The Usui System of Natural Healing or reiki is a healing art that anyone can learn and practice. It is a gentle hands-on and distant healing discipline that simply, but powerfully, balances body, mind, heart and spirit using your own natural healing energy. It is not a religion, but honors and coexists peacefully with all religions and belief systems. Western reiki's tradition is oral and is passed from teacher to student based on their personal relationship as reiki student and reiki teacher. A thumbnail sketch of reiki's history follows:

Reiki originated in Japan in the 1920's. Mikao Usui, the founder of Reiki, undertook a study of the healing phenomena of history's greatest spiritual leaders. Through study, research, and meditation, he evolved a system of healing he called reiki. He spent the rest of his life up until his death in 1926 practicing and teaching this method of natural healing which involves the laying on of hands and distant treatment. Mikao Usui authored the principles or precepts of reiki.

One of Usui's students, Dr. Chujiro Hayashi continued his work after Usui's death opening a clinic and school in Tokyo. One of Dr. Hayashi's students, Mrs. Hawayo Takata, an American who was born in Hawaii of Japanese descent, consulted with Dr. Hayashi in Japan in 1935 about severe  medical problems she was having, studied reiki under him, and in 1938 was very honored to be designated one of Hiyashi's small group of reiki masters. Mrs. Takata brought reiki to Hawaii and to the mainland of the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Mrs. Takata's granddaughter Phyllis Lei Furumoto, is recognized as the present reiki grand master of the Usui System of Natural Healing, Usui Shiki Ryoho by the Reiki Alliance, a worldwide organization founded in 1982 by 21 out of the 22 reiki masters initiated by Hawayo Takata before her death in 1980. Phyllis Furumoto has taught and has encouraged the  teaching of the western traditional form of reiki worldwide.