A Call To Healing: One Body,

One Spirit At A Time

By Kaaren Valenta

Karen S. Judd is an interfaith minister, a Reiki master, and a licensed clinical social worker who draws on all of these aspects of herself to help others heal.

“Whole human beings are one body, one spirit,” she explains.

A Newtown resident who has a private practice in Bethel, she will be teaching an introduction to Reiki course in the Newtown Continuing Education program this fall. The class will provide an overview of this holistic method of healing, its history, and the principles for living a life of wellness.

Karen Judd was working in psychiatric settings in the early 1990s when she began to feel that many patients needed more than just conventional illness- and pathology-based treatment.

“Even the language, the clinical labels, began to bother me,” she said. “I needed a new language that I felt comfortable with.”

She had gone from working in a psychiatric hospital to working with adolescents who were in crisis.

“I was involved in the opening of the adolescent partial hospitalization program at Danbury Hospital and was part of that team for four years,” she said. “I had a very young son at the time and my job was very intense. I had no energy left for my family. I knew I had to create a better balance in my life.”

Eventually she resigned from her job and embarked on a journey that would lead her from psychotherapy to a very strong spiritual path.

“I made a paradigm shift,’ she said. “I opened a practice in my home in Ridgefield, where I was living at that time, and was drawn to creating collages. I would give them to clients as a transitional object that they could take with them as symbolic of the work they had done and who they are.”

She joined the Ridgefield Guild of Artists, a group that drew heavily on the spiritual and psychological aspects of their lives. “I became part of the guild board, taught classes in collage, and for two years ran the arts and crafts show in [Ballard] park.”

She became interested in Reiki, a deeply relaxing and centering hands-on healing technique — therapeutic touch — that is believed to have originated in Tibet thousands of years ago and was rediscovered in the 1800s by Dr Mikao Usui, a teacher in Kyoto, Japan. Reiki accesses a universal life force energy in each person to promote healing on the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels. After learning Reiki I and II, she attained the Reiki III level of learning two years ago, and became a Reiki master.

Raised as Roman Catholic, she eventually became a part of the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Redding and began teaching religious education to children. She became the director of the program and served in that capacity for six years.

“The job felt very right. I absolutely loved it,” she said. “I had to wear many different hats — keeping up with the new curriculum, doubling the staffing when we expanded to two services.”

She also began to consider going into the ministry.

“People who are UUs believe you have a responsibility to seek out what your truth is, and to advocate for social action, justice, and peace in the world,” she said. “It became clear to me that I wanted to minister to others, but I did not want to go back to school for a divinity degree. I wanted an experiential and spiritual program that would blend my education and experience.”

Because UUs embrace all religions, she found the prospect of becoming an interfaith minister was a good fit. She started in 2001 at The New Seminary in New York City. When the seminary split into two separate programs the following year, she followed her teachers into the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in the city, and in June 2003, she graduated and was ordained.

“I do ritual sacred ceremonies, weddings and baby namings, and serve as a guest minister,” she said. “I am on the Caring Committee at the UU congregation [now located in Danbury], and also am a member of the Unity Church in Norwalk, where I am on the board of directors,” she said.

This October Karen Judd plans to start her second year of workshops at the Hudson Valley Psychodrama Institute, in New Paltz, N.Y., which teaches the use of guided dramatic action to examine problems or issues.

“People can reach the point where talking [to a therapist] doesn’t work or maybe it never worked,” Ms Judd said. “A part of the person wants help, but another part resists. Psychodrama can bring you into the moment and out of your head.”

A graduate of Providence College with a bachelor’s degree in social studies education, Karen Judd earned a master’s in social work at Columbia University in 1981. While living in Ridgefield, she maintained a private practice from an office attached to her home. After moving to Newtown, she worked as a substitute teacher in the local schools while finding a place to relocate her practice. Recently, she found an office in a small professional building behind 153 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel. Here she uses her skills to help others.

“I find that many people have a wound from their experience with the religion of their youth or their young adult years which causes them to cut off from their spiritual self, from being associated with any church,” she said. “I want to help people find a way to reconnect with their spiritual self and be whole.

“When we have an imbalance in our life for a long period of time, eventually it can manifest as physical symptoms,” she said. “Being out of balance, out of our center, explains why pains develop where they do.”

Ms Judd says she tries to help people to “find their voice — to empower others to become what they are here to do” and to “work through the things in life that are blocking them.”

“While working through their blocks, many find unresolved grief due to someone they have lost or to an aspect of themselves that they have lost,” she said.

Sometimes clients may need additional help, such as medications, psychological testing, career testing, chiropractic, or massage therapy, and in these cases Karen Judd says she refers them to the appropriate professional.

“It’s important to do whatever is needed to bring them into balance — one body, one spirit,” she said.

The Introduction to Reiki course will be taught on October 6 from 7 to 9 pm at Newtown High School. To register, send the $27 fee for course No. 8345 and a $5 registration fee to Newtown Continuing Education, 12 Berkshire Road, Sandy Hook 06470 or call 426-1787. To reach Karen Judd, call 545-3664.