Does Reiki Work?

What is Reiki?

Reiki is a Japanese technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing. It is administered by "laying on hands" and is based on the idea that an unseen "life force energy" flows through us and is what causes us to be alive. If one's "life force energy" is low, then we are more likely to get sick or feel stress, and if it is high, we are more capable of being happy and healthy.

The word Reiki is made of two Japanese words - Rei which means "God's Wisdom or the Higher Power" and Ki which is "life force energy". So, Reiki is actually "spiritually guided life force energy."

A treatment feels like a wonderful glowing radiance that flows through and around you. Reiki treats the whole person including body, emotions, mind and spirit creating many beneficial effects that include relaxation and feelings of peace, security and wellbeing. Many have reported miraculous results.

Reiki is a simple, natural and safe method of spiritual healing and self-improvement that everyone can use. It has been effective in helping virtually every known illness and malady and always creates a beneficial effect. It also works in conjunction with all other medical or therapeutic techniques to relieve side effects and promote recovery.

An amazingly simple technique to learn, the ability to use Reiki is not taught in the usual sense, but is transferred to the student during a Reiki class. This ability is passed on during an "attunement" given by a Reiki master and allows the student to tap into an unlimited supply of "life force energy" to improve one's health and enhance the quality of life.

Its use is not dependent on one's intellectual capacity or spiritual development and therefore is available to everyone. It has been successfully taught to thousands of people of all ages and backgrounds.

While Reiki is spiritual in nature, it is not a religion. It has no dogma, and there is nothing you must believe in order to learn and use Reiki. In fact, Reiki is not dependent on belief at all and will work whether you believe in it or not. Because Reiki comes from God, many people find that using Reiki puts them more in touch with the experience of their religion rather than having only an intellectual concept of it.

While Reiki is not a religion, it is still important to live and act in a way that promotes harmony with others. Mikao Usui, the founder of the Reiki system of natural healing, recommended that one practice certain simple ethical ideals to promote peace and harmony, which are nearly universal across all cultures.

During a meditation several years after developing Reiki, Mikao Usui decided to add the Reiki Ideals to the practice of Reiki. The Ideals came in part from the five principles of the Meiji emperor of Japan whom Mikao Usui admired. The Ideals were developed to add spiritual balance to Usui Reiki. Their purpose is to help people realize that healing the spirit by consciously deciding to improve oneself is a necessary part of the Reiki healing experience. In order for the Reiki healing energies to have lasting results, the client must accept responsibility for her or his healing and take an active part in it. Therefore, the Usui system of Reiki is more than the use of the Reiki energy. It must also include an active commitment to improve oneself in order for it to be a complete system. The ideals are both guidelines for living a gracious life and virtues worthy of practice for their inherent value.

The secret art of inviting happiness
The miraculous medicine of all diseases
Just for today, do not anger
Do not worry and be filled with gratitude
Devote yourself to your work. Be kind to people.
Every morning and evening, join your hands in prayer.
Pray these words to your heart
and chant these words with your mouth

Usui Reiki Treatment for the improvement of body and mind
The founder, Usui Mikao

How Does Reiki Work?

Reiki stimulates energy (Reiki) to move in the body.

You already have energy in the body but it may be blocked and not flowing smoothly. During or after a treatment, you may feel the effects of energy being unblocked.

For a time, physical and psychological symptoms may worsen as the mind/body cleanses itself. This is normal and expected, so if it happens to you, just ride it out and know that the discomfort will pass and you’ll feel much better, soon. It’s important to support your body as best you can to help you move past the cleansing process.

Reiki does not direct the life force energy or manipulate it in any way – it is about clearing out the pollutants that prevent free energy flow.

Can anyone practice Reiki? Yes!

Interestingly, the ability to use Reiki is not “taught” but rather is transmitted from teacher to student in a class. The student undergoes an “attunement” that allows the student to feel and transmit life force energy. It is not a religious practice so anyone who desires can learn Reiki without any religious beliefs.

The practice of Reiki goes beyond healing physical ailments. The philosophy encourages living and acting in ways that promote harmony both with others and within oneself. Making the decision and commitment to improve yourself is an integral part of Reiki teachings.

The Theory Behinds?

Research into reiki is gradually gaining speed, with much being done into the electromagnetic field of all living things, and the pathways for which this energy is transferred within the body.

Our physical bodies have a mesh of tubes made up of collagen and filled with a very fine fluid, called the myofascial system which links all parts of us, sort of like an energetic superhighway. The myofascial system carries signals in the form of tiny electrical light impulses called biophotons (literally meaning biological light) which are said to be the smallest sparks of conscious energy, carrying the very building blocks of life and allows all cells to communicate with one another.

The amazing thing is, that these biophotons have actually been photographed in a single drop of water using a somatoscope with a magnification of 30000x. What researchers found was that a single biophoton goes through a series of changes in shape, showing ancient symbols that we recognize from ancient culture and religion, starting as a single point of light, going through a series of six pointed stars and ending in the flower of life.

It clearly seems to me that our ancestors knew much more than we do now about life and left us these clues in the form of symbology—but that’s a whole other subject that I should probably not get into here.

We know now that energy, carrying messages and information, is constantly moving throughout both our electromagnetic fields and our physical body in the form of light. This light is everywhere and in everything, vibrating at different speeds as was previously mentioned, and imperceptible to the limited capabilities of our basic five senses.

The myofascial system is probably one of the most important systems in the body and also one of the most over-looked. Within us the myofascial system has seven major points where there is much more fascia than in other areas which, funnily enough, correspond to the seven main energy centers, or more commonly, chakras.

It stands to reason that if there is more fascia in these areas, more biophotons would be found here since the mesh of tubes is much thicker, creating a larger energy hot spot, so to speak. In standard Reiki treatments, it is with these areas that the practitioner will work with the most.

Scientific Evidence

The healing art of Reiki has been practiced and taught around the world for many years, with many believing its origins to be as ancient as those of humans themselves. With scientific research now emerging attesting to the ability of human thoughts, emotions, and intentions to affect the physical material world, an increasing number of scientists, quantum physicists in particular, are stressing the importance of studying factors associated with consciousness and its relation to our physical world. One of these factors is human intention.

Reiki essentially uses human intention to heal another person’s ailments. Practitioners usually place their hands on the patient in order to channel energy into them by means of touch. It can be roughly defined as using compassionate mental action and physical touch, energy healing, shamanic healing, nonlocal healing, or quantum touch.

The popularity of this practice is exemplified by the fact that, as of 2000, there were more ‘distant healers’ in the United Kingdom than therapists practicing any other form of complementary or alternative medicine, and the same goes for the United States. (Barnes PM, Powell-Griner E, McFann K, Nahin RL. Complementary and alternative medicine use among adults: United States, 2002. Adv Data. 2004. May 27)

Quantum physicists have been advocating for the effectiveness of such treatment for some time. For example, Max Planck, the theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory — winning him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918 — stated that he “regards consciousness as fundamental” “and derivative from consciousness.” He also maintained that “everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”

Distant healing involves factors associated with consciousness.

Eugene Wigner, a well-known theoretical physicist and mathematician, emphasized that “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.” Richard C. Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, takes this idea even further in his article “The Mental Universe,” published in the journal Nature:

A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial—mental and spiritual.

Over the past three decades several scientists and universities have conducted experiments using laying-on of hands healers. Professor Bernard Grad, a Canadian biologist, alone has published thirty-five papers on experiments involving healing. Grad has used barley seeds, animals, plants, and humans to prove something objective and scientifically verifiable happens when a healer goes to work. The results consistently showed the healer’s intervention had a profound positive effect on the rate of healing. His major conclusion is that healing by laying-on-of-hands is fundamentally an objective and repeatable phenomenon, verified by numerous carefully controlled experiments throughout the world.

One of the more interesting experiments using humans was conducted by a California doctor, Daniel Worth, president of Healing Sciences International. Worth set out to explore whether there would be a healing effect if the persons to be healed were kept completely unaware of the healer’s presence and unaware that any healing was taking place. He enlisted forty-four male student volunteers who were told they would be part of an experiment to test a new, highly sensitive camera which could photograph the energy flowing around the human body. Under the tightest of secrecy and controls, half of the group came to a rented house at regular intervals in the morning and the other half came in the afternoon. Everyone was told the same story; everyone was treated in exactly the same way. Each volunteer had an eight-millimeter-wide, skin deep wound cut on his forearm. When they went into the house, each volunteer was seated close to the wall of an otherwise empty room and instructed to insert his arm through a small, heavily draped hole— nothing was visible on the other side. Each volunteer sat there for precisely five minutes while the “camera” in the adjoining room was supposedly filming the wound. The purported theory was that there would be extra energy flowing around the wound and the camera would be able to record it. The point, however, was that there was no camera in the next room. The morning group were simply hanging their arms in empty space. In the afternoon a healer, named Laurie Eden, totally concealed from them, sat in the alleged camera room, close to the wall, and carried out a healing session on the wounds, keeping her hands just inches above their arms.

At the end of sixteen days, medical experts, who did not know who had been treated by the healer, examined the arms of the forty-four students. The wounds of thirteen of those treated by the healer had healed entirely, each wound had closed over and had a layer of new tissue sealing it. The rest of the afternoon group were “well on the way to total healing.” By contrast, not a single member of the control group had experienced complete closing of the wound, or anything close to it. The photos showing the differences are striking. Worth’s experiment showed that the healing was effective and that belief or suggestion played no part in the healing.

Researcher Krinsley D. Bengston witnesses multiple cases of cancer remission associated with a hands-on energy healer. Bengston then apprenticed with the healer to learn how to reproduce the healing effects.

Bengston obtained 5 experimental mice with mammary adenocar-cinoma, which had a predicted 100% fatality between 14 and 27 days following injection. Bengston treated these mice for an hour a day for a period of 30 days. The tumors developed a “blackened area,” then ulcerated, imploded and closed, and the mice lived their normal lifespan. The control group of mice with breast cancer, sent to another city, all died within the predicted time frame.

The results were so remarkable; three replications of the experiment were done in different cities. The studies were done with skeptical volunteers trained to do hands-on energy healing. In these three studies, 87.9% of the energy-treated mice lived, and 100% of the control group mice died. In addition, the mice in remission from two of the four experiments were re-injected with cancer, and it did not take, suggesting a continuing, stimulated immunological response. Histological studies confirmed the viability of cancer cells through all stages of remission.

Bengston wrote “The tentative conclusions are that belief in laying-on of hands is not necessary to produce the effect; there is a stimulated immune response to treatment, which is reproducible and predictable; and the mice retain immunity to the same cancer after remission.”

New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Campus conducted one of the first studies ever

performed to determine the effectiveness of Reiki treatments on the autonomic nervous system. This

“blind, random study” included a Reiki treatment group, a “sham” treatment group and a “control” group.

The testing began with all participants at “baseline” autonomic nervous systems levels. The results within the Reiki treatment group showed a lowering of these levels including heart rate, respiration and blood pressure. These positive results led the team to recommend further, larger studies to look at the biological effects of Reiki treatment.

It’s interesting to note that Columbia/Presbyterian was one of the first hospitals to offer Reiki as part of their Integrative Medicine Program (CIMP). The now famous cardiovascular surgeon, Dr. Mehmet Oz brought tremendous attention to Reiki when he invited Reiki practitioners to treat patients during open heart surgeries and heart transplant operations. Dr. Oz is often quoted as saying, "Reiki has become a sought-after healing art among patients and mainstream medical professionals."