Are Distant Reiki Attunements Effective?

In response to a question from a student. Free video.

Some Reiki Masters are claiming that Reiki attunements via distance are not “true” Reiki or come from personal energy. Is this true?

The short answer is no. Summary:

• Remote initiations can be just as if not more effective via distance.

• If you don’t think remote attunements work then why do distance healing?

• The origin of Reiki is universal life force energy, which comes from a higher source, and it can be accessed by anyone without the need for a Reiki master.

• A lot of the so-called “real” Reiki out there is just smart marketing. That’s not to say it’s bad or wrong, but it’s marketing.

More in the video above.

Automated Transcript
Note: This transcript has not been edited and will contain errors.

Hi, I'm Stephanie Brail and I'm going to answer some questions about Reiki attunements sent to me by a Reiki student of mine who lives in Russia. And there is some controversy going on about exactly how attunements work and she wanted me to clarify because I've been in this Reiki world since I think 1999 It's now a long time totally aging myself. However, I do have some opinions on it they're just my opinions, but I do believe they are backed by practical experience and also the feedback of my thousands of students over the years.

So let me preface this by saying that since I first learned Reiki in, I think it was nineteen ninety nine two thousand. Reiki was a lot simpler back then and my lineage goes back to Hawaii oh Takata, I'm sorry if I did not get her name properly the woman in Hawaii who was originally credited for bringing is Sui Reiki to the West and I have this lineage that goes back to her I believe somewhere in my finals.

The original lineage in my original Reiki manual, back from my first Reiki teacher who was in Los Angeles at the time. And Reiki was fairly simple it was. Here's what it is. We're going to teach you some symbols to help you connect to the energy. Here's how you do an attunement but a Bing but a bong and you're good to go. Because ultimately Reiki is a very simple process.

Now we can complicate Reiki, which humans love to do, and we have over the years, and I've complicated it myself, I've put out different Reiki attunements and whatnot, focusing on specific issues or specific energetic qualities. I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. We now have people who have claims to have researched and discovered the original use sui Reiki, and they have now made this sound more official with the use of a lot of Japanese terminology, which we did not use back in the day.

But they've also added on some meditation and some other things. I'm sure that these are wonderful ways to practice Reiki, but it's not the only way to practice Reiki I've seen online just briefly so I'm not saying this is necessary prevalent, but there seem to be a little bit of a disdain perhaps for the new A G Reiki which was focused on chakras. And oh, if we're going to be doing traditional Reiki, we're going to use the Japanese energetic system and all this Japanese terminology and make it sound a little bit more academic and a little bit more palatable to perhaps the more skeptical Western minds out there.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, because it might make Reiki more appealing to people who might have originally written it off and said, Oh well, that's just a bunch of New Agey, woo wooly fluff you're talking to Archangel Michael and this whoever the Saint Germain is and Ascended Master what's what is all this stuff? This sounds really fruity. Why don't you just. I don't know, Take some herbs and get some acupuncture why are you doing this weird New Agey stuff so for some people, I think this more serious sounding Reiki might be better for them.

That's not to say that it is better or more powerful than the woo wee New Agey type of Reiki that I pretty much was involved with for many years, because that's really what was the most popular at the time. I don't mean to. I hope I'm not offending anybody by saying these things I'm just kind of saying it like it is that there's been these different versions of Reiki, and I believe they appeal to different personalities. So connect with the Reiki system that feels comfortable to you, and if you feel more confident, sharing Reiki to your skeptical friends by explaining it in a way that makes it sound more Buddhist with these nice sounding Japanese terms for things, great.

But ultimately, when push comes to shove and you've got your hands on or near the person if you're doing an in-person treatment, all of that other stuff is just wrapping paper. It's not the Reiki okay. That's my official opinion, whether you want to take that or leave that so let's get to these questions. The first one is how do you feel about the statement that remote initiations do not exist? And then this way of learning is not Reiki but something else. Well, if you believe that, then perhaps you'd have never had in a remote initiation and or at least a good one. And that's really don't have any say in the matter there's been thousands of people, maybe millions, I don't know.

But I know thousands of people, maybe not personally, but they have gotten remote initiations for me I've gotten remote initiations from other people, and I can guarantee that they do work. Whether you want to say is this officially Reiki or not, I'm using my officially researched and very serious Reiki and you're using your, you know, fluffy new a G You know, see that's where you're getting into ego and judgment and you're not connecting with the energy so I don't think that this is a really fair thing to say. Remote initiations can be extremely powerful and yes, they are Reiki in the at least the Usui Reiki that I was taught, we learned the hon-sha-say- sho-nen distance healing symbol.

Well, if you can do distance healing, why can you not also do distance attunement? So you're kind of going against what you see we taught if you're saying that you can't do a remote initiations because you're basically saying that distance healing isn't a thing. And if you are supposedly A Reiki practitioner, you should know that distance healing is not only possible but is a very wonderful way to practice Reiki so next question, Masters in Russia who teach contact training say that in remote initiations we heal with our personal energy and not Reiki.

What do you think about this? Well wait, I thought some of these people were saying that remote initiations didn't work or didn't exist. Now you're saying they exist, but it's our personal energy That is kind of contradictory but let me also finish the question because it was a two-part question so the first part was masters in Russia who teach contact training say that in remote initiations we heal with our personal energy and not Reiki. What do you think about this? Also, these masters say that transmission is possible only with contact Reiki initiations OK well first of all, if you believe that, then don't do any distance healing, right? So I mean, that's part of it but also these people have it backwards.

Because think about it, when I or another Reiki master sends a remote attunement, what are we really doing? I'm not sending my personal juju out there. The Reiki energy is being said, what is Reiki energy? It's universal life force energy. Where does universal life force energy come from? And some of you might say it just exists. I would tell you that universal life force energy comes from a higher source. Some might call that source God or the source or Brahman or whatever you want to call it.

So when I send it be a distance, it's not really me sending it is the divine source and in actuality, I'm not needing to send it from here to there so it's not like it's coming from me to you. I'm here and I do a request. I might use some sort of ritual for my request i might even pretend that you're in front of me and do some motions and draw some symbols in the air. But ultimately, I'm saying divine source of all that is, could you please attune this other person? Then over there, where that other person is remotely, they're getting that attunement from source.

It's not coming from me to them, It's coming from the source directly to them in their own little space, perhaps outside of space and time if you want to get technical about it so this question is nonsensical because it really is it shows a deep misunderstanding of where Reiki comes from. I would also say that if you're saying that you physically need to be there in person to give the Reiki atonement, as this question suggests, you're really saying that it is about the person.

And if it's about the person, then what you're saying is that you have to have that person to send the energy. And so it sounds to me like the in-person attunement, people who are attached to that might actually be the ones using their personal energy because they're saying I have to be there. That's your ego. Your ego saying, oh, I have to be there what, It's not going to work. If I'm not there in person with my great Reiki masterness, it's not going to work. That's ego. You are putting yourself in there. You don't need to be there at all.

In fact, Reiki Masters technically aren't needed whatsoever. Usui did not get Reiki from a Reiki master guess where he got it from. If I put a Reiki attunement out there, if I put out a Reiki system, where do you think I got it from i didn't create it out of my own stuff. It's the divine energy. We can all access it. Anybody can self attune.

It's just helpful to have another person there it helps with our belief they can be a bridge and A and a conduit of sorts, but nobody needs a Reiki master ultimately. So in the free Reiki training that Reverend Jason Storm created many years ago, and which I have reprinted because he put it in the public domain, the whole basis of that system is you can get attuned directly you don't need an intermediary to be attuned.

Anybody who thinks that you absolutely need to have an intermediary in that intermediary is them. And oh by the way, could you pay i don't know what it is in Russian rubles or whatever i don't know what the currency is. It used to be you had to pay ten thousand dollars to get a Reiki master attunement it was a lot of money. I never charged that it was always just like a couple hundred dollars but do you think that you have to pay somebody to go sit in front of them and there are some sort of guru that's going to give you the Reiki? I'd say that might not be Reiki.

So these people are just dead wrong. Ok question number three masters from Russia say that there is only Usui Reiki Rioja. I think that she means Rioja and everything else is not Reiki what would you say about this? I would likewise say that is not true. I did mention this that there is this trends towards people trying to create a more legitimate Reiki by claiming and maybe they did i don't know i have not been able to go to Japan myself and trace the research to verify whether the I'm not saying that people are making this up i want to make that clear, but I cannot verify it And that those people, they could be great and well meaning and maybe it's a really wonderful way to do Reiki i don't know i have not trained in a person I'm actually curious i might go and get trained in it because I'd like to be well-rounded but I don't know if in the course of their research that they had to kind of create some things and set some things up to make it more structured because in my opinion, if this was always part of it, then why wasn't it part of the tradition that we've been? All of us had been learning way before they came up with this.

All this stuff is still actually relatively new compared to what people used to get trained in Reiki, which didn't include all, like I said, all these fancy Japanese terms and all this other extra stuff. All of it's lovely it's great, fine i love it i think it's a great idea you know what it does help for people who aren't into New Agey stuff to be able to think of Reiki as something a little bit more legitimate. I would be honest with you, when I first started doing Reiki and I was in my well, I was about 30 years old when I became a Reiki master. You do the math.

And so i was still single, as in Los Angeles. None of my friends were into this stuff and I was embarrassed about it because I'd say it was embarrassed so much as I think embarrassed is a little strong, I was a little uncomfortable trying to navigate these dual worlds. And it's just even though I was in LA which is considered to be like, oh, that's a lot of New Agey stuff is there really wasn't as much as you'd think at least in the nineties. And so I would I really didn't know how to talk about it there wasn't an easy way for me to talk about it in a way that would make sense and not get some people that roll their eyes.

And today it's probably even worse because in the West we've gotten so focused on science as the end all and be all. If you tell somebody that you do Reiki and yet you work with Archangel Michael, they're just be like, so having a Reiki system where you could say, oh this has been researched and it's from Japan and it has this, it's based in Buddhist philosophy or whatever it is can be a nice way for people who aren't comfortable with woo stuff to benefit from Reiki. So I think it's a lovely idea.

I think it's a smart idea and it's fantastic marketing, but it's marketing. Do not fool yourself. It is marketing. I'm not saying that there aren't legitimate extra practices that they don't, that they teach. But ultimately, when somebody, I don't care if they're a Reiki master from Russia, for Africa or the United States or wherever they're from, if they say that there is only this type of Usui Reiki that, oh, they happen to be certified in, and that's the only legitimate one that is a marketing gimmick.

They're trying to appeal to authority and say you can only come to me because I'm the one who went and spent the 5000$ extra to get that special certification. And you schmucks over there, you only spent 100$ to get your online attunement or maybe you went and got the free attunement. You're the free Reiki system from Reverend Jason Storm and well, that doesn't mean anything because, well, you didn't really pay for it, right you figured it out on your own you followed his instructions, what you know.

So ultimately, all of these questions come down to ego. And I'm not saying that these people who are doing this or bad people or that, because we all have ego it's part of how we're how we survive on the planet but it's a misunderstanding of what Reiki really is and where it really comes from. It doesn't matter how you wrap up Reiki in a nice little bow. If you want to have the Japanese Reiki with this, you know the fancy words and all of that formal sounding stuff and have it sound all like serious and researched and this, that and the other thing that makes you feel good, OK great.

But when somebody's actually on your massage table or if you're doing your distance healing, does it really matter to your client? They just want to feel better. They want to feel more energized they want to feel lighter, happier, better. They don't want to feel sick anymore. They don't want to have their chronic illness. None of that stuff is going to help the client. The main thing that's going to help the client is that you get out of the way that means your ego gets out of the way, and that you're helping to focus the divine life force energy that is Reiki and help that person receive it and that means you need to get out of the way.

You cannot pay somebody 5000 or ten thousand dollars to get out of the way. In fact, if you are paying that much money in order to feel like, oh, look how much, how many certifications I have, then you aren't getting out of the way you're in the way because you're focusing on your certifications. The best healers are often the ones that they aren't putting up flashy websites or charging tons of money or saying my way is the only way they're humble servants who are just doing what they're guided to do a lot of them go and do it for free.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't charge I'm just saying that a lot of the best healers out there doing it for free, they're volunteering. They might not even been calling, they might not be calling it Reiki, it might be Holy Spirit, healing or whatever it's all the same source. So in response to these questions, once again, yes you can be attuned or initiated remotely. You do not even need a Reiki master you can simply ask in prayer to get attuned to any system you want for free. That doesn't mean the manual is free or the training is free please respect the time and effort that teachers put into trying to teach you.

It's it does take time. Okay so it's okay to pay your teacher, but you can be attuned to free for anything you can ask for any sort of new attunement that you want. If it's a focusing, I want to have an attunement for being jolly. I'm going to put out a system called Jolly Reiki please send me the attunement God. And then you go into a receptive mode and you receive that and then you can share that with other people.

Now that I've said that, I'm going to have to write up a manual for it because now it's that's what popped into my mind maybe it's needed good Christmas themed Reiki attunement and you don't need all of the other stuff is wrapping paper. It's how are you marketing this, that or the other thing. And Reiki in and of itself is simply a way to access to vine healing cheat. I think that covers it so one more thing for especially for new people who might be new to this whole world of Reiki, what is this whole thing with Reiki attunements so you can get attuned to the first three levels of Reiki some systems will add like a three and a half 3 5 they'll split up Reiki master to Reiki master teacher.

It's still the same thing so it's basically 3 levels. And then there are Reiki systems that are additional systems that might be completely new systems or addons or whatever, and they offer additional attunements and those attunements are basically in some ways like a supercharged healing energy that you can use for personal spiritual growth or for healing and to work on certain blocks, you can use them potentially to send a different type of healing energy to the client now that's not saying it's not Reiki, it's more of like a flavor of Reiki so we have ice cream and you go to the ice cream store and you're in the mood for vanilla maybe one day you want chocolate or black Raspberry or mint chocolate chip or rocky road.

So different these different types of Reiki attunements are basically flavors of ice cream their flavors are Reiki. It's all still Reiki. It's just in some ways it's more of a way to set the intention. It's adding an intentional layer to the basic Reiki, chi or divine life force energy. So you can get additional attunements in any number of different systems and maybe one of them will call to you or it'll feel particularly helpful for you or your clients and if you love it, then great and if it doesn't speak to you, then that's fine, no big deal.

But yes, these work very much remotely because it's not about you or a person standing in front of you. It's about the divine. I hope that was helpful, and I'm sorry if it was a little controversial, but it was that was the question that was asked, so I'm going to be honest and anyway, keep on Reiki-ing and namaste.