What the Reiki Level 2 symbols actually are, and why I don't hide them
August 2026 · 4 min read · By Vanessa Chugani
Level 2 is where Reiki training turns mysterious for most people. Level 1 is hands and basics, something anyone can picture. Level 2 is symbols, a manual you're sometimes told not to show anyone, and an unspoken feeling that you've now been let into something. I teach it differently, and this is why.
What you're actually given
At Level 2 you receive a second attunement and three symbols, along with how to use them, and the addition of distance work: sending Reiki to someone who isn't in the room. That's the content. Not a jump in power, not a rank you've earned, just more tools and a way to work when you and the other person aren't in the same place.
The symbols themselves are simple line drawings with names attached. In most Usui Reiki Ryoho lineages, tradition has you draw or picture them, sometimes say the name to yourself, and use them to focus your attention during a session, whether that's physical discomfort or something more emotional. That's the whole function: focus. Not a code that unlocks a stronger current, not a password that makes the session more real.
Where the secrecy came from
Somewhere in the decades Reiki spent moving from Japan through Hawaii and into the West, these symbols picked up an oath. Students were told not to draw them outside of class, not to write them anywhere permanent, not to show them to anyone who hadn't been attuned, sometimes with a warning that the symbols would "lose their power" if seen by the wrong person. Nothing in what survives of Usui's own teaching describes that kind of rule. It arrived later, largely through Hawayo Takata and the teachers who trained under her, at a point when secrecy had become part of how the lineage was run and how it was paid for.
I take the same view of the symbols that I take of the chakra system: what's taught today is not what's ancient, and pretending otherwise doesn't serve the student, it just makes the training feel more impressive than it needs to. I've gone into the actual history of Usui Reiki in more detail here, and the honest version of the chakra story is here too, because the two often get presented as one and the same, and they aren't.
Why I teach them plainly
You get the symbols printed in your manual on the first day of Level 2. You can photograph them, write your own notes beside them, ask me about them in front of the other people in the room, or on your own if we're working one to one. There's no oath, no ceremony about never revealing them, no line about a drawing losing its meaning if the wrong person sees it. If a practice depends on nobody looking at a piece of paper, the paper isn't what's doing the work.
What I do ask is that you use the symbols the way they're meant to be used, as a focusing tool inside a session, not as proof that you now belong to something exclusive. That's a request about care, not about secrecy. It also means that if you train with someone else afterward, or compare notes with another practitioner, you won't find yourself confused about whether you're even allowed to talk about your own training.
What actually changes for you
The real shift at Level 2 isn't mystical. It's practical: you can now work with someone who isn't physically in front of you. I've written separately about what that does and doesn't involve here, because it gets romanticized fast and I'd rather you understand what you're actually doing than enjoy a nicer story about it.
If you're deciding whether to move from Level 1 into Level 2, or you're starting at Level 2 having trained elsewhere, come with the expectation that you're learning a second set of tools, not crossing into a stronger version of yourself. The structure of each level, arranged around you rather than a fixed calendar, is on the training page.
I'd rather you arrive at Level 2 with accurate expectations than romantic ones. That's not a smaller way to start a practice. It's the only way I know how to teach one honestly.