It’s important to say right at the start Reiki is not a substitute for medical treatment. Reiki can be used alongside any treatment you receive from a medical professional.

While the body is designed to heal itself, we live in a world that interferes with this natural capacity. Conventional medicine treats symptoms (either emotional or physical) but not the cause. Curing is about alleviating symptoms and eliminating disease. Healing happens at a much deeper level. A Reiki practitioner’s hands become sensitive to the subtle energies of the aura, channeling energy or Ki to restore balance to the body.

The quotations below offer further explanation:

Curing consists of treating disease and eliminating symptoms. We all know people who have received cures but have not experienced healing. When this happens, the symptoms generally return.
While curing eliminates symptoms, healing transforms your life, and often, though not always, produces a physical cure. While healing, we measure success by increased well-being, a sense of newfound peace and empowerment, and a feeling of communion with all life. Its transformative experience is reflected in every aspect of life – relationships, diet, job, marriage, how you relate to your children as well as how you experience wellness and illness.
Alberto Villoldo Phd

The cure is for the disease, not for the person. And that is the difference between a cure and a healing.
One never speaks of healing a disease, only of healing a person. A cure is an end; so is a healing, but in a very different way. Healing is rather a transition, a threshold between one stage of one’s existence and the next. Thus, it is often a beginning for an element of a life story that was not there before.
Rudolph Steiner Health Center