Reiki Science
Our physical self is always healing itself. Always! There can be no reasonable or legitimate denying of this elementary fact. When something, anything, affects our body, it will immediately begin to heal. We are always in a natural state of healing. Always! With Reiki, we have a conscious intention of this healing. Reiki is a heightened state of awareness and acceptance of this healing. Reiki is an energy healing modality, a healing of intent, which is comfortably aligned with the most fundamental laws of the universe and the natural world.
Energy is everything and everywhere. It reacts with our bodies internally and externally. This is not a new concept. Most Eastern systems of medicine have always been based on these ideas.
All matter is simply slow moving energy. Einstein stated that all matter, energy, time, and space are relative to each other. These elements are also directly related and affected by the presence of a human observer. Any experiment will always be affected by the presence, attitude, and intention of the experimenter.
With Reiki we choose an intention of healing. It is an attitude that expects the total wellness of the whole self. This includes all aspects of the physical, mental, and spiritual self.
“Reiki is one of the leading safe energy medicine approaches.” C. Norman Shealy, M.D. Ph.D. Founder, American Holistic Medical Association
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 Wirth, president of Healing Sciences International. Wirth 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 that 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 went 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 was 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. Wirth’s experiment showed that the healing was effective, and that belief or suggestion played no part in the healing.
The documentation for Wirth’s findings is contained in a special thirty-minute documentary film by the BBC called “A Way of Healing.” It has also been fully written up by Dr. Wirth himself, complete with all the relevant statistics and charts, in Subtle Energies, vol. 1 no. 1, 1990.
More Studies on the Effectiveness of Reiki
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.
The studies were published in The Effect of the “Laying On of Hands” in Transplanted Breast Cancer in Mice, by Krinsley D. Bengston, Journal of Science Exploration, 2000; 14:353-364.
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.”
Sources and Documentation
Much more information is available about energy medicine, including the bibliographical sources below. We hope this overview will help you better understand the science behind Reiki.
The Uncommon Touch, by Tom Harpur; McClelland & Stewart, 1995.
Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis by James L. Oschman
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution by Danial J. Benor Southfield, MI: Vision Publications
The Effect of the “Laying On of Hands” in Transplanted Breast Cancer in Mice, by Krinsley D. Bengston, Journal of Science Exploration, 2000; 14:353-364
The Science Behind Reiki: What Happens in a Treatment, by Tamisha Sabrina, The UK Reiki Federation
EEG Amplitude, Brain Mapping and Synchrony in and Between a Bioenergy Practitioner and Client During Healing, Subtle Energies Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3, The International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine
Positive therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer in a coronary care unit population; Byrd R. 1988. Southern Medical Journal. 81(7): 826-9.
Reiki Technique Study to Control Chronic Pain in Diabetic Neuropathy
Department of Public Relations & Marketing Communications, University of Michigan
Reiki: A Starting Point for Integrative Medicine by Schiller R. (2003)
Using Reiki to Support Surgical Patients: Aladydy P. Alandydy K. (1999) Journal of Nursing Care Quality.
Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance by James L. Oschman
Enhancing the Treatment of HIV/AIDS with REIKI Training and Treatment; Schmehr R. (2003) Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine.
Reiki: A Complementary Therapy for Life; Bullock M. (1997) The American Journal of Hospice & Palliative Care