Reiki was aggressively marketed to the West as an ancient, sacred Tibetan mystical healing art, despite the fact that it was completely invented by a Japanese guy named Mikao Usui in the nineteen-twenties.

A closer look

Reiki was aggressively marketed to the West as an ancient, sacred Tibetan mystical healing art, despite the fact that it was completely invented by a Japanese guy named Mikao Usui in the nineteen-twenties. He reportedly gained these profound energetic healing powers after fasting on a mountain for three weeks, completely skipping the necessity for any actual medical training or an understanding of human anatomy. Today, eager practitioners will happily charge you an exorbitant hourly rate to lightly hover their hands over your body, utilizing their supposed access to universal life force energy to cure your chronic back pain. It is incredibly impressive that you can build a massive, lucrative global wellness empire based entirely on the medical equivalent of waving your hands around and wishing really hard that someone's arthritis magically disappears