Reiki: Hawayo Takata's Story

For forty-five years Hawayo Takata carried in her hands—literally—the energy of one of the world’s great healing arts which she called Reiki. She shared this knowledge with hundreds of students and treated thousands of sufferers during her long career as teacher and practitioner of Reiki Healing. Her path and mine converged in the early Fall of 1973 when she traveled from her island home in Hawaii to teach a class on another island, this one off the Northwest coast of the State of Washington. I was one of thirty students in that class, and when this small Oriental woman stood before the class and said firmly, “Reiki means Universal Life Energy and we were are all composed of this energy. Everyone can use this energy for healing—and I can teach you how!” I knew she had the answers for which I had been searching. This had been a long and diligent quest of more than seventeen years, one motivated by my need to understand more fully what had occurred in my life with a profound spiritual experience, a transformational event which even now I can describe inadequately only as “mystical.” My conventional Christian rearing had not prepared me to comprehend nor cope with the energy which was spontaneously released as a result of this experience, and I found little comfort to help within the structure of my church. Instead, books began to gravitate to me and in the writings of the mystics, ancient and contemporary, I found validation for what had happened. The teachings of Jesus took on new depth and meaning in my life, and the way was opened for me to seek more answers in the study of the world’s great religions, in theology, philosophy, psychology, parapsychology, and in science, especially the “new physics.” I read the popular literature on healing and healers and attended workshops and lectures on this subject. I sat in meetings with some of the world’s renowned spiritual healers, and I learned much about healing; yet no one seemed able to give me direction or assistance in utilizing my own abilities until Mrs. Takata stated clearly that September evening: “. . .I can teach you how!”—and she did. With my Reiki Healing training, the search was completed and this became the pivotal moment when my life began to change beyond imagining. In her visits to the Pacific Northwest I came to know Hawayo Takata both as teacher and as friend, and when in 1980 she asked me to write her life story with Reiki, I was honored to do so. Before the manuscript was completed she made her transition, and the project was put aside temporarily, although I knew at the appropriate time my promise to her would be fulfilled. In addition to those Masters initiated by Mrs. Takata in her lifetime, many more have since been trained to carry on this work. I am privileged to be among them. To the Masters and to the thousands of students who now carry Reiki Healing to the world, I offer this gift from Reiki Master Hawayo Takata. —Helen J. Haberly, 1990