The History of Reiki
The history of reiki centers around a man named Mikao Usui, who was born on August 15, 1865, in the village of Taniai (now called Miyama cho, cho meaning “town”) in Yamagata county of the Gifu Prefecture of Japan. Usui lived in an evolving country. During the reign of the Meiji Emperor, Japan underwent significant change, most notably the end of its self-imposed isolation, or sakoku, from the rest of the world (outside of limited contact with Dutch and Chinese traders), which had lasted from 1639 to 1854.1
Usui was born into a class system that would change dramatically over his lifetime. His family, which included two brothers and an older sister, belonged to the privileged class and were descendants of the Chiba clan, an influential samurai family (the samurai were the military nobility in medieval and early-modern Japan). Specifically, they were hatamoto samurai, who were the highest-ranking officers and the personal guard of the shogun. Usui studied martial arts, beginning in his youth: aiki-
, the precursor of modern jujitsu and aikido, and a form of yagyu ryu (the art of sword fighting).2 Presumably, part of these studies would have entailed learning how to cultivate and use ki, as this is a core tenet of many Japanese martial arts, and in aiki-
in particular, practitioners are trained in redirecting their opponent’s energy flow in order to control their actions with minimal effort. For example, one aspect involves meeting and blending with your opponent’s energy and tuning in to its rhythm, which enables you to respond with minimal effort and maximum effect. No doubt Usui’s many years of martial arts training influenced his development of the system of reiki.
According to his memorial stone, which was erected one year after his death by his students, Usui traveled a great deal, both within Japan and overseas. His career was varied (we know at one point he was a private secretary to a politician named Shinpei Goto), and his interests were diverse as well, ranging from history, medicine, and psychology, to Buddhism, divination, and physiognomy.3
While he is sometimes referred to as Dr. Usui, he was never a medical doctor, and there are no records indicating that he was called by this title in Japan. It is thought that this was an incorrect translation by Hawayo Takata (we’ll learn more about her later) of the honorific title sensei.
According to Chris Marsh, a reiki teacher who met some of Usui’s students in Japan, Usui was a zaike, or lay Tendai priest. Tendai is a branch of Buddhism that was brought to Japan in the ninth century by a monk, 
, who founded a temple on Mount Hiei, a mountain northeast of Kyoto where there is still a temple today (rebuilt in the 1500s after the original complex was destroyed).4 Tendai practice centers around the Lotus Sutra and involves the use of mudras, or hand gestures, devotional chants, and meditating on mandalas and other sacred geometries. As part of his Tendai practice, it is believed that Usui also studied 
, which translates as “the path of training and testing.” 5 
blends Japanese Buddhism, Shintô (the indigenous Japanese religion), Taoism, and shamanism, and the influence of both Tendai Buddhism and is seen in Usui’s teachings, for example, in the reiju, mantras, symbols, and other techniques, as well as in his twenty-one-day fast on Kurama-yama,6 which we’ll look at in more detail below.
While Usui did not open an official learning and treatment center until 1922 (the Usui Reiki Ryôhô Gakkai, or Usui Reiki Healing Method Society, in Aoyami Harajuku, Tokyo), two sources indicate that his teachings existed prior to this time. A woman whom Chris Marsh refers to as Suzuki-san indicated that her formal training with Usui began in 1915. She and her fellow students retained study materials that included the precepts, waka (poetry), meditations, and other teachings. And a Japanese article from 1928, “A Treatment to Heal Diseases, Hand Healing” by Shûô Matsui (a student of Chûjirô Hayashi; more on him below) states that Usui’s system was founded decades prior to the article’s publication.7 Usui’s early teachings as a whole were not called reiki; the name was used in conjunction with his teachings but with the literal meaning of “spiritual energy,” a word commonly used by healers practicing various modalities. It wasn’t until Usui’s teachings left Japan that the system became known as reiki.
The aim of Usui’s teachings was enlightenment, but healing was occurring as a wonderful side effect, and initially, there wasn’t a clear distinction between those coming for hands-on healing and those interested in the spiritual teachings. This changed in 1917. All of Usui’s students would receive reiju, a spiritual blessing or attunement, designed to help the student remember their true nature, as well as the five precepts (see Chapter 13), but those who wished to go deeper with the spiritual practices became dedicated students. The concept of reiju was not specific to Usui’s teachings. For example, in Tendai practice, go shimbô purification is performed using specific mantras and mudras to prepare oneself for ritual, and the famous Japanese healer Toshihiro Eguchi, a friend and student of Usui, performed a similar spiritual blessing known as kosho michibiki (illuminating guidance).8
Usui utilized a variety of teaching tools to reach students at different levels, such as meditation practices, and mantras and symbols to help students with less energetic sensitivity tap into particular elements of energy. After the formation of the Usui Reiki Ryôhô Gakkai, the teachings became more codified, and at the society’s fifty-year anniversary, a manual was published, the Reiki Ryôhô Hikkei, which included a healing guide, the Ryôhô Shishin, as well as information regarding the early development of Usui’s system.
One of the most legendary founding stories involves Usui’s twenty-one-day fast on Kurama-yama (Mount Kurama). In one version, Usui experiences enlightenment during his fast, and as he is returning down from the mountain, he stubs his toe. When he placed his hands on his foot, he realized that he had been given the power of hands-on healing. The twenty-one-day practice on the mountain is known as kushu shinren, which, in , is a form of intense discipline and severe training. This was a well-known practice that was carried out most commonly by the yamabushi, or mountain ascetics, who would use these extreme trials to, among other things, test themselves, deepen their personal practice, and achieve enlightenment or revelation of some kind. This was not a quest to be taken lightly by the untrained, and presumably Usui’s many years of spiritual practice and martial arts training prepared him for this trial. The memorial stone states that “he suddenly felt One Great Reiki over his head and attained enlightenment and he obtained Reiki Ryôhô. Then, he tried it on himself and experimented on his family members. The efficacy was immediate.” 9
While the Gakkai was not formed until a month after Usui’s experience on Mount Kurama, it seems clear that he was teaching before this point. The Reiki Sourcebook notes that “Divine Inspiration is a must for the founder of any Japanese art,” so is this part of the story merely a tool to add credibility to Usui’s teachings? 10 We will likely never know for certain what happened on the mountain, but in many ways, it matters little. Usui’s teachings were effective prior to his twenty-one-day practice; perhaps they became more so afterward due to a revelatory experience, or perhaps not. Regardless, his methods are still in use over a hundred years later and have helped thousands of people, indicating that they offer something of great substance and value that is worth preserving and passing on.
In 1923, the Great 
Earthquake hit Tokyo and Yokohama, causing an estimated 100,000 deaths with 40,000 reported missing. Hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless. According to his memorial stone, Usui “went out every morning to go around the town, and he cured and saved an innumerable number of people. This is just a broad outline of his relief activities during such an emergency.” 11 In 1925, Usui moved his clinic and home, selecting the new location in Nakano ku by divination. He traveled throughout Japan to teach and give treatments, with the number of students totaling over 2,000. On March 9, 1926, while traveling in Fukuyama, Usui suffered a stroke and passed away. In February of the following year, his students erected his memorial stone at the Saihô-ji temple in Suginami, Tokyo.
Chûjirô Hayashi (1879–1940)
There are numerous figures throughout reiki’s history, some of which we’ll meet in the Appendix A when we look at the various branches of reiki, but one especially important figure is Chûjirô Hayashi, a naval officer who was one of only twenty people (some sources cite twenty-one) permitted to progress to the highest level of training (shinpiden) within Usui’s system. Many of the shinpiden-level students were naval officers, and according to scholar-practitioner Hiroshi Doi, three of the Gakkai’s presidents were as well: Jûzaburô Ushida, Kanichi Taketomi, and Hôichi Waname.12 Hayashi was also a medical doctor, and he is credited with developing Usui’s teachings into a system with a slightly greater emphasis on healing over spiritual development.
It is surmised that while he was still a member of the Gakkai, during the year following Usui’s death, Hayashi wrote the healing guide included in the organization’s fiftieth anniversary manual, as it is very similar to the healing guide that Hayashi wrote shortly thereafter for his own clinic, the Hayashi Reiki Kenkyû Kai (Hayashi Spiritual Energy Research Society) in Shinano-machi, Tokyo. It was a large clinic with eight treatment tables and sixteen practitioners, two per client.13 One practitioner would begin treatment at the head while the second practitioner began at the abdomen (hara). Clients paid money for treatments, and there were internships available for students, which included volunteer hours in the clinic.14
Additional information about Hayashi’s teachings comes from the son, Tadao Yamaguchi, of one of his students, Chiyoko Yamaguchi. Tadao currently teaches a form of reiki known as Jikiden Reiki, jikiden meaning “directly transmitted or passed down from one’s teacher,” and in his book, Light on Reiki, he describes seminars taught by Hayashi and attended by his mother, Chiyoko, and her older sister, Katsue. At the time, Hayashi would often travel around Japan to teach, and following an invitation by one of Tadao’s relatives, he came to Ishikawa in 1935 to lead a seminar, which was attended by Tadao’s aunt, Katsue; his mother, Chiyoko, attended her first seminar in 1938. Tadao writes, “The tuition fee for Reiki seminars in those days was 50 yen, when the average salaried workers were getting 47 yen a month,” but Chiyoko’s uncle felt it would be more worthwhile spending money for his niece to attend the seminar over lavish wedding arrangements: “This shows how seriously the family took Reiki.” 15
When she arrived for the seminar, Chiyoko remembers, many of the participants were wearing very formal attire, which lent a very serious atmosphere to the occasion. She was ushered into a room with rows of floor cushions (zabuton) and instructed where to sit. The coordinator explained that the lights would be turned off, and participants would be asked to sit in a kneeling posture (seiza) with their eyes closed, “taking care no pressure is put on the lower tanden (a spot three cm lower than the navel).” 16 They were to place their hands in prayer position (gasshô) and remain seated and quiet until the reiju was completed. After the introduction, Hayashi entered the room dressed in traditional Japanese attire, and Chiyoko was very impressed by his stature and bearing; she said he seemed to have a light shining all around him. Hayashi then led the group in reciting the five reiki principles, which were written on a scroll hanging in the room, a total of three times. Occasionally, Hayashi would also chant poetry from the Meiji Emperor (gyôsei). He would then give reiju to the group. This was followed by reiju given by other members of the shihan (teacher) degree, and Chiyoko estimates that there were three shihans present.
After the reiju, the group came together in a circle, hands touching, allowing reiki to circulate (this is called reiki mawashi; see page 233), during which time Hayashi would join in the circle or sit in the center, giving instructions. Over the course of the five-day seminar, students would receive repeated reiju, and Hayashi would give lectures and practical training. Students were required to practice on each other and occasionally on a guest who lived close to the venue and was suffering from an illness.
Hayashi Reiki Kenkyû Kai divided instruction into shoden and okuden, the first two courses, often taught together as a five-day seminar, and upon fulfillment of certain requirements, students could continue to the shihan-kaku (assistant teacher) and shihan (teacher) training.17 The final two levels were originally less formal in structure and did not contain a set curriculum as they do today. There were also prerequisites to the shoden and okuden courses, known as kyu (degree). Tadao believes there were four levels of kyu, beginning with sixth kyu and ending with the highest, third kyu. These degrees were given when participants experienced a reiki session, but they were not yet permitted to practice reiki on others.18
Hayashi died on May 11, 1940, having taken his own life. Tadao writes that Hayashi traveled to Hawaii shortly before war broke out, which was especially risky for him as a former high-ranking naval officer, and upon his return to Japan, he was questioned by naval authorities. His refusal to give information was sure to lead to severe punishment, “which would have had a major effect on his family,” so he instead chose what he felt was an honorable death.19 According to one of his students, Hawayo Takata, Hayashi was concerned that he would be forced to fight in the war, killing many people, and this is why he chose to end his life.
Hawayo Takata (1900–1980)
In 1935, Hawayo Takata was lying on an operating table in Japan, having been told that surgery was required to remove a tumor and gallstones, among other physical issues. It was then that she heard a voice telling her to ask the surgeon for alternatives, that the operation was unnecessary. Based on the recommendation of the hospital’s dietician, Takata soon found herself in Hayashi’s reiki clinic. She could feel heat and vibrations emanating from the practitioners’ hands as they gave her a treatment. When she returned for a follow-up the next day, she checked for machinery that might have been used to generate heat, but there was nothing.20 Hayashi explained the basics of the treatment to her, but Takata was told that this technique was not taught to foreigners; while both of her parents were Japanese, she had been born and raised in Hawaii.
By all accounts, Takata was nothing if not persistent, and after only three weeks of treatments, she was feeling much better, which only stoked her curiosity and desire to learn. Eventually, Hayashi relented and she was allowed to study as an honorary member. She continued receiving treatments for six months, after which she moved in with the Hayashi family to spend another year studying and practicing. She would spend the mornings in the clinic as a practitioner and travel to do house calls in the afternoon, progressing to the okuden level at the end of this period.
In 1937, Takata finished her practitioner training and returned to Hawaii, and Hayashi and his daughter arrived a few weeks later, staying for six months in order to help her establish a practice in Honolulu. Before returning to Japan, Hayashi announced that Takata was now a Master of the Usui system. Hayashi used Mikao Usui’s name on her certificate, rather than the name of his own organization, and scholar-practitioner Hiroshi Doi explains this was a way of showing respect to the original teachings (although Hayashi had, by this point, changed the teachings to a certain extent).21
In 1939, Takata built a healing practice with living quarters for her family in Hilo, and it was not long before it took off, becoming a huge success. Her treatments might have been a single session, lasting up to a couple of hours, or they might have been given on a recurring basis for as long as a year. She would sit cross-legged on the floor while giving treatments, starting at the head or the abdomen, and there is a story of her allegedly bringing someone back to life after five and a half hours of treatment at the solar plexus. It appears that she would charge clients who were able to pay and treat those who could not free of charge.
In January of 1940, Takata had a distressing dream about Hayashi, and in April of that year, she decided to return to Japan to see him, despite his family’s assurances that all was well. When she arrived, she learned of Hayashi’s decision to take his own life. Takata claims that Hayashi left her his practice and home in Tokyo, which she accepted, leaving it in the hands of Hayashi’s wife, Chie, so she could return to the US. When she came back to Japan fourteen years later, she found the house divided into apartments at Chie’s discretion to house refugees in the aftermath of World War II, and Takata officially gave the house and clinic to Chie and returned, once again, to the US.22
Takata spent the next thirty years working out of Honolulu, although she would also travel around the islands to teach, and in 1973 she began teaching on the mainland and in Canada as well. She didn’t teach her first official master-teacher level student until she was seventy-six. She charged $100 for her level one training in 1975, increasing it to $125 in 1976, and $400 for the level two training. From 1976 to 1980, her master-level training was $10,000, and Takata explained that this high price tag generated the proper amount of respect for the teachings. As the Stienes write, she felt that “students would feel more responsible and have more respect for the system once they had paid their hard-earned money to receive it.” 23 According to reiki teacher-scholar Robert Fueston, the following people completed their master-teacher–level training under Takata (the date of certification is indicated in parentheses):
1. Virginia Samdahl (1976)
2. Ethel Lombardi (1976)
3. John Harvey Gray (October 1976)
4. Beth Gray (1976; official certificate received in 1979)
5. Dorothy Baba (1976)
6. Barbara Lincoln McCullough (1977)
7. Harry M. Kuboi (April 1977)
8. Fran Brown (January 1979)
9. Iris Ishikuro (1979)
10. Phyllis Lei Furumoto (April 1979)
11. Barbara Weber (September 1979)
12. Bethal Phaige (October 1979)
13. Barbara Brown (October 1979)
14. Wanja Twan (October 1979)
15. Ursula Baylow (October 1979)
16. Paul Mitchell (November 1979)
17. George Araki (1979)
18. Shinobu Saito (May 1980)
19. Patricia Bowling (September 1980)
20. Mary McFadyen (September 1980)
21. Rick Bockner (October 1980)
Fueston also includes Takata’s sister, Kay Yamashita, on this list. While Takata does not appear to have considered her sister an official teacher, she told one of her students, John Harvey Gray, that Kay could replace her as a teacher if need be.24
Takata claimed that the system of reiki was an oral tradition, giving her permission to teach as she wished, and based on a comparison of notes taken by some of her students in different classes, it seems that her teachings frequently varied. While in Japan, she speaks of meeting with other practitioners, and she felt that their teachings were highly complex, requiring many years of training, closely tied to religious practices, and inappropriate for non-Japanese learners.
To all her students Takata taught a simple version of the five precepts and hand positions, the latter of which has been the subject of controversy. It is believed that Usui did not originally teach hand positions, although later this evolved into five hand positions, all for the head, as shown in the Reiki Ryôhô Hikkei, a healing guide published by the Usui Reiki Ryôhô Gakkai. The symbols, too, seemed to have varied in Takata’s teachings. Students were not permitted to keep copies of the symbols, and in 1982, during the first teacher-student meeting after her passing, each person drew the symbols that had been given to them by Takata and to their surprise they differed from one another in some respects. The group decided to standardize the symbols, although none were entirely sure if they were using the correct rendition or not. The group later became the Reiki Alliance, with Phyllis Lei Furumoto named grandmaster, which originally meant that she was responsible for training other master-teachers and was considered the “lineage bearer of the system of Reiki.” 25 Eventually, all the teachers were permitted to train other teachers. Barbara Weber Ray was not present at the meeting to standardize symbols; she claimed to be Takata’s successor and went on to create her own branch, the Radiance Technique.
The version of Mikao Usui’s history as popularized by Takata in the 1970s is still quite persistent in many reiki circles today, in spite of new information, including the discovery of Usui’s memorial stone and research conducted by various scholars and practitioners. It’s unclear whether her stories were intended to be taken as factual or were more like parables, but these are a few of the lingering inaccuracies:
• That Usui was a Christian (or a Christian minister). There is no evidence that this was the case; Usui was a practicing Buddhist. This may have been her way to introduce the teachings to a Western audience, particularly in the political climate of World War II.
• That he attended certain universities, such as the University of Chicago or Doshisha University (Tokyo), even though these institutions have no record of him working or attending there.
• That he was a medical doctor (this may have been Takata’s translation of the honorific sensei).26
The fact remains that Hawayo Takata played an integral role in bringing reiki to the West, and her treatments and teachings have impacted thousands of people. While it seems impossible to determine, as a whole, how much her teachings differed from Hayashi’s, or from student to student, this does not, in my mind, lessen her immense contribution to the reiki community. Hawayo Takata passed away on December 11, 1980.
Reiki’s Decline and Reemergence in Japan
Reiki teacher and researcher Masaki Nishina discusses the changing attitudes toward spiritual healing practices in Japan before and after World War II in his book Reiki and Japan: A Cultural View of Western and Japanese Reiki, and it’s helpful to look at these shifts, as they shed light on reiki’s diverging trajectories in Japan versus elsewhere in the world. Prior to the war, there were numerous alternative healing methods and traditional folk remedies in use. During the Meiji period, when the government sought to Westernize the country’s healthcare system, there was an increase in out-of-pocket medical expenses, and a ban was instituted against any healing methods that relied solely on prayer and incantations without the use of medical treatments or prescribed drugs. In spite of the ban, the number of traditional Japanese midwives, acupuncturists, and Chinese herbal pharmacists increased between 1884 and 1926, while the number of Western-trained providers remained fairly constant, and Nishina credits this, in large part, to the rising medical costs and people’s need to secure affordable healthcare.
This climate gave rise to many alternative therapies, and while they were new techniques, they were based on older Shintô, Buddhist, or practices. Practitioners were known as reijutsu-ka (rei = “mysterious,” jutsu = “technique,” and ka = “professional”), and many books and magazines describing these techniques were published. In 1868, the government created National Shintô, standardizing religious practice and placing the emperor as a living god at the center of worship. In response, many people wanted to return to older forms of Shintô, while others created new movements based on older teachings, many of which included forms of hands-on healing techniques. Usui began teaching and practicing his system during a time when traditional and alternative therapies were on the rise, perhaps in reaction to the government’s attempts at standardization and Westernization.27
Following the war, there was a marked decrease in these practices, however, and there may be several reasons for this shift. Following Allied occupation, attitudes toward traditional Japanese culture changed, and in particular, many things deemed “unscientific” were regarded with suspicion, including spiritual healing techniques and hands-on energy therapies. In 1947, the GHQ (General Headquarters of the Allied forces) issued a law banning folk and traditional therapies, with the exception of massage, acupuncture, moxibustion, and bone setting, categorizing them as “quasi-medical.” It wasn’t until 1960 that the Supreme Court ruled that only those “quasi-medical” therapies that were harmful to human health would remain illegal, and Nishina writes, “Since then, many therapies, now called ‘alternative therapies’ have been practiced in a grey area. Even today in Japan, if I were to refer to myself as a therapist, it wouldn’t be accepted by society who would see me as a ‘would-be’ therapist.” 28
In the post-war period, the GHQ ordered the removal and exclusion of “undesirable personnel” from public office, the vast majority of which were army and navy personnel. Anything deemed to be military related was also banned, including martial arts, such as judo and karate, as well as sado (tea ceremony), kabuki (historical plays), and Shintô. As noted earlier, many of the Usui Reiki Ryôhô Gakkai’s original members and leaders were connected to the Japanese navy. After the war, the society closed its doors to the public, and it is very difficult for non-members to access any information about the organization directly. One can become a member now only through formal introduction by an existing member; thus, their numbers have decreased to only a few hundred—quite a difference from the purported 7,000 members in 1930.
In the 1980s, Mieko Mitsui, a journalist living in New York who had been trained in Barbara Weber Ray’s style of reiki, the Radiance Technique, came to Japan and began teaching Western reiki classes, sparking a resurgence in its popularity. She also translated Ray’s book, The Reiki Factor, into Japanese, making information about the system, at least from a Western point of view, more accessible. Mitsui was only authorized to teach up to level two, however, so it was still difficult to find teachers in Japan, given that few people knew of the existence of the Gakkai at this point. Reiki teacher and researcher Frank Arjava Petter, who had been trained to the master-teacher level in the Reiki Alliance lineage, began teaching in 1993 in Hokkaido, offering instruction in all levels, and many of his students went on to create their own reiki schools. One of these students, a man named Toshitaka Mochizuki, published a book on Western reiki called Iyashi no Te (“healing hands”), thus contributing to reiki’s renewed popularity in Japan.
One of the first students to receive an attunement from Mieko Mitsui was a man named Hiroshi Doi (see page 340), and in learning that he could not train to become a teacher with Mitsui, he began to research the origins of reiki, in the hopes of finding a successor of Usui still living in Japan. It was through this line of inquiry that he discovered the Gakkai and was permitted to join after being introduced by one of its members. He studied with Kimiko Koyama, the Gokkai’s sixth president, and he “was amazed at how different it was from the Western reiki of Ms. Mitsui.” 29 He eventually went on to form the system of Gendai Reiki Hô, with the aim of uniting Usui’s original teachings with Western reiki in a way that resonates with modern users while still retaining its effectiveness.
Comparing Systems of Reiki
In the Appendix A, we’ll look at the various branches of reiki created over the decades, but here, we’ll look more broadly at some of the possible differences between Dento Reiki, or Usui’s system of reiki as it was originally taught (keeping in mind that our information in this regard is incomplete), and Western reiki. The latter category, too, requires a caveat, because there are so many branches that fall under the Western reiki umbrella, making it difficult to apply any one statement to all.
One tenet that appears consistent among all traditional teachings is that reiki does not require concentration and effort, and indeed, intense concentration or the use of one’s will to direct the energy is to be avoided. Masaki Nishina writes that the use of “personal intention, imagination and/or deliberate breath” renders the energy “no longer pure Reiki,” 30 and Hiroshi Doi says, “It is crucial to relax and place the hands without any intentions.” 31 There are numerous Western reiki systems that incorporate visualizations, setting of intentions, and other techniques that run contrary to this principle. I use these techniques in my own practice and have not found that they “sully” the energy, but I also appreciate making the distinction between these techniques and more traditional reiki practices.
There is also a conflict between the Western belief that the ability to use reiki is “obtained” only after an attunement, or that this ability has to be granted or bestowed by an external agent of some kind, and the Japanese belief that reiki is innate. In some Western schools, the attunements given at different levels of training are said to activate more powerful (or otherwise distinct) levels of energy within the student, and some teachers even claim that attunements only last for a certain period of time, after which they “expire” and the student must receive another attunement to continue using reiki. In traditional reiki, only one form of attunement is used, reiju, and rather than being viewed as something that grants a mysterious reiki ability to the student, it is seen as a way of opening the person to the natural flow of this energy. Throughout life, based on myriad factors, our energy channels may become blocked and unable to channel as much energy as is needed to effectively administer a reiki treatment. While other methods of “declogging the pipes” are certainly available, a reiju is a quick and effective means for clearing our energy channels, after which your regular practice maintains this clarity and increases your ability to channel reiki effectively.
Finally, the use of symbols may differ in traditional versus Western reiki, again, depending on the branch of Western reiki in question. Some branches teach a heavy reliance on the power of the symbols, that certain symbols can only be used after a particular level of attunement, that symbols must be used in a special order if they are to work, or that reiki cannot flow without “activation” via the symbols. It seems that Usui used the symbols as teaching tools to help students who had difficulty in sensing particular vibrations of energy but that, with practice, the symbols would no longer be necessary. It also appears that the fourth symbol, sometimes known as the master symbol or Dai Kômyô, may have been introduced by Hawayo Takata; it does not seem to be part of Usui’s original teachings. When asked about the master symbol, one of the teachers at the Gakkai, Fumio Ogawa, replied, “I have never seen that before.” 32
Now we’ve placed reiki in its historical context, and if you wish to learn more about reiki’s development from Mikao Usui’s time to the present, including the many new branches of schools and teachings that have arisen, please see the Appendix A. In the next chapter we’ll get up close and personal with reiki as we discuss receiving a reiki treatment, including tips for making the most of your healing session.
1. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 53.
2. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 54.
3. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 55.
4. Paul Groner, 
: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), 65.
5. Shokai Koshikidake and Martin Faulks, 
: The Way of the Mountain Monks, foreword by Steven K. Hayes (Faulks Books, 2015), 15.
6. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 57.
7. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 58.
8. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 59.
9. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 61.
10. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 61.
11. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 63.
12. Hiroshi Doi, A Modern Reiki Method for Healing (Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, 2014), 36.
13. Tadao Yamaguchi, Light on the Origins of Reiki: A Handbook for Practicing the Original Reiki of Usui and Hayashi, trans. Ikuko Hirota, ed. Neehar Douglass (Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus Press, 2007), 68.
14. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 82.
15. Yamaguchi, Light on the Origins of Reiki, 30.
16. Yamaguchi, Light on the Origins of Reiki, 31.
17. Yamaguchi, Light on the Origins of Reiki, 139.
18. Yamaguchi, Light on the Origins of Reiki, 69.
19. Yamaguchi, Light on the Origins of Reiki, 69.
20. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 166.
21. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 168.
22. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 171.
23. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 172.
24. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 174.
25. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 188.
26. Stiene and Stiene, The Reiki Sourcebook, 180.
27. Masaki Nishina, Reiki and Japan: A Cultural View of Western and Japanese Reiki, ed. Amanda Jayne (self-published, CreateSpace, 2017), 27.
28. Nishina, Reiki and Japan, 112.
29. Doi, A Modern Reiki Method for Healing, 40.
30. Nishina, Reiki and Japan, 165.
31. Doi, A Modern Reiki Method for Healing, 21.
32. Nishina, Reiki and Japan, 263.