The Reality of Reiki

As some of you may know, I volunteer for Inova Hospital's Life With Cancer program, which offers Reiki treatments for people undergoing chemotherapy (or who have recently completed chemo), as well as for their families and caregivers. I blogged about my experience as a Reiki volunteer last December. Knowing of my involvement with Reiki, a friend emailed me a link to Friday's uncredited Washington Post article "Reiki: Touching the Intangible," about how Reiki is increasingly being used in hospitals to help reduce stress and promote healing in patients. Luann Jacobs, head of Reiki Partners, and creator of the George Washington University Hospital Reiki program, is quoted in the Post article. I have had the pleasure of meeting Luann, and am familiar with the high standards of the GW Hospital Reiki program, which is a wonderful resource available to all patients who are interested in utilizing this service.

The Post article is short, but informative. However, I believe that the author missed the point in saying, "There's no scientific evidence behind their claims, but reiki healers believe that during sessions, they're tapping into a universal source of energy that is then transferred to the recipient." While it may be true that we do not have the means to measure something as ethereal as "a universal source of energy," several studies have investigated Reiki, and a number of these have supported its efficacy in treating a variety of conditions.

An article by Anne Vitale (a nurse/researcher/Reiki Master), published in Holistic Nursing Practice in 2007, reviewed Reiki research published over the past 20 years. Most of the studies had small sample sizes, or did a poor job of controlling for factors other than Reiki. However, several showed significant positive effects of Reiki treatment, including decreased distress, anxiety, pain and physiological stress responses.

Pamela Miles, a Reiki Master who "has developed Reiki programs in prominent New York City hospitals, published in peer-reviewed medical journals, and presented and taught Reiki at medical schools and conferences," provides citations for current research on her website (see the Reiki and Medicine section). Findings from these studies show significant effects of Reiki, including reduced anxiety, pain, depression, and fatigue. One thing that the literature on Reiki has suffered from is the lack of large-scale studies, although this is true for many areas of research in the medical field. As Reiki gains more attention, more and more studies are being designed to address this issue. Currently, the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is supporting several studies on the effectiveness of Reiki, the results of which I hope to see in the not-too-distant future.

In the meantime, empirical evidence shows us that huge numbers of patients have reported relief from pain, nausea, anxiety and fatigue after receiving Reiki. Nurses, who are on the front line of patient care, have long understood the healing power of touch, and see first hand the positive effects of Reiki, Healing Touch and Touch Therapy. The Reiki in Hospitals website lists over 40 hospitals in the U.S. that offer Reiki to their patients, and this is just a partial representation. The authors of the Reiki in Hospitals website are undertaking the task of gathering and summarizing the entire body of peer-reviewed Reiki-related research in order to educate the medical community and the public as to the current state of knowledge about the effectiveness of Reiki.

Admittedly, all of the studies I have mentioned only addressed the tangible effects of Reiki, not the mechanisms underlying it -- not the transfer of "universal energy." However, The Promise of Energy Psychology by David Feinstein, cites recent studies that have begun to show how energy runs through the body and may be transferred from one person to another. Science is just beginning to try to address the measurement of the "subtle energies," and it is still in a nascent stage, but the more interest the public shows in complementary and alternative medicine, the more investigations there will be. In the meantime, remember that, before Einstein, we looked at the physical world in a very different way -- we didn't hold the concept of light as particle AND wave, energy AND matter -- and could not measure many of the things we now measure. And before we had microscopes, people scoffed at the idea that we could get sick from little unseen creatures (which we now fondly refer to as bacteria, viruses, etc.).

Our current inability to measure the transfer of universal energy does not negate the possibility that it exists. Just because we don't currently understand how something works does not mean that it isn't beneficial. Take aspirin as an example. Around 400BC, Hippocrates prescribed the bark and leaves of the willow tree (which contains salicin) to his patients. Then, in 1897, chemist Felix Hoffmann created aspirin (whose key ingredient is salicin), which today remains one of the most widely used drugs for treating pain and fever. However, it wasn't until the 1970s that scientists figured out the mechanisms by which this medicine worked. Similarly, even if an objective measurement of universal energy transfer isn't developed anytime soon, this does not in any way diminish the effectiveness of Reiki as a healing practice.

(Image borrowed from The International Center for Reiki Training FAQ page -- a comprehensive source of information on Reiki)