Following the huge 1923 earthquake which ripped through Tokyo causing firestorms and destruction on an almost unknown scale, Usui and his students gave Reiki to countless suffering people. Their dedication and compassion meant that his Reiki system became known to many people who studied.

The original society founded at this time in Tokyo – the Usui Reiki Gakkai still exists.

Through Mikao Usui’s teaching career, he taught many people Reiki. They in turn, passed this system to their own students.

For people particularly outside of Japan, Reiki was spread through a retired naval officier – Chujiro Hayashi who was a prolific teacher. One of his students, a Hawaiian Japanese lady called Hawayo Takata who was a widow and single mother, was singlehandedly responsible for the spread of Reiki from Hawaii to the US and from there around the world.

With the enormous popularity of Reiki today, this life-enhancing system has been taught to millions of people worldwide in various forms. This is partly due to the huge popularity and hunger for Reiki that spread across the Western world and led to many variations in the way Reiki was taught.

In the early 1990s there were discoveries of Usui’s original Reiki teachings. The memorial of Usui was found by western teachers and many of Reiki’s missing links were uncovered. Revelations included the discovery of a living Reiki tradition in Japan, with additional methods as taught by the Reiki Gakkai (Reiki Learning Society). A number of Usui’s notes and manuals were also shared and this led to greater discoveries which were later made more generally available. Western Reiki teachers gained new information regarding the system as it had been taught in Japan and this was pieced together with established systems of Reiki in the West.