Reiki is a Japanese system of hands on healing as well as a spiritual method for personal growth and transformation. The way Reiki is passed from one person to the next is in the form of a lineage tradition. What this means is that a student requires the necessary empowerments from a qualified teacher of the original Reiki tradition. This transmission is given by the teacher in the form of a series of Reiki Attunements. Attunement into Reiki guarantee’s the students’ ability to achieve a healing outcome and as a result the ability to heal themselves and others is bestowed.

Although the teachings of Reiki are new to the West, (formally introduced to America in the early 1970’s), Reiki’s origins stretch back to Dr. Mikao Usui who founded the system of Reiki in Japan at the end of the 19^th Century. Dr. Usui was primarily a Buddhist although he studied many religious systems of his day. Through Dr. Usui’s teaching career, he taught many people his system of Reiki. They in turn passed his system to their own students, yet even today many facts concerning the origins of Reiki and the life of Dr. Usui remain largely unknown.

With the enormous popularity of Reiki today, the system has now been taught to millions of people worldwide. Out of this popularity, the Reiki teachings have developed into many new styles. The majority of these styles have been listed at the end of chapter 1 of the book Reiki Healer by Lawrence Ellyard. Since the mid 1970’s to the present day, we have seen exponential growth in the area of Reiki. When Mrs. Takata (the first Western Reiki Master) brought Reiki to the west, Reiki merged with western culture and with this came much diversity and new developments. Mrs. Takata popularized the notion of Reiki being maintained as an oral tradition, yet in recent years knowledge of Dr. Usui’s and Dr. Hayashi’s training manual have come to light. As an oral tradition prevents the use of written manuals, students and teachers had to rely on their memory. As a result, within a few short years, Mrs. Takama’s system of Reiki began to change. Added to this were many teachers who added or removed aspects of the system, making it their own. Inevitably this left the Reiki teachings somewhat altered from their original form.

Fortunately, in the early 1990’s further discoveries of the original Reiki teachings were found.  Dr. Usui’s memorial was discovered and many of Reiki’s missing links were uncovered. Further revelations included the discovery of a living Reiki tradition in Japan with additional methods as taught by the Reiki Gakkai (Japans Reiki Learning Society.) These discoveries were later made available and for the first-time teachers of Reiki gained new information regarding the original system. This information did much to piece some of the lost teachings together with the more established systems of Reiki in the west.

Based on these new discoveries, much of the way Reiki was taught in the past has now changed. Much like an archeological find, these fragments of the past can tell us a great deal about Reiki today and it is from these findings that the following rendering of Dr. Usui’s life and path is told.