Western Reiki (Usui Shiki Ryoho)

Hayashi, Takata and Hawaii

In Justin Stein's encyclopedia entry, Hayashi Chūjirō, a retired Imperial Navy captain, opened the Hayashi Reiki Kenkyūkai around 1925, and Hawayo Takata (1900–1980), a Hawaii-born Japanese American, began studying with him in December 1935 for about six months. James Deacon's history site, written by a Reiki researcher, dates Hayashi's visit to Hawaii to 1937 and Takata's Master certification to February 21, 1938. William Lee Rand, a Reiki teacher, states that she returned to Hawaii in 1938 as a Master, while Beeler and Jonker date her first mastership to 1937. The sources reviewed therefore give differing dates for the Master step.

Stein reports that Takata took the practice to mainland North America from 1951 and trained at least 22 Masters, with more than 10,000 students; Beeler and Jonker give 23 Masters trained between 1975 and 1980. The publisher's description of Stein's 2023 book presents her as the architect of Reiki's international spread, through a network linking Hawaii plantation workers to elites in Tokyo, Hollywood and New York. Only that description was reviewed, not the book itself.

Takata's account of Usui and the questions about it

Deacon transcribes a 1979 recording in which Takata describes Usui as principal of Doshisha University in Kyoto and a Christian minister who led Sunday services in its chapel. Rand adds that she taught that Usui attended the University of Chicago, earned a theology degree and set out to learn how Jesus healed. Deacon notes that she maintained she was repeating what Hayashi told her, and he argues the account was a teaching story meant to convey principles rather than a factual chronology.

Rand reports that Doshisha, after his 1989 inquiry, said Usui had not been president, faculty member or student. Deacon dates inquiries to Chicago in 1990 and Doshisha in 1991, with both reporting no record, but argues that Christianity was legal and active in Meiji-era Japan, so some contact cannot be excluded. Stein's entry does not present Usui as Christian and notes that Suzuki Bizan's philosophy, which informed the Five Precepts, drew on Christian Science and New Thought. Which account is accurate is not settled by these sources.

Usui Shiki Ryoho and related names

The Reiki Alliance gives Usui Shiki Ryoho in translation as the Usui System of Reiki Healing and uses Usui System of Natural Healing on another page. Rand writes that Usui chose the name Usui Reiki Ryoho because the word reiki was already in use in Japan. In the West the Takata line is also called Western Reiki, which Beeler and Jonker contrast with Japanese practice, and Rand compares Western and Japanese styles as distinct approaches. Neither label is an official name for an organization.

Levels, attunement and Shinpiden

Beeler and Jonker describe Western training as three levels, Reiki 1, Reiki 2 and Master, each with its own initiation, called attunement or initiation and derived from the Japanese reiju. Rand writes that Master level corresponds to Shinpiden, meaning mystery teaching, and that Hayashi developed a new system of attunements, with four-attunement and one-attunement versions in use. The Alliance's page describes First Degree and Second Degree and states that the initiation ritual is for Masters only.

Variants and how many exist

Rand writes that there are now over 30 kinds of Reiki with subgroups, and names offshoots including The Radiance Technique, Karuna Reiki, Rainbow Reiki and Reiki Jin-Kei Do. No source reviewed gives a census, and the figure depends on what counts as a separate style. Beeler and Jonker report hundreds of styles since the 1980s, some adding other spiritual traditions. The Reiki Alliance governs its own members only, and the sources describe no single body governing Reiki as a whole.

Sessions and hand positions

In a fibromyalgia trial, three Reiki Masters trained in what the authors call the popular Usui style gave 30-minute sessions of light touch at 12 standardized positions. Rand describes Takata's foundation treatment differently, as seven positions, four on the torso and three on the head, and contrasts it with Japanese practice in which placements are chosen for each client. Stein reports that pre-war Japanese practice mainly used a single hand. Descriptions of the standard sequence therefore vary between sources.

Training in the Alliance line

The Reiki Alliance describes First Degree as four consecutive daily sessions of two to three hours, with Second Degree open to practitioners who have committed experience. Rand reports that Takata required each Master she trained to charge $10,000 for Master training, and that treatment moved from a chair with one practitioner to a table with several. These are teachers' reports, and current fees vary by teacher.

Associations and standards

Beeler and Jonker date the Reiki Alliance to 1982, formed by Takata Masters and second-generation practitioners, with Phyllis Lei Furumoto as Grand Master. The Alliance states it was established in 1983 in British Columbia, that members are Masters who acknowledge the lineage and a code of ethics, and that it created an Office of the Grandmaster in 1992 because members were not all teaching in the same way. Its lineage runs through Usui, Hayashi, Takata, Furumoto and Johannes Reindl. No statutory training standard was found in the sources reviewed.

Uses described by the tradition

The Reiki Alliance describes Usui Shiki Ryoho as a Japanese healing art through which a student can attain self-awareness, spiritual understanding and daily experiences of healing. Rand characterizes the Western style as simplified and accessible to anyone soon after training. These are statements of the tradition's own aims and do not report measured results.

Conditions studied

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health notes that Reiki has been studied for conditions including pain, anxiety and depression. The page does not distinguish lineages, so the studied uses cannot be assigned to the Takata line in particular.

The studies that name the Usui style concern fibromyalgia symptoms and, in one review, mental health symptoms such as stress, anxiety and depression. The sources reviewed describe no uses specific to the Takata line beyond the aims stated by its own association, and the research section below sets out what those studies found.

Studies that name the Usui style

The fibromyalgia trial by Assefi and colleagues randomized 100 adults to Reiki or sham, delivered directly or at a distance, over eight weeks, and 76% completed. Pain, fatigue, sleep, well-being and function showed no significant differences among the four groups, and the authors concluded that neither Reiki nor touch improved symptoms. An earlier Canadian methods study used two Usui-system practitioners and two untrained placebo practitioners, and four breast cancer survivors and four observers could not tell them apart in the last round. It tested blinding, not clinical effect, and only its abstract was read.

Lineage reporting in reviews

Zadro and Stapleton reviewed 14 placebo-controlled trials of Reiki for mental health symptoms and concluded that Reiki consistently showed an effect over placebo, with GRADE ratings from low to high by outcome, while stressing that studies were few and small. They found only five trials specified the original Usui method and two used it alone, and the data did not allow comparison across styles. NCCIH states that Reiki has not been clearly shown effective for any health purpose. No trial found compared the Takata line with other lineages, and family-wide results are covered on the Reiki page.

Reported harms

NCCIH states that Reiki has not been shown to have harmful effects, in a page last updated in December 2018. In the fibromyalgia trial, 41% of participants reported excess energy or anxiety and 18% reported other effects such as sleep disruption or low mood, spread evenly across groups including sham. Zadro and Stapleton report that none of their included studies recorded adverse effects. Rand lists harmlessness among the qualities he says define genuine Reiki, which is a teacher's description. No case series on the Takata line were found.

Suitability and care boundaries

Reiki should not delay or replace necessary medical care, and the Alliance's own pages do not present it as a medical treatment. Prospective students may weigh the costs described above and the disputed elements of the founding story. The sources reviewed contain no studies on risks specific to initiations or to the Takata line, and none on distance sessions beyond the fibromyalgia trial.