I Got A Reiki Haircut

And I'm not ashamed

It is dusk and I am at the LA River with a handful of my own hair. It’s tangled in a small clump that looks like a rodent. I pet it. I smell it. I look around to see if anyone is watching. 

I’m nervous because I’m not sure this is allowed. You see, I’m about to put my hair into the river, and when I googled “is it ok to put your hair into the river?”, the results were more about how the river might damage one’s hair, than how one’s hair might damage the river. I read that, while hair takes a long time to biodegrade– roughly two years– it does break down into nitrogen, carbon, and sulfur eventually. In fact, hair is compostable (I really need to get into that), and there are even organizations that use human and animal hair clippings to create mats which clean up oil spills. 

But all that is irrelevant, because the woman who cut the hair I am holding did not tell me to donate it to the oil mat people. She told me to bury it in the ground or scatter it in a body of water. Like a river. And she told me to do this nearly six months ago. 

My friend Sam had offered to help me clean out my storage closet. We were catching up one evening and I mentioned how cluttered the thing was, and she said any time I wanted to go through it, just say the word. The closet had come to represent my life: chaos and avoidance. Finally, one weekend, I texted her. 

I come from a mess-adverse family. My mom’s side is fastidiousness to a degree that trained professionals (not me, to be clear— trained professionals) might consider pathological. It’s been ingrained in me to tidy when people come over and to not let others see you in disarray. I take pride in making the bed each morning, sweeping the floor after cooking a meal. What’s more, I identify as clean: showering sometimes twice a day, flossing regularly, washing my clothes too much. So, showing Sam my closet of horrors was a big deal. Furthermore, taking Sam up on her offer in the first place, admitting “I need help” was just as difficult. 

“Now, is this Costco pack of lollipops something you want handy?” Sam asked with truly not a shred of judgement. Then, moments later, “What should I do with the rain stick?” And: “Which do you need to access more? Your printer or these pickleball paddles?” We found a ton of art I’d forgotten about, a wig, some ribbon, tissue paper, and super glue. Behold: my “tax folder” which I’m going to let YOU imagine all on your own! Hey, I said I was clean, not organized.

Finally: “What is this?” Sam asked. Curious. Kind. Like she was referring to anything but a bag of human hair. 

The Reiki haircut cost $200 and took place at a salon in Highland Park called Freija Collective. They do regular haircuts there, too. And highlights and full color and balayage and facials and brows and you get it. It’s an airy, beautiful space that, unlike many LA salons, felt immediately welcoming.

The woman who conducted the ceremony (it was, indeed, a ceremony, not just an appointment) was named Jo Marie. She was a Seattle-native like me, with a soft voice and an essence that was both tender and cool. She asked what I knew about Reiki and I told her not much. In truth, I had some inkling that the practice was similar to “laying of hands” in Catholicism, where Jesus healed the sick by touching them. But I didn’t tell Jo this, lest I seem unnecessarily religious in Highland Park. I listened to her explain the ritual, nodding and smiling and hoping I wasn’t giving off a nervous, parochial-school-girl vibe.

Jo told me she was half indigenous, and that, in her culture, they believe hair holds energy. “Hair can be used as medicine” she said. She mentioned break-up bangs, a sharp chop after a hard year. “We grow our hair long to feel more, and cut our hair short to feel a little less.” It made sense.

Reiki is a form of Japanese energy healing. It’s founded on the idea that a life force surges through us. This force can be weakened by stress or illness or a cluttered storage closet. Jo explained that Reiki is a “universal energy.” It’s not something that she possesses, it’s something she channels. Basically, I could expect Jo to access this vibration and inject it into me via her hands. Then, afterward, she would ceremoniously cut my hair to finish the process. Reiki is safe and not invasive and you can keep your clothes on while it’s performed. Although there is no science to prove that Reiki “works” it does require you to sit still for 30 minutes or more and breathe deeply while a person lovingly and non-sexually places their hands on your body. Which can’t be…bad. Right?

Jo threw a purple tie-dye robe over my shoulders and asked me to pick two crystals from the shelf. There were four of them lined up, all uniquely beautiful. I chose a tan, gritty one that looked like a calcified bird’s nest (desert rose selenite), and a rich, spiky, lavender one that matched the color of the robe (amethyst). 

Armed with the crystals, our session began. Desert rose selenite had a satisfying texture, and I rubbed my thumb against the sandpapery surface to relieve my anxiety. We were sitting at Jo’s station in the middle of the salon. There was a woman in a chair a few feet away getting a regular haircut and it was really throwing me off. What did she think of us? She tossed her head back and laughed. Although I had no proof, I was sure she was making fun of me. I tried to relax. Jo asked me questions. 

Why was I here? What did I want to get out of the ritual? And, crucially, how did I want my hair cut? I said I wanted some peace. Some closure. A light fringe bang and no more than an inch off the ends, please.

The next part was a free-association exercise. Jo asked me to complete her sentences with the first thing that came to mind. The improvised nature of this, the lack of censorship, terrified me. What if I said something horrible? What if, in my answers, I revealed my mess? 

“I am feeling….” Jo prompted. ”UNMOORED” I blurted out, instinctually. “Interesting” she said, in a way that conveyed true, honest interest. “I trust…” she prompted. And my first thought was: “No one.” Dark. Inappropriate. I had already said “unmoored,” so I reigned it in. The woman behind us giggled and showed her stylist a TikTok. “I trust…everything,” I lied. 

Jo then took me to “the bowl” for the Reiki session and also to, you know, wash my hair. But she started with the Reiki. I clutched the crystals with all my might, already feeling bad about cheating on the fill-in-the-blank thing. “I trust everything?? What does that even MEAN, Olivia? By that logic you also trust…I don’t know…this CHAIR? You trust the SHAMPOO BOTTLES? Do you trust the RACCOON you saw in the alley on your way here? What’s next, are you gonna get LUNCH with the RACCOON in the ALLEY after all this? Are you gonna talk about WORK with him—”

Jo had returned with a warm cloth that she gingerly placed over my eyes. “Allow whatever comes up” she said. The raccoon in my fantasy ordered a tuna melt. Jo put headphones on my ears. I laid back. I waited.

For a few minutes, nothing happened. When I say nothing happened I actually mean a lot happened. My thoughts raced, specifically around the man getting his hair washed a couple of seats over. His bicep was covered in ink, a vaguely tribal pattern mixed with stick and pokes and portraits of people I didn’t recognize. This made me think of an ex who, when I asked him the significance of his tattoos, replied, “sometimes tattoos don’t mean anything.” 

I tried to stop thinking about the man and my ex and all men everywhere. When that didn’t work, I decided to “allow” the man and my ex and all men everywhere to stay. They gathered like a bearded jury in my mind’s eye. One stepped forward and reminded me that everything doesn’t need to have significance, that you can permanently ink a drawing of, say, a demonic octopus on your body simply because you want to, simply because you like it. Another raised his hand and asked why I’d never bothered to get any tattoos myself. “You’re an artist, after all.” The crystals seemed heavier. I defended myself. “Nothing has ever been important enough.” The man-mouths shot back: “But why does it NEED to be important?” they probed. “I don’t know!!!” I screamed. “IT JUST DOES!!” 

Jo asked me if I was comfortable. “Mmhm” I said.

I focused on my breathing. That seemed wise. Normal. The music must’ve been binaural beats; the sound gave me the sensation of traveling through space, or my own cells. Eventually, the men left and I was alone. Inhaling and exhaling into a blank expanse. Standing on a dock. 

Was I actually standing on a dock? Look, no! Was I dreaming I was standing on a dock? Not really. It was more like a trance. The image of the dock was extremely vivid. Above me was the sky, cloudy and cool. In front of me was a vast ocean. In the distance, there were cliffs much like the Cliffs of Moher. 

Right now, there is a part of my personality that is telling me to make a joke about what I saw that day during Reiki. This part begs me to undercut the meaningfulness with sarcasm, to roll my eyes before you can roll yours. The logic goes that internal rejection is more palpable than external rejection. If I laugh first, no one can’t point the finger. If I wound first, you can’t turn my earnestness on its side, fashion something sharp with it, and puncture me. I am the critic. I am the judge and jury. I deny the good before you can destroy the good. I brace, I contract, I arm myself. I am in control. But am I?

I wonder how it would feel to lay down my defenses and say something strange but true. To “allow everything” at this moment, much like I did on that day.

On the dock, I was holding a thick rope. It was scratchy, much like the desert rose selenite, and I felt the resistance of it, like it was attached to something large. “Allow everything” I thought again. Jo was touching my head very lightly. Like she was there but she wasn’t. After some time, it became clear that it was my job to let go of the rope, but this frightened me. I was very concerned about what it was holding. 

The music continued. I heard a “ding!” and immediately felt the presence of someone standing by my side. I didn’t turn to look at them, only sensed they were there, supporting me. Their presence was familiar, but like a word you can’t remember, their identity was hidden too deep for my mind to access. The figure said nothing, did nothing, but their proximity gave me courage to release the rope. My stomach sank. I watched a boat appear and float toward the horizon.  

This process repeated several times. The pull of the rope, not wanting to release. Releasing anyway. Over and over.

Then, a laugh! A sputtering, deep, bizarre laugh coming from…not the tatted man, but ME. It was odd; I didn’t think of a joke, or how funny it was to be sitting in a hair salon holding rocks, thinking about boats. I didn’t even realize, as I do now, the connection between the statement “I feel unmoored” and the ships in my vision, unmooring themselves in my mind. 

The laughter was involuntary, urgent. It felt like getting your reflexes checked. I was embarrassed at first, but the sensation was so all-encompassing and enjoyable, I gave in. I laughed until I cried. I laughed because I had given up the ships. I cried because the ships, of course, were not just ships. They were people.

When the session was over, I told Jo what I experienced. I asked her if laughter was normal, because it surprised me the most. She said Reiki always provides the exact medicine you need. “And laughter was your medicine.”

I believed her. After all, it’s harder for the Jury of Beards to laugh at you, if you beat them to the punch.

But then again, as Jo handed me that little bag of my own hair, as I paid my bill and stepped out into the bright, sunny street, I didn’t feel shame or the urge to self-deprecate. The raccoon was gone, probably sharing a bite with someone else. For a moment, I felt compassion for the Jury of Beards, realizing that they were really just an extension of my own psyche— there to protect me from perceived failure or potential humiliation. And by that logic, they could just as easily be a Bearded Support Group, a…Bearded Craft Club, cheering me on as I create, as I attempt to be better, as I unmoor the ships, a little bit closer to “trusting everything.”

Back at the LA river, it’s dark. Some bikers bike by, some joggers jog. I am visibly hunched at the concrete shore, creaturely, about to do something that may or may not be legal.

I don’t care. I let it all go.