The Reiki Book Club: "Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the..."

Welcome to The Reiki Book Club!

Dive into the world of Reiki through inspiring books, thoughtful discussion, and shared insights. In this bi-monthly gathering, we’ll:

• Explore different perspectives, history, and practices within Reiki.
• Reflect on key takeaways and how they impact our personal practice.
• Share questions, curiosities, and ideas sparked by the reading.
• Connect with like-minded practitioners in a supportive, relaxed space.

Whether you’re new to Reiki or a seasoned practitioner, this complimentary book club is a chance to deepen your understanding, gain fresh inspiration, and explore new ways to integrate Reiki into your life.

BOOK
"Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific" by Justin B. Stein, University of Hawaii Press, 2023

DATE
April 9, 2026

TIME
6:00 - 7:30 PM MST

FEE
This is a complimentary gathering for our Reiki Community.

Description from a Seller's Website
In the second half of the twentieth century, Reiki went from an obscure therapy practiced by a few thousand Japanese and Japanese Americans to a global phenomenon. By the early twenty-first century, people in nearly every corner of the world have undergone the initiations that authorize them to channel a cosmic energy―known as Reiki―to heal body, mind, and spirit. They lay hands on themselves and others, use secret symbols and incantations to send Reiki to distant recipients, and strive to follow five precepts to cultivate their spiritual growth. Reiki’s international rise and development is due to the work of Hawayo Takata (1900–1980), a Hawai‘i-born Japanese American woman who brought Reiki out of Japan and adapted it for thousands of students in Hawai‘i and North America, shaping interconnections across the North Pacific region as well as cultural transformations over the transwar period spanning World War II.

Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific analyzes how, from her training in Japan in the mid-1930s to her death in Iowa in 1980, Takata built a vast trans-Pacific network that connected Japanese American laborers on plantations in Hawai‘i to social elites in Tokyo, Hollywood, and New York; middle-class housewives in American suburbs; and off-the-grid tree planters in the mountains of British Columbia. Using recently uncovered archival materials and original oral histories, Justin B. Stein examines how these relationships between healer and patient, master and disciple, became deeply infused with values of their time and place and how they interplayed with Reiki’s circulation, performance, and meanings along with broader cultural shifts in the twentieth-century North Pacific. Highly readable and informative, each chapter is structured around a period in the life of Takata, the charismatic, rags-to-riches architect of the network in which Reiki spread for decades. Alternate Currents explores Reiki as an exemplary transnational spiritual therapy, demonstrating how lived practices transcend artificial distinctions between religion and medicine, and circulate in global systems while maintaining strong connections with the practices’ homeland.

Host
Tracy L. Cash, LCSW, the founder of Sacred Mountain Healing Center and Community Reiki Circle, is a social worker; Reiki Master Teacher for Usui, Karuna and Drumming lineages; ISTA Certified Therapeutic Sound Practitioner; Certified Nature-Based & Integration Coach; Partswork Facilitator, Licensed Chakradance Facilitator, Certified Morning Altars Teacher, and Pilates instructor.

With more than 30 years of experience exploring wellness and spirituality, Tracy draws on both clinical wisdom and lived experience to ethically bridge the mystical and the practical. Her work supports participants in transforming inner conflict into wholeness, helping them embody their truth and shine with integrity and self-trust.