by Karen K. Harrison, LCPC, LCMFT

First published in the Reiki News Magazine Spring 2026 – click here to download

On a Friday morning in January 2021, I woke up, and during my Reiki self-practice time, the thought came through, “I am going to buy a lake house.” I was surprised, but thought it must be time. Both of my siblings had lake houses, and I had been a guest at my sister’s lake house many times. I wrote my request and put it in my Reiki grid. I contacted my best friend, Linda, a realtor, and two days later, we were looking at lake houses at Lake Lotawana. By Sunday, I had a verbal agreement to purchase a lake house. And then on Monday, the sale fell through, right when I was leading a Reiki Circle. Although disappointed, I realized it wasn’t meant to be.

My friend Linda then told me about wooded lots at another nearby lake. I was so excited! We went to look at two lots, and I stood in the snow and cold, looking over all the trees and the lake. How perfect! I wanted it! My heart leaped with excitement. Thus began my journey of building a lake house as a single woman. I appreciate my ancestors’ hard work, which allowed me to invest and buy a lake house, and Reiki, which kept me in the flow of abundance.

Next came deciding which builder to use. I placed the right and perfect builder request in my Reiki grid. I was teaching a Reiki class when one of my students told me that her family had built the house I was living in. I decided to check out that builder and two others. After interviewing all three of them, I chose the builder who had built the house I had been living in for the past 20 years. Synchronicity!

I looked over the house plans the builder had on his website and chose a plan. Unfortunately, it was too wide for the size of my lot. The company’s owner worked on the architectural drawings. He suggested a different plan that would fit my lot. I added the right and perfect house plan request to my Reiki grid. The owner, Linda, and I had many meetings to work on customizing the house plan to my needs.

Visualizing is not one of my better skills, so I used Reiki, trust, intuition, and the builder’s and Linda’s keen sense of design. Finally, we had the plan and the outside renderings done. He gave me an estimate of 11 months to build after breaking ground, which grew into 15 months.

Building a house was a part-time job and a full-time adventure in flexibility, patience, persistence, shopping, and some stress. I worked in my Reiki business full-time, providing sessions, teaching classes, learning how to teach online during the pandemic, alongside my responsibilities at the International Center for Reiki Training. So, naturally, I used Reiki continually, and it helped me through every step of the process.

The builder was very organized. The company gave me a 12-step plan with a pre-step and a post-step. Although I am also a counselor, I am not trained in addictions, but I found it humorous that I was working a 12-step plan to build my house. It made it much easier to chunk the work into smaller, manageable steps with deadlines for each category.

I knew I wanted stucco and rock for the exterior. Choosing the rock was one of the hardest things. The first rock I chose went out of stock. I put the right and perfect rock in my Reiki grid. I chose a different pattern. Then, the company went out of business. I sent more Reiki. The builder chose another company, and they brought out two patterns of rock. I chose one. While I was on vacation, the supplier put the rock on, and it had a lot of gray and charcoal that had not appeared in the sample. I cried over that. I sent more Reiki. Finally, the builder had the rock company remove some charcoal and gray rock and replace it with more colorful rock. It still wasn’t quite what I wanted, but it was close enough. I put a lot of Reiki into the whole rock project. I kept adding more detailed Reiki requests for the house and the entire process to my Reiki grid.

Reiki gave me the idea of visualizing the completed house and working backward from there. Since I am not a great visualizer, I set my intention to visualize it, feel it, and create from my intention with Reiki. That turned out to be a great plan. I am happy with all my decisions, which is a true miracle!

To keep me stable and facilitate the process, I asked my friend, Karen, to send Reiki to me and the house project for two one-hour sessions a week during the entire project, which ultimately took two years. The pandemic caused many delays and cost overruns because of workers contracting COVID-19, staff shortages, supply shortages, and things I had ordered months before going out of stock. I had to re-choose the carpet, tile, rock, and more—delay upon delay.

Karen continued to send Reiki and create distance Reiki Trails all over the property, and I practiced self-Reiki every morning and put all my Reiki requests regarding the house into my Reiki grid. I also called on my spiritual team of God, Jesus, and Archangel Gabriel for help. Most of the time, I stayed calm and enjoyed the process.

I kept working the 12 steps, and the house broke ground in November and was ready for concrete in December. Seeing the house I had designed materialize was so exciting. By the time they started putting up the walls, I could get a sense of space, and I was hoping I would be happy with the layout and the size of each room. Joyfully, I was!

The process continued with choosing everything in the house except the nails! Decorating is not one of my skills, and I was concerned about how to put it all together into a cohesive whole. I hired a decorator at Kenny’s Tile and relied on the excellent help. That was another synchronicity. One of my students was an owner at Kenny’s Tile. When I was choosing a builder, he recommended the builder I ultimately chose, J.S. Robinson. And it turned out that J.S. Robinson used Kenny’s Tile for all their tile and flooring. Reiki provided synchronicities!

My whole house has a mermaid theme. I created a mermaid-style bathroom with aqua colors and scalloped tiles in various hues of aqua as an accent on the bathroom wall. The shower floor has various hues of aqua-colored flat pebbles.

I also went boat shopping and purchased a pontoon boat. It is all white with silver seats. I named it Mermaid Life and put large, purple mermaid decals inside all the doors. And I got a matching decal for my golf cart. I thought a golf cart would add to the fun, since golf carts are a big part of my lake community. I chose one that looked like bubbles under the water for the steering wheel. The whole mermaid theme placed a joyful spin on everything! Reiki is great for creativity and fun!

While I knew how to pilot a speedboat, I had no idea about a pontoon, which is like a floating barge. Piloting it was easy, but docking it was quite a challenge. I had to consider the speed of the boat, the wind, and the moving water, and try to get it into the dock without crashing. I applied a lot of Reiki to the situation and have successfully docked the boat many times.

I designed the downstairs of my house to teach Reiki classes. It has big windows and a walkout to the large patio. Students can gaze at the lake, the boats going by, and see the many birds. Further down the walkway is an outcropping of rock that overlooks the lake. I put a fire pit there and entertain guests around the fire.

The completion date of the house kept moving out month by month. I added the intention to my Reiki grid to easily sell my current house. During the project, I told two neighbors I was building a house and would be moving. One neighbor immediately told me his son wanted to buy the house. I thought, “Right, what son wants to live by his parents?” He persisted, and I told him he could come over and I would show him the house, and he said he wanted it. We negotiated the price, and at first the deal fell through. However, I sent more Reiki, and later he returned, and the deal went through. They have lived happily in my Reiki house for over two years. Reiki sold the house for me with very little effort!

I finally closed the deal for the new house in March 2023. The landscaping project had not yet begun, and since the deal for the house had closed, I managed the whole project, which turned out to be quite a lot of work and somewhat stressful. I have a pump that pulls water from the lake for irrigation, and the first system kept breaking. I applied a lot of Reiki to the problem, and I eventually worked it out with the builder by replacing the pump with a new system. My plants and trees love the benefits of lake water.

I moved in and discovered that the furniture from my old house didn’t match the style of my new house, so I began a redecorating project, which took another year. Finally, it is complete with pictures of mermaids, turtles, dolphins, and dolls dressed up in mermaid outfits, sitting on my rock collections throughout the house. Some of the furniture is aqua and teal, which pulls my colors together.

My students love my house and comment on how serene and peaceful it feels. They contribute to the beautiful Reiki energy here, whether they attend class in person or online. It has a spa-like atmosphere, with the scent of essential oils wafting through the air. I Reiki my house every two weeks.

I am grateful for the gift of Reiki and how it turned what could have been a much more stressful and difficult experience into one that brought joy, fun, and creativity into the process.