True to Heart and Hands

At first glance, Serena Poisson appears to be a reserved, conventional woman.

But that is far from the truth; Serena is a warm, lively woman whose life has been anything but conventional.

She has had the great fortune of fulfilling a satisfying career before retiring and turning full tilt towards her present life’s work.

Serena retired as a GS12 Security Specialist instructor for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, having served the federal government for thirty-three years. Now, she is blossomed anew in her work as an energy healing practitioner.

I met Serena at a nearby café for our interview. She had just returned from Hawaii, where she swam with dolphins. "It was birthing season for the whales. All the bays were filled with their birthing energy." I watched Serena as she spoke. With her gray hair pulled back in a bun, I could imagine her knitting by a hearthside fire more easily than swimming with dolphins. "I saw bites on the side of one dolphin, so I sent a burst of Reiki energy and love and compassion out to this wounded dolphin. The next thing I knew, about fifteen or so dolphins came over from the main group to us and swam around us and under us , and I was just getting major hits of energy. I had sent out a burst of love and compassion and it was being returned multi-fold. When we got out of the water, I couldn’t stand up. The energy was just pulsating through me, very powerful energy."

Serena’s spiritual journey began when she was a child, raised as a Southern Baptist, in the Bible Belt of the South. She embraced her religion and became a Sunday School teacher. In 1963, she was hired as a clerk typist at Pt. Magu Naval Station. She trained Sunday School teachers during her off hours but began to have experiences to which the chaplains and Baptist ministers could not relate. A slow shift began in Serena’s life; as she states she "moved more and more into the world of spirituality and less in the world of religion."

Serena climbed the civilian job-ladder within the military. Eventually, she was hired as a security specialist for a mobile training team, traveling frequently to Japan and Guam and to stations around the United States. Serena was one of only six civilians in the Navy to work as a Security Specialist Instructor, and just one of three women to teach security management. She gave instructions on security requirements, how to protect information and material, how to determine about safes, containers and strong rooms, how to look for spies and indicators of individuals in distress, vulnerabilities to blackmail, and the complexities of security violations.

It was while working for the military that Serena first learned about meditation. She jokes that during the day she taught how to look for spies while at night she learned how to trust. Serena recalled an extraordinary experience during one of her early meditations, "I had been involved in an automobile accident where I had some whiplash. It was painful. I couldn’t move my head back." During meditation she felt as though something entered her. "I felt that my scalp was about six inches thick." She had already learned how to set boundaries to protect herself from unwanted energies and having done so she was unafraid. Her head turned one way and then the other. She heard the thought, "Oh, this will never do." Serena giggles as she recounts how far back her head turned, finally making her a little nervous. "Then I had the feeling of 'thank you' and [the energy] leaving. I’ve had full range of motion ever since."

Serena admits that she had to overcome guilt associated with leaving her Southern Baptist upbringing. "I have some friends who would have trouble with me saying some of the things that I believe." But she did not doubt herself or the guidance she received in her meditations. "During a meditation I was told to change the way I did healing. I was told that I should put my hands on [the body] and connect with the earth energy and the universe’s energy. I was shown the planets suspended in space and around it, various layers and that one of these layers was a layer of energy and that this energy had been placed there at the same time that the universe was created and put there for our benefit."

Her hands often felt like open faucets of energy. "There would be times when my hands would be uncomfortably hot; I’d have to run them under the water." Unaware of how to contain the energy running through her, Serena sought help from teachers and workshops. She was unable to find adequate answers until she became a Reiki practitioner. Reiki is an energy healing modality in which the Reiki initiate’s hands are given an "attunement", to channel healing life-force energy. Through her first attunement, she gained control of the energy simply by intention. "It was almost like the attunement put a washer in my hands and I could turn it on and I could turn it off."

In 1997, Serena enrolled in 9 Gates Mystery School which is where she was initiated into Reiki. There, she also explored various spiritual modalities and since her graduation, she has since served in staff and faculty capacities. These days Serena lives comfortably with her husband in San Diego, where, in addition to her work as a Reiki Master, she teaches empowerment workshops for the purpose of recognizing one’s fears and moving into complete ownership of one’s skills and talents. The workshops are designed so that people can recognize and eliminate self-limiting habits, "So that they can move forward with confidence to the unknown, so that whatever happens they’ll be able to cope with it."

As our conversation came to an end I felt inspired by Serena’s ability to live life on her own terms. Raised in a life of strict religious doctrine and completing a career in the military, she retired with the intention to devote herself entirely to her spiritual growth and healing practice. Remaining true to her heart’s path, she had successfully found the career of her dreams, twice.

By Eloissa Leonna