History of Reiki
For this article about the history of reiki, we are referring to the original Usui Reiki Method. There are now many more versions of reiki, which have ‘splintered’ off from the original reiki path of the Usui Reiki Method.
The founder of the Usui Reiki Method was, Dr Mikao Usui, who began his quest in the late nineteenth century to study the ancient healing methods that he found in the Buddhist scriptures.
Inside these scriptures, Usui came across the the symbols and mantras which are now key to the Reiki System as we know it even today, although at the time, Usui did not know how to use the symbols and mantras for the purposes of reiki healing.
After many years of study amongst Monks, he ventured on a 21 day meditation and fast on a holy mountain near Kyoto. On the very last day of his fasting meditation, he had a strange experience. It is recorded that Usui saw a bright light in the sky which moved towards him, striking him in the middle of his forehead, referred to as the ‘third eye’.
Usui Reiki Method
Now in a state of deep meditation, he saw a bright white light in which he saw, glowing in gold, the symbols he’d seen in the sanskrit sutras. This experience strengthened and charged his inner energy leaving him feeling healed and enlightened.
Much happened for him after this event and he set about helping and healing the poor with his Usui Reiki method, using those symbols and mantras that had been shown to him. He also travelled so he could heal and teach his reiki method to others. Before he died, he passed on his reiki methods to a Dr Hayashi, who went on to open a clinic in Tokyo where he also trained new reiki practitioners in the Usui Reiki method as set out by Dr Usui.
Dr Hayashi later came across a Japanese woman, who lived in Hawaii, called Ms Takata. Takata learnt Reiki from Hayashi over approximately one year. Then, as his successor, Takata trained over 20 students to become Reiki Masters and the art of reiki was spread throughout the Western world.
By this time it was the early 1980′s and since then Reiki as a healing method has continued to spread.
Of course Reiki branches of slightly different formats have appeared, however the Usui Reiki Method remains very popular and true to Usui’s original teachings.
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