The reiki story

THE REIKI STORY

The early chapters in this manual serve to provide a foundation of understanding about us and energy in general. Now, in this and subsequent chapters in this manual, we start to focus on Reiki itself.

Reiki is a very ancient healing system which was first practiced in Tibet thousands of years ago. The practice of Reiki in Tibet died out, but was re-established in Japan by a Mikao Usui in the nineteenth century. Mikao Usui was a Christian minister teaching at Doshisha University in the ancient Imperial capital city of Japan, Kyoto.  One day he was asked by his students if it were possible for a person to perform healing miracles such as those that Jesus performed. Mikao Usui was not aware that this was possible, but set himself the task of finding out how Jesus did his healing work. He travelled extensively through Japan and China, studied at the University of Chicago Divinity School and eventually returned home to Japan. Despite all these travels, he had been unsuccessful in finding out how Jesus was able to heal. One day, Mikao Usui decided to undertake a 21 day meditation on Mount Kurama at Kyoto. On the very last day of his meditation, he saw a bright shining light on the horizon that started to come towards him. He decided not to move out of its way, and it hit him straight in his third eye centre. As the light entered his head, he saw symbols and felt a huge flow of energy starting to move through his body. Mikao Usui then finished his meditation and started to walk down the mountain. As he did so, he stubbed his toe on a rock and it started to bleed. As he held his toe in his hands, the blood stopped flowing and the abrasion on the toe healed immediately. He realised that the energy that was flowing through him, which was the Reiki energy, had the healing properties similar to those of Jesus that he had been seeking. 

From this moment onwards, Mikao Usui was able to perform miraculous healings for people. He spent some time healing people in the slum areas of Kyoto. He soon realised that although he was able to achieve physical healings, the best healing came when people also decided to change their behavioural patterns and attitudes to life. He had been giving healing treatments for free, but realised that his patients did not understand the value of the gift he was giving them. He felt that it was important that people receiving healing therefore gave something in return and he started charging for his services.

A few years before he died, Mikao Usui initiated a retired naval officer, Dr. Chujiro Hayashi in his Reiki healing system and declared that Chujiro Hayashi would be his successor in his Reiki lineage.   Chujiro Hayashi opened a private Reiki clinic in Tokyo where practitioners were trained and patients were treated. Healing was given generally by two practitioners together, one treating the head of the client with the other treating the stomach area. The client would then be treated on the back. A Reiki organisation had been created, and to become a Reiki practitioner a student had to be accepted by the organisation and to give a deep commitment to work with Reiki every day.

Around this time, a young Japanese woman named Hawayo Takata was living in Hawaii.  She was suffering from a number of physical conditions including a tumour. It would have been normal practice for her to have undergone surgery, but she received an inner message telling her that she did not need surgery and that she should go to Japan where she would find an alternative way of being cured. She went to Tokyo where she found eventually Chujiro Hayashi’s Reiki clinic. She received healing at the clinic for several months and was cured eventually of all her physical conditions.  

In those days, Japan had a very male orientated society. Consequently, none of the Reiki practitioners were female. Hawayo was so impressed by the Reiki healing that she begged Chujiro to train her in Reiki. He refused at first but in 1938 she became his Reiki student. Unfortunately, Hayashi died in 1941. In the subsequent years, Hawayo performed numerous healings, being the only Reiki Master in the world until 1976. (Master means having the ability to pass the Reiki energy on to other people). In the early 1970’s, she moved from Hawaii to the USA mainland where she started to teach Reiki. She started to teach anybody who she felt would take a sincere approach to Reiki practice. As she knew that she would have to die one day, Hawayo began to train some of her students to Master level so that they would be able to pass on the energies until after her death. At the time of her death in 1980, Hawayo had initiated 22 Reiki Masters.

- Ethel Lombardi

Hawayo Takata died without leaving any structure or organisation through which Reiki could be taken forward. Consequently, after her death, Reiki was taken forward through two main paths by her Reiki Masters. Barbara Weber Ray developed the Radiance Technique School and Hawayo’s granddaughter Phyllis Lei Furumoto developed the Reiki Alliance which the other Reiki Masters joined. Phyllis Furomoto eventually started to refer to herself as the ‘Grand Master’ and lineage bearer of Reiki. The Reiki Alliance developed very strict procedures and rules in connection with the practice of Reiki. In the mid-1990’s, Phyllis Furomoto tried to trademark Reiki around the world. The idea was that everybody who wanted to become a Reiki Master had to pay the sum of US$10,000. As far as I am aware, the trademarking application was unsuccessful in every country except Latvia.

The problems associated with so much money being involved with Reiki that had nothing to do with the spiritual aspects of Reiki or with the energy itself led many Reiki Masters not wishing to belong to the Reiki Alliance or its equivalent elsewhere in the world.

In the present day, there must be several million Reiki Masters around the world, each of these Reiki Masters doing something to help the world and its life forms.