The Power of Three

In ancient China, sages came up with a concept they called the ‘three powers’.

Above is Heaven. Below is Earth. And in between stands a human being, drawing on both.

In time, the idea travelled to Japan, where it became known as ten-chi-jin: Heaven (ten), Earth (chi) and humanity (jin).

Later on, this idea found its way into Reiki, and Hiroshi Doi, a member of the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (the Reiki society Usui founded), says its members often speak of the ‘harmony of Ten-Chi-Jin’ – i.e. heaven, Earth and humanity in balance.

In particular, this harmony plays out in three energy centres that classical Japanese Reiki works with, often called the three ‘haras’.

The lower hara, in the belly, connects us to Earth (energy).

The upper hara, between the eyebrows, connects us to Heaven (energy).

And the middle hara, where the heart chakra lies, is where the two (energies) meet and fuse as one.

Together, they form an energy grid that can transform your spiritual practice.

The Lower Hara

The Japanese call the lower hara the seika tanden – i.e. ‘the elixir field below the navel’. It sits about 3–5 cm below the belly button, a little way inside the body.

It’s what we typically mean in my courses when we talk about the ‘hara’, and it’s the home of Earth ki (energy).

Earth ki is heavy, dense, grounding, and powerful. It’s the energy that makes you feel solid, stable and confident – the kind of person who can walk into a noisy, crowded room without being knocked off balance.

In the Chinese system, the lower hara (or ‘dantian’ as they call it) stores our essence – i.e. the energy we’re born with.

But in Japan, the hara is more than an energy centre, it’s the seat of the self.

In the West, we tend to feel that the essence of who we are lives in our head. That’s where we locate our identity. But in Japanese culture, the core of a person is found in the belly.

We can get an idea of this from everyday Japanese expressions.

Hara ga tatsu – literally, ‘the belly stands up’ – means to get angry.

Hara wo kukuru – literally, ‘to tie up the belly’ – means to steel yourself and commit to a decision.

Hara wo watte hanasu – literally, ‘to split open the belly and talk’ – means to speak frankly, holding nothing back.

So in traditional Japanese culture, your anger, your resolve, and honesty (amongst many other things), all come from the hara. It’s where the real you sits.

Not surprisingly, Zen, the martial arts and Japan’s traditional arts all treat the hara as the body’s centre of gravity.

And classical Japanese Reiki does exactly the same.

In the system we practice, it can be seen as the body’s central energy hub – what I like to call our body’s ‘grand central station’ for energy.

Like a central station in Europe that has train lines shooting out to all other major cities, your body has energy channels (meridians), that flow from the hara to the rest of the body.

So connect to the hara and you can energetically connect to your entire body.

Better still, focusing on the hara helps to get you out of your head and into a more intuitive part of your being.

So if you are agonizing about something, and keep pounding away at it with your mind, try shifting your point of focus into your hara and meditating on it. That will often settle you down.

Ultimately, in the classical form of Reiki which Usui taught, strengthening the lower hara (i.e. the seika tanden) is a necessary step on the road to almost every advanced practice.

It is like the foundation of a building that supports the entire Reiki healing system, and it is also the foundation the body’s other key energy centres are built upon.

So if the lower hara is weak, then everything above it will wobble.

The Upper Hara

The upper hara (jōtanden) sits deep between the eyebrows, roughly where the third eye is.

This is the home of ‘Heavenly’ ki.

Where Earth ki is heavy, Heavenly ki is light. Where Earth ki is dense, Heavenly ki is expansive.

The lower hara gives you stability, strength and the power to act.

The upper hara gives you guidance.

It’s the source of intuition and insight. Of clarity. It lets you see the bigger picture, sense what’s needed in a healing session, and feel your connection to Spirit. It’s also where many people see colours and have visions when they meditate.

It’s the perfect complement to Earth ki, the issue is simply that very few of us develop the upper and lower haras equally.

Spiritual Pyrotechnics

In almost every course I teach, I see the same thing. Students connect to the upper hara far more easily than the lower one.

And I was no exception at the start of my healer journey.

My energy tended to gush upwards from my solar plexus into my third eye and crown, but I seldom felt any of my lower energy centres.

That mattered because it made me like an inverted pyramid. I was all top heavy and unstable.

Overly sensitive to the world around me.

Unsurprisingly, I frequently sought time alone out in nature, where I could simply rest in my own energy without any disturbance!

So why are so many healers in the same boat?

Partly, it’s attention.

Turn your awareness to your third eye, and you’ll usually feel something almost straight away. Earth ki doesn’t work like that. It builds slowly, through weeks and months of daily practice.

Partly, it’s also about what I call ‘spiritual pyrotechnics’.

Colours! Bliss! Visions!

Otherworldly states of being.

Upper-hara experiences can get so fancy.

The lower hara, by contrast, tends to work more quietly.

Solidity. Serenity. Inner balance.

It’s super valuable, for sure, but a little more pedestrian – not necessarily the first thing you rush off to tell your friends about.

Interestingly, even Hakuin, one of Japan’s great Zen masters, suffered from being energetically ‘top-heavy’.

After years of intense meditation, his energy shot up into his head. His lungs burned. His legs were icy. His ears rang – and no doctor could help him!

It was only after he met a mountain hermit called Hakuyu who diagnosed him as having ‘Zen sickness’ that he found his cure.

And that cure was to bring his ki down into the lower hara and the soles of his feet.

Within a month, Hakuin felt a huge difference, and after three years, he was not only completely well, but meditating better than ever.

It wasn’t an instant fix, but bit by bit, learning to ground his energy (in particular in the lower hara) transformed even Hakuin’s spiritual practice.

So if you feel like the psychic who reads everyone else’s energy beautifully, but struggles in crowds, with money, and health, then maybe you need to learn to work on both the upper and lower haras.

Harmonising Your Energy with the Middle Hara

One hara is good.

Two haras are great.

But the Universe in its infinite wisdom gave us three haras – and that works best of all!

Because a special kind of magic happens when we merge the lower and upper haras into the middle one (i.e. our heart chakra).

You see, humans are bipartite creatures.

Part physical.

Part spirit.

And much of the time, those two parts pull in different directions. The spirit wants a month in a mountain monastery. The body wants a cheese toastie and a nap.

Earth ki is our physical side. Heavenly ki is our spiritual side. And the middle hara (chūtanden), in the centre of the chest, is where they meet and harmonise.

Think of oil and vinegar. Pour them into a jar, and they sit in separate layers. Shake the jar hard, and you get a dressing – something neither could be on its own.

The heart is where that shaking happens.

Have only Heaven, and you’re spacey, oversensitive, inspired but unable to act.

Have only Earth, and you’re solid but heavy, stuck in the material world.

Have both, but keep them apart, and you’re serene on the meditation cushion – and furious in traffic.

But fuse them together, and you can take ‘your Zen out into the fields’, take your spiritual connection into the midst of your everyday life.

Conclusion

Work on your lower hara (seika tanden), and you’ll feel more solid. Crowded shopping centres. Energy-sucking work colleagues. Critical family. You’ll navigate them all with relative calm.

Work on your upper hara (jōtanden), and you’ll feel clearer, your intuition will sharpen, your insight will deepen, and your connection to Spirit will grow – without you getting lost in the clouds.

Bring the two together in your middle hara (chūtanden), and you’ll stop feeling like your world is divided into two distinct parts: the material and the spiritual.