The Line You Would Be Entering
Nine to Ten Levels From Dr. Usui
Reiki passes hand to hand. This is whose hands.
What a lineage actually is
Reiki isn't learned from a book. It's passed โ teacher to student, through a set of attunements that change how energy moves through the body. You cannot give yourself one. Someone has to have received it before they can hand it on.
Which means every Reiki practitioner alive sits at a countable distance from Mikao Usui, who developed the system in Japan in the early 1920s. Count the hands between you and him, and that's your lineage.
Most practicing Reiki Masters today stand fifteen, twenty, or more transmissions from the source. That isn't a criticism. A hundred years is a long time and the line has branched enormously, which is exactly what a living practice does. But it does mean a short line is uncommon, and it's a reasonable thing to ask a teacher about before you study with them.
Mine is nine to ten, depending on how you count the two teachers who trained me together. Here it is, in full.
The line, teacher by teacher
Dr. Mikao Usui
1865โ1926 ยท Founder
Developed the practice that became Usui Shiki Ryoho and taught it at his school in Tokyo until his death. Everything downstream of this point is one continuous chain of hands.
Dr. Chujiro Hayashi
1880โ1940 ยท Usui's student
A former naval officer who trained directly under Usui and ran a Reiki clinic in Tokyo. Much of the hand-position structure Western Reiki still uses was formalized in his clinic.
Hawayo Takata
1900โ1980 ยท Brought Reiki to the West
Born in Hawaii to Japanese parents. She was treated at Hayashi's clinic, trained under him, and carried the practice out of Japan. Before her death in 1980 she initiated twenty-two Masters โ and nearly every Western Reiki lineage in existence traces back through one of them.
Beth Gray
One of Takata's twenty-two
Taught widely across the United States and carried Reiki to Australia in 1983. This is the branch my own line runs down.
Glen Dunning
Robert Brady
Marlene Cleckner
These three names were given to me with my attunement, the way lineage names always are. I don't have their stories, and I'd rather leave a gap here than fill it with something I made up. If you knew any of them, I would genuinely like to hear from you.
Nancy Lennon & Julie Blanchard
My teachers
They attuned me to Reiki I and II in the fall of 2001, and to Reiki III in May of 2004. Julie carried me the rest of the way alone.
Carissa Andrews
Your teacher
Attuned to Reiki Master and Teacher by Julie Blanchard on June 21st, 2008. Eighteen years in the chair since, and twenty-five since that first class.
The certificate
Anyone can write a list of names on a website. Here's the document behind mine.
Usui Shiki Ryoho ยท Reiki Master & Teacher ยท June 21, 2008
Signed by Julie M Blanchard
The one who signed it
Julie M Blanchard ยท Reiki Master & Teacher
Julie attuned me to Master, and then became one of my closest friends. Not a teacher I checked in with once a year. A friend, for thirteen years.
She died on July 21st, 2021, of pancreatic cancer.
I took that photograph. She was working on a master's in psychology and needed headshots, so we spent an afternoon on it. Her family chose it for her obituary.
Her name is on my certificate, and it will be on the certificate of every person I ever attune, and on theirs after that. That is what a lineage is for. It's the only form of continuation any of us actually get.
What a lineage is not
A short line does not make me a better practitioner than someone fifteen transmissions out. It makes my paperwork shorter. Skill, presence, and the willingness to actually sit with a person are earned separately, and I have met people far down long branches who are extraordinary at all three.
I'll say the harder thing too. Almost no one can independently audit a Reiki lineage. Mine was given to me the way they all are โ passed down, name by name, alongside my attunement. The certificate above documents exactly one link of it: Julie's hands to mine, on a date, in writing. Everything above her I am telling you in good faith, exactly as it was told to me, the same as every other practitioner you will ever ask.
If a teacher offers you certainty about a hundred-year-old oral chain, be a little curious about that.
If you'd like to enter this line
Sovereign Light is live Reiki I & II certification in the Usui Shiki Ryoho tradition. Six attunements spaced across ten weeks rather than stacked into a single weekend, because an attunement is a real change in how energy moves through you and your body needs time to meet it. Cohorts of twenty, so everyone can still be seen.
Every name on this page is printed on the certificate you receive. The line becomes yours the moment you're attuned.
To be precise about what that does and doesn't mean: Reiki I and II make you a practitioner. You can work on yourself and on other people. Teaching and attuning are a separate training and a later one โ that's Master level, and it isn't what Sovereign Light is. But if you ever go that far, this is the line you would be handing down.
More about who I am and how I got here โ
Reiki is a practice of energetic support and is not a substitute for medical or psychological care. No specific outcomes are promised or guaranteed. Certification reflects completion of training within the Usui Shiki Ryoho system.
