What Is a Reiki Attunement? What Happens, and Why We Do It in Person

The moment that separates a Reiki student from someone who has read about Reiki lasts about a quarter of an hour. The student sits with eyes closed and hands together; the teacher moves behind and in front, touches the crown, the shoulders and the hands, draws the symbols, breathes, and steps away. Nothing is said. That is an attunement, and around 720 people a month search the term, usually because a school has offered them one over Zoom for $49. Here is what the ritual is in the lineage, what physically happens, what the 21 days afterwards are for, and why the question of distance divides Reiki teachers more sharply than anything else.

For what each level then permits, read what Reiki Level 1, 2 and Master actually let you do; for the wider argument about screens, what you cannot learn through a screen.

What is a Reiki attunement in the lineage?

The act by which a teacher passes the practice to a student, person to person, in an unbroken line the tradition traces back to Mikao Usui. The Japanese term is reiju, often rendered “spiritual gift”; Western lineages say attunement or initiation. Our Reiki manual places its origin in Usui's own story: after years of study, it records, he “lived a spiritual experience on Mount Kurama, near Kyoto, during his 21-day retreat”, and from that experience came the method and the means of transmitting it. Usui founded a society, the Usui Reiki Ryōhō Gakkai, to teach it; from him the line runs through Chujiro Hayashi to Hawayo Takata in Hawaii and, the manual notes, to a small group of masters who carried it to the West.

Two things follow. First, an attunement is not information; the student learns nothing during it and could not repeat it afterwards. Second, it is defined by lineage: its value in the tradition comes from who gave it and who gave it to them. That is why serious schools publish their lineage and why who taught your teacher matters more in Reiki than in almost any other modality we teach.

What actually happens in the room?

Fifteen to twenty minutes, in silence, with a small fixed set of gestures. The exact form is passed teacher to teacher and varies between lineages, and we do not publish ours; the outline below is what every Usui-descended attunement has in common.

1. 1

   Preparation

   The student sits on a chair, feet flat, eyes closed, hands in gassho at the chest. The teacher has already explained what will happen and asked for consent to touch the head, shoulders and hands. In our cohorts this is done one student at a time while the other nine practise in another room.

2. 2

   Behind the student

   The teacher stands behind, hands above the crown, and opens the ritual with an intention. In most Western lineages the symbols are drawn over the crown, and in some a breath is directed there.

3. 3

   In front of the student

   The teacher moves to the front, takes the student's hands and draws the symbols over the palms, then closes the hands again. At Okuden the three symbols are given; at Shinpiden the master symbol.

4. 4

   Sealing

   Back behind the student, the teacher touches the shoulders or the back, marks the close, and steps away. Some lineages include a short blessing; ours ends in silence.

5. 5

   Return

   The student is given a minute, then asked to open their eyes and, before speaking, to place their hands on their own body for the first self-practice. Then water, and the next student.

That is all. The ritual is brief, physical and quiet, and it is the same whether the student feels a great deal or nothing. No music, incense, crystals or dimmed lights are required; a teacher who needs them to attune is decorating.

What is the 21-day clearing period?

The three weeks after an attunement, during which the tradition asks for daily self-practice and expects some turbulence. The number comes from Usui's 21-day retreat on Kurama, and our manual gives it a second rationale in its chapter on the energy centres: “a chakra needs 3 days to change its frequency, and the whole set of chakras needs 21 days”. Seven centres, three days each. The manual returns to the figure at the end of a session, advising practitioners to tell clients that “cellular renewal across all systems takes place progressively over 21 days”. Whether you accept the framing or not, the instruction that follows from it is sensible: practise on yourself every day for three weeks, morning and evening, 3 to 5 minutes per position, and keep a note of what changes.

What students report during those weeks is varied and ordinary: vivid dreams, tiredness, unusual thirst, a raw day or two, and for some, nothing. The manual describes a similar pattern after client sessions, a “healing crisis” of fatigue or hot and cold sensations lasting “24 to 48 hours”, and it makes a point of not announcing it in advance, so that the person does not “stay focused on that potential eventuality, which may not occur at all”. We take the same line with the 21 days: we ask for the practice and we do not script the experience.

How do attunements map to the three levels?

One per level, each adding something. Lineages descending from Takata often give four attunements at Level 1 rather than one; Japanese-style lineages repeat reiju at every meeting as ongoing practice. Our program follows the three-level structure in our curriculum, and the table gives what each attunement transmits and permits.

Note the last column of the master row: “teaching ethics”. The right to attune is also the right to charge for attunements, and the master level is where the commercial abuses of Reiki live, from weekend masterships to online lineages ten steps removed from anyone who met a teacher. Our curriculum puts ethics in the same module for that reason.

Why are distance attunements contested?

Because they remove the one thing the lineage's own account says an attunement is. Every description of reiju, from the Gakkai to Takata, involves a teacher's hands on a student's head and hands, in a room. Distance attunements, sent by intention to a student at home, appeared with the internet in the late 1990s and now underpin most online Reiki certification. Their defenders argue that Reiki already claims to work at a distance, so an attunement can too. Their critics, including most lineages that trace their line carefully, reply that a session and an initiation are different acts, that the student cannot know what they received, and that the resulting certificate certifies nothing a client could rely on.

Our manual, which devotes a chapter to distance sessions, does not describe distance attunements at all; in our curriculum the attunement appears only as something done in the room, in Modules 1, 3 and 5. That is my decision, and the reason is plain. I cannot verify that a transmission happened over a video call, and neither can the student, and a certification that rests on an unverifiable act is not one I am willing to sign. In the room I can see the student's hands, hear their breathing, and be there for the first self-practice. Whether energy crossed the space is a question the tradition answers one way and a trial would not answer at all; whether a teacher was present has a plain answer, and it is the one I can stand behind.

What does an attunement feel like, and what if you feel nothing?

Anything, and nothing is common. Students describe warmth in the hands, tingling at the crown, pressure behind the eyes, tears without sadness, or simply fifteen calm minutes with their eyes closed. None is required and none is a sign of failure. The tradition holds that the attunement has taken place whatever was felt, and our practical rule is the same as for the 21 days: do not script the experience. A teacher who tells a student in advance what they will feel is guaranteeing a report, not an outcome. The student who felt nothing and practises daily is, three weeks later, indistinguishable from the one who wept.

Can you be attuned online, and should you?

You can buy one online in an afternoon, and we think you should not, for the reasons above. If you want the attunements from a teacher whose hands are on your head, whose lineage is written down, and who is in the room for your first self-practice and your first sessions on classmates, our in-person Reiki program gives all three across 5 classroom days (35 teaching hours), in cohorts of ten, for $1,500. The attunement takes a quarter of an hour. What makes it mean something takes the rest of the program.