From an anthropological point of view, Reiki can be understood first of all as a practice, rather than as a fixed system of ideas or a set of abstract principles. This shift in emphasis is significant. A practice exists only when it is enacted: when people meet, when bodies are present, when gestures are repeated, when attention is trained, and when meaning gradually takes shape through experience. Outside of these conditions, Reiki remains a name or a reference, but not a lived reality.

To describe Reiki as a situated practice means recognising that it always takes form within specific contexts. These contexts include historical trajectories, cultural expectations, institutional frameworks, and social relationships. The way Reiki is taught in a private studio, shared in an informal group, or presented within a professional association is never neutral. Each setting brings with it assumptions about authority, legitimacy, learning, and care. Anthropology does not treat these differences as deviations from an original model, but as integral to the life of the practice itself.

This perspective invites caution toward essentialist definitions of Reiki. Describing Reiki as something that exists independently of time, place, and social conditions risks overlooking the very processes through which it is learned and embodied. From a situated point of view, there is no single, context-free Reiki. There are multiple ways in which Reiki is practised, recognised, and made meaningful, each shaped by the environments in which practitioners operate. Acknowledging this plurality does not imply relativism or fragmentation; rather, it allows for a more precise understanding of how continuity and difference coexist.

An anthropological approach to Reiki places the body at the centre of analysis, not as a biological object, but as a lived body. This distinction is crucial. The lived body is not something one simply has; it is something one is. It is through the body that attention is trained, relationships are formed, and experience acquires texture and depth. Reiki, from this perspective, exists only insofar as it is embodied.

Practicing Reiki involves specific bodily dispositions: ways of standing or sitting, patterns of touch or non-touch, rhythms of breathing, forms of attentiveness, and cultivated modes of presence. These elements are often taken for granted by experienced practitioners, yet they constitute the very infrastructure of the practice. Anthropology draws attention to these tacit dimensions, highlighting how learning Reiki is not only a matter of acquiring knowledge, but of undergoing a gradual bodily education.

This emphasis on embodiment also helps distinguish Reiki as a practice from a purely technical procedure. Techniques can, in principle, be applied independently of the person who performs them. Practices, by contrast, depend on the practitioner’s bodily engagement, sensitivity, and capacity to attend. In Reiki, the quality of presence, the modulation of touch, and the ability to remain attuned to subtle changes are inseparable from the practitioner’s own embodied history. Consequently, the body becomes both the medium and the memory of the practice.