Gathered in this loving memoir are the colorful stories told by Hawayo Takata during her thirty-five years as the only Reiki Master teaching. The stories create an inspirational panorama of Takata's teachings, filled with the practical and spiritual aspects of a life given to healing. An uplifting and inspirational volume that leaves the reader believing that anything is possible! Reiki is the energy of life. In the Usui System of Natrual healing, this energy is honored and used as a guide in daily life. It offers a simple path to perceive and experience our lives as a sacred honorable experience. These stories are illustrations from the life of a woman who lived the Reiki teachings. They are funny and serious, happy and sad, reflecting her own upbringing and always demonstrating her deep trust in the Life Energy. The stories also show the growth of Takata's healilng power and the simplicity with which she accepted it. From humble beginnings, she became a great figure of strength, loved and respected by all who knew her. After raising a family, Fran Brown began a spiritual search that led her into an awareness of her own healing gifts. She met Takata in 1973 and became Takata's 7th Reiki Master in 1979. She has since devoted her life to teaching Reiki and travels all over the world sharing her work. In the seven years that I knew Hawayo Takata, we had numerous occasions to talk about Reiki, its practice and its intent. She taught us to treat Reiki with the respect it deserves. The information transmitted is sacred. She urged us to treat it with due respect and do nothing to diminish it. To learn Reiki cost her dearly in 1936-1938, and she exacted a promise from her masters that those costs remain the same even though the cost of living has risen dramatically....She continually gave thanks to God for all she received and was diligent in her daily prayers and meditations, affirming that "It is not I that does the healing, but the God Power coming through me that heals." She told me to place my hands as I was taught, to trust my hands, and allow the Reiki Energy to flow through me into the fully clothed client without concerning myself as to how or when the healing would take place....She stressed the need for humility because the ego's desire for power and recognition creates a block to healing. During the time of teaching she would not permit even one small glass of wine with dinner, insisting that Reiki Energy was not to be mixed with any other energy.