Have you read Thích Nhất Hạnh’s ‘Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet’? If you don’t know, Thích Nhất Hạnh was a Vietnamese Zen Monk who helped make the wisdom of Buddhism accessible to a modern western audience. His words are a shear delight. They both guide us into deep meditative calm and weave a profound gratitude and reverence for the simple acts of being – breathing, walking on the earth, eating food, caring for loved ones. It didn’t dawn on me until I read the book, that his body of work is an expression of a Buddhist practice that went hand in hand throughout his life with environmental and political activism. At points in the book you feel that the earth herself is speaking through his words. You can feel his deep relationship with the earth:
“When you wake up and you see that the Earth is not just the environment, the Earth is us, you touch the nature of inter-being. And at that moment you can have real communication with the Earth. That is the highest form of prayer. In that kind of relationship, you will have the love, strength, and awakening you need to change your life.”
When I first came across this quote in 2023 I thought `ahh I can use this to describe the experience of practicing Reiki’. I longed for people to know that Reiki as the deep personal practice it was intended be first and foremost, is a wonderful and beautiful doorway to directly touching this “nature of inter-being”, a sacred intimacy and communication with the Earth exactly as Thích Nhất Hạnh relates. I realised through more study that what I was experiencing is also described by the term Animism, or seeing that the universe itself is a living being. Reiki is the beginning of Animism.
The Energy of the Deep Woods
Take this definition of Reiki shared by Masaki Nishina in his book `Reiki and Japan’ which he lifted from a common Japanese dictionary:
Reiki 霊気 – Noun : Reiki, the sacred energy, filling the deep forest1
Do you remember that day, that we walked up the mountain we didn’t know was sacred, and we came to a place, a dip, a saddle, a grove, and there it took us, just like that. Our eyes became clear, our mind became clear, all that existed was the sound of our breath and the forest, and the clear knowing that we were part of something big. the sweet rapture of that strange and mysterious vastness. And later, when this meeting had passed, we knew our life had changed shape somehow, we felt a strange renewal.
This is what Thích Nhất Hạnh talks about. This energy that we feel is the energy and experience of inter-being. In harder terms, this is the beginning of the animistic perspective, to feel a softening of the boundary between us and the natural world, to sense an intelligence in action of which we are clearly only one part. It’s written all through the language of Reiki but rarely is it so explicit. Reiki as it is commonly known in the West as `universal life force energy’ – the universal energy of all life, the force of the animistic. Reiki is the animistic force. Usui Reiki Ryoho, the original practice from which modern versions of Reiki stem, so named by its founder Mikao Usui, is a practice to work with this animistic life force daily to change one’s life and over time attain what Thich Naht Hanh spoke about.
Born on a Sacred Mountain
During my first ever stay in Kyoto this June I worked to further deepen my Reiki practice by attending a four day intensive with Hyakuten Inamoto Sensei founder of the Komyo Reiki Do lineage. On the fifth day our group took a fun train trip together and visited Mount Kurama. This sacred mountain is mentioned on Mikao Usui’s memorial stone as the location of his 21 day austerity practices and consequent great enlightenment. This experience is what spurned the creation of his beautiful system of therapy. My shared experience on Kurama Yama with my group was visceral and beautiful, but I needed more time to really deepen into it alone.
So days later, a second trip there to listen, witness, be taught if that was offered and see if some poetry would emerge. Climbing the path this place took me for the second time; tree canopy on top of tree canopy, nothing but emerald clumps rising up the quiet mountain pass; red Tori gates and Buddhist shrine on the right; sacred waters trickling; then further up, ascending through a large wooden Tori gate to a Shinto shrine. Offerings made, then up and around an elbow. And that’s when my eyes started to clear, and my mind started to clear and I was realised I was becoming engulfed in the presence of this mountain:
The atmosphere refined
The mysterious atmosphere (Reiki – noun)
Dark and light dance apart
Reflecting each other’s brilliance
Our deep ancestors of body and heart
Knew this too
Of course
And revered it too
Reverence is a story
The bones know well
– A poem from my first trip to Japan and my second trip to Mt Kurama, June 2026
Eventually you are gifted with a rest at the courtyard of Kurama Dera temple and if you like, the famous `power spot’. Beyond, a further final strenuous ascent and then the famously photographed roots of the Japanese Red Cedar tree grove are revealed right there, but for real. This is the supposed place where Usui undertook his practice and when I stood there I finally understood. Amongst a grove, of trees. A circle, of trees. Where else, who else, could better provide an initiation than a sacred mountain, its ancient channels of secret springs and a stand of tree beings? This is the birthplace of Usui Reiki Ryoho. Animism.
“One day, he climbed Kurama-yama and after 21 days of a severe discipline without eating, He suddenly felt One Great Reiki over his head and attained enlightenment and he obtained Reiki Ryoho.”
– From Mikao Usui’s Memorial Stone – translated by Hyakuten Inamoto2
How do we Use Reiki to Connect with the Animate?
Reiki doesn’t carry the drums, the many spirit beings and plant medicine of modern shamanistic traditions, but what does do is help us see very quickly that the world is alive, that this energy is real and that spirit is imminent in all things. It helps us bring healing to our inner world and to work to come into right relationship with all beings, starting with ourselves. The more we practice diligently, the more we can embody our inherent place amongst all things – the heart of the animistic principle. With experience we can witness the profundity of the animate in our living room as much as the deep woods. We just have to use the tools Mikao Usui gathered for us and use them well.
How do we use the system well? To answer that I use the description defined by Senior Teachers and practitioners Bronwen Logan and Frans Stiene. Though their teachings diverge, they both have a shared foundation, formed from learnings with Japanese teachers, extensive research and almost three decades of dedicated practice. Here I describe the five unique elements they defined from this work and their purpose or, `how we use the system well’:
- Somatic-energetic touch therapy or ‘hands-on-healing’ – calm the body-mind, embody difficult feelings, increase vitality and embody spirit. Foster physical and emotional healing of the body-mind
- Meditation practices – generate focus, mindful awareness of our body-mind, presence, groundedness and an awakening to our nature
- Esoteric symbols and mantras – invoke, develop and awaken fundamental aspects our spiritual/energetic essence; develop focus and presence
- Reiju (Attunement) – ritual blessing – witness and awaken to our ultimate and pure spiritual essence
- Precepts – vibratory contemplative tools, guide posts and direction to cultivate skilful compassionate action and develop right relationship with all beings
For myself, the turning point in my practice with these elements, was learning that they are for my own development instead of being aids to support me in providing more powerful spiritual healing to others. The turning point was learning that to go as deep as Reiki could go, I had to learn to embody the practice in my life. As I did, this changed my whole world and understanding. Healing happened and continues to happen again and again. The layers of fear, worry and anger that I picked up through my life and my actions, more and more have dropped away and more and more of who I really am has manifested. Very simple. I have the `love, strength, and awakening’ of Thích Nhất Hạnh and I `touch the nature of inter-being’.
Ostensibly I’ve answered our question here, to use the system well – just practice it for yourself first and not others, and practice it as part of your life. It may still not make complete sense I have to admit, and the answer is `you just have to try it’. Until you visit Kyoto, don’t really know what Kyoto is like. But I still feel like I haven’t delivered on my promise, so let’s go a little deeper and clearer. And to do that let’s orient the five elements of the system back to our initial provocation – how Reiki birthed me into the animistic.
“Real Communication with the Earth”
I hate to do this because we get attached to intellectual ideas about a thing, and then set up expectations – but sometimes we still need enough words to carry us forward. So hopefully these words can just carry us forward until we can drop them by the side of the road. This is how I describe each of the elements of the system in relation to birthing the animate perspective:
- Somatic energetic touch therapy or ‘hands-on-healing’ – be safe in the body, experiencing a softening of the boundary self and universe
- Meditation practices – focus our mind, let go, associate less with our ego self
- Energetic symbols and mantras – be grounded as the soil, expansive as the sky and present in the timeless space of inter-being
- Reiju (Attunement) – lower the boundary between self and other, bare witness to the cosmos and the land within and without, experience relationality with the land first hand
- Precepts – embody compassionate considerate relations
Here are some reflections from Mikao Usui, later in his life as he trained his 2,000 students:
“The Natural Law of the Great Universe and each human spirit as a small universe must be constantly united and exist as One.”
“The Universe exists in me, and I exist in the Universe.”
- From Reiki Author and Teacher Hiroshi Doi
This is the nature of our interconnectedness revealed through the spiritual practice of Usui Reiki Ryoho. And through this we see first, that we too are already a spirit of the land. We’re not some separate human that is connecting with the land. We are already intimately woven into `all that is’. And it’s through this realisation, we can begin to better relate to our fellow beings of the land, water and sky. We can learn from our tree teachers, from our mountain teachers, from our bird teachers. As long as nature remains something `out there’ beyond the human world, then we’re caught in false distinctions, self-other, me-the universe. When the distinction between ‘out there’, and ‘in here’ starts to fade, then everything changes. That’s Usui Reiki.
Why Reiki is Very Good for `Modern’ Humans to Remember the Animate
This modern society that we are bound to promotes disconnection, emotional numbing, a materialistic focus and the unitisation of human beings. I find that the tools of Reiki very quickly snap me out of this spell of the so-called `modern world’. When I practice Joshin Kokyu-Ho meditation, when practice hands-on-healing (teate 手当て) and when I practice with the symbols and mantras and Reiju ritual I am within 10 minutes or less back in the mind of the sacred.
A friend recently related several stories of feeling a clear sacred presence in wilder places at different times in life. In one story she explained how as a young adult, she and some friends ventured to the purported haunted hill near their agricultural college. There they passed through a threshold said to have a strange presence. When she and one of the friends did pass through, they felt this clear presence, this renewal and refreshing of spirit. It was so beneficial they returned again and again to experience this renewal. Spirit in place. We long for this. It’s right here, right now. In older animistic cultures, it’s normal to experience this spirit in place and this renewal regularly as part of life and culture. In so-called `modern’ cultures, it takes a little work, but we can reclaim it. And one way I can recommend is the very simple and deep Usui Reiki Ryoho.
Let me offer you a final poem:
Come home, come home
Great being
Come inside
Together us both
To the place
Where the wild geese of Mary Oliver
Reside
And swim ‘cross the vast sky
And beat their wings
To the wildness, inside
Let’s reflect on Thích Nhất Hạnh’s quote one more time:
“When you wake up and you see that the Earth is not just the environment, the Earth is us, you touch the nature of inter-being. And at that moment you can have real communication with the Earth. That is the highest form of prayer. In that kind of relationship, you will have the love, strength, and awakening you need to change your life.”
Wake up!!
Footnotes
1. Reiki and Japan – A Cultural View of Western and Japanese Reiki, Masaki Nishina, 2017
2. komyoreikido-international.net/about-reiki-and-history.html