About Mari and Finding Healing with Reiki
About Mari and Finding Healing with Reiki
Explore my journey of discovering and falling in love with Reiki. Out of my experience with Reiki my passion was born to help people to connect to their inner peace and, through creative resolution, take this out into the world. Read my story here.
“Mari began her Reiki journey in 1980 when she was searching for a way to help with a debilitating health issue. Mari went on to become a Reiki Master in 1983. She was the first Usui Reiki Master to bring Reiki to the UK, and the first to teach Reiki in the Ukraine, Norway and Czechoslovakia. Mari has taught Reiki to more than 55,000 people worldwide. She is a highly respected figure in the wider Reiki community.
As the founding director of the International Association of Reiki (est.1989), Mari has greatly influenced both the development of Reiki as a professional practice and the standards for its teaching. This was clearly seen in her work with the International Board of Complementary Medicine for the standardization of teaching and the professional practice of Reiki within the European Union.
Mari is a teacher, coach, mentor, and motivational speaker who inspire people to reawaken their spirit and values in their personal and professional lives. Her passion is for people to connect to their inner peace and, through creative resolution, take this out into the world.
The late President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic recognized this work when Mari was nominated for the prestigious Heart of the Country award, which is the Czech equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mari also teaches Jikiden Reiki (direct teaching). She found Jikiden Reiki in Bogota, Columbia in 2007 when she went there to present techniques that she developed using Reiki to help with brain and motor neurological problems and muscle memory.
She began studying Jikiden Reiki with Tadao Yamaguchi and Arjava Petter in Bogota that year, and was Arjava’s US coordinator for his Jikiden classes in the United States for 7 years. She is a Shihan (Teacher).”
About Reiki
About Reiki
Reiki is an experience.
Reiki is the simplest, most natural and safe method of spiritual healing and self-improvement that anyone and everyone can use. It has been effective in helping virtually every known illness and problem, always creating a beneficial effect. It also works in combination with all other medical or therapeutic techniques to relieve side effects and promote recovery.
Reiki is a Japanese technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing. It is administered by laying your hands on yourself and/or others and is based on the idea that our life force energy, which is unseen, flows through us, causing us to be alive. If our life force energy is low, we are more likely to get sick.
Stress is a big deterrent to harmony. When we have less stress, we are more capable of being happy and healthy.
Using Reiki is not dependent on your intellect or spiritual development, therefore it is available to everyone. It has been successfully taught to thousands of people of all ages, cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds.
Reiki is a remarkably simple technique to learn—the ability to use Reiki is not taught in the typical sense, but is transferred to the student during a Reiki class by the Reiki Shihan/Teacher during an “attunement.” It allows the student to tap into an unlimited supply of this universal life force energy to improve one’s health, thereby enhancing the quality of life.
The word Reiki means Universal Life Energy, and was derived from two Japanese words, Rei, which means “Creator's Innate Wisdom or the Higher Power” and Ki, which is “life force energy.” So the definition of Reiki is actually “spiritually guided life force energy.” I think of it as God’s unconditional love. And while it is not a religion, it touches you in such a way that your spiritual life can be deepened.
The system of Reiki was discovered by Mikao Usui, who named his system of palm healing Usui Reiki Ryoho. In an interview he said:
“My Usui Reiki Ryoho is an original, there is nothing like it in this world…My Reiki Ryoho is an original method based on intuitive power in the universe. By this power, the body gets healthy and enhances happiness of life and peaceful mind. Nowadays people need improvement and reconstruction inside and outside of life, so the reason for releasing my method to the public is to help people with illness of body and mind.”
Reiki Resources
Reiki Resources
Below are some of the books I have written and recommend if you want to know more about Reiki:
Harper Collins
Practical Reiki
Reiki for the Soul
Reiki: Using Healing Energy for Peace, Joy, and Vitality
Piatkus
Reiki for Common Ailments
Infinite Light Publishing of Sedona, Arizona
Reiki for the Soul: The Eleventh Door
Jikiden Reiki
Jikiden Reiki
The history of Jikiden Reiki began in 1938, as initiated by Dr. Chujiro Hayashi, head of the Hayashi Reiki Kankyuka (Institute), a Reiki clinic and school in Japan founded years before by Hayashi Sensei. With the approval of his teacher, Usui Sensei, the discoverer of Reiki, Dr. Hayashi mentored a 17-year-old girl named Chiyoko Yamaguchi.
She received Reiju (attunement) from Hayashi Sensei at the home of her Uncle Wasaboro Sugano, who had been attuned to Reiki 10 years earlier and had paid for all the members of his large family to be attuned as well. Two years after Chiyoko Sensei’s attunement, Hayashi Sensei died.
Prior to and during World War II, the Japanese government was introducing strict regulations on all practices such as Reiki. Chiyoko Sensei, like many other Reiki practitioners, continued to practice Reiki but had to adapt to the many stringent rules set upon all hands-on healing practices.
In many cases, this meant that Reiki practice and teaching had to go underground. Chiyoko Sensei, however, remained in Japan practicing Reiki every day for 65 years as taught by Hayashi Sensei.
It is through Chiyoko Sensei’s dedication to her Gyo (diligence to duty) and to her teacher, Hayashi Sensei, that people inside and outside of Japan now have the opportunity to study and practice the original teachings of Reiki in the form Chiyoko Sensei and her son Tadao named Jikiden Reiki.
Tadao Yamaguchi
Tadao Yamaguchi
As previously mentioned, by the early 1900s, Japan itself had begun to make changes in the way that certain healing practices were regulated. After the war, there were even more restrictions and Reiki went underground, only being used in private for family and trusted friends. Since those times, the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai has remained a closed group and to this day, does not teach anyone outside of the Gakkai.
As a result, by the late 1980s much of the Reiki being practiced and taught in Japan was coming from outside of Japan from the Western Reiki lineage. Mari’s friend Frank Arjava Petter who lived in Sapporo in 1993, began offering a Reiki teacher course, which had previously been unavailable in Japan. There were also many styles of Reiki being developed in the West that blended new practices into the methods.