On the Name Hikari no Ki

For a long time, the name of the salon would not settle. The harder I tried to pack meaning into it, the less any of it fit. In the end it was less that I decided on a name and more that, after confirming it again and again inside myself, one word simply stayed. Hikari no Ki. Of all the words I tried, it was the one that let me breathe most easily when I said it aloud.

It is made of two words. Light, and tree.

On light

Light, I feel, is not something added from outside.

What I do in a session is help someone reconnect with the light that is already inside them. It is not a matter of adding something new. When a clouded window is wiped, the light outside comes straight in. That is the closest image I have. It is time spent remembering what is already there.

I experienced this myself, back when I was the one receiving sessions as a client. I have no memory of being handed some special power. I only noticed again what I had carried all along. So I placed the word “light” into the name as something that lives on the inside.

On the tree

A tree grows in two directions at once. Roots reaching down into the ground, branches reaching up toward the sky.

This shape says well what I hope to do here. Spiritual practice is sometimes pictured as raising your awareness higher and higher. But a tree with shallow roots falls in a small wind. Keeping your feet on the ground and living your days, and reaching toward something high — both happen within the same single trunk.

I, for one, am not trying to let go of ordinary life and disappear somewhere else. To live in Yokohama, to meet people, and within that same daily life to return to who I really am. The word “tree” holds that hope too.

And the tree is also part of my own name. Yuki — written with the character ki, tree. When I was off searching for a name for the salon, I had gone looking far afield, only to notice that a tree was already there in my own name. It made me laugh a little. It felt like choosing again, on purpose, something that had been in my hands the whole time.

On the Tree of Life

The tree carries one more layer.

Among the traditions I have studied is a system called Kabbalah. In it, a figure known as the “Tree of Life” has long been used as a map for reading how the world and a person are put together — a set of spheres linked together in the shape of a single tree.

The name Hikari no Ki holds a quiet nod toward that Tree of Life. Not Tree of Life, but Tree of Light. If the Tree of Life is a large map that mirrors the structure of the whole world, then the Tree of Light hopes to be a smaller map: one for finding the way back to the light inside a single person. That is the wish I lay over the name.

I won’t go deeply into it here. I only want to leave a note that there is another layer behind the name.

As a place to return to

After the name settled, the meaning of the time I spend with the people who come here grew a little clearer to me. I hope this is a place to come back to your original self. For me too, it is time that reminds me of that, each time.

If anything in this name speaks to you, you are welcome to start with a free 30-minute Zoom consultation. No pressure either way.