In order to answer that question for you, you need to understand my background. When I got into Reiki, I was a high school math teacher with an education degree, and I come from a family of teachers. You could say that teaching is in my blood.
Before I was able to teach mathematics, I had to study all levels of math, the history of its development and discovery, and how to teach it at different levels, and when I started teaching, I was never presented with information that went against anything I learned.
I found that to be different in the world of Reiki.
After a thorough year-long Reiki Teacher Training in 2011-12, I became a Reiki Master and was allowed to teach Reiki; however, soon after I started finding information that did not match what I was trained to teach. How could that be?
In comparing my math education training with my Reiki training, I thought that when both were completed, I should have all the knowledge and tools needed to teach others, and that I would have the answers to questions that students would have.
But I was the one with all of the questions!
One Reiki Master said this, but another one said that. Which is correct? Who knows?
It got to the point that I wanted to know what Mikau Usui (the founder of the Usui Reiki Healing Method) really taught in Japan from 1922-26, and what happened afterward.
In my search for answers after taking several Reiki Master trainings with different teachers, I signed up for a seminar with Frank Arjava Petter, my favorite Reiki author and researcher.
The seminar was titled Jikiden Reiki, and I learned that Arjava had studied with one of Chujiro Hiyashi's students, Chiyoko Yamaguchi. Hiyashi was one of the 21 students of Mikao Usui that was permitted to teach his method to others, and Chiyoko studied with him in 1938.
Chiyoko Yamaguchi and her family all studied with Hiyashi in the 1930s, and she practiced Reiki daily. She never left Japan and wasn't aware that Reiki had become so popular and that people around the world were practicing.
In the late 1990s, word got out that one of Hiyashi's students was still alive, and Reiki practitioners were very interested in meeting her to find out what it was like to study with one of the key figures in Reiki's history. She and her son, Tadao, founded the Jikiden Reiki Institute in 1999 to teach Reiki as Hiyashi and Usui taught it in the 1920s and 1930s in Japan. Jikiden translates to "Directly Taught" or "Direct Teachings."
That seminar with Arjava in 2016 started to clear up my confusion on the teachings and practice of Reiki and its history from the time of Usui through the time the Reiki teachings traveled to Hawaii, and it began to add a lot more context to its development within the Japanese culture.
A few years later, in 2019, I was certified as a Shihankaku (assistant teacher) and began to teach Jikiden Reiki Shoden (first level) classes. I no longer felt confused about the curriculum. I felt connected to it, and it felt authentic to me. I loved bringing this information to others, whether they were new to the practice or were Reiki Masters themselves.
Fast forward to today, where I just received my certification as a full Shihan (teacher), and I can teach both levels (Shoden and Okuden) of the Usui Reiki Healing Method through the Jikiden Reiki lineage, traditional Japanese Reiki, which is free of new age and Western influence. It's as pure and close to the source as I can get.
If you would like more information about Jikiden Reiki and its classes, reach out anytime, and I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.
I scheduled a Shoden class for May, and for those of you who have taken Shoden already and are ready for an Okuden class, let me know. We can find a day this summer to make that happen.
Receiving my Jikiden Reiki Shihan certificate from Tadao Yamaguchi.