There are many aspects of Home Study learning that make it better than the face to face workshops. For many students, these aspects more than compensate for the lack of face to face time spent with the teacher – of course, it is not for everyone, but for many, it is the preferred way of learning Reiki.

Home study or distance learning as it applies to Reiki has long been misunderstood due to the confusion around the Reiki ‘attunements’.  Reiki attunements are what activate Reiki to flow in your system and this does require a real-live Reiki Master to carry out the attunement.  However, it does not have to be done face to face.  Much like when we learn to send Reiki at Reiki Level 2, Reiki is not bound by geography, and attunements are equally successful done face to face or via distance.

​Our home study Reiki 1 class involves 4 attunements, these are done by Elaine Grundy.  So to be clear, it is true, you cannot learn Reiki if it is solely from a book or you download something from the internet, but the combination of online information, plus distance attunements is what makes these classes effective and powerful.

Who chooses To learn Reiki Mikao Usui KYSA by Home Study?
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A home study is an excellent way for people without access to a face to face class to learn Reiki.  If you live geographically far away from your Teacher it means you can still learn Reiki without traveling to a class. Maybe there are teachers in your area but you do not feel connected to them. For many students, learning Reiki from the right teacher is important.
Many of our home study students studied Reiki many years ago but wish to refresh or update their knowledge and they are attracted to our down-to-earth way of teaching but prefer to learn at home rather than re-sit another face to face class.
In our busy world, many students choose home study as they find it difficult to fit in a face to face class in between their home or work commitments.
And others simply enjoy the process of being able to take their time and learn at their own pace!

Reiki symbols are used in the practice of Usui Reiki, an alternative form of healing developed nearly 100 years ago in Japan by Mikao Usui. The word Reiki is derived from two Japanese words: Rei and ki. Rei means "higher power" or "spiritual power." Ki means "energy." Put together, Reiki can be loosely translated as "spiritual life force energy."

Reiki healers practice attunement (sometimes called initiation) by moving their hands over the body along the lines of the five traditional symbols. These gestures manipulate the flow of universal energy called ki (or qi) through the body with the goal of promoting physical or mental healing.

A typical Reiki session lasts 60 to 90 minutes, and clients are treated either lying down on a massage table or seated. Unlike massage, people can remain fully clothed during the reiki session, and direct physical contact is rare. Practitioners typically begin working either at a client's head or feet, moving slowly along the body as they manipulate a person's ki.

Reiki symbols do not hold any special power themselves. They were devised as teaching tools for reiki students. It is the intention of the practitioner's focus that energizes these symbols. The following five reiki symbols are considered the most sacred. Each may be referred to by its Japanese name or by its intention, a symbolic name that represents its purposes in the practice.

KYSA Reiki Mikao Usui System Now available as Homestudy.

Usui, however, remained determined to find the answer to his questions about his vision. Finally, he met Shingon priest Bonze, who immediately recognized Usui's enormous spiritual potential and took him in his care as a student. Thus Usui became a dedicated Shingon Buddhist. His family was very shocked and baffled by this. He was therefore removed from the family tree. To this day, his family refuses to talk about him. They say that it is against the will of their ancestors to pronounce his name. His daughter even included a clause in her will that her father's name should never be pronounced in her house.

Meanwhile, Usui spent a lot of time and money collecting and studying Buddhist scriptures to follow his newly discovered spiritual path. In particular, he studied the Buddhist healing techniques and energetic disciplines that focused on the use of 'Ki'. Since Kyoto has many large and extensive Buddhist libraries and monasteries with collections of ancient texts, it is very likely that Usui has done a lot of research there.

Another remarkable thing; around the turn of the century hands-on-healing or Teate became very popular in Japan. Toschihiro Eguchi was a very good friend of Mikao Usui. They studied together in the 1920s. Toshihiro Eguchi founded the Tenohira Ryoji Kenkyu kai or the Hand Healing Research Center.

Mikao Usui has never been a western model doctor; he did become a "Zaike Tendai priest" [5], according to the students of Suzuki san. This means that Usui could continue to live with the family without having to stay in a temple, as is normally expected from priests. From the moment Usui became a "zaiki", it is said that he took the Buddhist name Guoho, Gyohan or Gyotse.

In April of the tenth Taisho year (1922), Usui Sensei founded the "Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai", also known as the Usui Reiki Healing Method Learning Society. He opened his first clinic in Aoyama, Tokyo where he practiced Reiki and gave workshops to a large audience. The education of Usui Sensei was mainly focused on achieving enlightenment, becoming one with the source. The healing techniques were part of his spiritual system. Performing treatments was only part of that.

Usui opened its first study center in Harajuku, a suburb of Tokyo. The school was his home, it had a large room that he used for meetings and education. His teaching was a true spiritual doctrine based on the Gokai (the Reiki principles) and leading a decent life.

In the following years he devoted himself to passing on the system, which officially did not yet have a name. Usui referred to it as a "method of achieving personal perfection." During his studies of Shinto and Mahayana Buddhism, he also came into contact with Reiju (energy-building method) and Hatsurei-ho (cleansing for body and mind).

Usui developed seven levels of education. They were numbered from six (lowest level) to zero (highest level). Usui worked with a small manual. It did not contain hand positions for treating others, but basics, meditations and Waka poetry. In the beginning he did nothing according to fixed hand positions, but purely intuitively in the areas of imbalance and pain. When he started teaching in Reiho, he learned that it was necessary to give instructions according to a certain pattern. He called this the Usui Reiki Hikkei.

It is also interesting to know that Usui based his practice on a Tantra that was later added to the Bhaisajayaguru Sutra (the Healing Buddha) - one of the last Sutras to know about Buddhism - and which has become the basis for Shingon Buddhism. He also got his inspiration from the Mahavairocana Sutra and the Dainichi-Kyo. Both sources for this determination do not exclude each other, but do not mention each other.

On September 1, 1923, just before noon, Tokyo and Yokohama were hit by the extremely strong Kanto earthquake of 7.9 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was 75 kilometers from Tokyo. More than 100,000 people died and a myriad of seriously injured. Tokyo and Yokohama went down in flames. It would go down in history as the greatest natural disaster of all time in Japan. Usui Sensei’s method was praised during this emergency because of the relieving and healing effect for the many victims. He did this work mostly for free and during this period passed on to many "Shoden", the starting level of Reiki, so that they too could help treat the large number of injured people with Reiki. Usui Sensei became famous throughout Japan as a result of these successes with Reiki and his merciful and charitable act.

The need for Reiki was enormous. Usui opened larger Reiki clinics and traveled around Japan to talk about Reiki and to initiate people. He passed on his knowledge to more than 2000 people and he trained a number to the Shinpiden level, or the teacher level. They were all Buddhists: four naval officers, five Buddhist nuns, a Christian naval officer, namely Chujiro Hayashi; the rest consisted of ordinary citizens.

In 1924, the Japanese emperor gave Mikao Usui the Kun San To, an award for his merits towards his fellow men. In 1925 he moved with his clinic to Nakano, a suburb of Tokyo. In the meantime Usui Sensei traveled all over Japan to teach in Reiki. It is striking that he mainly came to naval bases and a large part of his students came from the army. Possibly the high degree of discipline played a role. Mikao Usui was a friendly and sometimes a little mischievous man with a constant smile on his lips. He had a "big heart" and belly, and was always in a good mood. He lived and thought not in problems but in possibilities and lessons.

Mikao Usui took over the rules of life that the Japanese emperor Meiji established with the aim of teaching inner peace as a fulfillment of life. Usui always gave the rules of life to his students; they had to read and follow these every day. He became increasingly famous and people often lined up at his house to be treated by him. Mikao Usui first established a clinic in Harajuka near Tokyo in April of the tenth Taisho year (1921). He later also opened clinics in Nagano and Shizuoka. He also founded the Reiki organization Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai. The Japanese Reiki movement is also called Usui Shiki Ryoho.