Reiki

Reiki is a Japanese-derived practice in which the practitioner places their hands lightly on, or just above, the person receiving it. Practitioners describe themselves as channelling a cosmic energy, also called Reiki, for the wellbeing of body, mind and spirit. In the second half of the twentieth century it grew from a little-known therapy, practised by a few thousand people in Japan and among Japanese Americans, into a practice found around the world.

Description

The name

The original Japanese practice is called Usui Reiki Ryōhō, which can be translated as "Usui Reiki Therapy": Usui is the founder's family name and ryōhō means therapy. Reiki itself is often translated as "universal life force energy". Early Japanese texts don't settle the meaning of rei, but "vital force" is at least one of its meanings. Knowing this helps a learner see that the popular English translation is an interpretation, not a fixed definition.

A session

The person receiving Reiki stays clothed and lies on a treatment table or sits in a chair. The practitioner rests their hands on, or just above, the body in a sequence of positions. They don't massage or manipulate the body, and they don't touch its private parts. People report sensations such as warmth, coolness or tingling, or notice nothing at all.

Sources give different session lengths. Victoria's Better Health Channel says a full session takes 60 to 90 minutes; Cancer Research UK says sessions usually run from 20 minutes to an hour. In the Western Reiki taught by Hawayo Takata, a full "foundation treatment" takes about an hour, with twelve hand positions each held for five minutes.

Self-treatment and distance treatment

Practitioners also treat themselves, and self-treatment has become central to Western Reiki practice. Reiki can also be given at a distance, to a person who is not physically near the practitioner.

Training and attunement

Students receive Reiki through an initiation, usually called an attunement in the West, which a Reiki Master performs. Western Reiki has traditionally been taught in three levels:

• Reiki 1, for beginners;
• Reiki 2, for advanced students, who learn three symbols and can give distance treatments;
• Reiki Master, which trains students to teach and to initiate others.

Newer styles vary from this pattern.

The original Japanese society has a comparable ritual, reiju ("bestowing reiki"), which pre-war branches practised at every meeting. Advanced practitioners there learn three symbols, which are not disclosed to the uninitiated, at the level called okuden ("inner transmission"); some rituals are performed only by those granted shinpiden ("mystery transmission").

The precepts

Reiki also carries an ethical teaching. Usui's five precepts (gokai) ask the practitioner, just for today, to let go of anger and worry, to be grateful, to carry out their duties and to be kind to others. His memorial stone says they should be recited morning and evening. Translations used in the West vary. The version most used by The Reiki Alliance also asks practitioners to honour parents, teachers and elders, to earn their living honestly and to show gratitude to every living thing.

Scope

What it includes

• Treatment of another person with the hands placed on, or just above, the body
• Self-treatment
• Distance treatment, taught at Reiki 2
• Teaching Reiki and giving attunements, by Reiki Masters

What it is not

• Reiki is not a treatment for illness or disease, and it will not cure them.
• Research hasn't clearly shown Reiki to be effective for any health purpose. Studies of its use for pain, anxiety, depression and other conditions have mostly been of low quality, with inconsistent results, and science hasn't found evidence of the energy field that Reiki is thought to work with. Nor is there scientific evidence that Reiki prevents, treats or cures cancer or other diseases.
• Reiki is not massage: the practitioner doesn't manipulate the body.
• Reiki is not usually described as a religion. No academic literature labels it one, and most practitioners call it a spiritual practice, although some scholars see religious elements in its worldview.

Traditions and lineage

Reiki passed from Japan to the West through a short chain of teachers, and knowing that chain explains why Japanese and Western Reiki now differ in their names, rituals and training.

Usui Mikao and the Gakkai

Usui Mikao (1865–1926) was born in Taniai village into a merchant family of samurai ancestry. Around 1922, possibly earlier, he performed twenty-one days of austerities on Mount Kurama, where he acquired the healing powers at the heart of the practice. In April 1922 he moved to Tokyo, founded the Shinshin Kaizen Usui Reiki Ryōhō Gakkai and opened a training hall in Harajuku. He died of a stroke on 9 March 1926 in Fukuyama, and in 1927 the Gakkai erected a memorial stone to him at Saihōji in Tokyo. Some sources date Reiki's development earlier, to the late nineteenth century.

Not every story told about Usui is supported by the evidence. For example, there is no evidence for the claim that the state recognised his work after the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake. The Gakkai still exists, but as of 2016 it had about five hundred official members in five branches, meeting mostly around Tokyo and only in Japanese.

Hayashi Chūjirō

Hayashi Chūjirō, a retired Imperial Navy captain and one of Usui's students, founded the Hayashi Reiki Kenkyūkai (Hayashi Reiki Research Society) in Shinanomachi, Tokyo, around 1925. His society played an important part in bringing Usui Reiki Ryōhō to the West. He made a teaching tour of Hawaii in 1937–38 and died in 1940.

Hawayo Takata

Hawayo Takata (1900–1980), a Japanese American woman born in Hawaii, is credited with leading the international spread and development of Reiki. She began about six months of study with Hayashi in December 1935, took the practice to Hawaii in 1936, and was teaching on the North American mainland by 1951. Hayashi named her his successor. Over about forty-five years she taught more than ten thousand students and trained at least twenty-two Masters. She died in Iowa in 1980.

After Takata

After Takata's death, most of the Masters she had trained recognised her granddaughter, Phyllis Lei Furumoto, as her successor. In 1982 some of Takata's Masters and the Masters they had trained formed The Reiki Alliance. Hundreds of styles have emerged since, some adding elements such as crystals or Tarot cards. Western Reiki has also returned to Japan: Mitsui Mieko began teaching it there in 1984, after training in New York City.

Context

Within Spiritualism

Spiritfold has found no Spiritualist organisation's published teaching that mentions Reiki. Spiritualists have their own healing practice (see Spiritual healing). The Spiritualists' National Union (SNU) in Britain describes Spiritualist healing as a form of mediumship, in which divine energy is channelled through the spirit world by touch, thought or prayer, and calls it complementary to medical treatment. Reiki, by contrast, is passed on through attunements given by a Reiki Master (see Training and attunement above). The two can look alike from the outside, since both may use the hands, so this difference in where the healing is said to come from is the key one for a learner to grasp.

The closest published comparison is with Spiritism, a tradition related to Spiritualism but distinct from it. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes Spiritist "passes", in which a trained practitioner's hands hover around a person's body and the pass-giver is believed to act as a go-between for spirits. It names Reiki as another example of the same kind of "biofield therapy", and notes that research often groups the two together.

In Australian Spiritualism

The Spiritualists National Union of WA, whose healing mediums train under the SNU's healing code of conduct, publishes profiles of its accredited healers. Some of these list Reiki among the healer's own qualifications, alongside their Spiritualist healing accreditation. These are personal qualifications, not a service the Union says it offers.

A Spiritualist perspective

A Spiritualist would look at Reiki with respect, as a healing tradition with its own lineage, teachers and attunements, rather than as part of Spiritualism. The difference lies in where the healing is understood to come from. Spiritualist healers see themselves as mediums: the healing is believed to come from the spirit world, and the healer's task is to attune to it and step aside. In Reiki, the ability is passed on from teacher to student through attunements.

Some people practise both, as the Western Australian healer profiles show. There is no conflict in that, so long as each is offered honestly under its own name and the person receiving it knows which they are being given. Whatever the method, the same good practice applies: explain what you do, ask before you touch, make no promises of cure, and encourage anyone who is unwell to keep seeing their doctor.

Reiki in Australia

In Australia, Reiki is offered in many hospitals, nursing homes, palliative care hospices and community service settings.

Victoria's Better Health Channel, in a page produced with Australian Reiki Connection Inc., advises people choosing a practitioner to ask about their training, credentials and membership of a professional association. It describes a professional practitioner as someone who has completed at least the second level of Reiki training, holds appropriate insurance, has first aid skills and belongs to a professional organisation. Professional associations set standards of practice and codes of ethics for their members, and many keep directories of practitioners. These questions give a person a way to judge a practitioner's training and accountability before booking a session.

Safety and good practice

No harmful effects of Reiki have been shown. Cancer Research UK knows of no reports of harmful side effects and considers Reiki generally safe for most people with cancer; it advises telling your doctor about any complementary therapy you use.

The main risk is indirect: that someone relies on Reiki instead of medical care. Better Health advises people to follow their doctor's or specialist's guidance and never to stop a medical treatment on a Reiki practitioner's advice. It warns against any practitioner who claims to cure serious illnesses such as cancer, or who suggests giving up conventional treatment.

Related modalities

• Spiritual healing
• Chakras
• Aura reading
• Spiritism

Further reading

• Beeler, Dori and Jojan Jonker. "Reiki (West)". World Religions and Spirituality Project, 2016.
• Better Health Channel. "Reiki". Department of Health, State Government of Victoria, 2021.
• Haberly, Helen J. Reiki: Hawayo Takata's Story. Olney, MD: Archedigm, 1990. Takata's account of Reiki as she told it, described by the University of Minnesota's Taking Charge of Your Wellbeing reading list as a teaching story rather than a factual history.
• Petter, Frank Arjava, Tadao Yamaguchi and Chūjirō Hayashi. The Hayashi Reiki Manual. Lotus Press, 2003.
• Stein, Justin. "Usui Reiki Ryōhō (Reiki, Japan)". World Religions and Spirituality Project, 2016.
• Stein, Justin B. Alternate Currents: Reiki's Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2023.
• Stiene, Bronwen and Frans Stiene. The Japanese Art of Reiki. O Books, 2005.
• Stiene, Bronwen and Frans Stiene. The Reiki Sourcebook. O Books, 2003; revised edition, Ayni Books, 2008.
• Yamaguchi, Tadao. Light on the Origins of Reiki: A Handbook for Practicing the Original Reiki of Usui and Hayashi. Lotus Press, 2007.