The History of Reiki

Contrary to popular belief, REIKI is not a proper noun in Japan’s language – the country where this therapy for healing and treatment took its first roots. Reiki is a very generic word that the Japanese use to describe a plethora of healing as well as spiritual disciplines.

This, and many other interesting nuggets of information lie hidden in the following pages waiting to be unraveled by you. So, sit back, relax, and read on ‘ the journey back in time to when Reiki originated ‘

How Do You Define Reiki?

You pronounce Reiki as “Ray” followed by “Key”. The Japanese dictionary defines Reiki as “Universal life energy that is all pervading, and omnipresent.” The “Rei” component of the term represents “spirit of transcendence”, while the “ki” stands for “life force”.

As you have read in the previous page, Reiki in Japan stands for several things, all of them related to different methods and therapies of healing, and also related to spirituality.

So, which particular Reiki do people refer to, when they speak about disease healing and spirituality growth in the west? The operative word here is “Usui”: it is the “Usui Reiki” that we talk about; it is this form of healing that is popular in the west, and it is this form that we are going to dwell at length in this book.

The Japanese, incidentally, refer to this form of Reiki as the “Usui Method of Reiki Healing” or “usui reiki shiki ryoho”.

Dr. Mikao Usui – The Founder

Where the true origins of Reiki lie, is a mystery shrouded in the cloudy wisps of history. However, it is guessed that Tibetan monks used to practice Reiki as a powerful form of therapy thousands of years ago.

The credit to rediscovering this ancient form of therapy goes to Dr. Mikao Usui, after which the “Usui Reiki” derived its name.

Mikao Usui – The Man

The biography of Dr. Mikao Usui makes insightful reading. As pieced together by numerous historians, Dr. Usui was born in a small village called “Yago” in Japan, on August 15, 1865. Yago is in the present district of Yamagata, which comes under the prefecture of Gifu.

He was quite fortunate to have been born in quite propitious circumstances, for two years after he was born, the then ruler of Japan, Emperor Ninko, died of small pox, thus paving the way for the ascension of his son, Emperor Meiji, to the throne.

It was during Emperor’s Meiji’s rule that Mikao Usui grew up. Raised in a wealthy family, Mikao was sent to the best schools in the country for his education. The subjects that most interested him were Medicine, Psychology and Religion, and the heady mixture of these three disciplines was to help him later in life
to comprehend the divine gift he was to receive later in life.

Either because the family itself was into it, or because of the surrounding influences, Mikao embraced the Tendai school of Buddhism, which was patronized by and extremely popular among the upper classes of the time.

The Tendai Doctrine in turn drew inspiration from the Chinese Tiantai Buddhist Doctrine, and contained elements in it that allowed adaptation of several outside influences. Indeed, the open-mindedness to look at other schools of thought, study them, experiment with them, and merge elements from them into one’s own outlook and lifestyle, shaped Mikao Usui’s personality.

These virtues enabled Usui to absorb the knowledge that the world had to offer, on his way towards enlightenment and “Satori”, as the Japanese call it, and the consequent development of Reiki.

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