The nature of reiki energy is being researched, but is not yet pinned down in scientific terms. In reiki classes, we are taught that it is akin to Ki, Qi, pranic, orgone and other forms of energy that are called ‘life force energy’. In some ways it is similar to the energies of the electromagnetic spectrum, but is not the same in all respects. Reiki practitioners are taught that they cannot perform reiki for results, but need to simply allow the ‘life force energy’ to flow where it is needed.
A CURIOUS SCEPTIC I knew none of this at the time of my reiki Level 1 attunement. I was very sceptical about having received anything during the attunement process and, frankly, was pretty weirded-out by the experience. However, I soon came to see my experience in a different light. Up until then, one of the constant
features about my life was my need to drink a plunger pot of coffee first thing in the morning. It was so important to me that I would plan my movements around it. If I was travelling, I would take the plunger and coffee with me if I thought there was any chance of missing out. On the morning after my reiki
attunement, though, I woke up and thought, “You know, I don’t feel like having coffee today. I might have a hot lemon drink instead.” So that’s what I did and haven’t had a coffee since, and haven’t even been tempted. Given my previous dependence on
coffee, that seemed like a minor miracle to me, and convinced me that the attunement must have made some kind of difference. Looking back, I see that this illustrates the problem with defining the nature of reiki energy. In scientific terms, energy is defined by its ability to do work, to cause a change. But what type of energy is it that can change the way you do things, to give you a healthier motivation? How much energy was needed to make me change my mind about drinking coffee? It must be a very subtle energy indeed. Intrigued, I set out to learn more
about reiki is and what it can do. Over a period of months I tracked down pretty
much all of the scientific publications on reiki in the English language and bought up a shelf of books as well. I was rather astonished to find just how many studies there were (more than 90 in total), and the range of conditions for which reiki has been tested.
SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF REIKI AND ITS EFFICACY Reiki has been shown to be beneficial in managing chronic disease conditions, in aged care, in the management of cancers, in postoperative recovery, in hospices, in drug and alcohol recovery, and as a form of self-treatment for highly stressed health care professionals. Typically, reiki is reported to reduce pain, anxiety, fatigue, and depression, and to improve relaxation, comfort, and quality of life.
//REIKI IS A NATURAL FORM OF HEALING THERAPY THAT IS APPLIED THROUGH NON-INVASIVE, AND NON-MANIPULATIVE GENTLE TOUCH. //
Through the course of my research, I came to realise that most people wouldn’t know much about the scientific studies on reiki. The most recent review in the public domain included studies up to 2011 – there has been an explosion of clinical studies since then. Given reiki practice should be informed by the available evidence, I was encouraged by the Australasian Usui Reiki Association (AURA) to write a review paper to bring the latest findings to public attention. The problem I encountered in writing
a review was that there is simply too much information to be adequately covered within the word-count limit of most academic journals. I realised that I
had to find a focus for my review, to cut the task down to a manageable size. It seemed to me that the most important point that needed to be resolved is whether or not reiki therapy offers anything more than a placebo effect.
POWER OR PLACEBO? The placebo effect is a well-known but poorly understood phenomenon that affects all clinical trials. Basically it means that a healing response can be triggered simply through the belief that a beneficial therapy is being administered. Early reiki studies had been criticised because they did not include a control treatment to account for the placebo effect, but this had been addressed in many of the more recent studies. A placebo reiki treatment is given by someone who looks and acts as much as possible like an authentic reiki practitioner, but who has not received the reiki attunement. In essence, testing reiki against a placebo control is a test of whether the reiki attunement has any real effect on the practitioner. In selecting studies for my review,
I also wanted to make sure that they were large enough to be statistically significant. This means that there must be enough people in each ‘treatment group’ of the study to ensure a reasonable degree of confidence that any measured differences are in fact real. This is a major challenge for researchers of alternative therapies, since it is time- consuming and expensive to recruit large numbers of volunteers for clinical trials, and such studies rarely receive grant funding. For my review, I selected studies with at least 20 participants in each treatment group to ensure that there would be a good degree of statistical confidence in the outcomes. There were 13 studies that met my
inclusion criteria, of which 11 were with human subjects and 2 involved rats. The rat studies were the most important, I believe, because they involved measurements of tangible physical evidence, such as observable changes in microscopic blood vessels and data from implanted sensors measuring heart rate and blood pressure.
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