Do You Practice Reiki or Just Do Reiki?

Estefanía Villalobos

When I took my first Reiki course, I did so thinking that I was learning how to “do therapy,” as a tool that I could use to help others.

Even though, at that time, I had already been living with panic attacks for a very long time, I never thought of Reiki as something I could practice on myself or as a tool for my own healing process.

In those years, little was said — at least in the spaces I had access to — about self-healing through Reiki or about understanding it as a path of personal development. It was not something that was addressed in the course I took, nor was it an idea that I could easily find in the information available on the internet.

Several years went by during which I continued offering Reiki sessions to other people while I myself continued experiencing panic attacks, until a particularly stressful situation occurred and I returned to that desperate experience of having attacks practically every day.

It was then, deeply exhausted and feeling that I no longer knew what else to do, that I decided to take the tool that for years I had placed at the service of others and, for the first time, truly direct it toward myself.

I began practicing every day.

I practiced Hatsurei Hō two or three times a day, applied Reiki to myself, breathed while reciting the Five Principles, and returned to the practice again and again. Day after day. Until one day I realized something that deeply surprised me: I had gone weeks without experiencing a panic attack.

What had cost me ten years of searching, suffering, anguish, and frustration had begun to transform through consistent practice.

For many years I felt that I had lost control of my mind, my body, and my life. Fear conditioned me to the point where I stopped studying, working, sleeping, and even, for some periods, eating normally. However, over time I understood that even that painful stage ultimately became part of a much deeper process. It led me to look within, to know myself in a different way, and to discover that Reiki could occupy a completely different place in my life.

From then on, I began to understand Reiki from another perspective. I could no longer see it only as a therapy performed through the laying on of hands. Instead, I began to understand it as a path of personal development. A path that invites us to cultivate kindness, gratitude, presence, serenity, and patience. A path that contains inner practices of purification, observation, discipline, and self-help.

Reiki was beginning to reveal itself to me as something much broader: a way of living and a possibility for transformation.

And this is where a question arises that I consider fundamental for those of us who have been walking this path for years:

Do we practice Reiki or do we simply do Reiki?

Because if Reiki exists only in the moment when we enter a treatment room, place our hands on another person, turn on soft music, or prepare a space for a session, then we are only getting to know one part of the system.

What does Reiki have to offer us when we leave that space?

What happens to our practice when a conflict arises, when someone makes us uncomfortable, when we are afraid, when we feel anger, when life does not happen as we expected?

What does it really mean to live Reiki?

For many Westerners, Reiki is known primarily as a hands-on therapy. However, this understanding represents only one part of a much deeper system.

The practice of Reiki goes beyond transmitting energy to another person. It also involves a commitment to our own growth, discipline, and self-knowledge. A Reiki practitioner does not only accompany the processes of others. They are also called to walk their own path.

Within the traditional teachings of Japanese Reiki, we find different practices specifically intended for the practitioner’s personal work: meditation, breathing, purification, self-treatment, and, of course, the integration of the Five Principles into everyday life. From this perspective, inner work is not a complement to Reiki, but an essential part of the practice.

In the Reiki Ryōhō Hikkei[1], a traditional document attributed to the teachings of Mikao Usui, a fundamental question appears:

“What is Usui Reiki Ryōhō?”

The answer attributed to Usui offers us a considerably broader vision than simply laying on of hands:

“We recite and learn with our hearts the teachings (poems) left to us by Emperor Meiji, and we live according to the Five Principles established by me in order to seek progress in spiritual and physical discipline. And in order to follow the right path as human beings, first we must heal our minds and, secondly, achieve physical health. If the mind follows the course of the path of truth and is therefore healthy, the body naturally becomes healthy. The mission of Usui Reiki Ryōhō is to live a life of peace and joy, keeping the soul and body as one entity, while at the same time healing others and thereby increasing our own happiness, peace of mind, and the happiness of others.”

These words invite us to look at Reiki from a different depth. Not only as a therapeutic tool, but as a way of life that seeks to cultivate balance, harmony, and a more conscious way of relating to ourselves and to others.

The concept of Reiki Dō brings us precisely toward this understanding: Reiki understood as a path. A path of personal development in which we transform ourselves as we move toward a state of greater understanding and serenity.

Within this path, we also encounter the concept of anshin ritsumei[2], associated with a profound state of inner peace, in which we can remain connected to our purpose even amid the changing circumstances of life.

If we look at Reiki from this perspective, it is interesting to notice that many of the first teachings we receive are not directed toward healing others, but toward ourselves. Meditation, conscious breathing, purification methods, self-treatment, and the Five Principles are tools that invite us to observe and transform our own inner tendencies.

And perhaps that is where one of the deepest dimensions of the practice lies.

The Five Principles of Reiki are not simply phrases that we repeat mechanically; they are a constant invitation to observe how we think, how we feel, and how we act. They invite us to look at our relationship with worry, anger, gratitude, inner work, and kindness.

When we truly begin to bring them into our daily lives, they can become a kind of inner compass. Each everyday situation then becomes a space for practice.

Meditation and conscious breathing, in turn, allow us to observe our mental tendencies from a space of greater silence and presence. Over time, this observation can help us recognize our emotions, our automatic patterns, and our habitual ways of reacting. And when we are able to observe ourselves, the possibility of choosing a different response also emerges.

Self-treatment occupies an equally important place.

When we practice Reiki on ourselves, we are not only giving ourselves a space for care. We are also training ourselves to remain present, to listen to ourselves, and to bring our attention back to our own inner world.

But all of this requires practice. It is not enough to know the techniques. It is not enough to have received an initiation. It is not enough to know where to place our hands.

Reiki begins to acquire a different depth when its teachings begin to express themselves in the way we live.

When we begin to respond instead of reacting. When we can observe ourselves before blaming. When we cultivate patience in the midst of what makes us uncomfortable. When we remember gratitude even during difficult periods. When we choose kindness not as a beautiful phrase, but as a daily practice.

This does not mean that we stop experiencing difficulties. It means that we begin to relate to them in a different way. Over time, we may learn to regain our balance more easily, to observe our emotions with greater clarity, and to understand that every experience in life can also become part of the path.

That is why, after so many years of practicing and teaching Reiki, I believe it is worth returning again and again to a simple question:

Am I doing Reiki or am I practicing Reiki?

Because doing a session may take an hour, but practicing Reiki can involve our entire life.

Perhaps the real challenge begins precisely when we remove our hands from the client’s body, turn off the music, and leave the therapy space. That is where another practice begins. The practice of bringing Reiki into our relationships, our decisions, our thoughts, our difficulties, and the way we choose to inhabit each day.

And perhaps it is precisely there that Reiki stops being merely something we do and truly begins to become a path.

About the Author

Estefanía Villalobos

Reiki Master and Reiki Master Teacher.

Reiki Master Estefanía Villalobos is a Reiki Master Teacher and has one of the largest Reiki communities in Chile. She is the creator of the first continuing professional Reiki Master training program that encompasses all four levels.

Her journey began through personal experience, discovering Reiki as a profound tool for transformation that, over the years, became her purpose: accompanying others in their own process.

She has dedicated her life to teaching traditional Reiki, training practitioners and masters who today continue to expand this practice in different spaces.