thehealingjournal.com: Aug - Sept 2007

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The Healing Journal

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HOW REIKI TRAVELS!

WHERE DID THIS ALL START?
The history of Reiki is full of conflicting facts and assumptions, even though this unique energy healing method began only 90 years. Until the recent past the history was transmitted orally from teacher to student and this may have led to more confusion than clarity. We are still a bit in the dark about the finer points of the origins. What we do know is that Reiki has spread throughout the world in many forms.

When I took my first level class nine years ago, I was told to read the history of Reiki in the usual form of the legend, which I found quite debatable and for which my questions received no real answers. I received a summary of Mikao Usui’s achievements (the founder) and I heard of how this system spread throughout the world.

Then I bought a computer and in 2000 a whole world of fresh information opened up and I would sit with my wondrous 386 and wait ten minutes with baited breath while a new Reiki site would open and up and I would give gratitude for not crashing and providing me with more knowledge! Since then, I have become a Reiki master and still cruise the net for more history. I tell the history in my Reiki classes with very little legend and a lot of facts.

SO NOW WE KNOW SO MUCH MORE
The Usui System of Reiki came about when the very spiritual and devoted Mikao Usui, a tendai Buddhist with several careers (not a doctor or theologian or gardener) had a seriously enlightening experience after much searching on the Japanese sacred mountain, Kurama, while on a commonly taken spiritual retreat. He consequently passed this knowing on to thousands of people in Japan in a very open manner, accessible to all who who showed sincere interest and dedication.

Usui initiated a small group of people to become teachers and in 1922, Usui opened a Reiki center in Tokyo for treatment and teaching and began to offer the Reiki healing techniques to the public (as well as being on-hand during the great Tokyo quake). Usui’s Method was foremost as a path to spiritual enlightenment and personal development and the students considered the ability to administer self healing as a wonderful extra. After his death in 1926, some of these masters continued his work in Tokyo and founded the not-so-open Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai. A good reason for the secretiveness could be the belief that the teachings being given should be the same as those of the founder, because the original energy of the founder, Usui, was considered to be a highly exalted individual, who had attained a level of consciousness and expertise far beyond the ordinary. The Tokyo Gakkai has a copy of Usui’s manual and in the 90’s Frank Arjava Petter, after spending considerable time and effort to unearth the proper history, managed to receive a copy of this very important document which he subsequently published.

A NEW WAVE OF INFORMATION AND ENTHUSIASM
Andrew Bowling and Chris Marsh, both Reiki masters in England were both separately and seriously looking for information in regards to Usui’s life and teachings and were rewarded for their quiet determination. Many historical facts were revealed to them. Students of Usui were met (including Usui’s wife’s niece - 106 years old at the time!) as well as the Japanese Reiki Master, Hiroshi Doi who was affiliated with the Gakkai. Some of these finding have been published just with in the last few years.

Mr. Doi has developed a new Reiki method that he calls Gendai Reiki Ho. It is partly derived from traditional Reiki according to Usui; the rest comes from elements he has developed himself. Even here we see change! Mr. Doi says that his way is “a new, useful method of practicing Reiki for modern people.”

USUI’S GOOD FRIEND
A Dr. Chujiro Hayashi, good friend and confidant of Usui had a key position in spreading the Usui System of Reiki from 1926 onward but in a different manner. He opened a Reiki clinic in Tokyo upon Usui’s passing and completed the manual he had been working on with Master Usui – a manual with detailed hand positions for those of us/students with less acutely enveloped intuition. Two Reiki Masters that Hayashi initiated survived the war and these teachers were key to the expansion of Reiki beyond the Japanese borders in the post war decades: the venerable Takeuchi and Hawayo Takata.

Takeuchi was the abbot of a small and remote Zen temple and a strand of Reiki has come to the West through this lineage. The central role in disseminating the Usui System throughout the West, was played by Hawayo Takata. She and her granddaughter Phyllis Furumoto, who has been a Reiki Master for the last three decades, have passed the practice on to teachers, who in turn have been practicing and teaching and often in a form that has become ever simpler (on the surface). That simplification makes Reiki more accessible to more people and now the Usui System of Reiki is a worldwide, popular healing method as the Reiki wave grows exponentially. Simplification is ever on-going - even today, and understandably much to the chagrin of those you prefer to teach the deeper, original, spiritual ways.

A friend once derisively said that there’s a Reiki master on every corner. My response: “Thank God! And look how little time that took!”

a free holistic publication dedicated to natural healing, holistic living, educating, raising awareness and building community