Rocking back and forth, we celebrate one of the world’s oldest self-healing, rejuvenation, and spiritual practices. It requires no particular belief, understanding, or elaborate explanation and is available to anyone who is both courageous and childlike enough to do something so simple. Its basic principle can be articulated with these two words: Do nothing. If you have to think about what this means, you will miss its instruction. This is an invitation to plunge into spontaneity.
Moved by a strong, invisible current, we feel a dynamic, tingling energy throughout our bodies. It matters not what this experience is called or how any spiritual, philosophical, or scientific theory attempts to explain it. We are content and satisfied to feel it and be moved, letting go of all contrived habits that try to make life happen.
Even if you have just one authentic experience of being inside this current—really inside it—it is enough to transform your whole being. Falling deeper into the current without effort, the desire for power and control falls away. Pow and kapow are let go in favor of be-here-now Tao. Words now prefer flowing inside improvisation. The words, like you, want to be set free.
Jump into the river of seiki. You’ll know it when you’re there, for you will bob like a cork on water and rock back and forth like a baby held by its mother in a rocking chair. Stay there longer. Watch how other spontaneous movements spring forth. They are fascinating and will catch you by surprise—suddenly your interest in the performance of an effortless, moving, changing you is far more interesting than old habits of thinking.
Become enveloped by the current that has no need for the effort of mindful attention. Get out of the way and let life make you happen; allow life’s wondrous movement to grab hold of you and carry you along with it. Be distracted by life: distraction rather than attraction is the secret. Your mind will lose track of how you are able to constantly change. It’s exhilarating, renewing, even intoxicating.
Hold our hands and feel where the current takes us. Are you feeling a tidal wave of heat flowing from the top of your head to the bottom of your soles? Or is it flowing from the bottom to the top? Anything can be experienced inside this stream—anything except tiredness, sickness, worry, jealousy, hatred, malaise, loneliness, and discontent. The deeper you plunge, the stronger you feel deep empathy, connection, joy, and love. Let the motion be inseparable from this exalted emotion. Feel free to celebrate with all kinds of commotion! We are. Shout out praise and joy! The universe dances and sings inside of you.
It’s incredible what happens, isn’t it? The more you offer praise, the happier you become. You are feeding joy with joy. The celebration of life is returned with more life. This is how it has always been, though we have forgotten. Don’t analyze—go deeper and further into the stream. There you can only laugh and love. If you remain on the riverbank, you risk getting all dried up. That’s the aging you want to avoid. The fountain of youth is found inside the current of the flowing stream. Enter the timelessness that is always present for all ages.
One of the oldest cultures in the world, the Kalahari Bushmen, lives inside this holy river, even though they make their home in a vast desert. The samurai of ancient Japan knew how to swim inside this fluidic spontaneity, even though they appeared to have extraordinary control. Their secret is found in the constant natural movements of a child. Bobbing, rocking, swaying, and dancing, children are constantly moving. When they stop, largely because parents and teachers command them to sit still and stop fidgeting, their energy drains away. School becomes an impossible exercise of trying to stay awake. Do you remember? Unless you were totally engrossed in a project, the more quiet and still you became at your desk, the more likely you were to doze off into slumber. But when the bell rang you ran to the playground, full of instant energy. Where did that burst of aliveness come from?
The bell is ringing for you now.
Move and the world moves with you. Move and notice you are the change. Move and find that inspired words flow like poetry. Move and feel moved to love. The alternative is sitting still and drowning in the internal recycled chatter that tries to figure out how to get on board the ship to glory, the train to success, the flight to happiness. But you are already on it! Once you know that, you will feel the current inside and outside of you. You’ll find happy feet and a joyful voice. It will be impossible not to experience the thrill of being alive, even if you have only a day to live.
Welcome to seiki, the old Japanese word for the vital life force. We refer to it as the non-subtle life force because experiencing it is unquestionably obvious and so powerful that it can transform your life in an instant. If you wonder whether you have experienced seiki, you haven’t. Once you have met seiki, you know it and never forget it. Seiki invites you to take a stand for your life. It inspires you to jump—even take a somersault—for life! You deserve to feel alive and to be exhilarated, lightened, and transformed, unrestrained by sideline commentary of the interpreting mind. Move right now! Shout out loud: Yes! Have you ever shouted a whisper? Shout a whisper as loudly as you can: Yes! Yes! Yes! Say yes to life and life will notice. It will rush inside of you and be instantly ready to take you on an extraordinary ride—the journey of a life recharged with seiki, the miraculous and ever delightful non-subtle vital life force.
The key to achieving a happy, meaningful, and fulfilled life is found in your relationship with seiki. When you are filled with seiki, you are able to mobilize well-being, awaken creative expression, and optimize everyday performance. We introduce you to the Japanese practice of seiki jutsu, the art of the non-subtle vital life force. Seiki makes you feel as alive as you can possibly feel.
Ikuko Osumi Sensei, one of the greatest practitioners of seiki jutsu, described seiki as activated and strengthened ki, made ready for empowered transmission and reception by human beings. Seiki is enhanced, concentrated, and supercharged life force. The practice of cultivating your connection with seiki is one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself. Seiki jutsu enables you to encounter your true nature, and to be continually tuned and recharged to carry out your unique destiny.
People talk about energy all the time. We mention energy when we refer to the essential quality of a person, relationship, performance, situation, thing, or place.
This place has exceptional energy.
This painting has good energy.
We like and dislike certain energies; we recognize good, bad, unusual, special, low, neutral, or high energy. But what do we really mean when we use this term, other than its being a comment regarding how we feel about something?
Scientifically speaking, energy is all there is. When Albert Einstein suggested that what we call matter is only energy that is moving slowly enough for us to perceive it as solid, this applies to us as well. Our brain, heart, guts, and skin are composed of electromagnetic forces in motion, all moving at incredible speed. The patterns of energy in our whole being determine the quality of our life. Our well-being is a consequence of our energetics, the vital life force or seiki that resides and circulates within.
When a musical performance carries the energized emotion to pierce your heart and soul, you know you’re in the presence of activated energy. Simply going through the motions with mere technique alone cannot enliven music. Whether it be art, sport, cooking, or everyday living, we desire our expression to be fully alive and charged with positive energy. Seiki is the current, vibe, and energy from which life flows. With seiki jutsu, you have the know-how to bring forth an energized life. Heart and soul will only arise when seiki is thriving within you.
healing modalities that address body movement and therapeutic conversation.
Seiki jutsu differs from other movement-based practices in that it emphasizes spontaneity over choreographed form. Unlike most bodywork and energy-oriented therapeutic methods, seiki jutsu has no prescribed movements, preferred choreographies, or elaborate explanatory systems. It proposes that the spontaneous, natural movements of the body deliver and infuse its basic teaching and that, over time, the performance of these movements results in resourceful outcomes for the practitioner.
In 1928, Jozo Ishii of the Seiki Ryoho Kenkyu Jo (Seiki Treatment Institute and Research Establishment) in Japan published a book entitled Essentials of Seiki Self-Healing Therapy, arguably the first written account of seiki jutsu. Ishii reported research on how seiki jutsu could resolve body disorders, ward off illness, revitalize well-being, and promote longevity. Japanese practitioners have referred to it as the fountain of youth. It was also claimed to awaken and nurture creative talent and spiritual gifts. Some translated excerpts of this source text are published in this book as an appendix.
Seiki jutsu was well established centuries before reiki was developed and was used by the samurai. It is thought to have existed in the early times of Shintoism, perhaps as far back as the eighth century, and holds within it ancient Japanese shamanic ways of handling the life force. In addition to being a self-help practice, seiki jutsu is a healing modality that emphasizes hands-on interaction—skin-to-skin contact—and its experience leaves no doubt as to its presence. Seiki jutsu practitioners experience a wide range of electric-like sensations, from vibratory buzzing to strong convulsing waves throughout their bodies.
The following chapter, Ikuko Osumi Sensei and the Lineage of Seiki Jutsu, presents the foremost practitioner and master of seiki jutsu in the twentieth century. Ikuko Osumi Sensei received seiki from her aunt in 1935. Ikuko Osumi was spiritually inspired by stories about her ancestor from the 1600s, Eizon Hoin, who revived a shrine on Mt. Maki and was reportedly responsible for numerous miracles. Today he is honored as a kami (spirit) who protects the weak, maintains justice, and guards against fire. Hoin’s grandfather was the famous samurai Katagiri Katsumoto (1556–1615), one of the Seven Spears of Shizugatake. Osumi’s gifts as a healer and spiritual teacher were respected in Japan, and her clients included many renowned artists, national treasures, scientists, and leaders. Despite this recognition and her strong spiritual and cultural lineage, Osumi refused to accept offers to turn her work into a religion.
Two books have been written on Osumi’s life—The Shamanic Healer: The Healing World of Ikuko Osumi and the Traditional Art of Seiki Jutsu (by Ikuko Osumi and Malcolm Ritchie) and Ikuko Osumi, Sensei: Japanese Master of Seiki Jutsu (by Bradford Keeney), and she is referred to as a Shinto shamaness by author George Williams in Religions of the World: Shinto. In this book we present how Osumi taught this natural way of healing and revitalization.
In 1996, Osumi Sensei passed her lineage to Bradford Keeney and legally authorized him to oversee its teaching. We will discuss the origin of The Keeney Institute for Healing, dedicated to passing on the basic principles and practices of seiki jutsu as a powerful means of transformation and personal development.
The tradition of seiki jutsu holds that seiki is the vital force in nature and that it underlies all life and creation, from daily health to creative expression, actualization of human potential, and mastery of any form of performance art. Seiki jutsu practitioners propose that there is no need to seek an elaborate understanding of seiki, for any intellectual encapsulation brings unnecessary constraint. And more importantly, any presumed understanding of seiki may inhibit its evocation or felt presence.
Words such as seiki and vital life force are not limited to signifying physical energy and forces that belong to the laws of physics; they are also poetic metaphors that hint at the wholeness of life and how it can be experienced. Though seiki may be felt as an electrical force surging through the body, any reference to this experience as an energy or force is better taken as a holistic metaphor. In the same way that a person can poetically say that she has fallen in love, been struck by God, or slain in the spirit, seiki is a way of indicating heightened ways of feeling alive.
Seiki is present in other cultural healing traditions. Osumi Sensei proposed that seiki has benefited people in every corner of the world, although it is called by many different names and is exercised in many different ways. This relationship to the unspeakable vitality of living is found in one of the world’s oldest living cultures, the Kalahari Bushmen (or San), whose word n/om has a meaning similar to seiki. Bushmen regard the quality of their life as inseparable from their relationship to n/om, the dynamic underlying creation, change, and transformation. They will not utter the word whenever they are experiencing n/om, nor do they regard any exposition over the nature of its reality as relevant to having access to it.² Similarly, the tradition of seiki jutsu postulates that the word seiki only points to the vital life force, while explaining little about it.
Seiki is believed to be in all of nature—from the atmosphere to redwood forests, from English gardens to architectural spaces, in jazz, ballet, and human beings. Wherever there is creation and life, seiki is present.
Anyone alive has seiki, or to articulate it circularly, life is made alive by seiki. When seiki is depleted, a person becomes vulnerable to fatigue, apathy, and even illness. The key to well-being and revitalization lies in replenishing oneself with seiki. The same is true for effective action, such as artistic performance, scientific invention, therapeutic intervention, or spiritual practice. Without seiki, all spiritual, creative, therapeutic, and self-help approaches are severely limited.
Though having seiki may experientially feel analogous to filling a vehicle with fuel, there is more to seiki than the amount of life circulating inside a system. Seiki is also a way of tuning the whole organism, a process akin to tuning a musical instrument. If a string instrument is out of tune, no profound music can be created on it no matter how much skill the musician may have. The instrument must be tuned in order for a performance to reach and deliver its utmost expression. The same is true for human beings.
The primary idea of seiki jutsu is that spontaneous, automatic movement of the body is a natural means of holistic tuning, which in turn enables seiki to flow unimpeded. The result is that one feels full of seiki.
The practice of spontaneous movement is found in various therapeutic professions. For instance, hypnotherapists pay attention to ideomotor body responses, like a trembling finger or body twitch; these automatisms are believed to be conveyors of unconscious communication. Among movement therapists, spontaneous motor responses are used to help facilitate symptomatic release and trigger new forms of flexibility.
As a therapeutic application, what makes seiki jutsu unique is that it does not regard spontaneous movement as a technique serving a larger model or strategy of healing and transformation. With seiki jutsu, the movement is the whole process of change in and of itself. Automatic expression becomes the teacher, teaching, tuning, therapy, healing, spiritual practice, and goal all at once. Seiki jutsu emphasizes spontaneous performance that serves change. It is improvisational, interacting with all of the forces it encounters—including its own expression—to bring forth significant changes that inspire ever new expressions.
As a seiki jutsu practitioner learns to allow the performance of spontaneous, improvised movement to occur, she finds that the body awakens new repertoires of expression. What at first may be limited to rocking and other simple motions may later move into trembling hands, bouncing, a pumping abdomen, and swinging arms and continue into dance-like choreographies. This development and broadening of the possibilities of spontaneous performance mark the ways in which a practitioner’s relationship to seiki grows. As the performance becomes more complex and unpredictable, so does the practitioner. In other words, as movement possibilities grow, the person’s life grows as well, awakening more possibilities for bringing seiki-filled improvisational action into daily life, relationships, and profession.
Seiki jutsu teaches us how to access flow experience and be inside the moving stream of life. Here free movement also includes free speech, and the latter is regarded as another spontaneous performance of the whole body. There is no necessary mind-body dualism in this practice, as the production of ideas, thoughts, and speech require the body to produce and express them. Seiki jutsu brings forth more possibilities for voicing one’s discourse, as well as relating to it in ways that are not attached to any particular narrative or preferred interpretation of lived experience.
The more seiki you have circulating inside you, the more likely your production of sound will distance itself from everyday speech and move toward ecstatic sound improvisation. Under the influence of seiki you lean toward becoming more metaphorical and poetic, and you may even speak in rhyme—you’ll see several places in this book where seiki has urged us down this rhyming path.
Although seiki jutsu as a self-healing and revitalization practice can be done without any professional assistance, it is initially helpful to have a master performer of spontaneous movement get you on track and in synch with these effortless motions.*1 The seiki jutsu master is like a performing arts teacher whose job is to help others find their own voice, movement, and way of participating inside creative expression. When a master of seiki jutsu spontaneously moves, a client can be inspired to start his own motion. Or a client can hold on to the hand or body of a master, whose natural movements can then be felt in the client’s body.
For example, the vibrating hand of a master can help activate the same frequency of vibration in the client if the client is ready and responsive to this transference of movement. Both seiki jutsu senseis (master teachers) and Kalahari n/om-kxaosi (Bushman traditional healers) use their hands, arms, feet, legs, chests, and whole bodies to send vibrations into the bodies of others. At first this is a means of helping jump-start an automatism in the client; later it enables rhythmic entrainment, going on a ride with another more experienced practitioner of spontaneous movement. When the client’s body allows the vibrations to precipitate her own movements, both bodies can become organized by one interactional vibration that orchestrates collaborative movement. Here the movement rather than the person embodying it is regarded as primary. The master practitioner has more experience catching the rhythm and movement and encourages the client to be carried into it through their interaction.
As the client becomes more familiar with spontaneous expression, there is less need for body contact, while paradoxically, more of this kind of interaction may naturally take place. A shift takes place where vibratory words, chants, and songs alone are sufficient to awaken automatisms and movement. Seiki jutsu refers to this stage of interaction as preparing someone to receive seiki. The Bushmen refer to this as helping make someone soft enough to receive an arrow of n/om. Each master practitioner has his or her own ways of emphasizing how to soften and make others ready for the reception of seiki. Keep in mind that the client already has seiki—anyone alive does, by definition—but the transmission of seiki (or the receiving of an arrow of n/om) refers to the readiness for a more intimate encounter with the vital life force and a greater capacity to express spontaneous movement.