August Birthdays

Phyllis in Kazakhstan

This morning I was out in my garden picking raspberries and remembered that the person who taught me to pick the ones that are past their best as well as the good ones, so that more will ripen, was Phyllis Lei Furumoto.  I was visiting her in Idaho for a Reiki conference and she kindly let me stay with her.  In return for this one of my tasks was picking raspberries!

It was Phyllis’ birthday on the 22^nd August, so I have been thinking about her.  She loved to teach and
share what she learned from her grandmother about Reiki.  She also travelled a lot to spend time with Reiki people all over the world.  When staying with her in Idaho I realised that she had spent very little time actually living in that house because she travelled so much.

After learning Reiki and becoming a Reiki master, she had travelled with her grandmother, Hawayo Takata, which is no doubt where she learned so much about Reiki and the particular way of teaching it that her grandmother held.  It was therefore no surprise to many that she became Takata’s successor in holding the practice.

Mikao Usui

August is also the month Mikao Usui, the founder of the healing system now known world-wide as ‘Reiki’.  He was born on 15^th August 1865 in Japan, at an interesting time in Japan’s history when the rule of the Shoguns came to an end and the emperor was reinstated.  After many decades closed to the outside world, Japan opened up once more, enabling exchanges of ideas with the wider world.  Usui clearly made the most of this, like Phyllis he also travelled to many places, including the USA, to study.  He spent many years exploring various spiritual texts to try to find out how healing could be
given in the way it was described in the Bible and in Buddhist texts.  He struggled to find the answer, until he spent 21 days on Mount Kurama near Kyoto, meditating without food.  On the final day he experienced something that showed him how to heal himself.  He discovered shortly after that he could also use this healing for others and eventually that he could also pass on this gift of healing.  Reiki energy was already well known in Japan, but this particular method of using and passing it on through initiation is something unique to Usui and it is this that has enabled it to be shared around the world.  After developing the Usui system of Reiki Healing he travelled around Japan to teach and give healing.

We honour both of these people for their dedication to the exploration and practice of the healing art we know as Reiki and for their willingness to go wherever they needed to, to share what they understood.   So in August we celebrate two important birthdays!