I'm fascinated that, as far as I can tell, there's a lot of disagreement here about whether this is "mumbo jumbo" or not, when nobody is addressing the major aspect that differentiates reiki from other non-traditional medicines -- which is that it is based on touch.
We're social animals. I've never had reiki but I have spent some time in hospitals. You know what you NEVER get in a hospital? Someone touching you in a way that isn't associated with a (usually painful) medical procedure. There is literally no aspect of hospital life that accommodates human sociality. So the idea that someone comes in to your hospital room and touches you gently and that makes you feel better? OF COURSE it makes you feel better. In the same way that therapy dogs make you feel better. It's social touch. It's pleasant. It addresses an incredibly deep-seated need in the human psyche, one that if it is not met eventually results in - if nothing else - significant mental health issues.
So it seems to me that the right scientific study to do here is not whether reiki improves on (say) chemotherapy outcomes; it's whether any sort of touch therapy, including therapy animals or just regular hugs from family, results in improved outcomes.
From my brief meeting with someone who did Reiki, it seemed to involve a lot of hovering, and zero touching. Maybe there are different styles.
I agree a touching studying would be worthwhile. But I'm not sure Reiki is evidence supporting one.
I googled a bit and found this:
> Will the Reiki Practitioner’s hands touch me in any way?
> At your option. Reiki may be done with a light gentle pressure static touch or the Practitioner’s hands may be a few inches/centimeters above your body at the hand positions with no actual touch. There are standard hand placements beginning at your head or feet, avoiding all sensitive body parts. Let your Practitioner know prior to the session which you prefer, light touch or no touch.
My experiences with reiki were positive, but my practitioner mixed shiatsu (lots of touch) with reiki.
There's an article on HN today also on "Physical force alone spurs gene expression, study reveals", which might be an interesting angle to consider with any sort of therapeutic massage involving contact.
Only it is not based on touch. The "Reiki Master" quoted in the article says it works just as well at a distance. He also claims that it works on animals and plants and that many cats can perform Reiki on their owners.
This is why science asks more specific questions than "Does Reiki work?" We shouldn't let a self-proclaimed Reiki Master determine what we look at.
I'd also add that we don't have to let them determine our terminology, either. If the touch parts of Reiki work, then there's no reason we should add an air of validity to all of Reiki by saying "Reiki works" instead of "touch therapy works" or something similar.
Exactly. What I'd like to see is Reiki practitioners who do not believe in the mumbo-jumbo, perhaps don't even know about it, but simply perform the same actions that the Reiki practitioners do. Will that matter for the effectiveness? Do they need to talk to the patient about healing energy channels, or can they talk about something else?
So I'm pretty skeptical of the distance aspect and the plant aspect. I'm actually not skeptical of the "animals" claim.
Cats cuddle with you. They enjoy being petted. So do dogs. And so do humans! I have a dog whose primary pleasure in life is snuggling up to you on the couch and getting petted. This is not surprising; dogs, like humans, are social animals. And this is a symbiotic relationship. It's pretty well known that therapy dogs significantly reduce stress, including physical markers of stress such as blood pressure and cortisol levels.
There's probably a whole body of unexplored potential in therapeutic systems that rely on varying types of placebo or psychosomatic effects. Modern medicine has a very strong naturalistic underpinning to it, which biases it towards pharmacological types of interventions and tends to write off anything else as fake quackery or superstition.
Granted, most of it IS fake quackery and superstition, and whatever the thing is the pharmacological intervention is probably going to be more effective in a more predictable and repeatable way than most traditional practices. But there's clearly some measure of relief people get from a lot of the traditional systems that we could learn from, even if it means we do a little dance and chant while we administer the ibuprofen.
I love animals and I agree that Dog Therapy is effective for the reasons you state. I fail to see what any of that has to to with Reiki and it's claims of tapping into the "Universal Source" and manipulation of "Healing Energy".
Hugs are also beneficial and cause documented positive chemical changes in our bodies. No imaginary mystical forces or increased "vibrations" needed.
>Hugs are also beneficial and cause documented positive chemical changes in our bodies. No imaginary mystical forces or increased "vibrations" needed.
It's just a different theoretical framework for describing an observed phenomenon. Even if it's not technically correct, it can still be a good enough cognitive heuristic to help people intuit what's happening or how to influence it.
Think about it kind of like Newtonian mechanics, which are also not quite right but make predictions that are generally close enough for most of what we do in everyday life and much easier for people to work with intuitively.
I agree. I don't buy the explanations reiki practitioners give of why it works; we don't need to resort to "healing energy". I just think that the act of gently touching someone who is in pain has significant positive effects, and that in hospital settings this is incredibly rare.
We're social animals. I've never had reiki but I have spent some time in hospitals. You know what you NEVER get in a hospital? Someone touching you in a way that isn't associated with a (usually painful) medical procedure. There is literally no aspect of hospital life that accommodates human sociality. So the idea that someone comes in to your hospital room and touches you gently and that makes you feel better? OF COURSE it makes you feel better. In the same way that therapy dogs make you feel better. It's social touch. It's pleasant. It addresses an incredibly deep-seated need in the human psyche, one that if it is not met eventually results in - if nothing else - significant mental health issues.
So it seems to me that the right scientific study to do here is not whether reiki improves on (say) chemotherapy outcomes; it's whether any sort of touch therapy, including therapy animals or just regular hugs from family, results in improved outcomes.