On Distant Reiki Attunements:

The question of distant Reiki attunements is somewhat complicated. There is no question but they do work. The Traditional Reiki community feels that attunements should be done in-person, and those done at distance simply do not work.

[Of course they work!, Reiki distant healing works in the same way! This is sometimes a "political" issue. Every time that an attunement is done at distance, a student who might come in person is lost. Typically, the costs of distant attunement are less than in-person attunements.]

The real problem is not with the attuning method, but with the teaching and learning process. To learn distantly requires a student who has unusual dedication, a good intellect, and an imagination to fill in the gaps of experience which are present when learning at a distance. The teacher also feels a sense of substantial frustration at not being able to provide the student with immediate feedback about hand positions and hand pressure, the accuracy of symbol tracing, and the ability to respond quickly to that occasional puzzled look on the student's face. In addition, the teacher cannot observe the student's energy response to attunement, with the occasional Kundalini sensations.

At a distance, the student is never quite sure that they are doing what they should be doing, and they are learning intellectually, not viscerally. In a sense, in all Reiki classes, the RM has nothing [no-thing] to teach; there is nothing to learn. There is a lot to experience and to assimilate. Reiki classes provide a format where the student can experience Reiki, both as giver, and as receiver. This is obviously absent in distant learning. There is, however, a possible value to distant attunements for an experienced Reiki Master who is learning a new form of Reiki which does not differ substantially from traditional Reiki.

Even then, there are the pitfalls mentioned above. Even though Reiki can be sent to a person at a distance for healing, and is done so routinely and effectively,  I will not attune and train at a distance for Traditional Usui Reiki, even though I have experienced such distant attunements as an experiment, long after I became a Reiki Master and had much Reiki experience and practice. I usually will not provide distant attunements for non-traditional Reiki forms, or for non-Reiki energy forms [unless they were specifically designed for distant training and use]. In short, it is the very rare student who can benefit from the distant procedure and the rare RM who can teach that way.