Amazing healing sessions between humans and a resident wolf with a neurological disorder. One of many interactions at Earthfire Institute that deepens our understanding and connection with wildlife. For more information, visit www.earthfireinstitute.org

REIKI AND THE POWER OF ORAL TRADITION

with Grand Master Phyllis Lei Furumoto

Saturday, July 25,2015
10:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.
San Francisco LGBT COMMUNITY CENTER
1800 MARKET STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CA
WORKSHOP FEE: $100

REGISTRATION: http://www.sfreikicenter.com/events

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Edited from a transcript of a tape recording of Mrs. Hawayo Takata.
The recording was made in 1979 when Mrs. Takata was 78 years old.
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Mrs. Hawayo Takata asked her teacher, “Dr. Hayashi, will you permit and consent that I have one class free for all the people that have helped me through this year of sorrow and illness. I would like to teach them and give them a free lesson in Reiki so that they may benefit.”

Dr. Hayashi responded, “Now that you are well, you can return your gratitude by giving them treatments when they need it, but I would not hold a class for them. They will never use it for it will have no value to them because they received it free.”

Having heard that she said to herself, “Well, I have to try.” And so she gave free lessons to her best friends and waited.

One day as she was hanging laundry one friend came by and said, “My daughter didn’t go to school today because she had a little stomach ache. So I brought her to you.”

Mrs. Takata asked, “Did you give her a treatment? Didn’t you even try?”

She said, “No, why should I? You’re the expert that lives next to me. It’s easier to bring her to you than to do it myself because I know she’ll get well.”

And so that was one disappointment.

And then on the other side of the town, another friend said, “My daughter has the flu and the teacher said go home because it’s contagious. So I brought my daughter; I want you to give her a treatment.”

Mrs. Takata asked, “Didn’t I teach you?”

She said, “Yes, but why should I use it when I have a car and can run to you? You’re the expert here, and when you do it I know she is going to get well.”

Mrs. Takata responded, “You never even tried to use it?”

She said “No.”

There wasn’t any gratitude whatsoever.

Mrs. Takata hid in her house and cried. And then she looked towards Japan, and bowed her head to Dr. Hayashi, and also towards Dr. Usui’s grave. She said, “Forgive me for being wrong. I did not help any person because they did not accept this gratefully and spiritually, because they didn’t spend a penny. It is very sad, but I will turn them down hereafter.

On Saturday, January 31st, 2015, Christopher Tellez of the San Francisco Reiki Center hosted a one-day conference featuring Phyllis Lei Furumoto, the Grandmaster of Usui Shiki Ryoho, the traditional practice of Reiki brought to America by her grandmother, Hawayo Takata. More than fifty Reiki practitioners and masters attended the event. A wonderful lunch was catered by students of the SF Reiki Center.

The theme of the workshop was “Exploring Reiki as a Spiritual Practice: An Individual Choice.” The flyer for the conference offered these details about the topic for the day. Join us for a day of discussion, introspection, connecting and community building. Phyllis Furumoto Sensei brings her profound understanding of the practice of Reiki gathered from her 40 years of personal practice and her connection with the global community. Initiated by Hawayo Takata Sensei and recognized as successor in the practice Usui Shiki Ryoho, she will address the questions regarding Reiki as a spiritual practice and a mystic order.

The top photo shows students of the San Francisco Reiki Center with Brian Brunius, Christopher Tellez, and Phyllis Lei Furumoto.

The bottom photo shows Brian Brunius, Christopher Tellez, and Phyllis Lei Furumoto at the end of the conference.

This is the flyer that was used for the event.

This song was presented by Ellen Montague to the Reiki community at the 2014 NW Reiki Gathering at the Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon. This recording was made of the entire gathering singing the song while Ellen Montague led us.

Ellen Montague of Salem, Oregon is a Reiki master, massage therapist, and practitioner of lomilomi, craniosacral therapy, lymphatic drainage, and much more. She can be contacted through her web site: http://www.cascadebodyworks.com

“Coming Home to Reiki” © 2010 by Ellen Montague

LYRICS

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I’m Coming Home to Reiki
Coming home to be
In the sacred hands
of my community

From the land that feeds me
To the stars above
I’m coming home to Reiki
Home to love

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I was recently reading Brigitte Müller and Horst H. Günther’s 1995 “A Complete Book of Reiki Healing.” In it the authors give two recipes they attribute to Hawayo Takata. I have seen similar versions of these recipes in others books, and thought it might be worth repeating them here. As many know, Takata believed that nutrition is an important foundation for health, and she was very careful about what food and drink she consumed. Following is an excerpt from pages 16 and 17 of the book.

Mrs. Takata had her own health recipes. The following are two of her recommendations:

GARDEN SALAD

1 small cabbage finely cut

2-3 medium-size red beets, grated raw

4 celery sticks, finely cut

1 small head of cauliflower, finely cut

1 apple (can be added for a special taste variation)

This makes a very large serving. It is recommended to reduce the size of the ingredients to make a fresh salad every day.

TAKATA’S REJUVENATING DRINK

1 grapefruit

2 small red beets, peeled

2 handfuls of cut cabbage

1 1/2 cups of water

4 tablespoons peeled almonds

4 tablespoons sunflower seeds

Mix in a blender until completely liquid, and then add 6 tablespoons Lecithin powder and 2 tablespoons brewers yeast. Now take half the mixture and add a half gallon of spring water. Drink several glasses daily.

Book Overview:

We are all Healers
by Sally Hammond

The following passages, excerpted from Sally Hammond’s classic 1974 book (Ballantine Books, New York) about spiritual healing, We are all Healers, documents a brief encounter she had with Mrs. Hawayo Takata at a conference on spiritual healing in 1971. The excerpt starts on page 283, and continues for about four more pages.

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I was suddenly aware of a crackling bundle of energy in the seat beside me — a small, black-haired woman who appeared to be Japanese. She was from Hawaii, and had flown in from Honolulu just for the symposium, she later told me. Her name was Hawayo Hiromi Takata, and she wore fire-engine red slacks, a tunic splashed with tropical flowers and her hair very short and straight.

Mrs. Worrall had just finished speaking and Mrs. Takata Could hardly contain her admiration. ‘She really knows what she’s talking about,’ she said to me, eyes sparkling. The rest of the speakers made her very impatient. Then she mentioned that she, too, was a healer and practiced in Waikiki. I quickly made a date with her for lunch.

When we had filled our trays and found a table, her story began tumbling out. ‘I studied in Japan under a great master,’ she said. ‘I am a teacher of healing. What’s the sense of having a good mind if the body is riddled with illness? I believe in the very simple method. It takes me only four days to teach it, and two hours a day. Why struggle for years when you can have it so quickly? I teach it to housewives who can use it practically every day.’

Then you believe we are all healers? I asked.

‘Yes, true. We are all born with it,’ she said. ‘But I am the engineer, the technician. You buy a new TV, you have to plug in the socket and get the energy. I give my pupils the contact with the great universal life force that does the healing — I have the secret of how to tune into it!

‘From the first day they can use their hands to heal. The fifth day I teach ideals and principles.’

How did you learn to do it? I asked, and she told me her teacher had been Chujiro Hayashi of Tokyo who had been the chosen disciple of Mikao Usui, founder of the Usui System. ‘He had a PhD from Chicago, an old Japan scholar,’ she said. Initiated in her thirties she was made a master in 1938 after going up by degrees. There were seven chosen to be teachers but all the others have passed on and today she’s the only living teacher of the system. ‘It is a method Usui revived from the Buddhist scriptures, a way of tuning into the reiki — that’s the Japanese word for “universal force”.’

I was amazed when she said she was now 72 and had been practicing and teaching healing for 37 years. There was not a line in her face and her body was slim and sprightly. ‘I am an old woman,’ she said, smiling, without a hint of self-pity.

‘I was very much impressed by Mrs. Worrall,’ Takata continued. ‘She’s getting results! That’s more important than a lot of words. Of course, it’s a good thing these fine young scientists are doing all this research, otherwise the healers would not be recognized. But when are they going to crack through and get going? How long will it be? Another 20 years?

‘In Honolulu we had a forum with the AMA. The president of the AMA tested me. He wanted to know what I did, and the meeting lasted from eight in the evening until one in the morning. At the end he asked me, “Alright, Takata, I think I understand you and what you’re doing. Do you recommend that all doctors learn this?”

‘I said, “not only doctors but ministers, too.” And I explained that in the church you have a large congregation and if the minister can help them by fixing their aches and pains they will listen to his sermons! The doctors know the techniques of medicine and psychiatry, and if they learn my treatment, I told him, the art of healing will then be a complete whole.’

I asked if she did the laying-on of hands and absent healing. She replied, ‘Yes, but it’s a higher degree. I learned it direct from the master.

‘He would tell me, “There is no such thing as I think so.” He was positive. If you were not positive, he just balled you out. He’d say, “That’s the wrong attitude. It shall be done. It’s not you, it’s the cosmic energy doing it. How dare you doubt the energy?”’

Takata said that since reaching 61 she has not worked full-time. But she gets up at 5 o’clock and at 6:30 AM plays a few holes of golf. On Thursdays she plays 18 holes and on Saturdays does her washing, ironing and cooking, and puts her food in the freezer. The last two years she’s been traveling all over the world. ‘But when I’m home, I work.’

‘I like teaching in groups of 10 to 12 because there’s more competition,’ she said briskly, ‘and they can compare notes.’ Her pupils come to her by word-of-mouth, and she teaches many doctors and their wives, and even a few celebrities. She named a famous American heiress but made me promise to keep it confidential.

I asked if she would give a few details of her lightning four-day course, and she was willing — up to a point.

‘The first lesson, I explain the universal life force, what it is, and I explain the workings of cosmic energy and how to make the contact. I maneuver it so they have it. So far I have never made a mistake. They come to the lecture and they get it from me.

‘The second lesson is how to use it. This is a demonstration of applying healing from the neck up, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, glands of the neck. I teach them how.

‘The third day I teach them how to treat the organs in the front of the body. The fourth day I teach them how to apply it to the back. I take the body in sections so they don’t forget or they’d get mixed up.

‘The fifth day is the mental and spiritual lecture – mental attitudes, meditation. When they acquire this Reiki it is a complete treatment for the physical body, the mental and the spiritual being.’

She said it also applies to plant life and animals and even to goldfish. ‘Anything that has life accepts it,’ she said, ‘and with babies it’s much, much more simple because the cause of the sickness is new. When it comes to chronic illness, it takes time. I work on the cause and effect. Remove the cause and there shall be no effect! Isn’t that sensible?’

She added that she gives her pupils the energy over five days, little by little because it’s so powerful. ‘I have to test them and see if they’re doing it right.’

But how do you plug into the universal life force? I asked, trying not to sound impatient. ‘It’s a secret,’ Takata said firmly, ‘but before I die I want to teach as many people as I can, spread it to as many people as possible and create many teachers.’ When I asked if there was any danger of the secret dying with her, she said, ‘I will reveal it in 1973.’

A Buddhist, she said, ‘We healers recognize God because the healing power is the God power.’ She accepts contributions to her church.

For healing lessons she charges a fee. ‘Not too much, not too little, for some it’s free. In a group it’s cheaper.’ Most of her pupils are just plain ordinary people with common sense, she declared.

In brief, Takata says her method is a way of making contact with the healing power quicker, and it comes straight out of old Buddhist scriptures.

I asked if her pupils learn to heal themselves and her eyes flashed. ‘That’s number one. If they can’t do that what is the good?

‘I have been asked to write about it but I have no time,’ she said as we walked back to the auditorium, and when we were settled in our seats and the next speaker was announced, she muttered ‘Scientists and all their theories are okay, but when? When?’

Since my chance encounter with this dynamic little Hawaiian healer I’ve wished many times that I had a ‘quicker’ way of making contact with the healing power, that I knew the old Buddhist secret for speeding up my development as a healer…