Energy healing a matter of touch

As more people seek alternative approaches to managing their health — both mentally and physically — energy healing is gaining ground. One of the most common modalities is reiki, a form of therapeutic touch therapy. Reiki was founded in 1922 by Mikao Usui, a Japanese spiritual scholar who received “divine guidance” for developing a healing system while fasting during a retreat at Mt Kurama, outside Kyoto. He went on to train hundreds of students in reiki over four years, before his death in 1926.

Reiki is based on the premise that a practitioner can transmit subtle life force energy, known as ki, to another person through their hands. And, thus, help transform stuck and stagnant energy and emotions in a person’s energy field, mind and body to increase vitality.

I discovered reiki in my mid-20s and was sceptical at first. A friend raved about it but it wasn’t until years later, when I hit a bit of a rough patch, that I was open to giving it a shot. I was nervous but as I lay on the practitioner’s table, with my eyes closed, I started to sink into a deep relaxation. Coloured lights began to swirl in my mind’s eye. At one point the light became so bright that I thought a torch was shining in my face. Alas, it was not.

I had entered a meditative state as my nervous system dropped down a few gears from go-go-go to rest-and-relax. If I was hooked up to an EEG (electroencephalogram), you probably would have seen my brain waves drop from beta (alert) to alpha (relaxed) and then down to theta (meditative).

However, with limited scientific research, energy healing has often been criticised as pseudoscience. Energy is all around us. It can be found in the images on our screens, the sound of the radio, and in the warmth of the sunshine on your face. It encircles, shapes and binds life together.

And in the 1920s, around the time Mikao Usui was developing reiki, Harold Saxton Burr, professor of anatomy at Yale University School of Medicine, was conducting experiments to measure the electrical fields of different life forms. His work has helped underpin recent studies of the subtle human bioenergetic field. Though the jury is still out on the efficacy of energy healing from a stringent scientific perspective, there is some evidence to back it up.

One study — a randomised, single-blind, placebocontrolled investigation — looked at the physiological benefits of reiki for healthcare professionals experiencing burnout syndrome. A single reiki session, compared to a false placebo reiki session, was found to positively increase heart rate variability and body temperature, and not increase salivary cortisol levels, in the participants. Thus, reiki was seen to help shift their autonomic nervous system into more of a parasympathetic mode, promoting rest and renewal.

Reiki has also been found to positively benefit some people experiencing stress, depression, anxiety and pain. In Australia, reiki is used in some hospitals, drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres and palliative care and oncology units as a complementary therapy but it’s mostly practised privately. However, the therapy isn’t regulated and more rigorous clinical studies are required to develop a comprehensive understanding of the benefits, and to determine what factors contribute to treatment success, in diverse cohorts and for different medical conditions.

Whether reiki “works” may be questionable. But the mere act of giving yourself permission to rest is powerful. When you allow yourself time and space to nourish your being, your body responds by turning on its innate restorative systems. And that alone, in my view, is worth giving reiki a go.

This article was first published in The West Australian in Renée Gardiner’s weekly column in Agenda, 21 May 2022.