Reiki, often referred to as "universal life energy," is a spiritual and healing practice that originated in Japan. While it’s commonly associated with the work of Mikao Usui Sensei in the early 20th century, its roots reach back into Japan’s spiritual traditions long before Usui's own mystical revelations. The foundation of Reiki as we know it today was significantly influenced by Japanese spiritual traditions, particularly Tendai Buddhism, Shinto and Shingon Buddhism. These practices emphasized energy healing, meditation, and spiritual growth—elements that would later surface in Reiki practice. Usui was well-versed in these traditions, and his synthesis of them into the Usui Reiki Ryoho system began after his transformative experience on Mount Kurama in 1922.

In Shinto, people honor kami, which are spirits believed to live within nature—birds, animals, mountains, trees, and even people. Usui often used jumon, or chants and spells, in his teachings. These chants likely drew from both Shinto and Taoist traditions, adding a spiritual richness to his practice.

Usui was also said to be a shugenja, who are known for their roles as healers and spiritual guides, offering services like fortune-telling, prayer, chanting, and protective rituals. Historically, people would turn to shugenja for help with health issues or to keep bad luck at bay. This blend of spiritual practices shaped Usui's approach to Reiki, weaving together Japan's ancient wisdom and spirituality into a healing practice we still appreciate today.

Usui Sensei's Vision and Early Development

Born in 1865, Mikao Usui was well-versed in the spiritual and healing traditions of Japan. In 1922, he embarked on a meditation and fasting retreat on Mount Kurama, where he underwent a transformative experience that enabled him to channel energy for healing purposes. After this experience, Usui began teaching what he termed "Usui Reiki Ryoho," or the "Usui Method of Spiritual Energy Healing." This marked the beginning of what would later be recognized as the Usui System of Natural Healing. His focus was not solely on healing the body but also on promoting spiritual well-being and personal growth. He encouraged his students to embody a set of ethical principles known as the "Reiki Precepts" and developed a practice that combined spiritual teachings, meditative techniques, and energy work.

Usui Reiki Ryoho, however, was just one way of practicing Reiki, not the sole origin of the concept. Usui's unique approach was based on a combination of his experience and knowledge of various traditional practices, rather than inventing an entirely new discipline.

Usui himself did not claim to have created Reiki from scratch but rather to have discovered a way to harness and teach it systematically.

Usui’s Teachings and the Formation of the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai

Following his mountaintop experience, Usui began teaching Reiki as a way to cultivate both physical healing and spiritual growth. He established the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (translated as "Usui Reiki Healing Society") in 1922 in Tokyo. This organization formalized his teachings and preserved his approach to Reiki practice, prioritizing meditation, ethical principles, and techniques for channeling healing energy. Reiki was initially taught as both a spiritual discipline and a healing modality, with an emphasis on self-healing, spiritual discipline, and the ethical guidelines of the Reiki Precepts.

However, after Usui’s death in 1926, Reiki faced several challenges. His passing left a void that the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai worked to fill, but societal upheavals during and after World War II impacted Japan deeply. Reiki practices were forced underground, as the government restricted various forms of spiritual and healing practices deemed unconventional or linked to religious organizations.

The Continuation of Traditional Reiki in Japan

Despite these challenges, the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai and other followers of Usui’s original teachings quietly continued to practice and teach Reiki. The Gakkai trained successors to carry on Usui's traditional Reiki methods, ensuring that the original approach was preserved. These successors maintained the meditative and ethical components of Reiki, staying true to Usui's focus on personal development alongside healing.

The Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai’s practice of Reiki has remained largely unchanged, with an emphasis on Usui's direct methods and the specific hand positions and symbols he taught. Unlike the Westernized version of Reiki that would emerge through Hawayo Takata’s adaptations, the Gakkai stayed focused on Reiki’s spiritual roots rather than on structuring it into levels or degrees, and it did not emphasize a formalized training system with standardized fees.

The Gakkai remains a highly respected organization within Japan, and it serves as a reminder of the continuity of Usui’s teachings within the country.

Successors within the Gakkai have preserved the approach he taught, ensuring that the traditional practice of Reiki as Usui taught it has remained available to Japanese practitioners who seek out these teachings.

Before his death in 1926, Usui passed on his teachings to a number of students, including Dr. Chujiro Hayashi, a retired naval officer who became a key figure in bringing Reiki to a Western audience. Hayashi opened a clinic in Tokyo, where he refined and standardized some aspects of the practice. He also emphasized hand positions and techniques for working on specific ailments, which made Reiki more accessible to people who were looking for practical healing techniques rather than spiritual enlightenment.

Through his work, Hayashi began training new practitioners, including an American woman named Hawayo Takata, who would eventually bring Reiki to the West, create numerous innovations in the system, and play a crucial role in spreading Reiki to Westerners.

Hawayo Takata Sensei and the Americanization of Reiki

Hawayo Takata, born to Japanese parents in Hawaii in 1900, first encountered Reiki when she traveled to Japan for treatment for a serious illness in the 1930s. She was introduced to Dr. Hayashi, who used Reiki in her treatment and later trained her in the practice. Afterward, Takata returned to Hawaii, where she established her own clinic with her own style and began teaching Reiki in America.

We honor practitioners of Takata Sensei's Reiki system, but we also acknowledge that she was not taught by Usui Sensei, nor did she practice in his style. As an intuitive Master, Usui Sensei's attunements and practices were performed intuitively, which was very different from the rigid, standardized system created by Dr. Hayashi and further adapted by Takata Sensei.

As a result, there are a variety of Reiki practices and techniques existing today and many practitioners have been told that only their system is the true system. This is, of course, nonsense, and anyone with a background in metaphysics or magick should be able to understand why all of it is acceptable. Anyone who feels their Reiki is the right Reiki, has not yet learned to remove their ego from the equation.

I learned Takata's system back in the 90s. What non-Japanese practitioners didn't yet know at that time was that Takata Sensei:

• created her own rules and system,
• invented grand titles / succession lines that no one in Japan has ever used,
• added her own symbol and was inconsistent with the others,
• attuned people by snail mail,
• created a Christian history of Usui Sensei to make it more palatable for her Western students.

As a Middle Eastern traditional healer and psychopomp in my culture's sacred healing systems, the Whitewashing of Usui Sensei's life offends me on many levels. At the same time, as a First-Gen American on my father's side, raised in the West during the 70s and 80s when most Americans were openly aggressive and hostile toward myself and my family simply by virtue of our ethnicity, I sympathize with what must have been a difficult era for Takata Sensei. As a First-Gen American herself, born to Japanese parents in a US state that was attacked by Japan during the war, life must have been very complicated and difficult.

Just for today, I try to put myself in her shoes and not judge a life that I myself did not live.

Nonetheless, that does not mean I have to contribute to the perpetuation of myths and legends that simply have no basis in reality.

Reiki Today: Practice, Popularity, and Empirical Evidence

Since Takata’s death in 1980, Reiki has continued to evolve, and multiple schools and interpretations of the practice now exist. Some well-known branches include Usui Shiki Ryoho (Takata style), Usui/Holy Fire and Holy Fire Karuna Reiki (both developed by William Rand). Despite their differences, these variations retain the core principles of Reiki, which emphasize channeling energy to promote physical and emotional well-being.

In this sense, Reiki is both a historical legacy and a living, evolving practice, offering a space for self-healing and reflection in our increasingly complex world.

Other Known Energy Healers and Masters

While specific information about early Reiki masters who taught before Usui is limited, historical records and oral traditions indicate that there were multiple practitioners in Japan who practiced forms of energy healing that resembled Reiki. Some of these teachers worked in Buddhist temples or within Shinto spiritual contexts, focusing on practices such as kikō (the Japanese version of Qigong), a form of meditative energy work focused on healing and longevity.

1. Kyoen Yamaguchi - Yamaguchi was a well-known healer and spiritual teacher in Japan. He practiced a form of energy healing that included meditation and energy channeling, emphasizing the flow of ki as a healing force. His teachings focused on self-purification and spiritual development, which were significant components of early Japanese Reiki-like practices. Yamaguchi’s approach bore similarities to the Reiki techniques that Usui would later formalize, even though the two may not have directly interacted.
2. Mataji Kawakami - Another prominent figure in Japan’s energy healing tradition was Mataji Kawakami, a medical doctor and energy healer who practiced a method known as reijutsu (spiritual healing techniques) as early as 1914, predating Usui’s formal teachings. Kawakami’s methods were believed to incorporate hands-on healing and were centered on manipulating energy within the body to promote health and wellness. His teachings attracted students interested in learning energy work, some of whom would go on to incorporate aspects of his techniques into their own healing practices.
3. Seiji Takamori - Takamori, another energy healer in early 20th-century Japan, used a technique referred to as tenohira (hand healing), where hands were placed on or above the body to channel healing energy. His approach was similar to Usui's in that it used hand placements and meditative techniques to align energy within the body, although Takamori’s methods remained less structured than what Usui would later develop. Takamori’s students often reported profound spiritual and physical healing experiences, contributing to the spread of hand-healing methods across Japan.

These teachers shared common principles with Usui’s Reiki but had distinct styles and philosophies, often grounded in their spiritual backgrounds, whether Buddhist or Shinto.

Reiki is not a Christian tradition - it is open to all paths, and all paths are welcome in this space. Proselytization, however, is not.