Someone practicing Reiki self-treatment sits quietly, places hands on their body, focuses attention inward, and enters a state of relaxed awareness. Someone practicing mindfulness meditation sits quietly, focuses attention inward, and enters a state of relaxed awareness.
The overlap is obvious. The differences are real.
Both practices have exploded in New York City over the past decade. Meditation studios in the Flatiron District sit around the corner from Reiki practitioners. Wellness centers in Williamsburg offer both on the same menu. Retreat programs in the Hudson Valley combine them in weekend packages. And a growing number of people in NYC practice both, sometimes in the same sitting, sometimes as separate daily practices, and report that each one changes the quality of the other.
The question worth answering is not “which is better” but “what does each one actually do, and how do they interact?”
The Structural Difference
Meditation is an internal practice. You generate the conditions for your own state change. Through attention, breath, visualization, or mantra, you shift your nervous system from active processing toward a calmer baseline. The mechanism is entirely self-directed. Nobody else needs to be in the room. Nobody else needs to do anything.
Reiki, at least in its traditional practitioner-to-client form, involves an external component. Someone else places hands on or near your body. The framework says energy is being channeled to you. Whether you frame that as biofield therapy, relaxation response triggered by human touch and attention, or something else entirely, the point is that something is happening between two people.
Self-Reiki collapses this distinction somewhat. you are both practitioner and recipient. At that intersection, Reiki and meditation begin to look most similar, and the question of whether they are genuinely different practices or variations of the same impulse becomes interesting.
A 2025 survey of Reiki practitioners found that 95% meditated weekly, with frequencies ranging from once to seven times per week. The most popular types were mindfulness, guided, and Gassho meditation. the last being a form of meditation specific to Usui Reiki tradition where practitioners sit with hands in prayer position and focus attention on the tip of the middle fingers. Most practitioners who meditated reported that meditation increased their connection to Reiki and enhanced their ability to channel.
This is not surprising. Both practices train the same fundamental skill: the ability to quiet mental chatter and sustain focused, receptive attention.
What Each Practice Emphasizes Differently
Meditation traditions, particularly mindfulness-based approaches, emphasize awareness itself as the goal. You notice thoughts without following them. You notice sensations without reacting. You develop what researchers call “metacognitive awareness”. the ability to observe your own mental processes. The benefits are well-documented: reduced cortisol, improved emotional regulation, decreased anxiety and depression symptoms, enhanced concentration, and structural changes in brain regions associated with self-awareness and stress processing.
Reiki emphasizes a different dimension. The tradition teaches that the practitioner is not generating healing energy through concentration or willpower. they are receiving and channeling it. The practitioner’s role is to get out of the way. This distinction matters in practice: a meditation practitioner is actively doing something with their attention, while a Reiki practitioner is aiming to be passive enough for energy to flow through them. One is about directing awareness. The other is about surrendering direction.
In practice, the line blurs. Advanced meditators often describe reaching states where effort drops away and awareness simply is. Experienced Reiki practitioners describe sessions where they enter deep meditative states spontaneously. The destination looks similar even if the map is different.
The Research That Actually Compares Them
Most research studies Reiki and meditation separately. A 2025 placebo-controlled randomized trial did something unusual: it compared them directly. The study (published in Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 2025) enrolled 164 adults with physician-confirmed knee osteoarthritis and assigned them to four groups: Reiki, sham Reiki, mindfulness meditation, or waitlist control. Each active treatment consisted of four weekly 30-minute sessions.
Both Reiki and mindfulness groups showed significant improvement in osteoarthritis symptoms compared to the waitlist control (Reiki p = .02, mindfulness p < .001). The study did not find Reiki significantly superior to sham Reiki, raising the familiar question about whether Reiki’s effects are specific to the energy channeling itself or attributable to the relaxation response, therapeutic attention, and structured rest.
What makes this study relevant to the Reiki-meditation question: both practices produced measurable benefits for the same condition, through different mechanisms, in similar timeframes. They are not interchangeable. one involves human touch and an energy framework, the other involves directed mental attention, but they appear to access overlapping pathways of symptom relief.
How Practitioners in NYC Combine Them
The combination takes several forms in New York City’s wellness ecosystem.
Pre-session meditation. Some Reiki practitioners begin sessions with 5 to 10 minutes of guided meditation or breathwork before starting the hands-on work. The rationale: a client who arrives from a hectic subway commute needs a transition period. Jumping straight from rushed to receptive does not work well. A brief meditation bridges the gap. Practitioners in Manhattan and Brooklyn who use this approach report that clients settle into the Reiki portion faster and describe deeper experiences.
Reiki-infused meditation classes. Several NYC studios offer group classes that blend meditation instruction with Reiki energy. The teacher guides meditation while a Reiki practitioner moves through the room, placing hands on or above each participant briefly. These classes typically run 60 to 75 minutes and cost between $25 and $45 per session. They are different from individual Reiki sessions. the Reiki component is shorter and less personalized, but the group meditation setting creates a different quality of collective experience.
Self-Reiki as a meditation form. For people who have completed at least Level 1 Reiki training, self-Reiki naturally functions as a meditation practice. The hand positions provide structure that some people find easier to work with than open-ended “just sit and focus on your breath” meditation instructions. The hands give the mind something concrete to attend to, which can be particularly useful for beginners who find their attention scattering during unstructured meditation.
Gassho meditation. This is the meditation form most directly embedded in the Reiki tradition. Taught as part of standard Reiki training, Gassho involves sitting with palms together in prayer position and directing attention to the point where the middle fingers meet. It is simple. remarkably so, but practitioners who maintain a daily Gassho practice describe it as fundamentally different from mindfulness or guided meditation. The focus point is smaller and more specific, and the prayer position itself creates a somatic anchor that some find easier to maintain than breath awareness alone.
For People Who Meditate but Have Not Tried Reiki
If you already have a meditation practice, Reiki sessions will feel familiar in some ways and foreign in others. The stillness and the inward focus will not be new. The presence of another person’s hands on or near your body will be. The framework of energy channeling may or may not resonate with your worldview.
What meditators consistently report about their first Reiki experience: “I went deeper than I usually do on my own.” Whether this is because the additional element of human touch activates a relaxation pathway that solo meditation does not, because the practitioner’s focused attention creates a shared field of calm, or because the novelty of the experience commands more attention. the subjective report is consistent.
What Reiki may add to an existing meditation practice: a different quality of receptivity. Meditation trains you to generate your own calm. Reiki trains you to receive it. For people accustomed to doing everything themselves, and New York City is full of these people. the experience of lying still while someone else holds intention for your wellbeing can be genuinely disorienting. In a good way.
If you’re curious what that reception feels like in practice, Self Empowered Minds’ approach to Reiki and energy healing combines intuitive mapping with traditional techniques, designed specifically for the overstimulated nervous systems common to New York professionals.
For People Who Do Reiki but Have Not Established a Meditation Practice
Reiki practitioners who do not meditate are working with a partial toolkit. The tradition itself recognizes this. Usui included meditation practices (Gassho, Joshin Kokyu Ho) as foundational to Reiki development, not as optional additions.
What meditation adds to Reiki practice: attentional stability. The ability to hold focus without drifting into planning, worrying, or narrating. Practitioners who meditate regularly describe being more present during sessions, noticing subtler sensations in their hands, and maintaining a clearer channel. whatever that channel is. for longer periods.
The NYC Reiki training ecosystem reflects this connection. Most comprehensive Reiki training programs in the city incorporate some form of meditation instruction, particularly at Level 2 and Master levels. Programs that skip meditation entirely are, in the view of many experienced practitioners, leaving out a foundational component.
Where to Find Combined Programs in NYC
New York City offers multiple pathways for people interested in both practices.
Meditation studios that also offer Reiki include centers in Midtown, the West Village, and DUMBO. The formats vary. some offer dedicated Reiki-meditation fusion classes, others simply have both services available as separate offerings. Asking at the front desk whether practitioners teach or combine both modalities is the simplest way to find integrated options.
Reiki training programs that emphasize meditation include schools in Union Square, Chelsea, and the Upper West Side. When evaluating training programs, asking specifically about the meditation component. how much time is dedicated to it, what forms are taught, whether it is treated as foundational or supplementary. reveals a lot about the program’s depth.
Community Reiki circles. weekly or monthly group sessions offered at reduced cost. often incorporate group meditation. These circles exist across the five boroughs and are one of the most accessible ways to experience both practices together without committing to a full session or class. Many list events on community boards and local wellness directories.
The Honest Assessment
Meditation has a broader evidence base. Decades of neuroscience research, thousands of participants across hundreds of studies, measurable changes in brain structure and function. If you had to choose one practice based purely on scientific evidence, meditation would win on volume and rigor.
Reiki has a smaller but growing evidence base with consistent positive signals, particularly for pain, anxiety, and relaxation. The research struggles with the same question it has always struggled with: separating the specific effects of energy channeling from the nonspecific effects of rest, touch, attention, and therapeutic relationship.
What neither practice replaces: professional mental health care for clinical conditions, medical treatment for physical illness, or the basic human requirements of sleep, nutrition, movement, and social connection.
What both practices offer, based on both research and the reported experience of thousands of practitioners in New York City: a reliable method for downregulating the nervous system, a structured form of intentional rest, and a counterweight to the relentless stimulation that defines life in this city.
Whether you start with meditation or Reiki is less important than starting with either one and practicing consistently.
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or psychological advice. Reiki and meditation are wellness practices, not medical treatments. Neither replaces professional medical or psychological care for diagnosed conditions. Consult a qualified healthcare provider for any health concerns.
Sources:
- Complementary Therapies in Medicine (2025). “Complementary therapies for chronic knee pain: A placebo-controlled RCT of Reiki and mindfulness.” 164 participants, four-arm trial comparing Reiki, sham Reiki, mindfulness, and waitlist control.
- Clark D, et al. (2025). “How Important are Meditation and Spirituality in Reiki Practice?” Survey of Reiki practitioners on meditation frequency and types.
- McManus DE. (2017). “Reiki is better than placebo and has broad potential as a complementary health therapy.” Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine, 22(4):1051-1057.
- International Center for Reiki Training. Gassho meditation and Joshin Kokyu Ho breathing techniques. reiki.org