It is often said that Reiki cannot be proven scientifically, that it is not empirically researched. This is wrong. Dr David Bolius has been addressing this question for a number of years and has delivered a lecture on this topic in September in Berlin.
Here follows a summary of his presentation that was made on the Symposium to the 150th birthday of Mikao Usui. The author of Reiki für Skeptiker (in German) made this information exclusively available to us; in this form it has only been published in the Newsletter of the Reiki Zentrum Bolius in Vienna.
Reiki and Science
In context with a lecture by Dr. David Bolius on September 13th, 2015 in Berlin with the title “Reiki & Science”, 47 relevant scientific studies (publications) spanning the years 1983 to 2015 were viewed, 39 of which were examined more closely. All studies had been published in peer reviewed journals. The initial and remarkable impression was that the amount of Reiki publications has significantly increased in the recent years (see graph).
Amongst the 39 closely examined publications 26 were based on clinical studies of which 19 showed evidence or indicators for the efficacy of Reiki, seven studies on the other hand could not document any effect of Reiki. None of the clinical studies showed indications towards any harm of human beings due to Reiki. Some of the papers emphasised the possibility of inexpensive therapeutic possibilities.
Besides the 26 clinicals studies there were six publications which contained descriptive characteristics, one publication addressed the question how Reiki works and six publications were so called review studies. Of these review studies 3 did not find indications of effectiveness of Reiki, however, two found indicators for the effectiveness of Reiki, one of the review studies did not make any conclusions. All review studies agreed and recommended that further, high-quality Reiki research was necessary.
Expamples of studies which did not show effectiveness of Reiki are results of Kundu et al. (2014) which investigated if Reiki helped in pain relieve for children after dental operations or research by Potter (2007) which persued the question whether Reiki was helpful to woman undergoing breast biopsy. Animal experiments by Baldwin et al. (2008), on the other hand, showed that Reiki helped rats significantly by reducing stress. And Marcus et al. (2013) come to the conclusion that Reiki supports patients with a broad spectrum of symptoms, including such which often occur in cancer patients.
Baldwin, A. L., Wagers, C., & Schwartz, G. E. 2008. Reiki improves heart rate homeostasis in laboratory rats. The journal of alternative and complementary medicine, 14(4), 417-422.
Kundu, A., Lin, Y., Oron, A. P., & Doorenbos, A. Z. 2014. Reiki therapy for postoperative oral pain in pediatric patients: Pilot data from a double-blind, randomized clinical trial. Complementary therapies in clinical practice, 20(1), 21-25.
Marcus, D. A., Blazek-O’Neill, B., & Kopar, J. L. 2013. Symptomatic improvement reported after receiving Reiki at a cancer infusion center. American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, 30(2), 216-217.
Potter P., 2007. Breast Biopsy and Distress Feasibility of Testing a Reiki Intervention. Journal of Holistic Nursing, vol. 25 no. 4 238-248.