1. Born on August 15th 1865 in the village of 'Taniai-mura' in the Yamagata district of Gifu prefecture Kyoto, Japan.
2. He studied in a Tendai Buddhist monastery school and was also a student of different martial arts. His interests were medicine, psychology, fortune telling and theology.
3. He got married with a woman named Sadako, they had a son (born 1907) and daughter.
4. During the Meiji Era he traveled to western countries, including China, to learn and study the ways of the western civilizations.
5. The Sensei held many different professions such as public servant, office worker, industrialist, reporter, politician's secretary, missionary, supervisor of convicts, and as a private secretary to a politician. He became, at some poitn, a Tendai Buddhist Monk/Priest.
6. It is said that it was in a 21 day meditation at Mount Kurama where he has channeled the inspiration for Reiki - his system of healing.
7. In 1922 he opened his first school/clinic in Harajuku Tokyo. He wrote a small manual, which was translated to english under the title "The Original Reiki Handbook of Dr Mikao Usui"
8. His teachings included self-healing (a very central point still in Reiki of today). After receiving the teachings, the students would be albe to heal themselves.
9. In 1923 after an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, Mikao Usui and his students started to giving Reiki on the affected area, and as a result, the practice became more famous.
10. In 1925 he was so busy that he had to open a new larger school, which he did in Nakano. As he traveled constantly, his senior students would keep up the work at his schools/clinic.
11. In 1926 he passed away at the age of 62. He is buried in Saihoji Temple in Suginami-Ku, Tokyo. His students built a large memorial stone describing his life and work. Part of the new information about his life comes from the translations of this memorial stone.
"Each and every being has an innate ability to heal as a gift from the gods."
-- Mikao Usui.