06 Dec Celestial Touch: Nine Years in Pawling
Have you heard about Celestial Touch Reiki and Readings?
Laura Schek, an Usui/Tibetan Reiki Master and Psychic Medium, opened her practice at 7 Arch Street in the Village of Pawling nine years ago this December. When we heard about this milestone, we reached out to Laura to learn more about her business and history in Pawling.
Laura graciously invited us to visit her location on Arch Street to talk a little bit about the services she offers her clients, and how she developed her practice as a medium and Reiki practitioner. Visitors to Celestial Touch find themselves in a peaceful, comfortable waiting room that has just a slight hint of the aroma of essential oils in the air. To the right is a spacious Reiki treatment room, which includes a large massage table. There is also a large office/reading room where Laura meets with her clients for psychic readings and mediumship. The decor throughout is beautiful, including antique furniture and gorgeous reproductions of paintings, as well as Tibetan and other spiritual symbols.
Celestial Touch offers Reiki healing, psychic readings and mediumship readings in sessions lasting 60 or 30 minutes. Laura offers psychic and mediumship readings via phone or video session as well as in person at her office. Her in-person clients come from the surrounding area, including lower Westchester and NYC, and she also has clients from all over the country and even internationally who do phone and video sessions with her. These remote clients make up a large percentage of her practice, and she spends several days a week conducting readings from her home office, which has a video/lighting set-up for that purpose. Most of her clients find her via referrals from other clients, but she also finds a fair number of new clients simply through her Google business listing. Laura works by appointment. Appointments can be scheduled via her website, celestialtouchllc.com.
Laura’s path to opening Celestial Touch began when she was just five years old, when she saw her first ghost while sleeping over at her Grandma’s house. She said, “I’ve seen spirit over the course of my life, but it wasn’t until a family member died about 16 years ago that things really took off. It was almost like the doors blew open, more and more unexplainable things started happening. I went to see a medium myself to try to contact my family member. I had never been to a medium before, and when I went, she looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Laura, you’re a medium. You need to be doing this work.’”
At the time, Laura was working at the high-end furniture finishing business that she had owned in Long Island City. While investigating where she could hone her mediumship skills, Laura learned about the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, which offered classes by well-known mediums. At the Omega Institute, she studied Mediumship and Trance Mediumship for many years with some of the top psychic mediums from the USA and UK including Lisa Williams, Tony Stockwell, James Van Praagh, John Holland and Mavis Pittilla. Through the Omega Institute, Laura also learned about a Spiritualist Church in New Jersey, where she also studied. As part of her training, Laura was tested many times for her accuracy and ability to connect with spirit.
Laura had been studying for several years, when friends encouraged her to open her own practice. She decided to seek a small space near her home in Pawling and shortly afterwards, she learned about an available space in the Dutcher House on Arch Street. Its “around the corner” location has both benefits and drawbacks–while it doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic, the location provides her clients with privacy.
Having grown up in Somers, Laura is familiar with the Hudson Valley and loves the quaint, small-town feeling in Pawling and the kindness of the people who live here. Both of Laura’s sons attended Trinity Pawling School, and she’s been a member of the community for a long time. Surprisingly, even though Celestial Touch is a member of the Pawling Chamber of Commerce and has been at the same location for nine years, Laura often meets locals who have never heard of it. Hopefully this article will raise the profile of Celestial Touch, so that Pawling folks seeking spiritual healing and guidance will know that we have a medium and Reiki master right here in our little town!
–by Amy Emke