Mikao Usui: the father of Reiki

The story of Mikao Usui

Since the 1990s, the world has discovered the true story of Mikao Usui, founder of Reiki. Before that, only a legend circulated orally transmitted from student to teacher. Mikao Usui was born in Tanjai, Japan, in 1865, in a small village in the prefecture of Gifu. He is a young man with a lot of talent and great creativity, who is interested in different arts and disciplines, thanks also to the possibility he has of traveling in different Western countries.

Usui's family observed Tendai Buddhism, so he honored the tradition and was introduced to a Tendai monastery as a child. He devoted himself to martial arts, in particular he dedicated himself to Kiko, a variant of Qi Gong . Among his friends, Ueshiba, founder of Aikido, Funakoshi, father of Karate, and Kano, father of Judo.

During his life, Mikao Usui was also a businessman . As a special adviser to Shinpei Goto, a Japanese politician, he acquired a considerable cultural background thanks to business travel, as well as a growing respect. He spent a lifetime of study, especially applying himself to the study of Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, psychology and history. Usui also had excellent knowledge of medicine and traditional healing practices and enjoyed philosophy and psychology. However it remains known for the discovery of the Reiki method.

Mikao Usui and the discovery of Reiki

The discovery of Reiki by Mikao Usui merges with the legend. In 1914, Usui is a lay monk, after being a traveling monk. Legend has it that Usui, in search of a healing method, came across an ancient scroll containing sutras, written 2, 500 years earlier. The teachings contained in the scroll described healing through the laying on of hands and the transmission of energy.

This is the theory. However, Usui still had to put it into practice. He went to Mount Kurama for a spiritual retreat . On the mountain, he placed 21 pebbles in front of him, one for each day of meditation and fasting. After the twenty-first day, he had a vision and perceived within himself the presence of a Universal Energy that could be transmitted to others. The legend goes on telling Mikao Usui's healings along the way back: twice on himself, then on the waitress of an inn, on a beggar and so on. This is what the legend or tradition reports.

In 1922, in Harajuku, Aoyama, Tokyo, Mikao Usui inaugurated a clinic in which to conduct healing sessions, holding seminars for learning the various levels in which he had divided the Reiki method. In 1922, he founded Usui Reiki Method Organization called Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, of which he was also the first president.

During his life he transmitted his teachings to over two thousand people and began 17 Masters. As for the diffusion of Reiki in the West, it is necessary to go back to the meeting of Mikao Usui with Chujiro Hayashi, a retired Navy officer, which happened, again according to tradition, in one of the markets where Usui wandered with a lantern in his hand search for men interested in the truth. Hawayo Takata then met Hayashi in Hawaii in 1936 and a few years later became Maestra. It was she who brought Reiki to the West when she moved to California. Hawayo Takata died in 1980, leaving 22 Reiki Masters, many of them American.

While he was in Fukuyama, instead, Mikao Usui fell ill (he had his third stroke) and, on March 9th 1926, he died at just 61 years.

Reiki according to Mikao Usui

We know the man through his own words. During an interview conducted between 1922 and 1926, Mikao Usui reported the motivation for which he publicly taught the Reiki method:

"Since time immemorial, it has often happened that those who discovered original and secret laws either kept them for themselves or shared them only with their descendants. Usually this secret served to guarantee a condition of financial security for their descendants and disciples. The secret is not transmitted to outsiders.

However this is an old and outdated habit. Since in times like these the happiness of mankind is based on common work and on the desire for social progress, I could not allow anyone to appropriate Reiki. Our Reiki Ryôhô is something absolutely original that cannot be compared to any other spiritual path and therefore I would like this method to be (freely) available to the public for the well-being of humanity. Each of us has the potential to be able to receive a divine gift whose result consists in the union of body and soul.

With Reiki many people will experience the blessing of the divine: first of all, Reiki Ryôhô is an original therapy based on the Spiritual Power of the Universe, through which man first receives health and then mental peace and joy. Today we need to improve and restructure our lives in such a way as to free our fellowmen from disease and suffering. For this reason I dare to teach this method freely in public ”.