History of Reiki

The Reiki palm healing modality was originally founded by Mikao Usui, a Japanese business man, and scholar who had become a Tendai Buddhist lay monk in the latter years of his life. Usui was born on August 15, 1864 in the village of Yago, which lies in Japan’s Gifu prefecture district of Yamagata. He was a lifelong student of philosophy, theology, medicine, poetry, and martial arts.

Although, not a licensed physician, he was referred to as Doctor Usui out of respect for the master healer that he was. Usui’s students also referred to him as Sensei, meaning Master Teacher. Usui was a master teacher of meditation, and spirituality, in addition to his Reiki healing modality.

Usui was involved in palm healing modalities that had been imported and adapted from China’s Qi Gong which had become popular in Japanese spiritual circles in the early 1900s. He wanted to find a way to not use his own energy when transmitting energy from himself into the recipient.

Usui’s memorial stone located in the Saihoji Temple cemetery in Tokyo, Japan states that in 1922, on a 21 day fasting meditation, on sacred Mount Kurama, he received a revelation of a way to channel the universal life force energy into his Crown Chakra and then out through his palm Chakras into the recipient, thus preserving his own personal store of energy. This was a completely unique method in the energy healing field at the time, and he named it Reiki, meaning Universal or Spiritual, Life force Energy.

Usui then went on to develop Reiki into a method of healing using extensive specific hand positions used to administer healing to clients. In 1921 he opened a clinic in Tokyo where he treated clients, and attuned students to channel Reiki, and also taught them his method of healing. After the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, his clinic became too small for his growing throng of clients so he opened a new larger clinic in Tokyo.

It is said that Usui attuned, and taught over 2,000 students to Reiki Level I, and Reiki Level II, and promoted about 21 of these students, to Reiki Master/Teacher before his death in 1926, of a stroke, at the age of 62. Additionally, Usui created a private healing society for his students named, the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, which is still active in Japan today.

Although, many of his students remained in this society after Usui’s death, others left the Gakkai changing and perfecting the Usui Reiki system as they saw fit, sometimes changing the name as well. One of these Master/Teachers, who left the Gakkai, was Dr. Chujiro Hayashi, who was a retired Japanese Navy surgeon. Dr. Hayashi, went on to open his own clinics, and teach his own students Usui’s original teachings.

One of Hayashi’s students was Mrs. Hawayo Takata, an American born widow of Japanese descent visiting Japan from Hawaii, USA. Takata was a patient in Hayashi’s clinic where she was cured of her medical problems, and with much difficulty, due to her being both a woman, and a foreigner, was able to persuade Hayashi to both attune, and teach her Reiki.

Takata stayed, and worked in Hayashi’s clinic for a time, gathering valuable experience before returning to her home in Hawaii in 1937. Upon her return to Hawaii, Takata set about spreading Reiki to her fellow Hawaiians by opening a clinic, and giving Reiki treatments to clients.

In order to have Reiki be accepted by Hawaii’s large Christian population, Takata embellished Reiki’s history with a story that Usui was a Christian school teacher trained in an American university, which we now know was not the truth. In recent years Frank Arjava Petter, a German Reiki Master/Teacher, living and teaching Reiki in Japan, discovered the true history of Reiki. However, in Takata’s time, her embellished story was accepted as the true history of Reiki, rendering Reiki more acceptable to American Christians, adding it to spread throughout Hawaii and the globe.

Prior to his death, Hayashi visited Takata in Hawaii and attuned her to the Reiki Master/Teacher level, enabling her to attune, and teach her own students. Subsequently, Takata taught many Reiki Level I and Level II students, but initially refrained from creating any Master/Teachers until the last 10 years of her life. From 1970 to 1980, the year of her death, she created 22 Reiki Master/Teachers, one of whom was her granddaughter, Phyllis Furomoto.

Although it sounds incredible today, Takata charged her students $10,000 each for the Master/Teacher class. Fortunately, the cost of Reiki Master/Teacher training has come down quite a bit in price, making it affordable for the majority of people who desire to become certified Reiki teachers. If the Reiki Master/Teacher cost had not become more affordable, Reiki may have eventually died out, rather than flourish as it has.

Takata’s Reiki Master/Teachers went on to attune, and teach their own students after her death, further spreading Reiki around the globe with each new generation of Reiki Master/Teachers. Due to Takata’s untruth about Reiki’s origins, Reiki was accepted in the West, and scores of people, and animals all over the globe have benefited from Reiki healing. Therefore, we can forgive Takata for her misrepresentation of Reiki’s Japanese origins, enabling it to be accepted by the general public in her Post World War II time.