Master Usui Mikao was born into one of the last high-ranking Samurai clans in 1865 during the Meiji Regime. He was an accomplished martial artist trained in Aiki Jutstu which combined physical skills with harmonizing with “Ki” or one’s energy, to experience enhanced calmness, concentration, willpower, and physical fitness.

Later in life, as Tendai Buddhist priest, he drew from his own spiritual experiences of Tendai Buddhism, Shintoism, and martial arts, to create a system that is now known as reiki to benefit everyone —whether they were religious or not.

Reiki was formalized to correspond to body parts and ailments by Hayashi Chujiro, a retired naval officer and surgeon who studied with Usui in 1925 to help naval personnel.

Hawayo Takata, an American born Japanse woman, studied with Hayashi for two years and is responsible for bringing Reiki to the West by opening the first Reiki clinic and school in 1938.

By the mid-1970s Mrs. Takata realized she needed to train teachers to pass on the system of Reiki.  Mrs. Takata died in 1980 and her students began to set up their own practices.  However, with the lack of formal infrastructure, and the sudden rise of the New Age movement some teachings took on new age concepts, straying from the traditional Japanese roots.