Mark Hosak, PhD

How it started

When I was thirteen, a Japanese school opened in my neighborhood in Bremen, Germany. I walked in and asked whether anyone there would practice karate with me. It turned into a trade: karate for German lessons. Without knowing it, I'd found the thread my life would follow.

I studied Japanology and earned my doctorate at Heidelberg University. I then spent three years at Kyoto University researching Buddhist art, architecture and ritual. On my professor's recommendation I took up the Shikoku pilgrimage to the 88 temples, and on my second attempt I walked the whole route on foot. Today I live part of the year in Japan.

From research to practice

Research led me to practice. I describe myself as a Shingon practitioner and researcher. In my spiritual work I go back to the sources Mikao Usui, the founder of Reiki, drew on himself, and I've written several books on Reiki in German.

Starting over, more than once

I've been self-employed since 2007. Before that, I built my work from nothing, with very few people at first. Then it ran well for a long time, until I had to start almost from scratch, twice. Then came the lockdowns, and nearly everything that had carried my work offline fell away. I had to reinvent the whole system, this time online.

During those years I paid for a lot of business advice. Most of it came down to paid ads, or to a niche so narrow my work no longer fit inside it. What finally worked was a different approach: keep your own field visible, offer a clear benefit as a door, and meet people through content rather than ads.

Why AI, and why this community

Today I'm building my English-language business with the help of AI: websites, email sequences, content, the whole setup. It has changed how much one person can carry. It has also shown me how easy it is to let a tool write in a voice that isn't yours.

I see so many spiritual practitioners with a real gift who get stuck on the shape of things, and who now wonder whether AI is a help or a threat. That's why Spirit X AI exists. I share what I've lived through, detours included, and walk alongside others on their own path. The “AI” in the name is also the Japanese word 愛, love. It's a reminder of which one should lead.

German-speaking? Mark's German community for spiritual practitioners is Spirituelle Berufung Leben. His Reiki work is at shingon-reiki.com.