What is Reiki?

Reiki is perceived as the transfer of energy from the practitioner to the patient, enhancing the body’s natural ability to heal itself by balancing the body’s energy.

What is Reiki?

Reiki is a Japanese form of healing perceived as the transfer of energy from the practitioner to the patient, enhancing the body’s natural ability to heal itself by balancing the body’s energy. Reiki (rei meaning free passage or transcendental spirit and ki meaning vital life force energy) is a holistic, hands-on technique intended to channel energy in a particular pattern to heal and harmonize. During most treatments the practitioner holds her hands a few inches away from the patient’s body with the intention of manipulating the energy field. The history of Reiki is fascinating, but the developing science of the technique may be even more exciting.

• A 2002 national survey by the National Center for Health Statistics and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) said that more than 2.2 million adults in the U.S. had used Reiki for health purposes.
  
• Reiki has been used to reduce anxiety and chronic pain and to relieve symptoms of HIV/AIDS.
• It is practiced in many hospitals across the country to assist people recovering from surgery or experiencing side effects from cancer treatments.
• Reiki also has been given as part of hospice care to help impart a sense of peace for the dying.

Current Research on Reiki

• The National Institutes of Health currently has five studies underway studying Reiki’s ability to benefit people with diabetes, advanced AIDS, prostate cancer, fibromyalgia, and stress. Here is a sampling of other outcomes that are in the early stages of scientific study.
• A 2007 pilot study looked at the ability of Reiki to reduce fatigue during cancer treatment and recovery. Fatigue was reduced in all 16 patients over the course of seven Reiki treatments and reported significant quality of life improvements—reduction in pain and anxiety.¹
• A study to compare reports of pain and anxiety in women after abdominal hysterectomy compared traditional nursing care plus three 30-minute Reiki sessions with only the nursing care. The experimental group reported less pain and requested fewer analgesics than the control group and also reported less anxiety than the control group on discharge at 72 hours.²
• At an inner city hospital clinic, HIV/AIDS patients were referred to Reiki classes by primary care physicians and psychiatrists to manage anxiety, pain, and insomnia, and to support substance abuse treatment. There was a decline in reported pain and anxiety, when Reiki was self-administered and also when applied by another person. The high completion rate of Reiki therapy also was encouraging, given this patient population was often in emotional and physical pain and had to travel more than an hour to the clinic. ³
• Nurses and other healthcare providers learned Reiki self-treatment as part of a pilot study. They reported feeling less irritated, more compassionate, more alert, more grounded, more empowered, more peaceful, and protected.₄

The Benefits of Reiki

While some of the commonly reported benefits of Reiki such as the sense of spiritual connection and enhanced self-esteem may not be quantifiable, the ability to develop rational mechanistic explanations and testable hypotheses about holistic treatments such as Reiki are evolving. The human body has magnetic and bio-magnetic fields, as well as other kinds of energy: light, sound, heat and gravitational. Science may be able to investigate these as they relate to energy medicine like Reiki.

Fortunately, we don’t have to wait for a full scientific explanation if the benefits of Reiki treatments can be clearly documented. After all, aspirin was used for 70 years before science began to understand how it worked.