At Los Gatos Reiki, our mission is to promote healing, balance, and wholeness, through Reiki treatments, classes, group meetings, and workshops. Our focus is on the traditional Japanese teachings as passed down from Mikao Usui, and researched by Frans Stiene. However, we will also share insights from other traditions when relevant, such as QiGong, the Ayurvedic chakra system, Subud, manual therapy, and various other energetic and mystical traditions. After all, every tradition works with the same Human Energy Field, and is ultimately talking about the same Source, whether we call it the Great Bright Light, the Tao, the Brahman, the fundamental ground of being, the Divine, or simply Everything. The mysteries of energy, healing, and spirit are too complex for any one tradition to describe fully, and when need be we can draw the best from each.
We encourage everyone to find an appropriate balance between tradition and experimentation. In our modern, largely secular world, many people don't understand the value of traditions and rituals, but there is great value in these practices that have have been passed down over the centuries. If practices have stood the test of time and helped many people over the years, why not suspend our disbelief and give them a try? However, once we've tried practices the traditional way, we don't have to be slaves to tradition, and always doing things exactly the same way without thought. If the traditional way doesn't work for us, or if we are just curious to see if another way might work better, we should feel free to experiment to see what works, and why. And, because this isn't an intellectual exercise, it's important to remember that there is always a time to unask the question, to transcend it in a completely new way, or to let go just be Reiki.
About Ryan
As the founder and Master Teacher/Practitioner of Los Gatos Reiki, I'm honored to be able to teach and practice a traditional Japanese form of the system of Reiki, called the Usui Reiki Ryoho. These time-honored techniques were developed and formalized by Mikao Usui in the 1920s, and passed down from teacher to teacher in our lineage, including my teachers, Frans Stiene and Joyce Leonard.
My focus is on helping people on the journey to wholeness and awakening, learning to center, ground, and balance ourselves no matter what the circumstances, and connecting with the deep source of wisdom and power that is our own true nature, what some traditions call the Higher Self, the Luminous Self, the Wisdom Mind, the Great Reiki, the Buddha Self, Christ Consciousness, or our True Self. As a Reiki master/teacher, my practice is always centered around the traditional Reiki practices, but incorporates teachings from other wisdom traditions and energetic practices when relevant.
My lineage:
Mikao Usui (founder of the system of Reiki)
Kanichi Taketomi
Koyama Kimiko
Doi Hiroshi
Frans Stiene
Joyce Leonard
Ryan Bush, founder and master teacher/practitioner of Los Gatos Reiki
My path to connecting with Reiki and the healing arts has been a meandering one, as I have always had many interests. When I went off to college, I thought I would major in Physics or Mathematics. I ended up receiving my B.A. in Linguistics and Russian from Swarthmore College in 1995, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from UC Santa Cruz in 2000. Linguistics greatly expanded my ability to look at a complex system from many different angles (such as syntax, semantics, and phonology). Studying Linguistics also helped instill a focus on the Western empirical method - suspending disbelief for long enough to try try something, which has helped me be open-minded and curious, but not willing to take dogma at face-value. As much as I enjoyed Linguistics, I kept wondering how it would directly help people.
I had always felt that there was something more, in some sense. Sometimes it felt like there was a mysterious world hidden just beyond an invisible curtain, like in the fantasy or science fiction books I read (that now seem strikingly similar to transcendental experiences of Emptiness, and to String Theorists' models of how our universe could loosely interact with universes on other 'branes').
As a child, I had looked for answers at church, but didn't find answers, or signs of any direct experiences of the divine. Like many people, I was turned off by what sounded like dogma and a need to believe just for the sake of believing. That attitude softened into agnosticism once I acknowledged that there was so much about the universe that I didn't know, and wanted to be open-minded.
While growing up, my main way of connecting with the mysterious Other world was always music, as I played the flute in orchestras, and have one published CD. I'm also a fine-art photographer (www.RyanBushPhotography.com), using techniques such as multiple exposures, 3-D photography, diptych, and video art to explore themes of consciousness, the visionary experience, our connection with nature, and the mysteries hidden in the mundane. My work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is in several collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Stanford Medical Center, and the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. As an artist, I also may be able to help others connect with their own creativity, or seeing the sacred in everything. For more about my background and perspective, feel free to read my books The Music of Trees, and A Singing Wire, and view my photography and video art at www.RyanBushPhotography.com or in my various gallery and museum exhibitions.
If there's any way we can help in your journey, please let us know!