You learn Reiki by receiving an attunement from a Reiki teacher, then practising regularly on yourself and others until working with Reiki energy feels natural. Books and videos can prepare you well, but the connection itself is experiential: it comes through the attunement and your own self-practice, not through reading alone.
That is the short answer, and it surprises some people. Most things we learn as adults start with information. Reiki starts with experience, and the understanding follows.
This guide draws on Jeremy O'Carroll's Reiki manuals and course materials, used in teaching at Om Reiki Centre. It looks at what learning Reiki actually involves, and where reading fits in.
Om Reiki's approach combines traditional Japanese Reiki with practical Western techniques. Jeremy O'Carroll teaches it around five pillars: attunements, meditations, the Reiki precepts, hands-on healing, and symbols and mantras. Each one supports the others. Meditation steadies your attention, the precepts give you a way to live with Reiki day to day, and hands-on healing is where you put it all to work.
At the centre is the attunement. It is widely considered the key to learning to channel Reiki, and it is the part a book can't hand you. If you're curious about the basics, here is what a Reiki attunement is, but you don't need the details to understand the principle: a teacher connects you to Reiki energy, and from there you begin working with it yourself.
Could you find that connection on your own? Possibly, but it is a long road. Mikao Usui, the founder of Reiki, came to it after years of spiritual training and a 21-day retreat on a mountain. A course makes the same connection far more accessible. Most of us have jobs, families and a limited supply of mountains.
One idea from Jeremy's Level 1 manual tends to reassure new students. He describes learning Reiki as less about acquiring something new and more about rediscovering something you already have. In his view, the ability to heal has always been there; you simply haven't known how to reach it.
Once you are attuned, you stay attuned. What changes over time is your familiarity with the energy. Regular self-practice is what makes Reiki feel stronger, steadier and more your own. If you'd like a clearer picture of the first stage, you can read about what students learn in Reiki Level 1.
You can learn a great deal about Reiki from a book or video. What you can't do is learn the experience of Reiki that way.
That distinction matters, and it isn't a knock on reading. Jeremy O'Carroll points out that beginners "don't know what they don't know". A good book answers the questions you didn't realise you had: what Reiki is, where it comes from, what a session involves and whether it sits comfortably with your own beliefs. Reading first helps you decide whether Reiki is right for you before you commit to anything. Om Reiki's free beginner's guide to Reiki was written for exactly that purpose.
Where books reach their limit is the connection itself. Reiki is an experiential relationship with ki, the life energy that flows through all living things, rather than a purely intellectual subject. Think of reading about swimming: you can learn every stroke and still not know what water feels like until you get in.
Jeremy compares an attunement to tuning a radio. A book can describe the station, the music and the presenters in loving detail, but someone still has to turn the dial.
Training is also only the beginning. A course can connect you to Reiki quickly, but skill develops afterwards, through practice, patience and plenty of time with your own hands on your own body. Reading prepares you, the attunement connects you, and practice is where the real learning happens.
For something with a reputation for mystery, Reiki training is reassuringly down to earth. Much of it looks like learning any practical skill. Someone explains, someone demonstrates, you try it yourself, and you ask questions when something doesn't quite make sense.
Instruction gives you the context: where Reiki comes from, how the practice is structured and why it is done the way it is. The attunement is usually the part people wonder about most. Knowing the basics before you arrive means you won't build it up into something you have to "get right".
Then comes the hands-on part. You practise on yourself, and often with other students, so the techniques move out of your notebook and into your hands. Questions are part of the process, not an interruption to it. A puzzled look and a "wait, is this right?" are exactly how learning happens.
Finally, you leave with a simple routine to continue at home. For a fuller picture of the content itself, see what students learn in Reiki Level 1.
Some students are surprised by this, but the course is the beginning of learning Reiki, not the end of it.
Om Reiki Centre's Reiki 1 Manual describes Usui's teaching as step-by-step: a student practised one technique until they had mastered it before receiving the next. The point, the manual notes, is not how many techniques you know but what you can do with them. That principle still holds. Information from a course becomes skill only once your hands, breath and attention have done it many times over.
That's why Om Reiki's Level 1 material is so clear about little and often. As the manual puts it, it is far better to practise ten minutes a day, six days a week, than for an hour once a week. Ten minutes is achievable, and ten minutes on a tired Tuesday still counts.
Regular self-treatment after the attunement helps restore and strengthen your familiarity with Reiki. It also teaches patience. Early experiences can be inconsistent. The guidance is to relax, not force results, and keep practising consistently. As Jeremy writes in Reiki Flow, the key to more consistent results is simply consistent practice.
Over time, something shifts. Beginners learn the rules and techniques and then practise them, and with repetition the practice becomes more intuitive. You stop checking the steps and start noticing what's actually in front of you.
The common trap is waiting for perfect conditions. Students hold out for the quiet room, the free hour, the right mood and a beautifully balanced set of chakras, including any they may have invented along the way. Om Reiki Centre's approach favours a combination of meditative practice and incidental Reiki through the day, in the spirit of Hawayo Takata's saying: “A little bit of Reiki is better than no Reiki.” There's more on why practice matters more than perfection.
If staying motivated on your own is hard, practising alongside others in a Reiki practice group can be one helpful support. The heart of it stays simple, though: a few minutes, most days, with patience.
Lineage can sound like a framed certificate on a wall. In Reiki, it's closer to a family tree of teaching: a living chain of people who learnt from someone, practised, and then passed it on.
Reiki has always moved this way, person to person. The attunements, the techniques, and the small practical tips about hand positions or what to do when your mind won't settle all come from a teacher who received them from their own teacher. Lineage is simply the record of that handing-on.
It matters for two quiet reasons. The first is accountability. A teacher who can name where their training came from is standing inside a tradition, not making things up as they go. The second is context. Lineage connects what you learn in a room today with Reiki's beginnings in Japan, through Mikao Usui, Dr Chujiro Hayashi and Hawayo Takata, and on through many teachers since. The history is more tangled than any neat diagram suggests, but the thread is real.
Jeremy O'Carroll studied Reiki in India, Thailand, Australia and the USA, with teachers including Frans Stiene, William Lee Rand and Laurelle Shanti Gaia. Om Reiki stays faithful to Reiki's traditional Japanese origins without becoming dogmatic, and supplements them with effective modern techniques. If you're curious about the chain itself, Jeremy O'Carroll's Reiki lineage sets it out.
This is also part of what a book can't give you. A book can explain Reiki beautifully. It can't attune you, notice where you're getting stuck, or answer the question you didn't know you had. That part comes from people.
A few questions come up again and again before a first course.
Maybe. Maybe not much at first. Some people notice warmth, tingling or a deep sense of calm straight away. Others feel very little in the early days, and that's normal.
Om Reiki course material notes that early experiences are often inconsistent: strong one day, barely there the next. The advice is not to go hunting for sensations or try to force them. Practice and patience do more than straining ever will.
There isn't a right sort. Reiki students come from all kinds of ordinary walks of life. You don't need a mystical personality, a flowing wardrobe or a crystal collection.
Many people are simply drawn to Reiki without being able to explain why. According to Om Reiki course material, that quiet pull is a perfectly good reason to explore it. You don't have to justify it to anyone, including yourself.
You won't, and that's fine. Om Reiki teaching is clear that consistent practice matters far more than perfect conditions. Five minutes of self-practice on a tired evening still counts.
You don't need a candlelit room, a silent house or a tidy mind before you begin. If you miss a day, or a week, you simply start again. The practice doesn't keep score.
If you're still at the reading-and-wondering stage, that's a good place to be. The free beginner's guide to Reiki is a gentle next step, written for people who are just starting to explore. It lets you get a feel for Reiki before deciding anything.
If you already know you'd like to learn in person, Level 1 is where it begins. You can read about the Melbourne Reiki Level 1 course, the Brisbane Reiki Level 1 course, or the Daylesford Reiki courses if a country setting appeals.
Either way, there's no hurry. Reiki has been passed from hand to hand for about a century, and it will still be there when you're ready.
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