Usui Mikao is known for making reiki accessible to a large audience over the past century (he learned the practice from a study of ancient Eastern texts and through his personal experience) and earned great respect in Japan following his use of reiki to treat large numbers of earthquake victims in 1923. He trained other reiki practitioners until his death in 1926. The healing practice of reiki gained widespread recognition in countries outside Japan over the past several decades, and this expansion of familiarity with reiki was accompanied by divergent views on how it should be practised.
In its essence, reiki is a specific methodology for accessing subtle energy fields (often referred to as ‘the human biofield’ when addressing the dimension of response of human beings to a greater repository of energy (in turn, referred to as ‘the universal energy field’) that can facilitate healing). Fascinating research has been conducted to gain deeper insight into the nature of these subtle fields. Some of the research has been conducted by leading scientists in the physical sciences, who published their work related to subtle energy fields in parallel with their paradigm-friendly mainstream research.
Reiki/energy work is a fundamentally person-specific procedure. As for the healing modalities mentioned in other posts on this page, clinical studies have been steadily increasing in number and reiki is being adopted in ever-greater numbers of hospitals and orthodox medical practices as a complementary treatment that demonstrates meaningful and valuable results in the overall healing care of patients.
My personal experience over the past several years has formed (and continues to form) the way I treat my clients as a practitioner. Deep respect, thorough preparation, and proper consultation form the foundation of a meaningful treatment.