Reiki is a form of treatment technique used as a complementary therapy for the treatment of physical, emotional, and mental illnesses. This practice is based around the understanding that life is supported by an unseen, life-force energy (Ki). When this energy is low, one is likely to become ill.

Practitioners use this life force energy channeled through their hands (also eyes, breath, intent) to bring about relaxation and healing to the patient. Reiki healing has been widely known to have positive (sometimes miraculous) effects in treating virtually every known illness and is always beneficial to the patient being treated.

It is said that Mikao Usui received the divine inspiration for Reiki while performing Isyu Guo, a twenty-one day Buddhist training course held on Mount Kurama in 1922. Although there is no specific knowledge of what this training entailed, it is believed that it involved meditation, fasting, chanting, and prayer.

The Reiki training that followed Usui’s death was carried on by Chujiro Hayashi, a medical doctor, who conferred with Usui about simplifying the methodology for practicality and broader application through his own clinical practice. This is how the use of specific hand positions for Reiki came to be. Usui did not follow a rigid structure of hand positions, rather he let his hands go as the energy inspired them to go.

The practice of Reiki changed from Usui’s purely spiritual technology to Hayashi’s more practical technology through his clinical background of medical and physical application. Hawayo Takata received her teachings from Chujiro’s clinic in the 1930s and became a Reiki Master on February 21, 1938.

It was Takata that brought Reiki to the United States and established the price structure for initiations and treatments. She believed that it was a divine gift that required a high investment to be honored and therefore fixed the price of $10,000 for Master training.

In order to protect the divine “secrets” the symbols used in Reiki were limited to only those willing to make the investment. To this day there are still those who believe it is imperative to protect the secrecy of Reiki training, however, in the information age, secrecy is difficult and rare. Knowledge is freely available to all those who seek to know.

There are many variations of Reiki practice in use today, and there is nothing particularly wrong with that because we are all individuals and spirit works differently with our individual natures. To say one is more correct than another would be inappropriate as the source of Reiki is divine energy. All beings are divine spiritual beings with a signature or vibrational frequency. Being different is not wrong, it is simply different. It is more important to honor the natural communion with spirit than to emulate someone else’s communion with spirit.

To thine own self be true.

From the standpoint of either practitioner or recipient, one must tune in to the vibrational frequency that resonates well, seeking the perfect vibrational match.

Mikao Usui

(08/15/1865-03/09/1926)

Chujiro Hayashi

(09/15/1880-05/11/1940)

Hawayo Hiromi Takata

(12/24/1900-12/11/1980)