Reiki

Japanese beginnings, 1922 to 1926

In a World Religions and Spirituality Project entry, Justin Stein dates the founding of Reiki as an organised method to Usui Mikao (1865–1926). Usui is reported to have fasted and meditated for twenty-one days on Mount Kurama, north of Kyoto, around 1922, and he established the Shinshin Kaizen Usui Reiki Ryōhō Gakkai in Tokyo in April 1922. He died on 9 March 1926. In the pre-war period the therapy was described as a hand-healing practice, often with a single hand, and members recited five precepts (gokai) and took part in a ritual called reiju.

The Gakkai passed through a series of presidents, and its second and third were retired naval officers. Stein reports that membership has fallen from thousands before the war to about 500 members with five branches, that entry depends on a member's recommendation, and that meetings are held in Japanese in the Tokyo area, which limits international membership despite worldwide interest in traditional Japanese Reiki.

Hayashi, Takata and the move to Hawaii and North America

Hayashi Chūjirō, a retired Imperial Navy captain, opened the Hayashi Reiki Kenkyūkai in 1925. According to Stein, he began teaching Hawayo Takata (1900–1980), a Hawaii-born Japanese American, in December 1935. She studied for about six months, took the practice to Hawaii and, from 1951, to North America, and trained at least twenty-two Master students. Beeler and Jonker give twenty-three Masters trained between 1975 and 1980 and date her first mastership in the West to 1937, so counts and dates differ between the two entries.

Stein's 2023 book, as described by its publisher, presents Reiki before Takata's teaching as a therapy practised by a few thousand people in Japan and among Japanese Americans. It follows how her network across the Pacific, from plantation workers in Hawaii to elites in Tokyo and New York, shaped what the practice came to mean. The publisher's page was the only part of the book reviewed.

Western institutions and a proliferation of styles

Beeler and Jonker describe how Takata replaced some Japanese concepts with Western metaphysical ideas. Reiki energy became universal life energy, the Japanese reiju became three separate initiations controlled by Masters, and self-treatment became central. The Reiki Alliance, formed in 1982 by Takata Masters and second-generation practitioners, continued the Usui Shiki Ryoho lineage and gave the title of Grand Master to Takata's granddaughter, Phyllis Lei Furumoto. The entry reports that hundreds of styles have appeared since the 1980s, some adding elements of other spiritual traditions.

Japan re-entered the history later. Stein reports that Mitsui Mieko brought Western Reiki back to Japan in 1984 after studying in New York, a date Beeler and Jonker give as 1985. Hiroshi Doi created Gendai Reiki Hō in 1995. Jikiden Reiki, led by Yamaguchi Tadao, and Kōmyō Reiki, led by Inamoto Hyakuten, both derive from Yamaguchi Chiyoko (1921–2003), who received initiations from Hayashi in the 1930s, and both gained followings in Japan and abroad from the late 1990s.

The word reiki and how it is glossed

Reiki is a Japanese word, and William Rand writes that it was already in use in Japan before Usui, which he gives as the reason Usui named his method Usui Reiki Ryōhō, adding ryōhō, a word for a therapeutic method. The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) defines Reiki as an approach in which a practitioner touches lightly, or holds the hands just above, a person with the goal of directing energy, and describes it as based on an Eastern belief in an energy supporting the body's healing abilities.

The UK Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC) curriculum, written with the Reiki professional bodies, describes Reiki as a natural healing energy understood to promote self-healing. Beeler and Jonker note that in Western Reiki the Japanese reiki energy became universal life energy, a concept they link to American metaphysical movements. These glosses are the vocabulary of practitioners and professional bodies, not measured quantities.

Reiju, attunement and initiation

Several terms name the person-to-person transmission through which a student is said to receive the ability to practise. The CNHC curriculum lists attunement, initiation and reiju together. Stein reports that reiju was performed at every Gakkai meeting and may derive from esoteric Buddhist initiation rites, while Beeler and Jonker report that Western Reiki turned it into three distinct initiations, one for each level, which made access subject to a Master's control.

Names that signal different things

Names within the family point to different kinds of claim. Some name a Japanese organisation or teacher line, as with the Gakkai and Jikiden Reiki. Others are trademarked systems, such as Rainbow Reiki, which its founder reports as registered in EU countries, and The Radiance Technique, whose founder adopted trademarked terms to separate her system from what she calls fragments. Labels such as Tibetan or Egyptian refer to claimed sources: Stenudd dates Seichim to Patrick Ziegler in 1979, inspired by Egyptian ideas of sekhem. The sources reviewed give no shared test for which claim is authentic.

Reiki has no single governing body that the sources reviewed describe as setting its content worldwide. A UK advisory body states that people practicing styles with the same name may teach very different content, and a teacher's article reports over 30 kinds of Reiki with more being channeled, while a scholarly entry describes hundreds of Western styles that added elements from other practices. These counts differ by author and by what is counted as a separate style, and none was found as a verified census.

What a session involves

NCCIH describes light touch, or hands held just above the body. The CNHC curriculum names three modes: hands on the body, hands near the body and treatment from a distance, and expects practitioners to understand self-treatment. Stein reports that pre-war Gakkai practice used mainly one hand and that distance treatment, using photographs, belonged to the second level, okuden. Individual lineages differ in hand positions and in the symbols they teach.

Lübeck's site contrasts the hand-position sequence of Usui Reiki with a technique he calls Marayana Sayi, which he describes as completing a full treatment in about twenty minutes. This is the developer's own description of one lineage's method and does not describe other members.

Levels and teaching

The Gakkai used ranks called shoden, okuden and shinpiden, meaning outer, inner and mystery transmission. Beeler and Jonker describe Western Reiki as offering three levels, Reiki 1, Reiki 2 and Master, each with its own initiation, and say Reiki Jin Kei Do divides Master training into 3a, 3b and 3c. Rainbow Reiki adds further seminars and three Dan levels, and The Radiance Technique teaches seven degrees, so level names do not map one to one across lineages.

Training standards

The sources reviewed identify no single training standard covering every lineage. The CNHC curriculum, issued in November 2023, sets the standard for eligibility to apply to its UK register and states that no regulated qualifications exist for Reiki. It requires a minimum of 240 study hours including 65 hours of guided learning, training over at least nine months, 75 documented treatments of others, 100 hours of received treatment and 10 case studies of at least four sessions each.

Other organisations set their own terms. Lübeck's site states that licensed Rainbow Reiki teachers complete over 600 teaching hours and document over 100 client sessions, while describing Usui Reiki teaching as not defined or controlled by anyone. That comparison comes from a competing lineage's own page, and no jurisdiction-wide requirement was found in the sources reviewed.

Uses described by practitioners and bodies

NCCIH reports that Reiki has been studied for conditions including pain, anxiety and depression. The CNHC curriculum describes treatment as non-invasive and used to restore balance in mind, body and spirit, and states an aim of preparing practitioners to work in private practice, organisations and care homes, including NHS settings. Beeler and Jonker date Reiki on London hospital oncology wards to 1999, and the 2026 palliative-care review below found studies concentrated in cancer care.

Qualitative findings in that review describe perceived relaxation, comfort and emotional support among people receiving Reiki or Therapeutic Touch. Such reports show what recipients say about the experience and do not show that the practice caused any change.

Self-treatment and spiritual development

Beeler and Jonker describe self-treatment as the cornerstone of Western Reiki practice and report that Western styles blended Buddhist, Theosophical and New Age ideas, with Reiki Jin Kei Do emphasising Buddhism. Karuna Reiki, by its developer's account, was named for the Sanskrit idea of compassion. In these settings the stated aim is personal and spiritual development, which research on symptoms does not address.

What the findings apply to

Trials and reviews of Reiki generally label the intervention as Reiki delivered by a trained practitioner. The review abstracts examined do not report results by lineage, and none tested one lineage against another. A finding about Reiki therefore applies, at most, to the family as pooled, and must not be carried to Jikiden Reiki, Karuna Reiki or any other member. The searches for this page, PubMed title searches for Reiki with systematic review or meta-analysis and a search for sham-controlled trials, found no head-to-head lineage comparison, which limits the search and does not prove none exists.

Systematic reviews

A 2015 Cochrane review of Reiki for anxiety and depression in people aged 16 and over found three randomised trials, with only 25 people with anxiety, 17 with depression and 20 with either, so results were reported narratively. It found no evidence that Reiki was beneficial or harmful, rated risk of bias as unclear or high for most domains, and concluded there was insufficient evidence. Searches ran to November 2014. A 2009 review of 12 Reiki trials found each lacking in at least one of randomisation, blinding or accountability of all patients, and 11 of 12 scored poor on the Jadad scale. Nine of 12 reported a significant effect, and the authors judged the flaws too serious for a definitive conclusion.

Later reviews are more favourable but carry caveats. A 2022 review of 14 placebo-controlled trials in adults, by Zadro and Stapleton, rated the certainty of evidence as high for clinically relevant stress and depression, but its authors call the findings inconclusive because few studies exist for each outcome and most had some risk-of-bias concerns. A 2025 meta-analysis of randomised trials with 661 participants reported a small quality-of-life gain (standardised mean difference 0.28, 95% confidence interval 0.01 to 0.56), whose lower bound is close to no effect.

Palliative care studies

A 2026 systematic review of Reiki and Therapeutic Touch in palliative care included nine studies with 415 participants, only three of them randomised, and rated the certainty of evidence as very low. Because it pools two practices, its findings cannot be assigned to Reiki alone.

A sham-controlled trial and the energy concept

In a 2008 trial, 100 adults with fibromyalgia received twice-weekly treatment for eight weeks from either a Reiki master or an actor, using direct touch or no touch. Participants, data collectors and analysts were blinded. Neither Reiki nor touch changed pain, measured at weeks 4, 8 and 20, or any secondary outcome. The trial studied one condition in one setting, so it does not settle other uses, and it sits beside the more positive pooled reviews above rather than cancelling them.

NCCIH states that Reiki has not been clearly shown to be effective for any health-related purpose, that study quality has been inconsistent, and that there is no scientific evidence supporting the energy field thought to play a role in Reiki. Practitioners and traditions describe that energy, but the research reviewed has not established it.

Reported harms

NCCIH states that Reiki has not been shown to have harmful effects. The Cochrane review found no evidence of harm or benefit in its small data set, and the 2026 palliative-care review noted that harms were poorly reported: only one included study monitored adverse events, and it reported one serious event considered potentially related to the intervention. Absence of reports in small, short trials is not evidence that no harm occurs.

Care boundaries in training standards

The CNHC curriculum states that there are no known contra-indications to Reiki when used on its own. It also expects practitioners to recognise red-flag symptoms, to know when a client has an urgent medical need or needs medical referral, and to understand conditions for which Reiki may be incomplete in itself. It lists possible reassessment of medication by the prescriber as one outcome to bear in mind. These are one UK register's training expectations, not individual advice. Reiki should not delay or replace necessary medical care.

Claims of authenticity

Several lineages state that they alone preserve the authentic system. The Radiance Technique founder describes other versions as imitations, while a Tibetan commentator reports that no one consulted in exile or in Tibet recognised Tibetan Reiki and suggests that such labels may be marketing-driven. Evidence from trials cannot arbitrate between these competing claims, and readers weighing a practitioner's lineage claims may wish to compare them with the dated history above.