DIVE INTO REIKI: Welcome to the Dive Into Reiki podcast. I have an exceptional guest, Justin Stein. I should have called him Dr. Justin Stein because he has a Ph.D., but I'm taking Liberty to call him Justin. Justin is an instructor in Asian studies at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. His research program focuses on how exchanges within transnational networks have shaped spiritual and religious practices and ideas in the North Pacific region. His work on Reiki, including original translations of historical materials, has been published in three languages. His upcoming book, Alternate Currents: Reiki Healing, North Pacific Networks, and the Circulation of Transnational Spiritual Therapies, focuses on the life work of Hawayo Takata, whose cultural translation turned Reiki from an obscure Japanese practice into a source of healing and spiritual transformation for thousands of Americans, Canadians, and other thousands of Europeans all around the world. Thank you so much, Justin, for accepting this interview.

JUSTIN STEIN: Thank you, Nathalie. I just sent off another thing to the publisher about the book, and I was like, that title is too long. So, hopefully, when it hits the market, it'll have a little bit of a shorter title! It's a beautiful introduction. Thank you so much. It's really a pleasure to be here with you.

DIR: I'm so happy to talk to you. I was very confused by Reiki's history when I started my journey, and I googled things, and the results were all different. And I remember a book that actually stated aliens brought Reiki to earth. So, having you here because having that research background and all your knowledge is really priceless for all of us who are a little bit confused, and this confusion may be affecting the way we practice. However, before we go into history with your origin story, how did you become interested in Reiki?

JS: I don't know how long of a version of the story to tell, but I'll try to keep it in the medium range. First of all, my family, my mother particularly, has been a meditator since the 1970s. So, I grew up with yoga, meditation, mantras, and visualization as part of my development as a young person. I went to a healer who told us wild stories about all kinds of energies, entities, and all kinds of stuff. So, I've been exposed to this world from a young age. 

In my late teens and early twenties, I began practicing a chakra healing practice called Spiritual Human Yoga. And I got interested in the "what is this." On the one hand, it was—and I am a little bit hesitant to use this word because I'm a professional researcher of religious movements and spirituality—but it's what the common parlance would say was a bit cultish. The leader seemed a bit manipulative and told people things I thought were a little irresponsible. I felt this phenomenon in my body when I did the meditations, something powerful. It seemed like it was happening to me. When I would put my fingertips on someone, Wow! We both would feel like really remarkable phenomena. But, at the same time, it seemed like this organization was a little suspect. So I was interested in that phenomenon. I wrote and received a research grant to go around the world, looking at different forms of energy healing. My research question was about the role of money in energy healing. So, under that auspice, I received Reiki initiations first and second degrees while I was traveling first in India and then in Japan.

This was in 2001, 2002. After that, I also received initiations in other energy healing practices. I was practicing Qigong and different yoga meditations. I was 22, 23-years-old. I was probably the healthiest I'll ever be in my life. I was just a practitioner for a while, practicing on myself, some friends, and my family occasionally. And then I was like, "What if I continued that research more?" Like you said, the Reiki history was very unclear. I was also interested in Johrei and other healing practices with Japanese origins that have some similarities and some important differences.

I ended up going to the university of Hawaii. My original project for my master's was going to be a comparative project with Reiki and Johrei. And then my supervisor was like, "It's too much for a master's thesis, just pick one thing." And so I started being like, "Okay, I'll do a project on Reiki." Then my chapter on Reiki's history was getting more complicated, and people said, "Well, why don't you just write about that?" So that's what I ended up doing for my master's. And then, for my dissertation, I went further with it and got to do all these interviews with some of Hawayo Takata's earliest students in Hawaii. Some of her students on the mainland, I got to work with her granddaughter and successor, Phyllis Furumoto, to set up the archive of her personal papers. I got to read all these letters and go through all these photographs and the class list. I did a deep dive into that while also learning Japanese and reading the 1930s Japanese language newspapers from Hawaii, learning about that side of things, and trying to dig up whatever we could find from the 1920s from Japan. Like, what texts are still there? And, yeah, it's been really exciting. 

Through that research, I got involved with the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, the organization Usui sensei founded in 1922. I have been able to study under them and had permission to write about some of their oral history in some of my writings. I really feel very conscious and grateful that, like, at the end of the first century of Reiki, there's this global community that's growing more conscious of itself and trying to build these bridges between different parts of this giant global network. To be part of that process has been really a blessing.

DIR: Fantastic. And a blessing for us, too, that you chose Reiki and not Johrei. Sorry, Johrei people. We had discussed we would debunk some of the biggest myths in Reiki history. Let me know if you want to start with the ones on your list. 

JS: I've got a couple, but I'm also interested to hear what you've got.

DIR: Well, I have a list, so maybe we should start with one of yours and see if they match.

JS: Okay. So, one that I've got, and I think this is maybe a little controversial for some people, but you know, there's Western Reiki, and there's Japanese Reiki. And those two things are very clearly distinct from one another. And I think that that idea is born out of an orientalist view. Where [we believe] the East is the East and the West is the West, they never meet and never change. And we can actually learn the traditional Japanese practice, and that is the way it was done originally. It is the right thing. And there is this degraded way that people have degenerated [the practice that] is corrupt now. And we need to purify it and get back to the real original source.

I sympathize with some parts of that. There are certainly people doing things under the name Reiki that really doesn't bear much [resemblance to] what historically has been called Reiki. So I can sympathize with the desire for [this] kind of purification and drawing boundaries. And at the same time, Japan is changing, right? The way that the Gakkai, for example, practices today, it's not necessarily the way it was practiced a hundred years ago. And maybe that's good, maybe that's right. Our world is not the world it was a hundred years ago. One hundred years ago, they were really revering the emperor as a kind of Godman and saying if you recite his poetry, your heart will merge with his heart, and his heart is divine. And that will make you a better Reiki practitioner because this divine man has this incredible power, like a God. 

I'm not saying that maybe his poetry has no potential for spiritual inspiration, but at the same time, it was clearly immersed in a kind of imperialist nationalist culture that I think is very different from the way most of us [live]. I don't know if there are very strong Japanese nationalist practitioners out there who want to revive the Imperial family's importance in Japan. But I think for most of us, we can try to see what can be recuperated from those older practices and how they could be adapted for our present age. And so I think that a lot of them, the criticism of Hawayo Takata—that she changed things—what she was trying to do was, "How can I make sense of this practice for my north American students who don't know anything about respecting authority? Who are hippies who don't listen to me when I'm trying to tell them things? I need a new precept to honor your parents, teachers, and elders. I need to tell them, "Hey, part of Reiki is listening to your teacher. The exchange of energies and the story of Usui in the beggar's camp. When I talked to the older local Japanese practitioners in Hawaii, they didn't necessarily charge money for their treatments. But if they did a treatment, and it was a good treatment, and someone benefited from that, you are going to be sure they were giving you stuff in exchange. That was just part of their culture. And again, maybe people are trying to get away with getting something for free. Takata wanted to impress on her students that there needs to be some kind of exchange—for appreciation, for gratitude—and that that's a part of their healing. If they aren't grateful, they're not going to necessarily change. I think a lot [of people think], "When Reiki left Japan, it started getting bad." I'm not going to deny that there are things that have changed over the years that may not be in the practitioner's best interest. That's clear. But at the same, this [idea that] Japan is good, and West is bad kind of distinction, I think, is a myth that I've devoted a lot of energy to working [against].

 

DIR: Thanks for sharing that. I tend to group everything under Western Reiki, with over 100 styles. For me, the one wrong thing is to not practice, and the other is not to respect the system. And honestly, people are guilty of that on both sides, Eastern and Western. I like what you reminded us of: I'm not a Japanese living a hundred years ago. I may do martial arts and fantasize I am one, but I'm not. I live in Harlem. I take the subway. So, how do I make my practice work for me in everyday life?

JS: The thing about practice is that, for example, a lot of lineages lost certain practices now have been found [again] and are regaining popularity. Like meditation or like chanting, maybe. These practices are very powerful and were forgotten, but they were also replaced in certain so-called Western Reiki lineages with daily self-treatment. That became the replacement for the meditation practice. You have to treat yourself every day. Like you said, what's important is that you respect your practice and you do the practice. That is something that can be common in many different lineages around the world. 

 

DIR: I love that myth you debunked. I do. That one never even occurred to me. My turn. I wanted to demystify the idea that he had no teacher and that he suddenly felt like going to a mountain, and voilá, Reiki was born. 

JS: Yeah. It's an interesting topic. It's written on [Mikao Usui's] Memorial stone [he] was a man of great and broad learning. He was interested in history, philosophy, medicine, psychology, Christian and Buddhist scriptures, and physiognomy—reading people's faces and knowing their personalities—in incantation. The way of the immortals, like going up into a cave and doing maybe Qigong-type meditation. He was interested in a lot of things, and he clearly studied things.

On the other hand, in the Kokai Denju Setsumei, like the big thing that Usui wrote, the question and answer [booklet], he says, in response, how does this work? "Listen, I didn't learn this from anybody. It's a wholly original therapy. And even I don't really understand how it works. I'm the founder, but I went up into the mountains, and I was fasting, and the sky touched me or something… The air mysteriously inspired me. It touched me on the top of my head. And now I got this healing system." Like you said, that's not really the whole story, right? But there are both of these aspects.

 

DIR: I love this! And the word sky has such a deep meaning in Japanese culture. Sky for the expanded mind, for spiritual energy, emptiness…

JS: Actually, it's interesting what you said about emptiness because I've been very interested in that. The character for emptiness is also sort of [the character for the] sky. It's not actually what it says in this particular sentence, but I've been trying to go down that route a lot because, in esoteric Buddhist philosophy, there's a real connection between emptiness—the nature of all existence—and the skies and the universe. The universe as the source of Reiki, or the universe is filled with Reiki. It's not entirely clear, but the universe and Reiki are importantly linked. So that kind of connection with emptiness is something I'm super interested in. 

I asked the president and the former president of the Gakkai about this particular passage because it says taiki, it's really like the air. He was touched mysteriously by “the air,” and I'm like, what does that mean? And I thought maybe it could be read as dai ki as like a great ki. I was touched by a powerful ki, and they're like, "Oh no, no, no, it's not that it's taiki. And I'm like, okay, well, what does it mean there? And they're like, it's like the atmosphere, like ether. I'm like, yeah, but what is that? They're like, yeah, it's mysterious. I think that's part of what Usui is trying to say in that passage: I don't really know what Reiki is. I just do it. And for me, that's a powerful teaching.

 

DIR: Beautiful teaching: stop trying to understand it with your head; just practice and feel it.

JS: Yeah. But I want to get back to one other part of the question, and this was actually a recent insight for me. I don't think this is in my book. Maybe I should put it in before it gets published! So in the Takata story of Usui—the master narrative I call it—sometimes it's like Usui is like looking in the Japanese Sutras, and he can't find anything about the Buddha healing. So he goes, "Oh, these are translations. I have to look in the Chinese Sutras." And he looks in the Chinese Sutra and can't find anything. So he's like, "I have to learn Sanskrit." And he looks in the Sanskrit Sutras, and there he finds like the formula, she says. He knew he had to test it for himself. He goes to the mountain to test it and has the experience with the light. And then he sees the symbols in the sky or something. She didn't say that exactly. But that it confirms for him that the formula works. That's what he saw in the Sutras, right? 

The story is a story, and she tells stories as teaching tools. It's not necessarily literal. But suppose you know about the symbols and [their] origins of the symbols, what's sometimes called the mental, emotional symbol, or the second symbol has its roots in a Sanskrit syllable that's used in esoteric Buddhism in Japan to symbolize one of the Buddhas. He found a Sanskrit formula, and he tested it out. Then he had this experience. For me, that story makes sense in a new way. The symbol is, in a sense, like a "formula." He learned this stuff, tested it out, and all of a sudden, he had this crazy experience. He taught his advanced students these kinds of secret, sacred formulas. That part of Takata story like that for a long time, I was like, "Oh man, like, that's, that's a good story, but that's obviously not what happened"—now I'm like it's kind of like a symbolic way of telling what happened. Maybe he studied, and he studied, and he studied, and then he experienced, and then he realized this thing that he learned really works, and it's now part of the system.

 

DIR: But I, as you said, he studied. Like he went in-depth into the Sutras, and those Sutras are freaking hard to understand, and I always need to have the book that explains them to me.

JS: Right. But I think that could have been like a symbol, a metaphor. He studied the Sutras. Maybe he had some sort of esoteric master under whom he learned some practices, you know? That's the way she told the story. Sutra themselves are stories. And there are stories that connect you. It's like a suture, like a thread, and it connects the practitioner to the Buddha. It's like the Dharma. It's this way of connecting to our true self, the Bodhicitta. Through a story or a metaphor, we find our true selves or something. I think that there are a lot of layers there.

 

DIR: Also, you see the teachings shared differently in Japanese culture. I study martial arts, and people in the podcast are tired of hearing me say that, but they had to adapt the teaching to Americans. Because if you don't tell us what to do, we're not trained to just watch and repeat. And it's a very different way of teaching; they teach by showing. If you go to a dojo in Japan, they actually expect you to watch them repeat and then practice on your own for hours. Because the way of learning is different, it doesn't mean there wasn't studying there. 

In my dojo, they are kind to us; they let us know when we are doing something wrong, so we can figure out how to fix it. That would perhaps not happen in Japan. 

JS: Like you said, they are kind in your dojo to tell you, "No, that's not how you do it." Because if they don't say it, you're not going to figure it out because you haven't been socialized from a young age to be like, "Huh, my teacher isn't telling me anything. I bet I'm doing something wrong." [Laughs].

 

DIR: Yeah. I'm supposed to figure out how to do it by myself by practicing for 24 hours in the winter with a sword. [Laughs].

JS: But it's interesting because if you listen to Takata's tapes or her students' stories, people will ask questions, and she'll be like, "Stop asking questions; just look at my hands. Look at what I'm doing. Practice this, do this over and over again." 

 

DIR: The Japanese teaching method, but at least she said, look at me and learn. I'm sure in Japan, they will not even say that… I love your answer to that myth. Let's go for the next one. Your turn. 

JS: Okay. So one thing is that Reiki literally means universal life energy, which is what Takata told her students.

 

DIR: It doesn't? I'm excited! I had the idea that it was a valid translation!

JS: The problem is, like, it's a lot easier to be like, that's not a good translation. What is a good translation? Hard to say! [Laughs].

 

DIR: You have to talk more about what it is, then!

JS: Ki is probably easier in that it's a more well-known concept. But there's a lot of criticism of the idea of ki being energy in Shiatsu or Chinese medicine. Energy has a particular meaning. For example, there's matter, and there's energy—there's a kind of dualism in there. Whereas if you look at ancient teachings about ki or chi, there's not that dualism. It's both. 

 

DIR: Ooh, I love that. Shinshin kaizen: harmony of body and mind in the word ki already!

JS: Because we are literally like made of ki. And we are animated by ki. It's just that there are more; I think they call it turbid and more like light forms of ki. So, there's like denser ki, and there's lighter ki... It's all key on some level. Energy makes it sound like we could like measure it. It makes it sound like it goes from one thing to another like it gets transferred into it. And I think a lot of those things can be distracting from what ki is. You can get attached to thinking about that flow transfer kind of thing. I know it's very commonplace to talk about to channel. There's the universal source, and I'm like a tube, and it flows through me. But in my reading, the really early stuff doesn't talk about that at all.

But what does it say? It's very vague. Like I said, it's kind of everything's a mystery. It's not a very satisfying answer, but Usui, and the memorial stone as well, talk about that. There's like this Reiki of the universe, and it's related to this reinō. And reinō is another hard thing to translate, and it depends on how you want to translate. Let me get to rei first, and then maybe I'll come back to this. The character day can literally be spirit. It's time. But it can also be other things that are not spiritual, like reiyaku, like, manbyō no reiyaku, or what I would say, the miraculous medicine that can cure all diseases. It's not literally spiritual medicine because if you look up stuff from that time, aspirin was at a reiyaku. We might call it a wonder drug, a miracle medicine, or something like that.

At the same time, rei can mean spiritual, and that's where it gets confusing. Sometimes when they're using it's clearly a dualist kind of thing as opposed to the body. There is a part of the Kokai Denju Setsumei where Usui talks about rei-niku. So like spirit and flesh, a very dualistic thing in a sense. And Reiki is good; it unifies them. The spirit and the flesh get unified through this practice. And so there is this kind of dualism, which we need to overcome. In that sense, rei can be like spirit. There's another funny one. A student of Hayashi, this guy Matsui Shou. He's like, "Well, even though it's called Reiki, it can't be a spiritual practice, reiteki hō, because I'm not a good person, and I can do it." He's like, "I'm not spiritual, I'm not a great religious leader and I can do Reiki. So clearly, it's not spiritual, like a reiteki.

DIR: [Laughs]. Yeah, but it depends on how you use it, right?

JS: This is just to give an example of some people at that time in the Reiki world who weren't thinking of "rei" as "spiritual." Yeah. But I think another way to think about it—and what my kind of academic mentor Yoshinaga sensei has told me, and he's one of the big experts on these types of practices at that time—is that rei can mean wonderful, excellent. Kind of miraculous, marvelous. It's amazing ki. That could be a translation, amazing ki, wonderful ki. 

As you might know, in Chinese medicine, there are so many kinds of ki. Right. In Japan, you often talk about genki, your vitality. So, Reiki maybe is like this really wonderful kind of ki where if you are touched by Reiki… And actually, Usui says that we're all full of Reiki, all living things have Reiki in them, but that there's some way of maybe awakening it or realizing it, putting it into practice. And when that happens, when the ki that's innate in us and in our environments gets moving, awakened or something, then—in the language of the late 20th century—it reaches its highest potential. 

 

DIR: As millennials would say, to live your best life. 

JS: Exactly.

 

DIR: I think this translation is fascinating. I was attracted to Reiki because it felt very magical. However, what makes me love Reiki now is how human it is. I can work with the precepts when I am angry or settle my mind using hands-on healing. 

In martial arts, ki is a normal, everyday thing that can be developed and moved. It's there, but we usually don't pay attention to it. 

JS: Yeah. I was also just thinking about reihō, which is a thing you see a lot in the Memorial. A lot of times, it's translated as “spiritual method,” but again, if you think about it as being like this wonderful method… Oh, I had a connection… That Usui taught this wonderful method and so the precepts—you were talking about not getting angry—and on the one hand, you can think about that as spiritual development, right? To be in control of yourself and your emotions, to be hard working, to be grateful, to be kind, you could think of those as spiritual virtues or values. But you could also just think about it as moral, just being a good person.

I think the word spiritual obviously is a European word with its own connotations. And rei is of Chinese origin. Ling in Chinese and rei in Japan [have their] own connotations. And actually, they share this thing about being spirit on some level, but they also have their own connotations and place. 

I think, in our [cultural] context, "spirituality" does have this dualist concept where it's as opposed to the flesh. And there also is this kind of hierarchy, like who is the most spiritual or something that can creep into that language. It's about breathing. It's interesting. Like the spire on the top of the church, reaching up, aspiring towards God, towards heaven. Whereas I think in rei there is something about mystery there. Like when they talk about when you walk into the mountains, there's like reiki there. When you look up reiki in the Japanese dictionary, one of the examples you always see is the reiki of the mountains. Being in this mysterious kind of non-human place where you're very like small and alone. There are things you don't know out there, and you're surrounded by power. And again, I think there are overlaps with our idea of spirituality, but I think there are also differences.

 

DIR: And again, we are talking about Japan's culture from a hundred years ago, right? I spent six weeks in Japan and was shocked that interconnection with nature is everywhere. Concepts that may be significantly elevated here are everyday things over there. In temples, digital museums, gardens… you see the reference to the interconnection of humans and nature transpiring everywhere. And the importance of being in the body, not having a spiritual experience that is separate, which is a trend in Western culture. 

 

JS: I think there is that in the Japanese language too. Like the example I mentioned in the Q&A, he talks about rei-niku. Rei-niku is the spirit and body, and then it's like ichinyo, like to unify.

DIR: Yeah.

JS: And that's something they talk about right in martial arts as well. Right? 

DIR: Yes, I practice iaido, and we have the term ki-ken-tai-chi, the unity of spirit, sword, and body.  

JS: In Aikido, there is shin shin tōitsu. It's like the unification of mind and body, and a lot of times, it's through breath and ki awareness and all this stuff. 

I think there is something to that kind of like dualism on dualism in the West: we're so dualistic, and in Japan, they're not. But in the same way, in Japan, they're talking about like, "Yeah, in our ordinary lives, like we're too dualistic, and we need to overcome it." The other thing being that [Japanese in Mikao Usui's time] were modern. [It was the] early 20th century. One of the things I found from the period is, do you know what a theremin is?

DIR: No.

JS: It's like a musical instrument you play without touching. It's got an electromagnetic field, and you move your hand through it. They use it in sci-fi movies. It makes spooky music. You play it with your hand, just kind of waving around in the air. At that time, they called that the reiki koto. So koto, the Japanese instrument that you play with Reiki.

DIR: Oh, beautiful!

JS: Yeah. [Laughs]. I need to do a little more research into that, but I found that somewhere, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's so interesting." Because it was [invented] around the same time that all these discoveries into electromagnetics, radio, and all this stuff were going on—at the same time that Usui was teaching. 

DIR: Wow! We forget that Japan was still feudal until the 1860s. Usui was born during the industrial revolution and was a very modern person who brought new things. 

JS: Yeah. The village he was born in was like the old-time world, and in his lifetime, he saw this rapid modernization. It's pretty amazing. 

 

DIR: Indeed. I find it interesting that Reiki practice originated when people felt isolated from their life during the industrial revolution and has come back in another pretty intense transition, the digital revolution, when we are also feeling disconnected from our lives.

JS: That's really interesting. Yeah. There's been rapid change. There's this feeling of uncertainty and alienation, and [there is] striving for connection, groundedness, and ritual practice.

 

DIR: I have one more question, and then I will go to your Reiki "oops." The answer to this question may be very obvious for people familiar with Reiki history, so please bear with me. Many Reiki practitioners believe the chakras are integral to the original practice. Can you clarify this?

JS: Yeah. Thank you for the question. Certainly, the seven chakras [have a] very interesting story on its own like, how did that get codified? A lot of people say [that] for 5,000 years, the Indians have taught about these seven chakras, and they're all the colors of the rainbow. And actually, it's funny because that's a modern process too, where many different people have been describing the chakras in different ways over centuries. It was only in the late 19th century and early 20th century that it started to become a very ordered system. It's almost like a parallel story to that of Reiki, where of course, in east Asia, people have been healing with their hands for a long time too. Is it all like Reiki, or is Reiki the system that systematized [this] in the early 20th century? 

That's a little bit of a tangent, but yeah, in the early 20th century, the seven chakras that we like of [as] the yogic body were not widely known in Japan at that time. Usui was certainly not teaching that particular thing. If you look at the treatment manual, the hand positions in the handbook published by the Gakkai, I was always wondering, when was it first published? We found one where it says the first edition was 1922. We haven't seen the first edition, but we have seen one now from 1926. So, around the time Usui passed away, they were publishing this handbook, and the hand positions are not like you have to treat the seven chakras by any means.

But they are interesting references to particular vertebrae. For example, I think it's C seven, the seventh cervical vertebrae, is often associated with the throat chakra or something like that. And it's not lining up exactly with the chakras, but the fact that they're referring to vertebrae by their kind of Western anatomical numbers is pretty interesting and maybe was an influence of chiropractic. Tadao Yamaguchi actually points that out in his book. I had missed that. I read that book several times over the years, and I had missed it until recently. I went back to it, and I saw that. I was like, "Good point!" Because chiropractic was one of those things that were picking up in Japan at that point. But anyway, to return to your question, chakras were not an original part of the practice. 

But Takata, even though she didn't teach about chakras, she did read about yoga. And she was very interested in the glands, the endocrine system, and the hand positions corresponding to different glands in the body. And there's been a lot of work on chakras, nerve plexuses, and glands and linking all those things together. So, I think her focus on these different kinds of plexuses in the body may have been like the roots for the next generation in the 1980s, linking it with chakras and then taking off.

 

DIR: Yeah. When you think of the core treatment, it does add up. I don't work with chakras, but I still do those hands position. When people are like, "Did you do chakra balancing?" I am like, "Of course I did."  

JS: Right. Because that's how Reiki works, kind of…. But I was talking with a friend recently who researches yoga history, and I [mentioned] Joshin Kokyu Ho meditation. It's kind of like some stuff in Qigong, but it's also like this yoga book that was translated into Japanese in the early 20th century. And he is like, "Well, everybody's working with the same body on some level." So, there are only so many spots in the body you can focus on. And, I know some people like Frans Stiene have talked about the three diamonds that go back a long time in China. [It's] associated with the three purities of Daoism and esoteric Daoist meditation, Qigong meditation… Again, was Usui studying that specifically and saying, "There's the head center, the heart center, and the lower belly center?" I don't have any evidence for that either, but that, at least, is more of an East Asian common idea. And also, very popular at his time was [the butter meditation]. Have you ever heard of the butter meditation?

 

DIR: Is it the one where you envision butter melting and going down your spine?

JS: That was a very popular meditation. That goes back to the 18th century in Japan, in Usui's time. So imagining the hot butter melting down your head, down into your spine, and down into your torso, which kind of heals your body. That was a very popular visualization at the time. It also kind of has a bit of this similar chakra scanning, chakra balancing kind of meditation.

 

DIR: In the end, it's all about bringing the energy to the hara. There is something I love about what you pointed out. So Usui's awareness of the C seven vertebrae means he did have a Western influence. This means that, from its inception, Reiki had a beautiful crossover of different cultures. The sutras in both Chinese and Sanskrit, chiropractic studies, and some other influences. Even if we are purists, we need to understand that then.

JS: Yeah. I do want to make a footnote that we don't know that Usui was the one with the vertebrae, and it could have been that one of his students put it in there. 

DIR: Maybe he was a purist, and the students started messing it up early.

JS: No, that's not at all. [Laughs]. From the Memorial stone, it says he went to the West to study. I mean, it says he studied Christian scriptures. He obviously was interested in Western things, not to say that he was the Christian principle of Doshisha University, as Takata said. But there is something preserved at the time that he died in Japanese for everyone to see on a big stone in Tokyo that says this guy was interested in Western stuff. 

 

DIR: I love that you clarified that he's not a Christian doctor. I learned that at the beginning of my Reiki journey. 

JS: That's the biggest myth. I feel like enough people have talked about that. I do want to say he may have gone to Chicago. We don't know that he didn't go to Chicago. As Robert futon pointed out, there were a lot of different Christian seminaries associated with the university of Chicago. And some of them just don't have records of who was studying there at that time. So, it's possible he did go to Chicago to study Christianity. That's something I think we will never know. 

 

DIR: Another thing, when you said he studied Christianity, he studied all these things... the importance of curiosity. You are curiosity incarnated; you're a researcher. I'm very curious. For example, I think if things like, "why do martial arts and Reiki have in common? I think curiosity is something we can bring to our practice to deepen our understanding of it.

JS: It's interesting. The very first time I talked to Phyllis Furumoto, she interviewed me like the way you're interviewing me now on Skype for her radio show. And after the talk, I didn't know what she would think of me at all. I was very nervous about what she would think of me. And afterward, she said, "You know? The kinds of questions you ask and the things you're interested in are so different from the things I'm interested in." She's like, "The kinds of things that you want to know could not matter less to me, but I recognize that there's a lot of people out there in the world who are like you who want to know the answers to these things. For them, your work is really important. And I want to support you on your path because I can see you are someone who's well-fitted to ask and answer these types of questions." I thought that was a really powerful kind of thing. 

You said before about how history can inform our practice. And I don't think that's necessarily true for everybody. There are people out there who get their story from their master in their training. And for them, that's enough. They don't need anything else. They just want to dedicate themselves to the style that I practice, and I understand there are other ways of doing it, but for me, this is enough, and I want to do it this way. And I think that's great too. I'm not out here trying to tell anybody, "Hey, like your teacher was wrong; you need to change." I understand that that's happening as a result. People are even at the heart of some of these lineages, saying, how do I honor what my teacher gave me and recognize that new historical insights are coming into being. I think that that's happening. And I think that's also natural. But yeah, it's not my agenda to go out and say, "Hey, everybody has to stop doing this because it's wrong." [Laughs].

 

DIR:  I think what you gave us was the opposite. You gave us a beautiful knowledge of being compassionate, open-minded, and understanding about the differences and evolution of Reiki practice since its inception; it already was weaving wisdom from different modalities. 

But also the importance of curiosity. When we plateau in our practice, let's change the filter and be more aware of what sensations I am feeling and what emotions come up. Can I observe them without judgment? Can I genuinely hold the space compassionately? 

And if we make mistakes, again, apply compassion and learn from them. These mistakes are teachable moments. And since we are talking about mistakes, I like to ask every guest about their biggest oops regarding Reiki practice. Would you share yours?

JS: Yeah… So, this was in 2002, and I was at a Reiki share in Kyoto. I was practicing all my Qigong, all my whatever… Actually, this may be a bit of what we were talking as well. I had been practicing a hybrid Reiki thing that I had developed that I thought was great. I was doing this kind of rhythmic breathing, visualization, and wow, I was really feeling [it]. When I was doing treatments, I was sweating, they were shaking, and it was like, "Wow, there is really something going on!"

I was at this Reiki share and had my hands on this guy's chest, this old man. And wow! It was a really intense feeling. I was like, "Okay. I want to pick my hands up because this is a little much what's happening right now" I felt like this magnetic pull where I couldn't pick my hands up. And I got like scared. I felt almost like being electrocuted. Not quite electrocuted—I remember one time I plugged in a dryer, holding onto the metal part of the plug, that was more intense. I couldn't let go of the plug. I knew I had to let go of the plug, but I couldn't. My fingers felt stuck to it. I felt like that a bit: my hands were like glued to this guy's chest. I got really worried and nervous. And then I never went back to that Reiki share. I stopped practicing for a while, and I went into a little bit of a dark period of my life where I was unhappy and worried about my project and all this stuff. 

I think at the time I was really in this mode of, I can make this more and more powerful and more powerful is better. When I practice, I think there's a lot of trying to step out of the way, just breathe and be present. Pay attention to your hands and pay attention to your feelings. I don't have as intense sensations as I did at that time when I was doing that kind of practice. But at the same time, it does seem like it's a much healthier practice that I learned out of that experience.

DIR: I love that. I call these experiences the Reiki dark night of the soul. They are the experience that transforms us. I think a lot of people will resonate with this!. 

Justin, there are no words to express my thanks. You opened my eyes to a lot of history because I am not a history nerd of Reiki. I'm really grateful. I could talk to you for hours. So I'm going to let you go, but it's a hard one to let go.

JS: [Laughs] Thanks, Nathalie.