AN ABBREVIATED HISTORY OF REIKI - the origins
Mikao Usui, Sensei, the founder and ultimate Teacher of Reiki, was born in 1865, near Kyoto, Japan. He married Sadako Suzuki (of Samurai lineage) and together they had two children. He was a very spiritual businessman man who took his daily religious and meditation exercises very seriously. In 1921 his deep devotion, vast personal searching, life experiences and a particular profound Satori during a sacred retreat on Mount Kurama, culminated into new insights and an even more focused way of energy transference that we now call Reiki. Master Usui had numerous students of varying levels of proficiency and dedication who learned meditation in groups throughout the country but mainly in Tokyo.
Reiki is a Japanese word, made up of two Japanese kanji – Rei and Ki - meaning, roughly translated, universal and energy. The word Reiki is often translated as “Universal Life Force Energy” or “Spiritual Ray of Life”.
During the early twentieth century in Japan, during Master Usui's time, the ancient art of hands-on-healing was enjoying a Renaissance. Healing, so much a part of shamanistic practice in all parts of the world for thousands of years, was also known in Japan. There were many different types of healing forms through meditation and energy transference and gradually "touch" was also being practiced by various teachers affiliated with spiritual traditions, at that time. As Master Usui's insights, classes and healing work spread, other teachers of other healing modalities shared their knowledge with each other and we now know that Master Usui's Reiki was not a rigid or static method but evolved, gradually over those last five years of his life.
Reiki was not well known and it was deemed best to keep it quiet and amongst those that were trusted. Master Usui went along with this until the massive earthquake of 1923 that devastated a huge part of Tokyo and left the city in ruins. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost and even more people were injured. At this time Master Usui, who had been the only teacher at his Reiki Gakkai (Society), which he had officially started the year before, made some changes such that eight of his senior students were given teacher "status". He taught them to teach Reiki and they went forth with many other Reiki students into the damaged city to do as much healing as possible and so the general public experienced this wonderful work at a time it needed it most.
Over the following years these teachers initiated thousands of people and thus Reiki and Master Usui became known in Japan. Had Master Usui not felt the need to reach out and change "the rules", then Reiki would not have been given away to those needing it most. And we, in the West, would probably never have been introduced to it, as a consequence.
Master Usui died in 1926.
The Reiki teachings were transmitted both orally and in written form, from teacher to student, from generation to generation, passing from Japan to North America and Europe and then throughout the world. Many stories, myths and legends about Master Usui and about the origins of Reiki have appeared - some honorable, some dubious and some quite preposterous.
In the last 50 years, various Western Reiki teachers created their own personal variations of the system of Reiki and thus there are now many different Reiki “offshoots” with names of their own. It is estimated that there are more than 50,000 Reiki masters and one million Reiki practitioners in the world today.
The search for the “truth” about Reiki and it’s history is fascinating and leads one down many interesting pathways. In the late 90’s a number of very dedicated Reiki Masters were determined to uncover the origins of Reiki; what happened to Reiki during WWII and details of the life of Master Usui himself and his intentions for the work in the future. We owe these pioneers a huge debt of gratitude.
Western-type Reiki is both practical and spiritual - developed on some of the fundamentals of the Reiki that Master Usui taught, but not all of them, due to the different nature of our culture and times.
His classes were undertaken with long term (even lifetime) commitments, which we do not do in the Western world. Even though we often read that someone teaches in the same manner as Master Usui, they surely mean something else. What is meant, no doubt, is that the course content may have similarities and the method of passing on the healing energy and concepts may be somewhat similar - such as attunements and symbols.
We also know that Master Usui often met like-minded people and invited them to his classes. Information was occasionally shared and a lot of fine cross-pollination took place. Master Usui had an open mind, hence the idea of sharing information and inviting other healers into his midst and then incorporating some of the concepts, much like we do today, carefully.
For example, Mrs. Tanaka, who was first to teach Reiki in the Western world, taught 12 distinct hand positions to her Level One students so that anyone could do Reiki, including anyone as thick as two planks. There was no emphasis placed on advanced development of intuition, even though sometimes Mrs. Takata's students were very advanced meditation and yoga practitioners. Sometimes Mrs. Takata just "knew" who would be very capable. Master Usui started with only several hand positions when working with clients and showing students, that he expected his students would understand and then had his good friend and fellow Reiki master, Master Hayashi, put basic hand positions into a schematic so that his students would find it easier. This was passed on to us with the odd change.
In comparing notes that Mrs. Takata's students' made at the end of each day of her classes you see variations and that speaks to the fact that with energy healing work even the great teachers did not feel that the work was static and cast in stone..
Some of us believe that the contemporary teachings should be as close as possible to the original teachings and ways, even as this may be a challenge... Back in Japan in the '20's, if you were invited to join an Usui healing/meditation group, you would probably spend many years diligently going to Level One classes, one evening per week, for years and eventually be invited to a higher level group and again after dedication, commitment and time and patience, an invitation to be a teacher could possibly evolve.
This is not possible in our rushed times. On the other hand, it is also not necessary to teach Reiki by Skype or resort to classes on a CD or to couple all levels together as one class in a jiffy half day at the community centre. Even though this saves on travel time and is a smart marketing ploy, it certainly does not serve our learning, experience and abilities, nor capture ANY of what Master Usui aimed for... and may even give Reiki a bad name.
As a devout, practicing Tendai Buddhist from early childhood, Usui Sensei would have had a deep understanding of the wisdom and teachings of The Buddha - teachings that were the result of his own direct investigations, deep meditations and guidance from his religious advisers, not from "supernatural" revelations. In fact, we read in Curtis Lang and Jane Sherry’s history of Reiki that what he taught was not to be taken "on faith" - his students were to examine for themselves, based on their own experience, whether Reiki was able to transform suffering into well-being.
There are no or few exact documents of Master Usui’s original healing system or methods as he taught it, or they have not been made available to the general public by those who claim they do have these pertinent original writings (Master Usui’s teachings have been kept in the dozen odd Japanese societies known as the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, where the teachers and practitioners do not discuss the details of the society with non-members and where membership in the society is closed to foreigners). Due to the nature of Japanese society, information and knowledge is often kept within it's own confines and never shared, even for the common good... almost never...
One of Master Usui's senior students, Toshihiro Eguchi, knew Usui-Sensei’s methods in its original form and taught this as well as his own system of touch healing to a student, Yuji Onuki, who decided to travel the world in order to pass on and teach what he had learned way back in 1971. Several of this teacher’s students later went to Japan and searched for the Reiki history and taught Japanese students Reiki ~ Reiki had come full circle, geographically!
In the mid 1990’s, when a German Reiki teacher, Frank Arjava Petter, was living in Japan teaching both English and Reiki, he had no idea that Reiki in Japan actually still existed. One of his students, however, spoke up and explained that there were many others in Japan who quietly knew Reiki from before World War II, but of a rather different form. This student went against the norm of vigilance and silent watchfulness!
Mr. Arjava Petter was wonderfully determined, deeply sincere and exceptionally fortunate to meet a teacher who lent him a copy of an Usui notebook that had supposedly been given to one of his students. Arjava found that the past Reiki practices were quite different from those taught in the West, but that the Reiki energy was the same. The only difference was in the methods by which the energy was applied.
Chris Marsh (a British student of martial arts and the Japanese language, a Tendai Buddhist and frequent traveler to Japan for his devoted studies) was serendipitously introduced to a Buddhist nun, over 100 years old, who had been a student of Master Usui in the 1920’s and possible a niece of Master Usui's wife! Chris was told by her that she and others were not happy with what had become of Reiki throughout the world. She taught him what she had learned from Master Usui himself ~ again quite different than Western Reiki.
Back in England Chris shared his new Reiki knowledge with another Reiki Master searching for solid history and details, Andrew Bowling.
In the following years, Andy and Chris were judiciously and slowly introduced to more of Master Usui's students (from 96 to 111 years old). Some original notes and notebooks and manuals were allowed to be viewed. From this a lot of sharing in the West followed amongst many who were also seeking the “better history”, culminating in the first Usui Reiki Ryoho International workshop, in Vancouver, organised by Vancouver’s Rick Rivard, and Tom Rigler, Andrew Bowling and other North American devoted Reiki Masters. Hiroshi Doi-Sensei, a member of the Usui Reiki Society in Tokyo came to Vancouver and spoke about the Society's history of Reiki. He also presented a modified version of a Usui Reiki empowerment procedure called Reiju.
So, bit by bit, the existence of Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (the closed societies) and details of the Reiki practices and Reiki history have been released to the rest of the world in a very controlled and limited manner.
In 1925, a retired Naval officer and a close friend and senior student of Usui-Sensei, Dr. Hayashi, created a manual listing maladies and illnesses (and body organs and tissues) with corresponding Reiki hand positions for those who did not wish to work intuitively as Master Usui was known to do.
Usui-Sensei died in1926 of a stroke and following his death, Dr. Hayashi continued Reiki on his own, separate from the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (the closed society).
Dr. Hayashi created the first Reiki Centre and clinic, where people could pay to receive healing. By 1939 he had initiated thirteen Reiki teachers. At that point he did not wish to continue to live as he knew Japan was heading to war. Japan had struck up an alliance with Germany and he knew he'd be called up to serve ~ after saving lives for so many years, killing was not an option.
Mrs. Hawayo Takata was born on December 24, 1900 on the Island of Kauai, Hawaii, the daughter of Japanese immigrants. While in Japan visiting her parents in 1936, Mrs. Takata needed medical intervention with appendicitis, gallstones and a tumour. Just minutes before the surgery, she heard a voice saying “There is another way - surgery is not necessary.” When she queried the surgeon just as he was to start the operation he answered her that yes, indeed there was another way. His wife worked at a Tokyo clinic where hands-on-healing was done and he referred her to Hayashi’s Reiki clinic. And after several months she was healed and sold on this wonderful system! She stayed on in Japan, lived with the Hayashi’s (Mrs. Hayashi and their daughter were both Reiki masters) and obtained instruction from Dr. Hayashi while working in his clinic for a year - Reiki Level One and Two.
In 1938, Mrs. Takata brought the system of Reiki back home to Hawaii, where she started a clinic on Oahu. The following year, Dr. Hayashi and his daughter came over to help her for a few months and gave their blessing to the first Reiki clinic outside of Japan! Mrs. Takata was initiated as a Reiki Master by Dr. Hayashi during this visit and was even given an English language certificate. Mrs. Takata needed to appease the local authorities and that's why we see the "dr." and the fact that the sertificate is in English (and that is why we still call Master Hayashi, Dr. Hayashi, so as to lessen the claims of quackery, which was a criminal offense at the time). Two government goofs sat stoically in her office, day in and day out, to pounce if ever any money were to change hands. Clients paid in eggs and breads and gifts.
Mrs. Takata stopped her work after the Pearl Harbour bombing and resumed her practice of Reiki on the Hawaiian Islands in the late '40's, after WW II. She studied nutrition and massage during her hiatsis. She thought that Reiki had not survived WW II as all contact with the Hayashi’s ceased.
Much later she began to teach the level One and Two classes. By 1975 she began to teach practitioners to become Reiki teachers (by invitation). She travelled to the American mainland and Canada and eventually initiated 22 Reiki Masters, in all, by the time of her death in 1980. Of these masters, five were from the Slocan Valley in BC.
Intense debate over how to continue and who would take Mrs. Takata's place began immediately following her passing. A group of mainly Mrs. Takata’s original 22 Reiki teachers formed the Reiki Alliance and called the work Usui Shiki Ryoho. Mrs.Takata’s granddaughter, Phyllis Lee Furumoto, is the head of this Reiki Alliance. She assumed the title of “Grandmaster” and continued on as close as possible to the previous ways of her grandmother.
Some other Reiki Masters initiated by Mrs.Takata, spread the Reiki teachings during the 1980's and made lasting changes and some even renamed their Reiki. They also reduced the tuition fees for Mastership training and consequently the rigid price structure for classes crumbled and thus many more Reiki Masters appeared on the scene. This led to the development of yet more off-shoot practices, as new Reiki Masters added their own concepts, tools and idiosyncrasies to the traditional way. Mrs.Takata's teachings were close to that of her teacher Dr. Hayashi and changes that she made were for practical purposes to adapt the work to Western ways. A typical Level One during Usui's time would take a number of years ~ you simply were AT a level for a portion of your life and generally met your group one evening per week. With Dr. Hayashi, students worked in the clinic daily for months to attain level One. With Mrs.Takata four half days were set aside for teaching with the commitment that practice would follow on ones own.
The study of the chakra system became a widespread inclusion and with the rise of New Age spiritual practices, Reiki practitioners began to work consciously with and include Spirit Guides, Ascended Master Teachings, Arch Angels and Nature Divas. Some practitioners also incorporated crystals, channelling, past life healing, shamanism, crystal bowls and various other modalities into their Reiki classes ~ a veritable circus and now one can understand why the Japanese were less than happy with Western Reiki. On-line classes were conceived, symbols started to circulate on the internet and long-distance classes were taught with distance attunements! Students felt free to study with more than one teacher – and more than one lineage. Competition for the cheapest and shortest classes led to another level of loss of quality and depth.
As students and practitioners of Reiki it is up to us to practice what is perhaps the most important spiritual discipline -- discernment. We must use our reason, our intuition and our inner spiritual guidance to understand the true nature of Reiki and to verify this truth for ourselves through our own direct experience.
As Reiki practitioners we naturally exercise tolerance for those who practice a different form of Reiki and who belong to a different lineage. As a Hindu yogi master once said, “When you have found a path up the mountain, and you can see the summit from far below, it is tempting to call out to those struggling to ascend on either side of you, and to tell them – ‘Look, I have found the way.’ It is only when one reaches the summit itself that one has the all-encompassing view of the mountain itself, and then one realizes that there are many paths to the summit, each with its own charms and its own pitfalls.”
Reiki is a Japanese word, made up of two Japanese kanji – Rei and Ki - meaning, roughly translated, universal and energy. The word Reiki is often translated as “Universal Life Force Energy” or “Spiritual Ray of Life”.
During the early twentieth century in Japan, during Master Usui's time, the ancient art of hands-on-healing was enjoying a Renaissance. Healing, so much a part of shamanistic practice in all parts of the world for thousands of years, was also known in Japan. There were many different types of healing forms through meditation and energy transference and gradually "touch" was also being practiced by various teachers affiliated with spiritual traditions, at that time. As Master Usui's insights, classes and healing work spread, other teachers of other healing modalities shared their knowledge with each other and we now know that Master Usui's Reiki was not a rigid or static method but evolved, gradually over those last five years of his life.
Reiki was not well known and it was deemed best to keep it quiet and amongst those that were trusted. Master Usui went along with this until the massive earthquake of 1923 that devastated a huge part of Tokyo and left the city in ruins. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost and even more people were injured. At this time Master Usui, who had been the only teacher at his Reiki Gakkai (Society), which he had officially started the year before, made some changes such that eight of his senior students were given teacher "status". He taught them to teach Reiki and they went forth with many other Reiki students into the damaged city to do as much healing as possible and so the general public experienced this wonderful work at a time it needed it most.
Over the following years these teachers initiated thousands of people and thus Reiki and Master Usui became known in Japan. Had Master Usui not felt the need to reach out and change "the rules", then Reiki would not have been given away to those needing it most. And we, in the West, would probably never have been introduced to it, as a consequence.
Master Usui died in 1926.
The Reiki teachings were transmitted both orally and in written form, from teacher to student, from generation to generation, passing from Japan to North America and Europe and then throughout the world. Many stories, myths and legends about Master Usui and about the origins of Reiki have appeared - some honorable, some dubious and some quite preposterous.
In the last 50 years, various Western Reiki teachers created their own personal variations of the system of Reiki and thus there are now many different Reiki “offshoots” with names of their own. It is estimated that there are more than 50,000 Reiki masters and one million Reiki practitioners in the world today.
The search for the “truth” about Reiki and it’s history is fascinating and leads one down many interesting pathways. In the late 90’s a number of very dedicated Reiki Masters were determined to uncover the origins of Reiki; what happened to Reiki during WWII and details of the life of Master Usui himself and his intentions for the work in the future. We owe these pioneers a huge debt of gratitude.
Western-type Reiki is both practical and spiritual - developed on some of the fundamentals of the Reiki that Master Usui taught, but not all of them, due to the different nature of our culture and times.
His classes were undertaken with long term (even lifetime) commitments, which we do not do in the Western world. Even though we often read that someone teaches in the same manner as Master Usui, they surely mean something else. What is meant, no doubt, is that the course content may have similarities and the method of passing on the healing energy and concepts may be somewhat similar - such as attunements and symbols.
We also know that Master Usui often met like-minded people and invited them to his classes. Information was occasionally shared and a lot of fine cross-pollination took place. Master Usui had an open mind, hence the idea of sharing information and inviting other healers into his midst and then incorporating some of the concepts, much like we do today, carefully.
For example, Mrs. Tanaka, who was first to teach Reiki in the Western world, taught 12 distinct hand positions to her Level One students so that anyone could do Reiki, including anyone as thick as two planks. There was no emphasis placed on advanced development of intuition, even though sometimes Mrs. Takata's students were very advanced meditation and yoga practitioners. Sometimes Mrs. Takata just "knew" who would be very capable. Master Usui started with only several hand positions when working with clients and showing students, that he expected his students would understand and then had his good friend and fellow Reiki master, Master Hayashi, put basic hand positions into a schematic so that his students would find it easier. This was passed on to us with the odd change.
In comparing notes that Mrs. Takata's students' made at the end of each day of her classes you see variations and that speaks to the fact that with energy healing work even the great teachers did not feel that the work was static and cast in stone..
Some of us believe that the contemporary teachings should be as close as possible to the original teachings and ways, even as this may be a challenge... Back in Japan in the '20's, if you were invited to join an Usui healing/meditation group, you would probably spend many years diligently going to Level One classes, one evening per week, for years and eventually be invited to a higher level group and again after dedication, commitment and time and patience, an invitation to be a teacher could possibly evolve.
This is not possible in our rushed times. On the other hand, it is also not necessary to teach Reiki by Skype or resort to classes on a CD or to couple all levels together as one class in a jiffy half day at the community centre. Even though this saves on travel time and is a smart marketing ploy, it certainly does not serve our learning, experience and abilities, nor capture ANY of what Master Usui aimed for... and may even give Reiki a bad name.
As a devout, practicing Tendai Buddhist from early childhood, Usui Sensei would have had a deep understanding of the wisdom and teachings of The Buddha - teachings that were the result of his own direct investigations, deep meditations and guidance from his religious advisers, not from "supernatural" revelations. In fact, we read in Curtis Lang and Jane Sherry’s history of Reiki that what he taught was not to be taken "on faith" - his students were to examine for themselves, based on their own experience, whether Reiki was able to transform suffering into well-being.
There are no or few exact documents of Master Usui’s original healing system or methods as he taught it, or they have not been made available to the general public by those who claim they do have these pertinent original writings (Master Usui’s teachings have been kept in the dozen odd Japanese societies known as the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, where the teachers and practitioners do not discuss the details of the society with non-members and where membership in the society is closed to foreigners). Due to the nature of Japanese society, information and knowledge is often kept within it's own confines and never shared, even for the common good... almost never...
One of Master Usui's senior students, Toshihiro Eguchi, knew Usui-Sensei’s methods in its original form and taught this as well as his own system of touch healing to a student, Yuji Onuki, who decided to travel the world in order to pass on and teach what he had learned way back in 1971. Several of this teacher’s students later went to Japan and searched for the Reiki history and taught Japanese students Reiki ~ Reiki had come full circle, geographically!
In the mid 1990’s, when a German Reiki teacher, Frank Arjava Petter, was living in Japan teaching both English and Reiki, he had no idea that Reiki in Japan actually still existed. One of his students, however, spoke up and explained that there were many others in Japan who quietly knew Reiki from before World War II, but of a rather different form. This student went against the norm of vigilance and silent watchfulness!
Mr. Arjava Petter was wonderfully determined, deeply sincere and exceptionally fortunate to meet a teacher who lent him a copy of an Usui notebook that had supposedly been given to one of his students. Arjava found that the past Reiki practices were quite different from those taught in the West, but that the Reiki energy was the same. The only difference was in the methods by which the energy was applied.
Chris Marsh (a British student of martial arts and the Japanese language, a Tendai Buddhist and frequent traveler to Japan for his devoted studies) was serendipitously introduced to a Buddhist nun, over 100 years old, who had been a student of Master Usui in the 1920’s and possible a niece of Master Usui's wife! Chris was told by her that she and others were not happy with what had become of Reiki throughout the world. She taught him what she had learned from Master Usui himself ~ again quite different than Western Reiki.
Back in England Chris shared his new Reiki knowledge with another Reiki Master searching for solid history and details, Andrew Bowling.
In the following years, Andy and Chris were judiciously and slowly introduced to more of Master Usui's students (from 96 to 111 years old). Some original notes and notebooks and manuals were allowed to be viewed. From this a lot of sharing in the West followed amongst many who were also seeking the “better history”, culminating in the first Usui Reiki Ryoho International workshop, in Vancouver, organised by Vancouver’s Rick Rivard, and Tom Rigler, Andrew Bowling and other North American devoted Reiki Masters. Hiroshi Doi-Sensei, a member of the Usui Reiki Society in Tokyo came to Vancouver and spoke about the Society's history of Reiki. He also presented a modified version of a Usui Reiki empowerment procedure called Reiju.
So, bit by bit, the existence of Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (the closed societies) and details of the Reiki practices and Reiki history have been released to the rest of the world in a very controlled and limited manner.
In 1925, a retired Naval officer and a close friend and senior student of Usui-Sensei, Dr. Hayashi, created a manual listing maladies and illnesses (and body organs and tissues) with corresponding Reiki hand positions for those who did not wish to work intuitively as Master Usui was known to do.
Usui-Sensei died in1926 of a stroke and following his death, Dr. Hayashi continued Reiki on his own, separate from the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (the closed society).
Dr. Hayashi created the first Reiki Centre and clinic, where people could pay to receive healing. By 1939 he had initiated thirteen Reiki teachers. At that point he did not wish to continue to live as he knew Japan was heading to war. Japan had struck up an alliance with Germany and he knew he'd be called up to serve ~ after saving lives for so many years, killing was not an option.
Mrs. Hawayo Takata was born on December 24, 1900 on the Island of Kauai, Hawaii, the daughter of Japanese immigrants. While in Japan visiting her parents in 1936, Mrs. Takata needed medical intervention with appendicitis, gallstones and a tumour. Just minutes before the surgery, she heard a voice saying “There is another way - surgery is not necessary.” When she queried the surgeon just as he was to start the operation he answered her that yes, indeed there was another way. His wife worked at a Tokyo clinic where hands-on-healing was done and he referred her to Hayashi’s Reiki clinic. And after several months she was healed and sold on this wonderful system! She stayed on in Japan, lived with the Hayashi’s (Mrs. Hayashi and their daughter were both Reiki masters) and obtained instruction from Dr. Hayashi while working in his clinic for a year - Reiki Level One and Two.
In 1938, Mrs. Takata brought the system of Reiki back home to Hawaii, where she started a clinic on Oahu. The following year, Dr. Hayashi and his daughter came over to help her for a few months and gave their blessing to the first Reiki clinic outside of Japan! Mrs. Takata was initiated as a Reiki Master by Dr. Hayashi during this visit and was even given an English language certificate. Mrs. Takata needed to appease the local authorities and that's why we see the "dr." and the fact that the sertificate is in English (and that is why we still call Master Hayashi, Dr. Hayashi, so as to lessen the claims of quackery, which was a criminal offense at the time). Two government goofs sat stoically in her office, day in and day out, to pounce if ever any money were to change hands. Clients paid in eggs and breads and gifts.
Mrs. Takata stopped her work after the Pearl Harbour bombing and resumed her practice of Reiki on the Hawaiian Islands in the late '40's, after WW II. She studied nutrition and massage during her hiatsis. She thought that Reiki had not survived WW II as all contact with the Hayashi’s ceased.
Much later she began to teach the level One and Two classes. By 1975 she began to teach practitioners to become Reiki teachers (by invitation). She travelled to the American mainland and Canada and eventually initiated 22 Reiki Masters, in all, by the time of her death in 1980. Of these masters, five were from the Slocan Valley in BC.
Intense debate over how to continue and who would take Mrs. Takata's place began immediately following her passing. A group of mainly Mrs. Takata’s original 22 Reiki teachers formed the Reiki Alliance and called the work Usui Shiki Ryoho. Mrs.Takata’s granddaughter, Phyllis Lee Furumoto, is the head of this Reiki Alliance. She assumed the title of “Grandmaster” and continued on as close as possible to the previous ways of her grandmother.
Some other Reiki Masters initiated by Mrs.Takata, spread the Reiki teachings during the 1980's and made lasting changes and some even renamed their Reiki. They also reduced the tuition fees for Mastership training and consequently the rigid price structure for classes crumbled and thus many more Reiki Masters appeared on the scene. This led to the development of yet more off-shoot practices, as new Reiki Masters added their own concepts, tools and idiosyncrasies to the traditional way. Mrs.Takata's teachings were close to that of her teacher Dr. Hayashi and changes that she made were for practical purposes to adapt the work to Western ways. A typical Level One during Usui's time would take a number of years ~ you simply were AT a level for a portion of your life and generally met your group one evening per week. With Dr. Hayashi, students worked in the clinic daily for months to attain level One. With Mrs.Takata four half days were set aside for teaching with the commitment that practice would follow on ones own.
The study of the chakra system became a widespread inclusion and with the rise of New Age spiritual practices, Reiki practitioners began to work consciously with and include Spirit Guides, Ascended Master Teachings, Arch Angels and Nature Divas. Some practitioners also incorporated crystals, channelling, past life healing, shamanism, crystal bowls and various other modalities into their Reiki classes ~ a veritable circus and now one can understand why the Japanese were less than happy with Western Reiki. On-line classes were conceived, symbols started to circulate on the internet and long-distance classes were taught with distance attunements! Students felt free to study with more than one teacher – and more than one lineage. Competition for the cheapest and shortest classes led to another level of loss of quality and depth.
As students and practitioners of Reiki it is up to us to practice what is perhaps the most important spiritual discipline -- discernment. We must use our reason, our intuition and our inner spiritual guidance to understand the true nature of Reiki and to verify this truth for ourselves through our own direct experience.
As Reiki practitioners we naturally exercise tolerance for those who practice a different form of Reiki and who belong to a different lineage. As a Hindu yogi master once said, “When you have found a path up the mountain, and you can see the summit from far below, it is tempting to call out to those struggling to ascend on either side of you, and to tell them – ‘Look, I have found the way.’ It is only when one reaches the summit itself that one has the all-encompassing view of the mountain itself, and then one realizes that there are many paths to the summit, each with its own charms and its own pitfalls.”
We wait patiently while those intent on diminishing Reiki learn to play nice with the rest of God's children... and those folks measuring with old parameters and paradigms hopefully, quickly, catch up. The latest controversial, offending piece of "research" is at: "Effects of reiki in clinical practice" by The International Journal of Clinical Practice, Volume 62, Issue 6 (pages 947–954) - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1742-1241.2008.01729.x/abstract
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Receiving Reiki healing allows you to set aside troublesome thoughts, worries, changing preconceptions, sticky judgements and stress for a little while.
Please look through the pages here and join me in one or more of the Reiki seminars offered.
Allow yourself to believe in and enjoy the deep, delicious benefits of the power of Reiki… and I look forward to seeing you.
Please look through the pages here and join me in one or more of the Reiki seminars offered.
Allow yourself to believe in and enjoy the deep, delicious benefits of the power of Reiki… and I look forward to seeing you.
Go to the sessions page to see what may be just right for you
Go to the classes page and see when you can learn Reiki in Vancouver
Go to the classes page and see when you can learn Reiki in Vancouver
Merrie Bakker, Reiki Master Teacher
schedule an appointment - 604-261-7742
info@reflexologyreiki.com
info@pacificholistic.com
schedule an appointment - 604-261-7742
info@reflexologyreiki.com
info@pacificholistic.com
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We accept cheques, cash, e-transfer and all credit cards (through the PayPal system).
SHOOT US AN EMAIL WITH “newsletter” in the subject info@reflexologyreiki.com
GET YOUR FREE HEALTH REPORT: 78 FOOLPROOF TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH - SHOOT US AN EMAIL WITH "78" in the subject info@pacificholistic.com
Reflexology, Reiki, Dowsing: http://www.reflexologyreiki.com
Live Blood Analysis: http://www.pacificholistic.com
Live Blood Analysis: http://www.pacificholistic.com
Ozone / Oxygen Sauna Detox therapy: http://www.PacificHolistic.com/oxygen
(We do not sell ANY supplements EVER.)
Sangeeta Healing Temple provides holistic Reiki Healing in Canada, designed to restore harmony, relieve stress, and enhance overall well-being. Our skilled healers use gentle energy techniques to release emotional blockages, promote relaxation, and support natural healing. Experience the transformative power of **Reiki Healing in Canada** and embrace a healthier, balanced life.
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