Reiki Made Easy

Chapter 1
The history of Reiki

As with many great spiritual traditions, Reiki started with just one person: Mikao Usui. Born on 15 August 1865, he was smart, eloquent and well read. But, as we all know from personal experience, this isn’t everything. We also need a dose of luck – and when this goes missing, we can reach rock bottom. Mikao Usui did. But if he hadn’t, we wouldn’t have the gift of Reiki.

Mikao Usui, the founder

His early life

Quite a few people who practise Reiki divide their lives into before and after Reiki. I will apply the same to Mikao Usui – after all, his life before Reiki provided the ground in which it could blossom. As this isn’t a history book, I’ll try to keep this account short. But here are what I consider the six key points about this time:

1. A time of change
Usui was born into a time of tremendous cultural and political change. After centuries of almost complete isolation, the country was being opened to trade and international contacts by the new Japanese emperor, who even invited other cultures to send envoys and teachers, including Christian missionaries. Internally, the changes were just as drastic: democracy was introduced, and education, health, industrial production and science exploded. The period is commonly called the Meiju Restoration, named after the emperor. It catapulted Japan to prosperity and international influence. The country said hello to the world.

2. Usui was a Samurai
Mikao Usui came from a Samurai family, the traditional ruling class. Prior to the Meiju period, the Samurai had been the only Japanese allowed to carry a surname – and the name ‘Usui’ has a particular history. In the 12th century, a famous Samurai warrior, Chiba Tsunetane, conquered the town of Usui and subsequently all the members of his clan had this as their surname.
This tradition seems to be of such significance that Mikao Usui’s ancestry is mentioned on his memorial stone. But he was born at the wrong time: the Meiju Restoration scrapped all the traditional privileges and brought in a system of equal opportunity for all. The Samurai’s exclusive access to jobs in government, administration and the police was abolished and they now had to make as much effort to establish themselves in a career as everyone else. Still, it is certainly fair to assume that Usui was brought up in the Samurai tradition of endurance, philosophical reflection and the practice of martial arts.

3. Rice wine drying up
In any case, there was no need for him to be worried about the loss of privileges – his own future was settled. His family was comparatively well off and as the eldest son of four children (he had one sister and two brothers), he was set to inherit the sake brewery owned by his grandfather. His family also owned a trading business.
However, during Usui’s time much changed and even this security did not last for long. His grandfather had signed an affidavit for a friend that could not be paid back. He lost the brewery.

4. Two kinds of Buddhism
There doesn’t seem to have been much else in the little village of Taniai, where the Usuis lived. Located in the Gifu district, a mountainous region in southern Japan, it didn’t even have a school.
As a young boy, therefore, Mikao Usui would have been educated by the monks at the nearby monastery. This was common practice in the absence of a school. The monastery belonged to Pure Land Buddhism, one of the big Buddhist teaching traditions in Japan, but the monks would have also taught general knowledge.

In his teens, Usui would have continued his education at a school in a larger town. As the dominant denomination in the region was Zen Buddhism (his local monastery being only a little Pure Land enclave), this would have meant that during his youth he would have been made aware that it was possible (indeed the norm) to have the same creed yet different paths.
While Pure Land Buddhism is centred around the devotion to the Amida Buddha and the help of bodhisattvas (enlightened beings in the spirit world who act as helpers for humans), Zen focuses on meditation, experiential exploration and one-to-one teaching from a master. Both traditions later contributed elements to Usui’s system of Reiki.

5. Big city, big politics
Finishing school, Usui was left without a clear career path as the brewery was gone. So he and one of his younger brothers moved to Tokyo, trying their luck in the big city. His brother became a medical doctor; Mikao Usui didn’t. In fact, we don’t really know what he became, or if he even had any formal education in Tokyo.

He was smart and ambitious, though, and keen on expanding his knowledge. Eventually he found a position that fitted his interests and personality: as the personal assistant of Shinpei Goto, who to this day is one of the most revered politicians in Japanese history. A trained medical doctor, he became an official in the health department and drew up new guidelines for public health, then went on to become health minister, minister for transport and information, interior secretary and foreign secretary. He was also the first civilian governor of Taiwan, headed the Manchurian Railway and eventually became mayor of Tokyo. He shared his Samurai background with Usui as well as a keen interest in the personal development of the individual – he was, for example, the first head of the Boy Scout movement in Japan. When, as mayor of Tokyo, he was presented with the prototype of an affordable watch, he declared that one day every citizen should be able to own one – and called the watch itself ‘citizen’. Following the astonishing success of the product, this was later adopted as the company name.

It is not hard to imagine the influence such a man would have had on Mikao Usui, who was eight years younger. Goto would have clearly demonstrated that a combination of determination and values creates the basis for success.
There was another benefit to Usui’s position too: he could travel. The memorial stone mentions that he visited the USA, Europe and China. So he would have been able to study different cultures and religions, and may have realized that no matter where they were in the world, people were faced with the same challenges. On the one hand, they were struggling with survival and everyday life; on the other, looking for meaning and truth. They may have used different names and symbols, but they were all on the same path.

All this knowledge bore fruit later on, when Usui created the system of Reiki and made it accessible to all, regardless of religious or cultural differences.

6. His life implodes
We don’t know how long Usui worked for Goto, but eventually he went his own way. He married a woman called Sadako Suzuki, had two children (son Fuji in 1908 and daughter Toshiko in 1913) and became an entrepreneur. There is no information on the type of business he started – in fact there are some suggestions that he tried several different careers – but it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t the kind of venture that was important for his development, but its result. And that was: complete failure.

Mikao Usui was made bankrupt. I can claim to be a bit of an expert on this subject, and it can easily be summed up as a nightmare. My knowledge, however, is limited to what it feels like in 21st-century London. We can only imagine what it would have meant 100 years earlier (approximately between 1915 and 1918), in a society based on social standing, reputation and achievement – and to a descendant of the proud Samurai…
Usui tried anything and everything to get back on his feet – after all, he had a family to provide for – but nothing worked out. The memorial states: ‘He fell into great difficulties.’1 Unsurprisingly, he became depressed and frustrated.

Embracing change

He started to reflect on his life. Was he maybe not meant to return to his old career? Did the universe have different plans for him? After all, he’d always been aware that there was more to life than just a mundane career. For many years he is said to have practised Shugendo, an esoteric discipline combining elements of Buddhism, Taoism and Shintoism. Some research suggests that he was already teaching a small group of students this practice. Was this the time to intensify his quest for spiritual development? Was it even an opportunity?
Although his decision doesn’t seem to have been too warmly received by his family, he resolved to follow his inner calling. And joined a monastery.

I would like to pause here for a moment, as I feel that this is the perfect point to really connect with Mikao Usui. Difficult times tend to provide a turning-point in life and it was the same for Usui as it is for us today. Would I have found my way to Reiki without my bankruptcy? I doubt it. Would you, dear reader, have picked up this book if you hadn’t needed healing – either for yourself or someone around you? Probably not. Times of change are times of development.

But even after a turning-point, life continues to have its ups and downs – and Mikao Usui was about to face another setback. He joined a Zen monastery, stayed there three long years – and ended up even more frustrated. He hadn’t found what he was looking for. As far as he was concerned, it was another failure.

Finding Reiki

But what was he looking for? The answer to this can bring us a big step closer to understanding Reiki.

Mikao Usui wasn’t looking for theory or intellectual understanding. He wanted to know with his heart. He wanted to feel. He knew there was a level of awareness beyond doubt and the need for rational explanation, a place where he could experience complete peace and harmony. Or simply just be. Today, this is often described as ‘being in the now’. In Japanese Zen Buddhism, it is called Anshin Ritsumei.

But Usui hadn’t been able to take the final step from knowing about something to living and being it. Discussing with his abbot what else he could do, he received the advice that the only way left was to die. Not intentionally – but at least to accept the possibility. We cannot take anything material with us when we die – and this is what Usui was asked to do: to leave everything behind, retreat to the mountains and follow a rigid discipline of meditation and deprivation. He would fast and, towards the end, possibly even abstain from drinking and sleeping. These are practices still followed by Eastern mountain ascetics today. The idea behind them is to give up anything that is normally considered essential in life and experience what lies beyond, eventually reaching a state of complete non-attachment or, in Buddhist terms, Nirvana. The saying goes that on that path you either find enlightenment or die.

Usui withdrew into complete isolation on Mount Kurama (Kuramayama in Japanese), a place well known by spiritual seekers. After three weeks the moment of transformation arrived: he felt as if he’d been struck by lightning. He had a vision of light so bright that he needed to close his eyes – and felt at complete peace with the world. He stopped identifying with his physical body, shed the boundaries of being individual and felt one with everything. Reiki is often translated as ‘universal energy’ – and at that moment Usui felt connected to the entire universe.

In Japanese this is called satori: a moment of sudden understanding, of looking beyond the illusionary veil of problems and seeing the world as it really is. In other words, a moment of enlightenment in a very literal sense: seeing the light. Only light. There is a complete absence of darkness, shadows, pain and desire. Pure being, pure bliss. Pure Nirvana. No theoretical understanding, no belief involved. Just experience. Just Reiki.

The mountain retreat had served its purpose. Usui was ready to go back. In fact, he probably couldn’t wait to go back to share his experiences with his abbot and his family.

As he was leaving, a now-famous incident took place: he caught his foot on one of the many roots covering the mountain and tore off a toenail. (And it did hurt – after all, he was still attached to his body, still a human being.) When he leaned down to look at the wound, he placed his hands around the toe – and, to his surprise, it started to heal. He realized that enlightenment had brought him healing powers.

He carried on walking down the mountain and eventually stopped for refreshment at an inn at the bottom. When the innkeeper’s daughter brought him a drink, he noticed that she was in great pain from a tooth infection. Realizing he might be able to heal this, or even just deciding to try things out, he asked for her father’s permission to treat her, then placed his hands around her jaw – and both the pain and the swelling went down.

Mikao Usui had become a Reiki healer.

The system of Reiki

Now everything happened very quickly. Usui tried the palm healing on friends and family, moved his family back to Tokyo and within a month had opened a small healing practice there. But it wasn’t his intention to be known as the miracle-healer. He didn’t want to become the one-and-only, he wanted to help as many people as possible. And given the abundance of need, one man would certainly not be enough. He therefore started to experiment with ways of transferring his healing power to other people. This was how he developed the system of Reiki.

And in doing so broke with Japanese tradition. Enlightenment experiences weren’t supposed to be shared (strange as this sounds to a modern ear). In fact, in one of the few texts attributed to Usui, he feels the need to justify his decision. The Japanese original of this text is very old-fashioned and difficult for contemporary Japanese people to understand, and the translation reflects this. However, there is no other commonly accepted translation in circulation.

From ancient times whenever someone develops a secret method the one would teach this to the people among family, as a legacy for the later generations of the family living. That idea, not to open to the public and keep that sacred method in the family, is really the past century’s bad custom.

In modern days we have to live together. That’s going to be the basis of happiness, earnestly wanting social progress.

That’s why I definitely won’t allow to keep this for myself.

The important thing was that Usui’s system worked! More and more ‘normal’ people were attuned and developed healing hands. Interestingly, though, Usui created the opposite of what he’d gone through himself. For me, this is one of the most remarkable aspects of the system! Rather than asking his students to fast and retreat from the world, he developed a system that could be used by anyone in any situation. He must have realized that his harsh mountain retreat was not the only way to make the connection to the universe and that it could be made just as well in normal life.

But how? Usui himself could feel the connection as subtle but intense energetic vibrations. If others could feel the same, he thought, they could gain the same powers. So he felt guided to develop a ritual, now called Reiju (in Japanese) or ‘attunement’ (in the West), which enables everyone to feel this connection in an instant. He added meditation and breathing techniques, suggested hand positions and at some stage introduced symbols as concentration tools for exploring Reiki more deeply. And he asked his students to learn a set of five principles and to reflect on spiritual texts. We will take a more detailed look at the system later.

Mikao Usui never actually called the system Reiki; it is referred to as a system based on Reiki. It was simply devised as a way to connect to Reiki. In other words, if we want to understand it, we mustn’t look at the techniques but at the source of the energy.

The training was divided into two levels (Reiki 1 and 2 today) and tailored around the individual student’s needs. In terms of income and student numbers, it could be said that Usui’s success was moderate. But he persevered, training and treating people, muddling along.