We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joni (Rajashree Maa) Dittrich a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Joni (Rajashree Maa), thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.
Even as successful psychologist and psychotherapist, I always knew there was more to “feeling better” than talk therapy: that there was an untapped energetic force within each of us that is already and always “whole” and “healed.” So I began practicing and teaching yoga, meditation, and reiki energetic healing to my clients and students. Then, in 2008, I began experiencing a series of mystical encounters with a goddess energy who appeared to me a Mother Kali, the goddess of transformation. She introduced me to certain energy signatures, or forms of light, which were presented as symbols to be used as a means to unblock stuck energy and create physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing for all willing clients. I was guided to introduced Kali-Ki Reiki Reiki® as a new reiki healing lineage. She impressed upon me the importance of “mid-wifeing” this method into the world right now. Kali-Ki Reiki works by activating the “loveforce” energy that is within us all. I call this primal lifeforce energy “Loveforce” because when you break it all down, it is love that is at the core of everything. This loveforce not only helps you feel better, but it increases your “wisening” or spiritual awakening. When people experience feeling better without medical or physical intervention, they begin to understand that we are made of energy and that our physical nature is dependent on our energetic source or substrate. This marks a transformation of consciousness, something that Mother Kali make it clear to me that is much needed in todays materialistic, objectified world. I was also guided to write book about my experiences and Kali-Ki Reiki. It took six years but the book was finally completed and published in 2023: “May the Loveforce Be With You~Kali-Ki Reiki: Healing through Divine Mother and Yogic Wisdom.”
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
In many ways, I gave up a rather mainstream career as a Ph.D. psychologist to pursue a deeper calling. Actually, I had always been interested in the mystical arts and questions about our spiritual evolution and what healing really means. I even went to seminary for a year before switching to psychology, thinking to become a minister. Now, in my “retirement” I am the owner of The Wisdom School, LLC, and in many ways I feel like what I am doing is the “ministry” I envisioned early on. I am the Master Teacher and Healer and we now have five additonal Certified Kali-Ki Reiki Teachers. We have students and clients around the globe and provide regular classes, workshops, and private healings both online and in person. My guided meditations are a source of comfort and inspirations for hundreds of followers and I also have an Internet TV channel. The beauty of Kali-Ki Reiki is that it not only helps people to feel completely and utterly relaxed, but it also relieves physical and emotional pain and can release long-held trauma and disease patterns. As a psychologist I treated people, often successfully, with standard trauma protocols. As a Kali-Ki Reiki healer, I tapped into my psychological experience to develop a reiki trauma treatment method I call “DROPPP” (Deep Release of Persistent Pain Patterns.) DROPPP is a more loving, gentle (and very successful!) method for getting at unwanted trauma patterns that may be from this lifetime or may also be rooted in karmic, ancestral, and cultural trauma. DROPPP is the subject of my second book which I am currently working on with Sandra Simon, one of our Kali-Ki Reiki Certified Teachers.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I must admit that I was more than a little uncertain about introducing a new lineage of reiki into the world. The reiki world, although appearing “woo-woo” to some, like most spiritual lineages, has historical precedent and various conventions it stands upon. The reiki that most people know today has its origins with a Japanese Buddhist monk of the early 20th century who gave us certain symbols that are different from the light forms of Kali-Ki Reiki. Who was I, an American laywoman, psychologist and yogi, to declare that the Goddess had entrusted me with new symbols that were meant to heal the woes of 21st century life? So, I decided to meet with some of the world’s experts in reiki to hopefully get their approval.
I began with the easiest one: My reiki teacher’s teacher, Susanna Luebcke, a German physician and traditioinal reiki master, who wrote the book Emotioinal Body Healing. Fortunately, Susanna has been a staunch supporter of Kali-Ki Reiki from the get-go. Then I met William Rand, the founder of the International Center for Reiki Training, who also encouraged me. However, there was another encounter with a very well-known and respected expert, whose name I will not mention. It was very difficult to get a meeting with them. Basically I had to pay a hefty fee for a healing with them to get them to even listen to me. Not to mention that I had to travel across the country on a bitter New Year Day. This person was, in a word, dismissive. They voiced my own fear: “how dare I presume” to say I could do such a thing? And how dare I call it reiki when we all know what reiki is and always will be, and that certainly has nothing to do with goddesses and an American woman.
The thing is, I never doubted my own experience, I never doubted the power of the symbols the Divine Mother had given me, and I never doubted that She wanted me to mid-wife Kali-Ki Reiki into the world. So, I quietly gave healings and classes for about 15 years, while new symbols were revealed and The Wisdom School grew. Then, at a certain point, I got the message loud and clear from Her that it was time to write the book. Like I said, it took five years, but finally it was published in 2023, and Kali-Ki Reiki has now been formally introduced into the world. Even the Ph.D. behind my name didn’t hold much credibility for me with this expert.
Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?
I believe that in this modern era, we often live many lives within one lifetime. We often have multiple marriages, families, and careers. I feel very fortunate to have had a successful career as a clinical psychologist in which I helped many people find a happier way to live. People still stop me on the street and thank me for “saving their lives” when they were stuck in depression, substance abuse, or a horrible relationship. I loved my work and thought I would be a psychotherapist until I dropped. But at a certain point, my spiritual life and my relationship with the divine, which had been with me since childhood, captured my attention once again. I literally received a calling to become not just a healer of words, but a healer of spirit. My mystical relationship with the Divine Feminine basically directs the later part of my life. Now a retired psychologist, I get to devote my attention to this new healing lineage that I felt directed to bring forth. As a healer and teacher of healers and I love my work and my life more than ever. And I am grateful for my career as a psychologist which has informed the way I treat people with compassion and empathy and for knowing how to help people in crisis. While, sadly, I lost my long-time husband in 2016, in many ways I feel entirely free to serve in every way I can to bring healing and wholeness into our broken world. I get to offer people a way of understanding themselves as beings of love: while the loveforce within us may have become obscured by the forces of greed, selfishness, and anger that plague our society, I am honored to have a simple method for restoring the luster of our souls, and healing body, mind, and spirit. While Kali-Ki Reiki may not be for everyone, for those who are drawn to it, transformation does happen, and I get to be part of it!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thewisdomschool.us
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewisdomschool.kalikireiki/
- Facebook: The Wisdom School: Home of Kali-Ki Reiki. (https://www.facebook.com/The.Wisdom.School.us/)
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWpe5cH0jKT4gHpKg7BA3xw
- Other: Ascension TV: https://consciousawakeningnetwork.org/?via=rajashree-maa
