Stiene - Japanese Art Of Reiki

Practitioners of the system of Reiki need to have a solid understanding of the system and the confidence to work within it. An awareness of the roots of the system and how ones practice fits into it will guarantee a practitioner confidence and exceptional skill. This chapter reveals the history of what is known today as the system of Reiki.

Kimonos, Cars and Reiki

Japan may be famous for its unique craftsmanship, quality auto mobiles and technological wizardry but it is also fast becoming renowned as the birthplace of the system of Reiki. Over the last century the name Reiki has grown as the system has spread around the globe. The pleasure that millions across the planet have derived from Reiki is in itself inspiring.

Literally translated from the Japanese, Reiki means spiritual energy; it can be described as the energy of everything. To work with this energy is to experience life at its fullest, to be one with all that can be seen and not seen. The system was created to give us this full life experience so that we may remember our connection to life and live in alignment with it. Its creator was a man born into the latter half of the 19th century in Japan, Usui Mikao (Fig. 11).

From Japan to the United States of America, around the world and finally back to Japan, this system was developed and buffeted by a multitude of influences. Stemming from a method originally created in the early 1900s to develop an individuals spiritual connection, it returned to Japan at the end of the same century with more worldly features. Today the system of Reiki is often considered to be many things that its founder would never have dreamed of. The connection to its Japanese roots has been virtually discarded. Now, in the 21st century, and almost a hundred years later, there is a rumbling undercurrent in the global Reiki community: people want to know what the original ideas behind this system were and for whom these teachings were meant.

The elastic band of connection has been stretched tight, but before it snaps we must bounce back right back, to the very beginning

The Beginning

Great social, cultural, economic and technological change occurred in Japan during Usuis lifetime. His birth in 1865 heralded the Meiji Restoration: the opening up of Japan after more than two hundred years of isolation. During this closed historical period there had been a cultural and social intensity in Japan. Foreigners and their accompanying Christianity had been banned. Feudal lords dominated both land and people in a culture that mingled native Shintoism with Buddhism and Taoism (both imported from China and Korea in the 6th century). In Japans feudal society exquisite handicrafts and perfect manners were valued highly, and religion and martial arts mingled in the same circles.

With the opening up of Japan in the mid-1860s came a national spiritual transformation. Industrialization, urban ization and improvements in public transport are named by researcher Inoue Mobutaka 1 as the cause for change in the social foundation of Japan. From the traditional ways of maintaining faith systems in a closed society with very little mobility, this opening up threatened the family and village unit. Parents could no longer be assured that their children would continue to follow in their footsteps, not just vocationally but also spiritually. New religions and spiritual groups began to emerge all over Japan to compensate for this sense of disconnection in peoples lives. People afflicted with the feeling of alienation and deprivation in an industrialized society felt that these new spiritual methods offered them a form of salvation. 2

This national search for inner connectedness and meaningful spirituality was likely to have also been an inspiration for Usui Mikao. He drew from his own spiritual experiences to evolve a teaching that he believed would benefit everyone whether they were religious or not.

Self-healing

Usuis method appears not to have been to teach new things, but rather to help practitioners to break down their accumulated old patterns and bad habits. In this way practitioners would gradually discover their true nature and realise that inherently each human is the keeper of all the knowledge that he or she requires.

The basic premise of this method is that healing exists within each person, not outside,and therefore the essence of the teachings is self-practice. The ultimate healing tool is the practitioners own dedication to healing the self: another can never give this depth of healing.

Suzuki san, born in 1895 and still alive at the time of writing, claims that the teachings assume people are already spiritual in nature and are used to help practitioners become entirely human. The first teaching of Usui that was given to students, she states, was the five precepts or gokai . Later came meditations and/or mantras for students to practice in an ongoing teacher/student based relationship. Suzuki san said that Usui became renowned as a healer later in life and that his initial teachings (his own practice) were based on the concept of reconnecting to ones spirituality. Students found that they experienced healing from his teachings and his practices. Usui performed a spiritual blessing or reiju on his students. This was the forerunner to what is known as an attunement today. The reiju is not to attune/empower or transform someone, but is merely a blessing of a spiritual nature. 3 What was taught at this time appears to have been based strongly on traditional Japanese cultural and religious mores.