1928 Reiki Magazine Article

Written by a student of Hayashi

Matsui Shouoh was a Student of Hayashi Chujiro. This is a translation by Amy of an article written by him in 1928.

“A Treatment to Heal Diseases, Hand Healing” by Shouoh Matsui
in the magazine “Sunday Mainichi”, Mar. 4, 1928

Reader’s Request: I would like to know about the healing method which was introduced in the book presentation on Mainichi paper (Jan. 30) by Shouoh Matsui. (Korea, Takijiro Inaoka).

I would like to talk about the healing with pleasure, since this is a reader’s request.

The healing method is named “Reiki Ryoho” and some special people practice it. Mikao Usui founded, or should I say created?, this Reiki Ryoho, and he passed away about 3 years ago. Currently, Usui’s students have a clinic to give healing treatments or teach this Reiki Ryoho. This healing method is so great that it can heal any disease, however, this is not well known to people. The reason is that Mikao Usui did not like to announce it and his students avoid making it public even now.

But I cannot understand why they do not like to make it public. Christianity has priests to engage in mission work, and Buddhism does also. The word “propaganda” was originally used to spread the truth. If the “truth” makes people happy, it should be a duty of human beings to propagandize the “truth.” Therefore, I always announce this Reiki Ryoho kindly when I am asked by others, I write for paper/magazine if asked. As such, my behavior causes opposition. Other Reiki practitioners will call me a heretic. I really think that it is regrettable not to make public such a great healing technique. It is really regrettable for society and in morality, and I always try to announce it with pleasure. Especially this time, I was asked by a reader of a big newspaper (Mainichi), how can I say, “No, our Ryoho does not like to propagandize”? That will make readers/journalists feel, “Reiki must be a trickery, they cannot speak out in public though they say they can heal any disease.” Therefore, I announce Reiki for Reiki itself by telling you the truth. That is why I write on the paper this time and please remember that my behavior has nothing to do with other Reiki practitioners. This article is written by me of my own thought. I cannot keep my silence. To tell you the truth, I feel that I cannot write the scenario of a play at all after knowing Reiki Ryoho. If I announce Reiki and spread it to realize my ideal, Japan will become a paradise. Not only Japan, but all the countries in the world will become paradise without diseases. Oh, I really want to make it public.

The “Reiki Ryoho” was founded some decades ago, and yet the number of Reiki clinics is still small. I learned Reiki from Chujiro Hayashi, who was a Navy Captain and a serious, warmhearted person as if he was destined from birth for the Reiki work. He gives Reiki treatments to people in the morning, and he teaches Reiki 5 days a month. However, there exist a lot of treatments which have “Rei” in their names. People consider our Reiki and other “Rei” named treatments all together. And since our Reiki practitioners do not want to announce it still, it cannot be helped that Reiki is not popular at all.

I have experienced/researched some treatments but Reiki is the best as far as I know. Reiki is the most unique and the most effective, it can really heal any disease. Some have asked, “Is Reiki effective on neural diseases?” but this healing is not limited only to neural, but to all diseases such as internal organs, hurts, burns, and so on, as you desired.

The Reiki Ryoho is considered a spiritual technique, as the name “Rei” shows, but as for me, I think it is a physical technique, based on my experience of healing more than a hundred people. Some think that Reiki is equal to the miracle healings done by Christ, but I am not a great person like Christ, and I do not have great character, either.

Some people look at the spiritual aspect of human beings and interpret every social phenomenon into spiritual matters, but other people consider every social phenomenon practically and physically. I am a person belonging to the latter group. I am a normal and common person so that I do not have to have spiritual ambitions to heal people physically. At least, my healing technique is NOT a super-natural matter at all currently. I consider Reiki as a normal and physiological treatment.

Let me talk about some examples instead of its theory.

Recently, a high school teacher in Urawa city took his 4-year-old daughter to my clinic. A person told him about my healing and introduced him to me. The girl had a blind eye and the other eye was becoming blind, too. The father took her to various doctors, but his daughter’s eye was not recovered. Then the father took her to my clinic. I thought that her trouble was not only in the eyes but other parts, and I scanned the whole body. I felt her stomach, nose, and kidneys had trouble, which appeared strongly in her eyes. I tried my Ryoho 5, 6 times and she was able to see. The father, who said he could offer his eyes to his daughter, now started to learn Reiki to heal his daugher.

Next example was last year, in early December. A doctor said that the famous painter Mr. O was going to die in 3 hours. 2 hours had passed when I got the telephone call from his daughter, at midnight, but 1 hour remained. My wife and I rushed to the suburb of Komazawa, it took 1 hour to get there, and we arrived at 3 hours and a half since the doctor’s pronouncement. The family was awaiting us in front of the house and said that he had became unconscious 1 hour before we arrived. We tried to heal his heart, put our hands on the heart, and sent Reiki energy there for 6 hours without drinking a drop of tea. Mr.O was attacked by valvular disease of the heart, but after our effort of 6 hours’ healing, the doctor announced that “Mr. O has recovered to the safe level.” The next evening, his temperature became normal and his pulse became 80 per minute. I can say that a pulse of 120 / minute will be decreased to 80 / minute by a few hours of Reiki healing. It is not so difficult.

Another example, when Mr. Ino, who was called “god in Onda (name of town),” was going to die, 4 famous doctors came for him. They pronounced his death 4 times, and on the last morning his family took water to moisten the dying man’s lips (this is a Japanese custom to attend the deathbed of a family member), but we promised his family that he would be recovered. Mr. Ino recovered at last, and the doctors left his house.
I have experienced such a miracle case many times. However, those are not miracles at all, we just gave patients healing treatment physiologically.

Now I will explain how I heal diseases. I just put my hands on the affected part. I do not push, I do not pat, either. I think this is the interesting point of this healing technique. I scan the whole body of the patient, feel the source of disease, give healing on that part, and the healing effect is big and quick. The way that I can find the source of disease is that I feel pain when I put my hands at the source point. The strength of pain differs depending on the disease, but I am not sure of the relation between the strength of pain and the state of disease. And my hands feel pain not only at the part that patients tell me, but also at the part of the source of disease, and I can find the healing point easily. In most cases, doctors know the affected part because patients tell them where and how they feel affected, but I do not need any information from patients. Patients can be suspicious about my healing. Anyway, the big change will occur at the affected part in 30 minutes – 2 hours.

For example, there is a man with serious heart disease. His pulse is 85 per minute and he feels pain in the heart. His doctor says that this is stricture of the heart. In this case, when I put my hand(s) on his heart area, I do not feel any pain on my palm(s). As I move my hand(s) down to the stomach, intestines, kidney area, I feel pain on my palm(s) and I make effort to heal these parts by Reiki. After a while, his heart stress is gone. This is the case of Mr. Takeo Kawai, an actor of new players’ group.

A question is raised here.

Why is his heart disease healed? Why do the healer’s palms have pain? These are the big questions. It is really mysterious that the disease which the doctor gave up can be healed by putting hands on the body. This phenomenon cannot be explained but tends to be understood as a spiritual phenomenon. In my opinion, the blood flow in my hands got to be activated well since I received teaching by Mr. Hayashi. I cannot open the method and process of Hayashi’s teaching, but it is true that his teaching gave me the healing power, very strong, fine, and wonderful work on the peripheral nerves of my hands.

Anyway, when my hands with activated blood are put on the patient’s body, I think my blood vibration may promote the patient’s blood vibration. Blood current, vibration may become the same. I believe that is why disease is healed. I think this system has similar meaning in various medical treatments such as blood transfusions and catheter treatments.

Even if my understanding of blood current matching between healer and patient can explain the phenomenon, everyone will question how the blood can be affected by healing through the skin. I think that the skin-barrier is no problem for healing, considering what we know of skin transplantation. Currently, medicine can make a nose for a syphilis patient whose nose is lost. The skin of another part (such as knee) is cut and moved to the nose to make a new nose. The cut skin is dead at least one hour, but once the dead skin is put on the nose, it connects to the nose, blood flows, and the nerves work normally.

When I talk about this Reiki story, most “intelligent” people will say, “It must be so-called animal electricity.” However, current science does not define what is electricity. There are some surprising examples such as practices of great Edison, but he does not explain about the nature of electricity. Therefore, what is Reiki cannot be defined and explained easily now. In my opinion, the effect of Reiki healing can be the work of ether or something, but the ether is not examined scientifically either, and people will laugh at me. But I think it is very close to the Reiki effect to explain it using “ether” when I apply this healing to someone and I need to tell him/her about Reiki. I cannot explain clearly and correctly, I am a person who does not know differentiation and integral calculus, should I study advanced mathematics to explain what is Reiki clearly? Anyway, now I am satisfied with the practical effect of Reiki.

At the very first time, I did laugh at this treatment.

One day I said to my friend, “Well, I do not feel well and I think I will start to play golf. How do you think?” The friend said, “There is a better practice than golf,” and he told me about Reiki. His father used to be the president of Japan Bank, and he himself is a great business man who has experience of studying in the UK. Such a great person told me about Reiki, I became interested in it, and my wife and child and I started to learn it, though, to tell you the truth, I did not believe it at that time.

Soon after I started to learn Reiki, I went traveling to give a speech with Mr.Saijo and Mr.Miyajima, and I met a man who was crying because a fish bone was stuck in his throat. I tried Reiki treatment on him without expectation, and the pain was gone. I knew the essence of this treatment at that time, and I cannot laugh at Reiki method anymore.

I became a student of Hayashi by introduction of an acquaintance. I paid a large amount of money to learn this method. There are grades such as Shoden (elementary level) and Okuden (advanced level), but I am a beginner who cannot reach the Okuden level. I do not know well about it but I heard there are more grades or classes. The people of this treatment are so modest that they do not like to advertise such a good treatment. It is odd that such a modest people make grades and receive money of entrance, but that is their privilege and everyone should accept the vested rights. Because of this reason, I do not have freedom to show you how to get the healing ability and what to do in detail. I feel very sorry that I cannot talk about it in detail, but I do not want to harm those modest people’s lives.

Well, I think I can talk about Reiki learning briefly. When you start to learn Reiki, you need to practice 1.5 hours per day, and continue the practice 5 days. Some can heal others from the first day of learning. This treatment is such an easy way to learn. A certain consciousness, which is hidden in everyone as the 6th sense, becomes activated by the training and the healing ability appears. The Master gives the lesson in a very simple and easy way. This ability is common to human beings and everyone but babies can use this ability to heal others. The healing way is to put your hands on the affected part. No other treatment method is easier than our Reiki treatment. I really think that I want to disclose this treatment method not only to a special group of people but general people, but I cannot do that because of the reason that I stated above. All I can do is to talk about the existence of Reiki treatment in order to have as many people know it as possible.

Let me add a few current, interesting stories at last.

I visited a dying widow in Fukushima prefecture this month. She is a house wife of a rich family where I worked as a helper in my youth. Last summer I visited her and applied Reiki treatment on her twice. She was very pleased that her headache became lighter and she wanted to receive my treatment again. I am very busy with working in Tokyo currently, but I owe her a great debt of gratitude, and I made 6 free days to visit her. I put my hands on her 7 or 8 hours each day, and the shadow of death was gone. The widow was recovered.
While I visited the widow this time, I met another patient whom I also put my hands on last summer. The patient suffered from rough palms’ skin for 40 years. The palms were thick, solid, and cracked more than the heels of physical laborers. It was summer and the backs of the hands were smooth. This disease seems common around this area, and I could see the same rough palms with a niece of the master of the inn where I stayed. The master said that his niece’s rough palms were checked at Fukushima hospital but no effective treatment was given. I thought that I could not heal it with my ability, but I tried Reiki for 10 minutes without expectation, but for my own experience. Then both her palms became soft and smooth with 10 minutes’ treatment.

It is February and mid-winter now, but when I saw the patient this time, both her hands and palms were still soft and clean. I was surprised, and people around her were surprised, too.
(Editor’s Note: The two facts of healing were reported with pictures by a newspaper of Fukushima.)

Well, now I remember another story related to hands.

It was the end of last year, a famous architect suffered from stiff fingers produced by long years of hard work making drawings. He could not write figures and letters. If he tried, the pencil dropped from his fingers when he wrote two lines of letters. He went to a medical doctor for three months but the fingers were not recovered, and he visited me at last. I was not confident that I could cure it at this time, either, but I tried for 10 minutes by holding his two stiff fingers, great fingers for an architect. I held a dark life of a person in my hands. About 10 minutes later, the fingers began moving. His life became active, and after three treatments of my Reiki healing, his fingers were completely recovered as before.

I can tell you my stories of Reiki a lot but suspicious people cannot believe it, and it is natural for you not to believe such a story without experience. If you have some disease, I can cure it in front of you. But it is not interesting to cure light and easy diseases, because doctors can cure them, too. If you find a patient with a serious disease the doctor cannot deal with, please take the patient to my place. If the patient cannot go out, I can visit the patient’s place. But I am busy, as you know, I am asked by two play theaters to write three scenarios within a week to be in time for next month’s play. I cannot deal with many patients but for only one patient with serious disease, I think I try to cure the patient to test my hand healing ability.

(February, The editor is responsible for the wording of this article.)

Bronwen and Frans Stiene

Bronwen and Frans Stiene are the co-founders of the International House of Reiki and co-authors of The Reiki Sourcebook, The Japanese Art of Reiki, Your Reiki Treatment, The A-Z of Reiki Pocketbook and the Reiki Techniques Card Deck. Bronwen and Frans teach in the USA, Europe and Australia. Visit the Courses page to find a course near you.