What is Byosen?
September 6, 2026
The old kanji for ki shows rice cooking in a bowl with vapour rising from it. The vapour is the energy, but the point is the rice: it is being cultivated. Ki is not something you take from anywhere or put into anything. It is your own energy, and the practice is about cultivating it.
I love this, because it is a visual thing. The Japanese kanji for ki is a picture of rice at the centre, inside a bowl, and from the rice cooking in the bowl we can see the mist and the vapour coming off.
The mist and the vapour are the energy. But what is happening to the rice? It is being cultivated. It is being cooked.
We can see our practice the same way. What are we doing? We are working on ourselves. We are cultivating our own inner ki, strengthening our ki, our resilience. And as we do, there is a greater amount of vapour and mist coming off the body: energy.
So it is not about taking energy from anywhere or putting energy into anything. It is all about us and how we work with our own energy. That is ki.
The character. Ki is written 気 in modern Japanese and 氣 in the old form. The old form is the one to look at: 米 is rice, and the strokes above it are the steam rising as it cooks. Reiki is 霊気, spirit and ki together.
Where it sits in the system. Everything in the system is a way of cultivating ki: the breath at the hara in Joshin Kokyu Ho, the daily sitting of Hatsurei Ho, hands-on healing, the precepts. The founder’s own name for the practice includes the word.
A common misunderstanding. That ki is a substance that runs low and needs topping up from a practitioner or from the universe. It is closer to a state of the whole person. You do not receive it; you cultivate it.
Try this. Look at 氣 for a minute. Then sit, breathe into the belly, and think of the breath as the heat under the bowl. That is the whole of the practice in one picture.
You might also ask: Why do most people pronounce Reiki wrong? · What is Joshin Kokyu Ho? · What is the Japanese word for a Reiki practitioner?
Cultivate your ki with me every day in the Shūyō app, or go deeper inside Shinpiden+.
More questions answered: Reiki Questions Answered.
