A Little Reiki History

Mikao Usui, or Usui-Sensei as he is called by his students in Japan, was born August 15, 1865 in the village of Taniai. It is thought that he entered a Tendai Buddhist school on or near Mt. Kurama at age four. He also studied kiko, the Japanese version of qigong, which is a health and healing discipline based on the development and use of life energy. The young Usui found that these healing methods required the practitioner to build up and then deplete his own life energy when giving treatments. He wondered if it were possible to do healing work without depleting one’s own energy.

 Usui-Sensei had an avid interest in learning and worked hard at his studies. He traveled to Europe and China to further his education. His curriculum included medicine, psychology, and religion as well as the art of divination, which Asians have long considered to be a worthy skill. Some believe that he was from a wealthy family, as in Japan only the wealthy could afford to send their children to school although others think this was not the case. He eventually became the secretary to Shinpei Goto, head of the department of health and welfare who later became the Mayor of Tokyo. The connections Usui-Sensei made at this job helped him to become a successful businessman. Usui-Sensei was also a member of the Rei Jyutu Ka, a metaphysical group dedicated to developing psychic abilities. In March 1922 Usui-Sensei with his personal and business life failing, he decided to spend some time on Mt. Kuruma to see if he could discover a solution to his personal problems; he was not seeking to discover a method of healing as some have said. He enrolled in Isyu Guo, a twenty-one-day training course at the Tendai Buddhist Temple located there. It is likely that fasting, meditation, chanting, and prayers were part of the practice. In addition, we know there is a small waterfall on Mt. Kurama where even today people go to meditate. This meditation involves standing under the waterfall and allowing the water to strike and flow over the top of the head, a practice that is said to activate the crown chakra. Japanese Reiki Masters think that Usui-Sensei may have used this meditation as part of his practice. In any case, it was during the Isyu Guo training that the Reiki energy entered his crown chakra. This filled him with tremendous spiritual enlightenment. When this happened, he was filled with excitement and went running down the mountain. On his way down he stubbed his toe on a rock and fell down. And in the same way anyone would do, he placed his hands over the toe, which was in pain. As he did this, healing energy began flowing from his hands all by itself. The pain in his toe went away and the toe was healed. Usui-Sensei was amazed by this. Usui-Sensei practiced this new ability with his family and developed his healing system through experimentation and by using skills and information based on his previous studies. He called his system of healing Shin-Shin Kai-Zen Usui Reiki Ryo-Ho or in its simplified form Usui Reiki Ryoho (Usui Reiki Healing Method).

 In April 1922, he moved to Tokyo and started a healing society that he named Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (Usui Reiki Healing Method Society). He also opened a Reiki clinic in Harajuku, Aoyama, Tokyo. There he taught classes and gave treatments. Contrary to previous understanding, Usui-Sensei had only three symbols, the same three we use in the West in Reiki II. He did not use a master symbol. (This fact has been verified by Hiroshi Doi and by research done by Hyakuten Inamoto, Arjava Petter and Tadao Yamaguchi.)

 In 1923, the great Kanto earthquake devastated Tokyo. More than 140,000 people died and over half of the houses and buildings were shaken down or burned. An overwhelming number of people were left homeless, injured, sick and grieving. Usui-Sensei felt great compassion for the people and began treating as many as he could with Reiki. This was a tremendous amount of work, and it was at this time that he began training other teachers. It was also at this time that he developed methods including a more formal attunement process.

 Demand for Reiki became so great that he outgrew his clinic, so in 1925 he built a bigger one in Nakano, Tokyo. Because of this, his reputation as a healer spread all over Japan. He began to travel
so he could teach and treat more people. During his travels across Japan he directly taught more than 2,000 students and initiated twenty Shihan, each approved to teach in the same way he did.

 While traveling to Fukuyama to teach, he suffered a stroke and died March 9, 1926. His grave is at Saihoji Temple, in Suginami, Tokyo, although some claim that his ashes are located elsewhere. One of the teachers initiated by Usui-Sensei was Chujiro Hayashi. Before his passing, Usui-Sensei asked Hayashi-Sensei to open his own Reiki clinic, to expand and develop Reiki Ryoho. Motivated by this request, Hayashi-Sensei started a school and clinic called Hayashi Reiki Kenkyukai (Institute). At his clinic he kept careful records of all the illnesses and conditions of patients who came to see him. He also kept records of which Reiki hand positions worked best to treat each patient. Based on these records he created the Reiki Ryoho Shinshin. This healing guide was part of a class manual he gave to his students. Many of his students received their Reiki training in return for working in his clinic. Hayashi-Sensei also changed the way Reiki sessions are given. Rather than have the client seated in a chair and treated by one practitioner as Usui-Sensei had done, Hayashi-Sensei had the client lie on a treatment table and receive treatment from several practitioners at a time. He also created a new more effective system for giving Reiju (attunements). In addition, he developed a new method of teaching Reiki that he used when he traveled. In this method, he taught both Shoden and Okuden (Reiki I&II) together in one five-day seminar. Each day included two to three hours of instruction and one attunement. During a trip to Hawaii in 1937–38 prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he was asked by the Japanese military to provide information about the location of warehouses and other military targets in Honolulu. He refused to do so and was declared a traitor. This caused him to lose face. The only solution was seppuku (ritual suicide), which he carried out. He died honorably on May 11, 1940. Mrs. Hawayo Takata was born on December 24th, 1900, on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. She married Saichi Takata and they had two daughters. In October 1930 Saichi died at the age of 34, leaving Mrs. Takata to raise their two children. In order to provide for her family, she had to work very hard with little rest. After five years she developed severe abdominal pain and a lung condition and suffered a nervous breakdown. Soon after this one of her sisters died and it was Mrs. Takata’s responsibility to travel to Japan to tell her parents. She also felt she could receive help for her health in Japan. While in Japan she went to Chujiro Hayashi's clinic. She was unfamiliar with Reiki but was impressed that the diagnosis of Reiki practitioners at the clinic closely matched the doctor’s at the hospital. She began receiving treatments. Two Reiki practitioners would treat her each day. Mrs. Takata got progressively better and in four months was completely healed. She wanted to learn Reiki for herself. In the spring of 1936 she received First Degree Reiki from Hayashi-Sensei. She then worked with him for a year and received Second Degree Reiki. Mrs. Takata returned to Hawaii in 1937, followed shortly thereafter by Hayashi-Sensei and his daughter who came to help establish Reiki there. In February of 1938 Hayashi-Sensei initiated Hawayo Takata as a Reiki Master. Takata-Sensei practiced Reiki in Hawaii, establishing several clinics, one of which was located in Hilo on the Big Island. She gave treatments and initiated students up to Reiki II. She became a well-known healer and traveled to the U.S. mainland and other parts of the world teaching and giving treatments. She was a powerful healer who attributed her success to the fact that she gave a lot of Reiki to each client. She would often do multiple treatments, each sometimes lasting hours, and she often initiated members of a client’s family so they could give Reiki to the client as well. It was not until after 1970 that Takata-Sensei began initiating Reiki Masters. She charged a fee of $10,000 for Mastership even though the training took only a weekend. This high fee was not part of the Usui system, and she may have charged this fee as her way of creating a feeling of respect for Reiki. She said that one should never do treatments or provide training for free, but should always charge a fee or get something in return. She also said that one must study with just one Reiki teacher and stay with that teacher the rest of one’s life. In addition, she did not provide written instruction or allow her students to take notes or to tape record the classes and students were not allowed to make any written copies of the Reiki symbols. She said that Reiki is an oral tradition and that everything had to be memorized. While this is generally true, she didn’t always teach the same way and in at least one class she allowed her students to take notes and gave them handouts. Before Mrs. Takata made her transition on December 11, 1980, she had initiated twenty-two Reiki Masters.