Reiki is a Japanese practice for restoring balance through gentle, hands-on energy work. The system in use today was developed by Mikao Usui in the early twentieth century, and has been transmitted from teacher to student in an unbroken lineage ever since
Mikao Usui
Mikao Usui was born in Gifu Prefecture, Japan, in 1865. He studied widely throughout his life, including Buddhism, Shinto, traditional Japanese medicine, and the martial and meditative arts. He worked across several professions before turning his attention fully to spiritual study and healing
In March 1922, Usui undertook a 21-day meditation retreat on Mount Kurama, north of Kyoto. Towards the end of the retreat, he experienced what he later described as a sudden expansion of awareness. From this experience, he developed the method of natural healing that would become known as Reiki.
Later that year, Usui opened a Reiki clinic in Tokyo where he began teaching Reiki and providing treatments. A total of 20 people became Masters/Teachers, including Mr Chujiro Hayashi.
Chujiro Hayashi and the clinical refinement
One of Usui's senior students was Chujiro Hayashi, a former naval officer and medical doctor. After Usui's death in 1926, Hayashi opened his own clinic in Tokyo and refined the teaching into a clinical format with standardised hand positions. This clinical structure is the form of Reiki most widely practised in the world today.
Hayashi also transformed the way Reiki sessions were conducted. Instead of having the client seated in a chair and treated by a single practitioner, as Mikao Usui had done, he introduced the practice of having clients lie on a treatment table while receiving treatment simultaneously from several practitioners.
Hawayo Takata and the spread to the West
Hawayo Takata a Japanese-American woman from Hawaii, travelled to Japan in 1935 seeking treatment for a serious illness. She received Reiki at Hayashi's clinic and, after recovering, trained as a Reiki practitioner and later a Master
Takata returned to Hawaii and began teaching Reiki across the United States. Before her death in 1980, she had trained twenty-two Reiki Masters. These students, and the Masters they trained in turn, are the source of most Reiki lineages outside Japan.