The history of Reiki: from Usui to today

The known history of Reiki goes back about a hundred years and starts with a single name: Mikao Usui. What follows is a chain — and you, reading this, are at the end of it.

There are two accounts below. First the story as Reiki reached the West, the one I also give in my manual; then what was learned later from Japanese sources. I prefer to tell both, and I explain why at the end.

The story the tradition tells

Dr. Mikao Usui was a school administrator. One of his students asked whether he believed in the healings attributed to Jesus; he said he did. To the question “then why does no one heal that way today?” he had no answer. He left his post and set out to find one.

He read and travelled for years. In a monastery he found old texts containing symbols used for healing, but nothing about how to use them. He decided to withdraw to a mountain to fast and meditate for twenty-one days. He gathered twenty-one stones to count the days, throwing one away each morning.

By the end of the twentieth day nothing had happened. Throwing the last stone he thought: tonight, or never. Towards dawn he saw a light coming towards him from the horizon. Instead of fleeing he stood still and let it strike him in the middle of the forehead. In that moment he saw, in all their colours, the symbols he had looked at for years without understanding.

Coming down the mountain he struck his foot on a stone and the nail bled; he placed his hand on it, and when the pain passed the toe had healed. At the roadside restaurant where he stopped, he noticed the girl serving him had toothache; he rested his hands on her cheek and the swelling went down.

What is given for nothing

Usui spent the following years in the poor quarters of Tokyo, healing the sick. But when years later he saw the same faces back on the street, he understood something: he had been giving health away, and what is received for nothing is not valued.

Out of that realisation he developed a rule of energy exchange and opened the first Reiki clinic. This story is why Reiki training is not given without exchange — the point is not money, but that what you receive should carry some weight.

The chain continues: Hayashi and Takata

One of Usui's students was Dr. Chujiro Hayashi. In 1938 Hayashi initiated Hawayo Takata as a Master. Takata was someone who had come through a serious illness with Reiki.

After Hayashi's death Takata remained the only Master for many years, settled in Hawaii, and in her final years began to train students. When she died in 1980 she left twenty-two Reiki Masters behind her. Reiki spread to the world from there.

What was learned later

The account above is how Reiki reached the West and how it has been passed on for generations. But as Japanese sources became accessible, some details turned out to be different.

• Usui was not a Christian minister. He was born in 1865 in Gifu and came from the Tendai tradition.
• He carried out the twenty-one-day practice on Mount Kurama, near Kyoto.
• In 1922 he founded the Usui Reiki Ryōhō Gakkai in Tokyo; the society still exists.
• The inscription on his memorial stone tells his life in the language of his own time and does not confirm parts of the Western account.

So which is true?

Probably both are doing their own work. Takata had to make Reiki intelligible in 1930s America, and she translated the story into the language of that culture. This does not invalidate what she passed on — my own lineage runs through her, and the transmission itself does not depend on the story.

I prefer to tell both. The first thing a teacher owes a student is to say what is known as known, and what is not as not.

And your lineage

When you complete a course, the certificate you receive carries this chain as far as your own name. My Usui Reiki lineage runs from Mikao Usui to Chujiro Hayashi, to Hawayo Takata, through Phyllis Furumoto and the names that follow to Allison Dahlhaus, and from her to me.

That is why history is not a matter of curiosity here; it is the record of where you come from. All my lineages are published openly on this site.