APPENDIX

ESSENTIALS OF SEIKI SELF-HEALING THERAPY

In 1928, Jozo Ishii of the Seiki Ryoho Kenkyu Jo (Seiki Treatment Institute and Research Establishment) in Japan published a book entitled “Essentials of Seiki Self-Healing Therapy.” It is arguably the first written account of seiki jutsu. Ikuko Osumi Sensei gave a copy of this book to a few of her students. Some excerpts of this source text have been translated by Eric Houk and edited by Brad Keeney based on Osumi Sensei’s commentary on the text. This is presented below to illustrate how seiki was discussed during the 1920s and 1930s in Japan.

What is seiki-healing therapy? This is when you use your own seiki vitality to stimulate the nerves in your body that have become weak, thereby causing spontaneous movement that heals. Then, relying on this, you can reinforce physiological action. As a result, if there is illness, the illness is cured. If there is pain, it is dispersed. In addition, a weak constitution is improved. A gloomy disposition becomes cheerful; and not only does sluggishness become agile, most of the mental illnesses, including those barely helped by medicine, and most of the severe illnesses not treatable by conventional methods, are effectively healed as well. Even for those people who are perfectly healthy every day, using the seiki vitality practice restores mental and physical fatigue, and they become full of energy and great wisdom. If people who work as government employees, teachers, or other various occupations use it between work, they can release their fatigue right before their eyes during a break and improve their efficiency afterward. If students use this as part of their daily routine, they won’t suffer with tiredness and will develop greater abilities. Seiki-healing therapy works by letting the body’s natural healing process save and strengthen itself through circulating seiki as the body spontaneously moves.

At its core the seiki exercise is a positive and robust method of disease prevention, and if applied at home, the sufferings caused by illness can be avoided. Older people needing more mental and physical vitality can also use this method of movement to improve their lives. If used to treat the discomfort that results from physical disorders, one will return to normal before long, improve health, and prolong life. This is the great efficacy of seiki vitality.

The physiological reflex underlying the seiki practice is a fairly simple thing to acquire, but it cannot be achieved immediately. It must be cultivated over time. As the body and nervous system are gradually trained, the ability to provide excitation increases. When the practice is learned, the simple body reflex action takes place naturally. . . . With the seiki exercise, pain can quickly leave, fevers rapidly decline, and swelling gradually disperse.

As we more fully understand how seiki brings vitality to the human body, we become astonished by its great efficacy and immeasurable blessings. We must enthusiastically put it to practical use. More serious scholars and medical scientists are now researching seiki as we are in our laboratory.

Seiki can be called a pure spirit that refers to the god of infinite power in Western philosophy. It can also be called the unitary spirit of the universe, integrating the universe of power found in both the East and West. Seiki underlies the creation of all things.

Seiki—the vital force of the universe—is integrated in the universe as one power. I have studied seiki in the human body. To really comprehend seiki we must first understand the vitality of the universe. Understanding the vitality of the universe can help us account for the general vitality of the earth and help remove the mystery concerning the vitality of the human body.

Seiki vitality is the essence of life. It is the energy that occurs within the human body, and it exists in some form within all living beings. Even though scholars have named it “animal electricity,” it is not simply electricity nor is it the frictional electricity produced by the movement of cells. The vitality of the human body also holds mystical wisdom and constitutes something different from the vitality of other animals. It is therefore necessary to think of the seiki vitality of the human body as differentiated from the vitality of other animals.

Seiki is more than a natural, reflex-like motion of the body. It can activate the hands to press and rub various parts of the body in the spontaneous self-treatment of disease.

Seiki in its intense form is most often perceived around the head more than any other part of the body. It can radiate light overhead as we see in the rings of light over historically known religious figures. For people who have a remarkable spiritual being and are full of seiki, vitality surges from their whole body and may appear to sensitive observers as a flame that emanates from the body.

Even though the teaching of seiki began during ancient times in the southern seas of the East and West, the power of science is still insufficient to fully study and explain it. It isn’t the right time to scientifically understand it. However, our ability to use seiki vitality treatment isn’t limited by the knowledge that science can acquire.

Seiki has a power of attraction. A seiki master can influence another person’s body movement and health. For example, a seiki master can influence the posture of another person standing in front of him. Seiki emanates from the fingertips, and here we find that the hands and fingers are the main ways seiki is transmitted.

People with strong seiki will feel this influence the most. They are readily moved by the hands of another person using seiki on them. In addition, sensitive people can feel seiki. Particularly, women and children are somewhat more sensitive, and people who are oversensitive due to illness will feel it strongly.

In my introductory lectures on seiki, I address the people who say they know absolutely nothing about seiki vitality. I ask them to stand. Then I aim my fingertips toward their backs. I start doing small vibrations with both hands right away and this results in their shoulders moving. If they resist the power of seiki pulling them backward, the spinal cord clearly will curve backward anyway. These people often note the occurrence of a hot sensation in their backs.

Pointing the fingertips at each part of the body as I send seiki can determine the strengths and weaknesses of nerves, the presence or absence of paralysis, the presence or absence of disease, and so forth. Thus, for people with a stiff waist, the waist will resist the power of attraction; for those with a bad leg, the leg will resist; and in the case of spinal nerve paralysis, the resistance in that part of the spinal cord will be strong. . . . We can easily cause self-movement in people with illnesses that will help them heal.

When you have worked with seiki, you can experiment with this force on yourself. Take one of your own palms and aim it at the fingertips of the other hand. With sufficient seiki, it will radiate vitality and gradually cause them to move. This will cause a kind of sensation in the part of the palm that is facing the fingertips. Next, put both palms facing each other and quietly open and close them without changing the distance. At this time, you will feel a chilly breeze in the middle that is the force of seiki vitality.

We can perform self-movement experiments with the strengths and weaknesses of another person’s seiki. The following method is used. Both persons sit or stand while facing each other with their eyes closed. One person gently extends a hand and raises it high without exerting power on the whole body, and the other person gently extends a hand horizontally. . . . At a certain time through the natural power of attraction that seiki exerts, the weaker person will find himself pulled toward the stronger person. If the person with the horizontally placed hand is stronger, the higher placed hand of the other person will gradually go down. . . .

Most importantly, seiki vitality is an extremely spiritual thing.