If you’ve been looking into Reiki training, you’ve probably noticed that most providers offer both in-person and online options and leave you to figure out which suits you. That’s not particularly helpful. Here is a candid comparison of what’s genuinely different between the two formats — and a framework for deciding which is right for you. 

The Attunement Question 

Attunement is the process central to Reiki training — the energetic initiation through which a student is opened to working with Reiki energy. It is what distinguishes learning Reiki from simply reading about it, and it’s the question prospective online students most often ask: can attunement really happen at a distance? 

The short answer, within the Reiki tradition, is yes. Distance is not considered a barrier to energetic transmission, and online attunements have been received by students around the world for many years. Uli Brell has been teaching online since well before it became the default mode for everything — the practice is well established and the student feedback consistently reflects the same quality of experience as in-person attunement. 

If you find this difficult to accept, that’s a reasonable response — and it may itself be useful information about which format will feel more settled and complete for you. 

Hands-On Practice: The Genuine Difference 

This is where the formats most meaningfully diverge. In-person training in Perth gives students the opportunity to practise on and receive Reiki from other students during the course itself — a dimension that is simply not replicable online in the same way. 

Feeling the experience of giving and receiving in real time, with a teacher present to offer immediate guidance on hand positions, pressure and attention, accelerates learning in a way that is difficult to overstate. You develop a felt sense of the work that is harder to arrive at when you are practising initially on yourself or on willing family members at home. 

This doesn’t mean online training produces inferior practitioners — it doesn’t, and many of Live Reiki’s most dedicated students have trained entirely online. But it does mean that online students need to be more intentional about seeking out practice opportunities after the course, which takes initiative and sometimes patience. 

Learning Style and Environment 

In-person training is immersive in a way that online training is not. A day and a half in a small group in Floreat has a particular quality — the shared experience, the conversations over lunch, the subtle but real effect of being in a dedicated space with other people all oriented toward the same thing. Students often describe this as unexpectedly significant, even those who didn’t expect the group element to matter to them. 

Online training offers something different: the ability to learn from your own home, in your own environment, without travel or accommodation costs, on a schedule arranged directly with Uli. For students outside Perth — or anywhere in the world — it opens access to a teacher they would otherwise not be able to learn from in person. For people with health limitations, caring responsibilities or simply a strong preference for learning in private, it removes barriers that would otherwise prevent training altogether. 

Community and Ongoing Connection 

Both formats connect students to the same ongoing relationship with Uli and the broader Live Reiki community. The small group sizes — typically three students maximum for in-person courses — mean that neither format involves disappearing into a crowd. Support after training is available regardless of how you originally learnt. 

What in-person students sometimes have that online students need to build intentionally: a ready-made peer group from their cohort. The people you spend a weekend learning Reiki with have a habit of staying in touch. 

So Which Should You Choose? 

Choose in-person if you can. The addition of hands-on practice with other students, the immersive group environment and the immediate presence of an experienced teacher are genuine advantages — particularly for Reiki I, where you are building your foundational felt sense of the work. 

Choose online if geography, circumstance or strong personal preference makes in-person impractical. The training is rigorous, the attunement is real and students worldwide have gone on to become accomplished practitioners and teachers from exactly this starting point. 

Either way, what matters most is the quality of the teacher and the seriousness of your practice afterwards — and those variables are the same regardless of which Zoom or which room you started in.