MATTAPOISETT — Lots of people decide to change their career paths. But not as many decide to take as drastic a turn as Kathleen Lankford.

Lankford was once a corrections officer in California. Now, she runs a Reiki studio in Mattapoisett, helping patrons relax using the 100-year-old Japanese technique.

“I’ve come full circle,” she said. “Just [the] total opposite of what I did in my job.”

Using the technique, which is based on the principle that a practitioner can channel energy into their patients, Lankford said the body “begins to heal itself from the inside.”

Lankford began Reiki after she saw an article about the practice while dealing with a thryroid condition. After that, she said, “Reiki always stuck in my head.”

Then, Lankford said she met a Reiki practitioner in Nevada “almost like it was fate.”

Lankforfd used the technique to help with her thyroid problems, after none of the treatment she received from doctors worked.

“I healed myself,” she said, using Reiki.

She began practicing in Nevada before moving back to the South Coast, where she was raised and still has family.

Lankford said in Nevada she was able to help patients with problems like stress, anxiety and personal trauma through Reiki.

“I have helped quite a few people in Nevada,” she said.

Since opening her practice in the Mattapoisett Wellness Center in July, Lankford said the local demand for Reiki has been high.

“Now word of mouth is getting out, so that’s even better,” she said.

Lankford said that her customer base in Mattapoisett is actually more accepting of the practice than in Nevada.

“It’s far more progressive here than it was in Nevada,” she said.

But Lankford still encounters doubters from time to time at her new practice.

“You can’t convince them that what I do helps,” she said. “I know it helps because it helps me.”

Part of Lankford’s treatment includes tuning forks, the sound from which Lankford said goes “deep into your body.”

“Our bodies are like instruments,” she said. “We fall out of tune.”

The forks are tuned to different frequencies, Lankford said, including the rotation of the earth’s axis and a mother’s womb. Some of the forks, though, are simply tuned to pleasing sounds.

Lankford also employs a bed, where her patients lay for the treatment, lined with amethyst crystals.

“It does relax you,” she said. “99.9% of my clients fall asleep and just relax.”

Lankford is confident in her practice, and that she’s able to help people. For her doubters, she has but one proposition: “Just come in and try it yourself.”