Is Reiki a Placebo? – Part 1
By nature Reiki is very intangible. So in a series of blog articles I will try to explore how Reiki works and what the scientific research says.
For me Reiki is merely a modern name for an ancient healing practice. Which 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, we are run down and 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 benefits of Reiki
- Help some people to feel deeply relaxed
- Help people cope with difficult situations
- Relieve emotional stress and tension
- Help to improve overall wellbeing
- Help alleviate pain & anxiety
My personal belief about how Reiki works, is that I act as a channel for Reiki energy and the client must be open to receiving it as the Reiki energy cannot “force” itself on to anyone. As humans have free-will this means a client can block it if they consciously choose too. The Reiki energy is then a resource that the human body can use to heal itself.
So is Reiki just Placebo?
A placebo is anything that seems to be a “real” medical treatment — but isn’t i.e. it is fake. The judgement is based on the availability of scientific evidence. Dame Carol Black (– a former President of the Royal College of Physicians and of the Academy of Royal Colleges) and a group of distinguished doctors and scientists at the Kings Fund has concluded that current assumptions about what constitutes good scientific evidence for complementary therapies are too narrow.
Professor Stephen Holgate who is also a member of the Kings Fund said:
“As scientists, we have often sneered at the placebo effect. But as doctors, we know it can have a real impact on the outcomes of treatment for our patients. What is it, after all, but a trigger to the body’s natural ability to heal itself? That is something worth encouraging.”
I am a firm believer in the body’s ability to heal itself. As the aim of all complementary therapies is to stimulate the body to heal itself, they could all be considered placebo. This is probably especially true of Reiki due to the fact that it has not been well studied scientifically. The limited studies have not gathered enough evidence to “prove” Reiki energy exists, but this is not the same as proving it doesn’t exist.
For me, it makes more sense to assess the impact of Reiki and Reiki energy. After all if you can assess the impact of the energy then it must exist. And as to, is it a placebo? If the Reiki energy has an impact, it must exist, and it can’t be a placebo because its having an impact.
So in my next blog I will at the scientific evidence on the impact of Reiki.
Related Posts
Is Reiki a Placebo? – Part 3
While in Part 2 we looked at the impact of healing (Reiki) energy on cells, yeast & animals, that is not the same as on human beings. So in this post I want to share with you some of the research done on humans. So I want to start with looking at physical factors... Krieger (1975) carried out four experiments with the intention of raising blood haemoglobin levels in patients. The technique of Therapeutic Touch (similar to Reiki) was used, with Oscar Estebany being the healer in the first three experiments and nurses trained in the method in the fourth. Significant differences in blood haemoglobin levels were obtained in:
- 43 healed patients as against 33 controls
- 46 healed patients as compared to 33 controls, where the groups were more carefully matched
More how to chill out…
In my previous post I said that the activity you do to chill out doesn't matter it you just need to enjoy it and it absorbs you. So why not consider paying video games, yes video games. If you ask any gamer, who enjoys playing them and they will tell you it help them relax or de-stress. I know this may sound unlikey. However that is scientific research to support the idea that regularly playing video games can help people unwind an dimprove their ability to handle everyday stress. In 2010 Associate Professor Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson of the Texas A&M Public Research Facility demonstrated that both men and women who play violent video games long-term seem to be able to adopt mental skills to handle stress, become less depressed and get less hostile during stressful tasks. In 2014 reserarchers from University College London found that people who played video games after work experienced faster recovery from work related stress. While there are a number of video games on the market which are specifically aimed at helping people unwind and manage stress, it seems that almost any form of game playing will do the trick. Spending half an hour each day on a video console could be be as effective as going to the gym for helping you “chill out” at the end of a busy day. References http://www.christopherjferguson.com/hitman.pdf http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1418103/
Tips for a healthy large intestine
Following on from my bowel health checklist. I want to focus on the large intestine whose job is to take all the remaining water and nutrients our any any food that comes its way and turn whats left into compact stools. When things start going wrong with your large intestine, you usually get inflamation and this can lead to a range of symptoms including:
- Stomach pain
- Cramps
- Bloating
- Flatulence
- frequent diarrhoea or constipation
