One of the reasons for starting this thread on anecdotes is that for years I've wanted a place to write down some of the unusual Reiki experiences I've had, especially those that seemed more than coincidence.

One such experience began in late 1996 when a local Japanese lady came to take my Reiki classes from level 1 right through to master level. Shiya had grown up in Tokyo but married a professor from a university here in Vancouver. She became a great resource for me to learn and understand Japanese customs. In early 1997, she made her annual trip to an Indian ashram and on the way stopped off in Tokyo to see her mother. One day while visiting a nearby friend there, she was reading a 1985 copy of a Japanese magazine called "Twilight Zone". By the Western title you can guess that it focused on paranormal and unusual topics. One of the articles was about Reiki origins and it not only mentioned Usui's grave site at Saihoji Temple but it also gave the address of the temple. (See the Twilight Zone article at this page.)

Shiya brought me a copy of the article and loosely translated it for me. The following week I shared this at my weekly gathering of Reiki friends. One of them, Jolanta, just happened to have lived in Tokyo for a time while training in Kotsuban Yumeiho massage with the originator of the system. Jolanta offered to email Reza, one of her fellow students there, and ask him to go to the Usui grave site and get photos of it, including the huge Usui memorial.

Weeks later I received the photos and they looked great. By an interesting coincidence, later that day I also received an email from William Rand telling me that a German Reiki Master living in Sapporo Japan named Arjava Petter was about to publish a book in German called "Reiki Fire." It contained photos of the Usui grave site as well as a translation of the Memorial. William gave me Arjava's email address so I could contact him. I thought the timing of his email was quite amazing, have just seen the Memorial photos for myself.

I contacted Arjava who explained that the book would also be published in English in the fall. Another interesting coincidence showed up when I looked at the photos from Reza and saw two other people in them. He said he went with them to the grave as the woman in the photo was a Reiki Master and new exactly where to find the temple and grave site. The other man was her student, there to receive a Reiki attunement from the master. It turned out that the Reiki Master was Ms. S. Akimoto, not only a student of Arjava's but the same person he mentioned in the "Reiki Fire" story who had a healing client named Mr. Oishi. Apparently Oishi-san is a friend of the Ogawa family, and Fumio Ogawa-sensei was the head of the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai branch in Shizouka.

I continued to exchange emails with Arjava over the summer and one day he asked if I would send Reiki to his business. He confided in me that he had not had a Reiki student in 2 months, which was very unusual for him; this was ever since he had published "Reiki Fire" in Germany. He said his publisher felt that someone was surrounding his Reiki business with strong negative energy. I said I would be happy to send energy and so I sat down and reached out mentally to his business and felt a stronger energy surrounding another. I called on my guides to help me flow as much higher Light through me and from my heart to the situation. I could sense a sudden separation of the 2 energies and suddenly Arjava's business grew much brighter. I emailed Arjava right after this, explaining what I had done and sensed, and hoped that it had helped. The next day Arjava emailed me saying he had just received 2 new students that day. He was very pleased and relieved. It was to be another 2 years before Arjava and I met in person at the 1999 URRI conference here in Vancouver.

Back to Shiya - that summer she decided to visit her mother again and this time she tracked down the president of the URR Gakkai, Mrs. Koyama. Shiya got the address from the daughter of Mrs. Koyama and since Shiya had grown up in the same area she knew exactly where to go. She did so and her experience is also at my Reiki pages. As an additional experience, the following year I was to learn of (and eventually meet) Mr. Hiroshi Doi, who turned out to be a student of Mrs. Koyama.