Untie The String Natural Healing Therapies

Home » What is Reiki?

What is Reiki?

Mikao Usui 1865-1926
Mikao Usui 1865-1926

Reiki is a Japanese spiritual practice for Self-realization, which encompasses a holistic approach to health and healing. There is a vital energy in our universe that flows in all living things. This energy has always been available to all and does not require or preclude religious beliefs. The Chinese talk about Ch’i or Qi and the Japanese talk about Ki. Indians talk about Prana. Many refer to light.

When Mikao Usui discovered Reiki in Japan over a hundred years ago, it was this universal, vital energy that he finally understood how to use for healing and self-development. He passed this ability on to others, training them and using intent to empower them to access the energy for themselves. His students trained others and they trained more practitioners through the same method we use today, which is a series of attunements; a process of opening up another to access the energy.  Now Reiki is becoming popular all over the world as a healing method that is complementary to orthodox medicine and alternative medicine treatments alike.

If you think of how water will flow through a bamboo channel to nourish plants in a traditional Japanese garden, you can use this image to understand Reiki. Just as water can flow gently to wherever it needs to go and yet also carves great changes in the form of immovable rock, so Reiki can find its way to where healing is needed and transform and shift to bring about change. A Reiki practitioner uses intent to flow universal energy through themselves to others by placing their hands in a series of positions on or over the body, gently clearing blocks to the client’s flow of energy,so that healing takes place from within on a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level, balancing and harmonizing mind, body and spirit. If we think of Mikao Usui as the roots of Reiki, who got his inspiration from his connection to the Universal Energy, we can see all the branches or styles of Reiki coming from his teachings and we can understand that all are One and growing from that single connection.