Usui Reiki Ryōhō

Mikao Usui and the 1922 society

In a World Religions and Spirituality Project entry, Justin Stein gives Mikao Usui's dates as October 4, 1865 to March 9, 1926. He describes Usui as the son of a merchant family with samurai ancestry and a largely self-taught man. Around 1922 Usui is reported to have undertaken twenty-one days of austerities on Mount Kurama, after which he said he had gained healing abilities. In April 1922 he founded the Shinshin Kaizen Usui Reiki Ryōhō Gakkai, rendered as the Mind-Body Improvement Usui Reiki Therapy Society, and opened a training hall in Harajuku, Tokyo.

The same entry reports that Usui treated casualties of the Great Kantō Earthquake in the fall of 1923, moved to a larger headquarters in Nakano around 1925, and died of a stroke in Fukuyama. A memorial stone was erected for him in 1927 at Saihōji in Tokyo. Stein reports that Usui taught about 2,000 students in four years. The entry adds that Usui said he found reiki hard to explain clearly.

The Gakkai after Usui

Stein lists eight presidents of the Gakkai, beginning with Usui. The second, Ushida Juzaburō, and the third, Taketomi Kan'ichi, were retired Imperial Navy rear admirals, and the fifth, Wanami Hōichi, was a vice admiral. Koyama Kimiko led the society from about 1975 until 1998, a period Stein describes as a golden age, and the entry names Kondō Masaki (1998 to 2010) and Takahashi Ichita (from 2010) as the seventh and eighth presidents.

As of the 2016 entry, the Gakkai had about five branches and roughly 500 official members, with regular attendance considerably lower and an aging leadership. Membership depends on a current member's recommendation, meetings are held mainly in the Tokyo area and in Japanese, and Stein reports that only a handful of foreign members had been admitted. He also reports that the society historically discouraged advertising and written disclosure of its teaching.

Hayashi, Takata and the move west

Stein reports that Hayashi Chūjirō, a retired Imperial Navy captain and a student of Usui, founded the Hayashi Reiki Kenkyūkai around 1925 in Tokyo. Hayashi taught Hawayo Takata (1900 to 1980), a Hawaii-born Japanese American, who brought the method to Hawaii in 1936 and to North America from 1951, according to the same entry. A publisher's description of Stein's 2023 book places her training in Japan in the mid-1930s and describes a trans-Pacific network of students that she built.

Beeler and Jonker describe the Western line as a transformation of Japanese practice. They report that the Japanese reiju became three separate initiations, that the concept of reiki became universal life energy, that symbols were treated as secret and sacred, and that self-treatment became a central element. They give the Reiki Alliance, formed in 1982 by Takata's Masters, as the main organization of the Usui Shiki Ryoho style, and say Takata trained twenty-three Masters, where Stein's entry gives at least twenty-two.

Name, spellings and translation

Usui Reiki Ryōhō is Japanese. The sources reviewed give the founding society's full name as Shinshin Kaizen Usui Reiki Ryōhō Gakkai, with ryōhō meaning therapy or therapeutic method and gakkai meaning society. Stein writes the name with macrons, while Beeler and Jonker spell the Western style Usui Shiki Ryoho, so a reader will meet Ryōhō and Ryoho as the same word and should treat Usui Shiki Ryoho as a separate Western label rather than a variant spelling of the Gakkai's name.

Stein's entry describes reiki as a polysemic term: it can refer to a vital force or spiritual energy, to a mysterious or miraculous ability, and to the practice itself. He also glosses rei as spirit and kokoro as heart-mind, and notes that, in the framework the Gakkai drew on, the state of the kokoro was linked to physical health. The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) uses a plainer gloss, describing Reiki as a practice in which hands are placed lightly on or just above a person to direct energy.

Reiju, gokai and related terms

Reiju, rendered as bestowing reiki, is the ritual that Stein reports was performed at every Gakkai meeting, and he says it may derive from the initiation rite called kanjō in esoteric Buddhism. Beeler and Jonker report that in Western Reiki the same word became attunements or initiations given at each level. The term gokai means five precepts, and gyosei refers to poems of the Meiji Emperor that members recited. Teate ryōhō, or hand-healing therapy, is the name Stein gives to the pre-war practice itself.

Level names appear in Stein's entry as okuden, meaning inner transmission, and shinpiden, meaning mystery transmission, with okuden linked to distance treatment (enkaku ryōhō). Shoden, a term used for a first level, is not described in detail in the material reviewed. Western teaching uses Reiki 1, Reiki 2 and Reiki Master for the three degrees, according to Beeler and Jonker, so the Japanese and Western level names do not map one to one.

Practice in the Gakkai as scholarship records it

Stein reports that Gakkai members recited the five precepts twice daily in a kneeling posture with palms together, and that the precepts appear on Usui's memorial stone. In his rendering, the precepts ask a person, for today only, not to anger, not to worry, to be grateful, to fulfill duties and to be kind to others. He traces them to a health manual by Suzuki Bizan published in 1914, and says members also recited poems of the Meiji Emperor collected in a members' handbook.

Stein describes the pre-war healing method as teate ryōhō, usually with a single hand, in which practitioners are said to project ki and light through the hands, breath and eyes. The entry places the work of the heart-mind alongside bodily treatment: a quotation attributed to Usui says that to walk the path of righteousness a person should first attend to the heart-mind, after which the body will become healthy as well. This is a belief reported by the source, not a finding.

Hands-on and non-contact forms

Both contact and non-contact forms appear in the sources. NCCIH describes hands placed lightly on, or held just above, a person, while Beeler and Jonker call laying on of hands the primary technique of Western Reiki and say it came with self-treatment as a central element. Stein associates distance treatment with okuden in the Gakkai teaching. A Turkish study of amputees described its distant sessions as Classical Usui Reiki, delivered for 20 minutes daily over 10 days.

Teaching structure

Stein describes a multi-tiered system in the Gakkai with more gradations than the three degrees of Western Reiki, with progression controlled by rank and with some teachings, including symbols, reserved for advanced members and not disclosed to outsiders. This page does not describe that restricted material. Beeler and Jonker report that Western Reiki has three degrees, each with its own initiation, and that Takata's Masters controlled initiation.

Uses described in the lineage sources

Stein's entry reports that reiki was understood in the Gakkai as a force used for physical healing, improvement of habits, spiritual development and well-being. This is how the tradition describes its aims, and the entry does not present these as tested outcomes. The precepts and recitations were part of that aim, because the Gakkai taught that purifying the heart-mind and treating the body belonged together.

Uses framed by recent studies

Recent studies that name Usui Reiki frame it as a complementary practice for specific problems. A Brazilian study applied Usui Reiki to nursing students' stress, anxiety and depression, and a Turkish study applied it at a distance to pain in people with limb amputation. Those are the settings the study authors chose, and they are not uses that the lineage's own sources describe.

What this page can and cannot say

Trials and systematic reviews of Reiki generally describe the intervention as Reiki without naming a lineage, so their findings belong to the Reiki family page and are not carried here. NCCIH states that Reiki has not been clearly shown to be effective for any health-related purpose, that studies on pain, anxiety and depression are inconsistent and mostly of low quality, and that there is no scientific evidence supporting the existence of the energy field that Reiki theory describes.

A PubMed search for Usui Reiki in titles and abstracts returned two studies, and a wider search combining Reiki with Usui, Takata or Japanese returned further papers that did not specify a lineage. No randomized trial that tested Usui Reiki Ryōhō against a sham or untreated group was found in these searches. Nothing here shows that Usui Reiki differs from other Reiki styles in effect, in either direction.

Two uncontrolled studies that name Usui Reiki

Fonseca and Vilela (2025) described a quasi-experimental study of 16 nursing students in Minas Gerais, Brazil, who received Usui Reiki in remote group sessions, either once or on four consecutive days. According to the abstract, mean stress scores fell from 27.75 to 22.81, anxiety scores fell from 19.06 to 11.31, and depressive symptom scores fell by 25 percent, with larger changes under continuous application. The abstract describes no sham or untreated comparison group, and the sample was small.

Yilmaz and colleagues (2023) enrolled 25 people with limb amputation in a single-group pretest-posttest study in Turkey, with distant sessions of 20 minutes daily for 10 days under Classical Usui Reiki. Pain scores and a holistic well-being scale improved from before to after, with p below .05. With no control group, the design cannot separate any effect of Reiki from natural change, attention, expectation or other care. Only abstracts were read for both studies.

A study of placebo procedures

Mansour and colleagues (1999) tested how to build a placebo condition for a planned Reiki trial. Two practitioners from the Usui system were compared with two placebo practitioners, who were trained but not initiated, because the study team noted the belief that only initiated practitioners can give Reiki. None of 8 participants in the final round could tell the real practitioners from the placebo ones. The study tested the placebo procedure with 20 participants across four rounds, not whether Reiki has any effect.

Reported harms and what the sources do not cover

NCCIH states that Reiki has not been shown to have any harmful effects. The two Usui Reiki study abstracts reviewed do not report adverse-event data, so they neither confirm nor rule out harm. For family-wide safety information, see the Reiki page. No lineage-specific adverse-event series was found.

Reiki is used as a complementary approach and should not replace or delay medical care for any condition. Distant sessions in the studies above were added to other care rather than substituted for it, as far as the abstracts state. Statements that Usui lineage practice is more authentic or effective than other styles are not supported by any study reviewed.

Access and practitioner standards

Stein reports that Gakkai membership requires a member's recommendation and Japanese-language participation, so most people who seek Usui lineage teaching meet it through other organizations and teachers. The UK Reiki Federation states that it is approved by the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC), a voluntary register, as a verifying organisation for Reiki practitioners, and that practitioners trained by approved providers or elsewhere may apply through verification. No statutory training standard was found in the sources reviewed.

The Usui line as a trunk

Reiki is described in the sources as many organizations and styles rather than one body. Beeler and Jonker report that hundreds of styles have appeared since the 1980s, and Stein reports the Gakkai as a small society with restricted entry, alongside separate organizations such as the Reiki Alliance. None of the sources reviewed identifies one body with authority over all Reiki, and the page therefore does not describe one.

Lineage charts

Many lineages claim descent from Usui, so the Usui line functions as the trunk from which other lines are traced. The UK Reiki Federation states that a lineage is the line of teaching a teacher has been trained in, similar to a family tree, and that Usui lineages should be traceable back to Mikao Usui in an unbroken link. For Western lineages its chart begins with Usui, Hayashi and Takata, followed by one of Takata's masters.

The same federation page says lineages that do not originate from Usui are acceptable for membership but do not meet its requirements for regulation, which is the federation's own wording. A lineage chart is therefore a document that some organizations ask for, and it records a claim of descent that the sources reviewed do not independently verify.