Born into a samurai family…

Mikao Usui studied Buddhisim from the age of 4 at the local monastry school. During the school years, he had learnt martial arts, an energy balancing system ‘qigong’, as well as meditation and healing. In his adult life, it was known that he had held many positions from a government officer to a successful businessman.

However, fortunes turned and he fell into bankruptcy, failing to support his family, he sought to understand the deeper meaning of this failure through monastic endeavours. Still no answer came forward, he ventured into Mount Kurama with the intention to completely surrender. After enduring 21 days in solitude, Mikao suddenly felt he was surrounded by a blinding white light. He felt a deep connection to the universe - an experience he described as forgiveness, acceptance and love. In his enlightenment, he descended down the mountain only to catch his toe on a knarled tree root, in pain he instinctively placed his hands over the wound. To his amazement he realised that his experience not only allowed him a spiritual connection but also access to a remarkable healing modality. Mikao later described this as Rei, ‘spiritual’ Ki ‘life force energy’.

And so it came in 1922, Mikao returned home, tried out the healing on family and friends, moved his family to Tokyo and opened a small practice to give Reiki treatments. He also developed a technique of attuning this gift onto students.

The result being, we have a 100 year old healing system that we call today ‘Reiki’.