My Journey with Reiki and Meditation: Jordi Ibern

My name is Jordi Ibern Novell, and I am the founder of Kisetsu, Reiki & Meditation School. I was born in Granyena de les Garrigues, Lleida, and I currently live in Barcelona. I am married. I am a father. And these are really the only certainties I have in life. What about the rest? The rest is much more complex and less clear.

I had a childhood that I remember as both beautiful and sad. My adolescence and early youth were dark and difficult. Like many others before me, I lost myself on the path of a life I neither knew nor understood. I successfully dedicated myself to surviving. Nothing more. I didn’t know that I could aspire to more. I never knew the rules of life, and it, in a somewhat aggressive yet alluring manner, led me to gloomy places, both inside and out. I encountered darkness. I even convinced myself that I liked it.

It was when I was just over 20 years old that I realized, for the first time, my general dissatisfaction, being generous in my assessment. It’s not that I wasn’t happy; I was unhappy. Also, like many before me, I don’t pretend to be special in these matters—a heartbreak triggered it all. A heartbreak and a book, Conversations with God. A book that, when reread many years later, I wouldn’t recommend to anyone, but which nevertheless awakened in me a need, motivation, and longing that would change the course of my life.

In 2002, at the age of 24, I discovered Reiki, not because I was seeking solutions to my suffering, but because the very person who, without intention or malice, had hurt my heart, spoke to me about it. At that time, in a failed attempt to be happy, I was devouring self-help books and dabbling in practices I deeply misunderstood, like meditation. I decided to write a book, El Despertar. It was a poorly written and arrogant book, considering it was penned by a young ignorant man who was unaware of his ignorance. Nevertheless, it was an honest book. What is written in those just over 200 pages faithfully represents the young man who wrote it. The book was published, and the 1,000 copies printed in the first edition sold out. One of the readers, an acquaintance I admired, approached me one day and said, “Jordi, you should do Reiki; it fits you.” Once again, that unknown “Reiki” was appearing. I decided to take a course. It changed my life. I felt at home.

It’s fair to say that I never found Reiki; Reiki found me. And it had to insist a bit, but it found me. And it saved me from myself.

My first Reiki teacher, Júlia Costa, played a significant role in my falling in love with Reiki. Warm, kind, and profound, I always felt protected with her. In two years, I completed my Traditional Reiki training, becoming a teacher (the misnamed “master”), and inadvertently began offering Reiki sessions to friends and acquaintances. For some reason I still don’t understand, and don’t intend to understand, people started coming. More and more. I didn’t charge for it. I was learning, practicing, discovering. My first course as a Reiki teacher wasn’t sought after either. I was too shy to try to satisfy my egotistical desires. When I recommended my Reiki teacher to some friends who wanted to learn, they begged me, almost forced me, to be the one to teach them. At that time, I had a much nicer life, far nicer than in my adolescence and early youth. Better habits, nature, constant reading. Beauty. Silence. I offered the course. I discovered Reiki. The words flowed, and so did the silences. From that day on, I began taking courses regularly; first every two or three months, then every month, then every two weeks. I moved to Barcelona. Lleida was a cycle, and that cycle had come to an end.

Why Barcelona?

At Fira Natura in Lleida, a fair similar to BioCultura, I was doing free 15-minute Reiki sessions for friends who had a natural therapies center and wanted to promote themselves. After one of the sessions, a fair attendee named Berta asked for my phone number. She wanted my contact for when she decided to learn Reiki. More than 20 years later, Berta is one of my best friends, but she still hasn’t learned Reiki. A week after the fair, a stranger called me asking if I wanted to move to Barcelona. “Who are you?” I asked, embarrassed. She was a friend of Berta’s. Apparently, Berta had given her my number because she was looking for a roommate and “felt” that I would be the ideal one. These strange New Age things… in Barcelona! I was taken aback, but I agreed to visit her house in Sant Just Desvern a week later. I was curious.

The same week of the fair, a Czech man named Vladimir Durina came to Lleida to present some natural products. The organizer was a good friend, Bruni. She invited me and “the ones from Reiki.” A few friends and I attended. Vladimir ended up “measuring” the energy of the attendees with some rods. I turned out to be “a 9,” but I didn’t know the scale, so I remained somewhat indifferent. Two days later, Bruni wrote to me asking if I wanted to go to Prague to learn an energy therapy. It’s unnecessary to explain my surprise. “Vladimir asked me about the one who was a 9.” That was her only explanation. “He wants you to go to Prague.”

A week later, I quit my job, told my family and friends that I was going to Prague to learn an energy therapy, and then I would move to Sant Just Desvern, in Barcelona. I was going to dedicate myself to Reiki. It was the most reckless decision I have ever made in my life. The best one. Sometimes I miss that naïveté. No one understood my reasons. I couldn’t explain them.

From Sant Just Desvern, I traveled back and forth between the Czech Republic and Slovakia for years. I conducted hundreds of sessions, courses, and retreats. I gained experience that I needed much more than I thought and learned rudimentary English, but it was enough. Every day, I practiced Reiki, meditated, ran ten kilometers, and ate healthily. I visited India—how could I not? I was extremely disappointed, but its influence on me was greater than expected. I was still searching; I am still searching. I didn’t know what I was looking for, and I don’t know what I am looking for. But I search.

In 2005, I met José de Groot. Initially my student in a Reiki course, she eventually became an inseparable soul mate. A yoga teacher specialized in anatomy for yoga and yin yoga, together we created the combination of Yin Yoga & Reiki. Since that first year, we have conducted hundreds of workshops and retreats in Spain, the Netherlands, and Finland. My collaboration with her opened doors for me to offer Reiki and meditation courses in other countries. Those were years of expansion and travel, both in Spain and the rest of Europe. I regularly offered Reiki courses in several cities. During those years of growth, I founded a non-profit association to bring Reiki to people at risk of social exclusion, Voluntarios Reiki. We conducted thousands of Reiki therapies for people who truly needed it. We had to close after the economic crisis that began in 2008.

In 2011, I had the opportunity to participate in a fifteen-day mindfulness intensive with Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh at Plum Village, France. That experience showed me the transformative power of mindfulness and simplicity in everyday life. I fell in love with Thay’s teachings, the affectionate name for Thich Nhat Hanh, which means “teacher” in Vietnamese. Later, I trained at La Salle University and the University of Barcelona, completing my knowledge with a Higher Diploma in Mindfulness and Emotional Management and a Course in Mindfulness Applied to Education, respectively. Diplomas always help, even though my meditation and mindfulness come from Thay. In 2015, I also started studying Psychology at U.N.E.D. Meanwhile, I continued traveling, offering courses, retreats, and Reiki therapies in different countries. In one of those courses in Paris, I met Taly, whom I would marry years later. Together, we live in Barcelona and have a beautiful daughter, Laïa.

In my search and love for Reiki, meditation, and Zen, I traveled to Japan, where I fell in love with the Japanese approach to Reiki. Afterward, I took Jikiden Reiki courses with Yamaguchi Sensei and Gendai Reiki Ho with Rika Saruhashi, deepening my knowledge of Japanese Reiki techniques under Frank Arjava Petter. Since 2015, I have gone to Japan every year. Currently, I also offer an annual twelve-day Reiki master course in Tôno, Iwate Prefecture, which includes a spiritual and cultural immersion. Japan is where I feel at home.

In the same year I went to Japan for the first time, I met Yasmine Sinno, a yoga teacher based in Beirut. We quickly connected. She invited me to offer Reiki and meditation courses in Lebanon. Together, we held courses and retreats in Lebanon until human ignorance, turned into violence, cruelty, and pain, forced us to take a pause that remains unpaused. Yasmine moved to Italy and opened a yoga center, where I regularly go to give Reiki and meditation courses while we both silently dream of the moment we can return to talk about Reiki, yoga, and meditation in Lebanon.

In 2019, I traveled to Yangshuo, China, where I completed an intensive Qi Gong and Tai Chi course at the Shan Tai Chi School. This experience further deepened my understanding of the healing power of a simple life and regular practice, integrating the wisdom of Traditional Chinese Medicine into my own path and teachings.

Upon returning from China, a pandemic, the birth of my precious daughter, the publication of my book The Spiritual Path of Reiki, and a resurgence of the online world turned my life upside down.

In 2023, along with my wife and a friend, we consolidated Kisetsu, Reiki & Meditation School, a project that had been in the making since 2015 after my first trip to Japan. Kisetsu was meant to be a Reiki and meditation school with a Japanese aesthetic and principles that, although they may seem idealistic, are fundamental to me: teaching with honesty, seeking simplicity, and promoting kindness. The pandemic changed everything, pausing the project until, after many meetings and many teas, we decided to slightly modify the original idea and invest in a prominent Online Academy, in addition to including everything I had already offered. Kisetsu is the evolution of what I had been until then. At Kisetsu, we offer online and in-person courses and workshops in Reiki, meditation, and mindfulness, delivered in a simple and accessible manner in the three languages I have always taught: Catalan, Spanish, and English.

Kisetsu means “seasons” in Japanese. The name refers to what I consider the heart of my teachings, whether in Reiki, mindfulness, meditation, or Qi Gong: life is spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring, summer, autumn… until one day it ends. And living is about learning to skillfully navigate these cycles that always return. What’s the secret? Discipline accompanied by kindness and humility.

Today, after more than twenty years since I embarked on this irreversible journey, I continue to explore each season, each change, each moment with curiosity. I am finally aware that I deeply ignore the most important questions of life, such as “Who am I?” or “What is the meaning of life?” but I feel comfortable with it. And I feel profoundly grateful. Life has been and is generous with me in experiences and people. My goal is now much clearer: I want to face death as a present, kind, and available person.

Thank you,
Jordi Ibern Novell (October 2024)