The History of Reiki

Reiki is a very ancient healing system which disappeared from our collective knowledge for a long time, until it was rediscovered at the end of the century before last by Dr. Mikao Usui, a Japanese scholar.

There are many myths around Dr. Usui and his life. Whatever his true story may have been, what we do know is that he was a genuine and sincere seeker. After putting his totality into the search for the secrets of healing, the Reiki symbols and their use were revealed to him after fasting and meditating for twenty-one days.

What follows is that account, the way it is passed from teacher to student. It is not a documented history, and it does not present itself as one.

Dr. Usui was a Christian minister in Japan and, though Japanese, the head of a Christian boys' school. One day some of his students asked him whether he believed in the miracles Jesus had performed, the healing for instance. Being a minister, he answered yes. Did he know how Jesus had done it? No, he said, and he became curious. From that day on he was determined to find out in what way Jesus had healed.

That set a journey of many years in motion. He first studied at Christian schools in the United States, with no result: the method was simply not known there. It was suggested he study Buddhist writings, since Buddha too had healing powers, so he spent another few years at a monastery, again without answers. In Japan he stopped at many temples and asked the elders whether anyone knew how Buddha had healed. The priests said they were more concerned with spiritual than with physical wellbeing.

In one small monastery he finally found ancient Sanskrit writings from India, or perhaps Tibet. After some more years of study he felt he had come to an understanding, and that to move any further it would take deep meditation. He told the monks he intended to fast and meditate for twenty-one days on a nearby mountain, and that if he did not come back they should come and get his body.

He gathered twenty-one stones to count the days, throwing one away each day. On the twentieth day nothing had happened yet. He threw away the last stone and said to himself: well, this is it, either I get the answer tonight or I don't. That same night he saw a ball of light coming towards him on the horizon. His first instinct was to get out of the way, then he realised this might be exactly what he had been waiting for, and allowed it to happen. The light struck him in the forehead.

He saw bubbles in all the colours of the rainbow, and inside them symbols. They were the very same signs he had studied in the Tibetan writings and had never been able to understand. Now they were completely clear. They are the symbols we know today as the Reiki symbols.

On his way back down the mountain he was able to heal from that moment on. On that first day alone he healed a broken toenail, his own starvation, an ailing tooth and the abbot's sickness, which had kept him bedridden. These are known as the first four miracles.

Usui wanted to use this ability to help others, so he spent the next seven years in the beggars' quarter of Tokyo, healing the poor and the sick and helping them find work to get out of poverty.

After seven years he began to notice familiar faces. People he had healed and helped long ago were back in the same slums under the same conditions. Asked why they had returned, they said life outside was too hard and that begging was simpler.

This made him think, and he returned to the monastery. He realised he had passed on the healing but not gratitude. That he had dealt with the physical ailments and not with the spiritual ones. People had not been able to see the value of what he gave them. After a long time and many hours of meditation he formulated five precepts, known today as the five Reiki principles.

He shared them across the country, teaching and healing, working from then on with both at once, the spiritual and the physical.

On these travels he met Dr. Chujiro Hayashi, a commander in the naval reserve from a well educated and well positioned family. They met in the marketplace, where Usui was announcing his lecture at a nearby temple by carrying a lit torch in broad daylight, to draw the attention of those who were genuinely curious and ready to work on themselves.

Hayashi was so impressed by Usui's sincerity and conviction that he accompanied him on his travels. After Usui passed away, Hayashi became the next in the lineage.

Hayashi opened a clinic in Tokyo near the imperial palace. It held eight beds in one large room, two practitioners per person: one treating the head, the other on the right treating the stomach area, then both treating the back. Everyone worked and practised in the same place, and they also went to the homes of the sick.

To give Reiki in those days took two things: being accepted by the masters of the Reiki organisation, and promising to use Reiki daily and to volunteer regular hours at the clinic.

Some credit Hayashi with the fixed hand positions. Coming from a military background and organised accordingly, he preferred a sequence that covers the whole body and all the organs.

Hayashi left his body on Tuesday, 10 May 1940, shortly before the Second World War. It was clear Japan would enter the war. As a reserve officer he knew he would be recalled and would become responsible for the deaths of many people. He did not want that, and so he determined to end his life. Beforehand he passed the leadership of Reiki to Mrs. Takata.

Hawayo Takata, of Japanese descent, was born on Kauai in Hawaii on Christmas Eve 1900. In the 1930s she travelled to Japan to visit her family and to tell them of her sister's death. While there she became seriously ill and ended up in hospital. The doctors were going to operate, and as she was being prepared she kept hearing a voice saying: the operation is not necessary. Eventually she jumped off the table and asked whether there was another way.

The doctor had a sister who had been cured of a disease at Hayashi's clinic. He brought the two together, and so Takata's Reiki treatments began.

Once she was well she wanted to learn Reiki herself. At first Hayashi was not willing to teach her because she was a foreigner. Only through the good graces of her doctor was she able to persuade him. The training took a year and brought her to what we would now call the second Reiki level: she could do everything except train others.

Back in Hawaii she learned something else. She treated a neighbour without charging, and the neighbour placed no value on the treatments and did not get well. She treated a relative and this time charged, and that relative recovered and stayed well. This is where the custom of asking something for a Reiki treatment comes from.

In November 1936 Hayashi came to Hawaii on a tour to promote Reiki. During that time he trained her to teach, making her what we would now call a Reiki master. As he left he asked her to come to him when he summoned her.

Shortly before the war Hayashi appeared to her in a dream, asking her to come to Japan. She went, and found him troubled, his naval uniform already out of storage. He passed the leadership of Reiki to her and gathered all the masters to share the news.

Takata returned to Hawaii, went on using and teaching Reiki and later moved to California. Only from 1975 did she train masters herself. By her death in 1980 there were twenty-two, one of them her granddaughter Phyllis Lee Furumoto. Shortly before she died she founded the American Reiki Association, with the mission of organising and coordinating the transmission of the Reiki experience.

Phyllis Lee Furumoto founded the Reiki Alliance at the end of the nineties.