History of Reiki — Mikao Usui
The story of how Mikao Usui developed the Reiki system in early twentieth-century Japan, and how it spread across the world through his students and their students.
The Origins of Reiki
Reiki was developed by Mikao Usui (1865–1926), a Japanese spiritual teacher and practitioner. Usui was a man of wide-ranging interests — he studied Buddhism, Shintoism, martial arts, and various healing traditions throughout his life. The system he eventually developed drew on these influences while adding something distinctly his own.
The Retreat on Mount Kurama
According to the most widely shared account of Reiki's origins, Usui undertook a twenty-one-day retreat on Mount Kurama, a sacred mountain north of Kyoto, around 1922. During this period of fasting, meditation, and prayer, he is said to have experienced a profound spiritual awakening in which he received the Reiki energy and the understanding of how to work with it. Whether one interprets this account literally or symbolically, it marks the moment Usui began teaching what would become the Reiki system.
The Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai
After his retreat, Usui founded the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (Usui Reiki Healing Method Society) in Tokyo in 1922. He taught many students and developed a system of hand positions, symbols, and attunements — a process by which a teacher passes the ability to work with Reiki energy to a student. Before his death in 1926, he had trained several teachers, including Chujiro Hayashi, who would go on to play a key role in spreading Reiki beyond Japan.
Reiki Comes to the West
Chujiro Hayashi trained Hawayo Takata, a Japanese-American woman from Hawaii, in the 1930s. Takata returned to Hawaii and eventually to the continental United States, where she taught Reiki for decades. It was largely through her efforts that Reiki became known in the Western world. She trained twenty-two Reiki Masters before her death in 1980, and from those teachers the practice spread rapidly across North America, Europe, and beyond.
Reiki Today
Today there are many lineages and styles of Reiki practice, from the traditional Japanese forms to various Western adaptations. What they share is the core intention of Usui's original teaching: to support relaxation, reduce stress, and cultivate a sense of peace and wellbeing through the gentle, compassionate use of focused energy.