In the 1984 hit film, The Karate Kid, Daniel LaRusso (played by Ralph Macchio) is injured in his fight against Johnny Lawrence (played by William Zabka). He’s brought back to the locker room and he’s lying supine in pain with the sage Karate master, Mr. Miyagi (played by Pat Morita and gaining him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), standing by his pupil. As an aside to the enduring popularity of this saga, there is now a television series, Cobra Kai, that brings back the original actors, Ralph Macchio and William Zabka, in their roles as Daniel and Johnny as adults to duke it out all over again for another generation.
Back to the locker room in the original film, Daniel wants to win the fight but his leg is in excruciating pain. Mr. Miyagi claps his hands together and begins to heal Daniel so that he can get back in the fight. Did you know about reiki and its martial arts roots?
Well, we don’t know if Mr. Miyagi’s healing hands technique is reiki, but it shows the connection between ancient healing practices and martial artists’ roles in the healing traditions of ancient history.
Reiki, the Japanese ancient healing practice, is inspired by the need for warriors on the battlefield to be able to heal their comrades-in-arms once off the battlefield. In this article, I discuss the history of reiki and its martial arts roots, as an analogy to how interdisciplinary fields (like integrative, complementary medicines) are better than the alternative.
Mikao Usui, Founder of Reiki and His Martial Arts Roots
Reiki is developed by Mikao Usui around the 1920s. What is known about Master Usui (or Usui Sensei) is that his famous and influential ancestors were from the Chiba clan and Hatamoto samurai, a warrior class of ancient Japan whose duties were to defend royalty and other nobility.
As part of a samurai lineage, Usui is trained in the martial arts customs of his family and this opens him to his understandings of reiki. While other styles of “reiki ryoho” are in practice contemporaneously with Usui’s epiphany of the Usui Reiki Ryoho style, his would be the style that endured while the other styles lost popularity and floated into obscurity.
Master Usui uses the teaching style of martial arts, teaching in lineages and tiers of small batches of students, that then in turn teach a small batch of students, to grow his Usui Reiki style to more than 2,000 students throughout Japan in his lifetime. This martial arts-style approach of concentrating on developing a small group of strong practitioners of reiki set it up for the healing modalities nuances to be retained and passed along to future generations.
Qi binds Reiki and Its Martial Arts Roots
Qi (or Chi), the life force energy that flows through every living thing, is the basis from which both reiki and many Chinese and other Eastern martial arts source their abilities. Coming from the ancient spiritual philosophies, qi serves the purpose in reiki of describing the energetic properties that keep a human in homeostasis, or all the regulating functions that maintain life in balance.
Martial artists talk of harnessing qi in many different ways. The qi can be used for internal purposes to benefit your own health and well-being, as is the case with Qigong. Where Qigong is used for healing purposes, you can put this to use in combat as Tai Chi Chuan.
As stated before, on the battlefield in ancient feuds, warriors had accompanying healers to help with incised wounds (from sword or arrow cuts deep into the skin, which would generally be a death sentence in those days). While the battlefield medical practices are little known and sometimes stodgy quality of ancient China and Japan, it can be presumed that at some point and perhaps enduring throughout advancements in traditional medical techniques, martial artists use energy healing as part of their healing practices during wartime. Now in modern times, the US Army is looking at ways to use reiki, yoga, and other natural healing practices for our military servicemembers again.
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This brings us all full circle to the nature of martial arts and reiki. All reputable martial arts impress upon their students the importance of moral virtues and living one’s life in balance. You cannot fight to defend yourself, your family and your country well if you are not honorable and virtuous. If you compare martial arts with reiki, which speaks to healing and defending the body through balancing physical and emotional well-being, do you hear the similarities?
What are your thoughts on reiki and its martial arts roots? Let me know in the comments!