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Reiki Australia is proactive in enriching our members’ day-to-day Reiki practice and raising the benchmark standards within the Reiki industry as a whole throughout Australia. By taking our responsibilities seriously we offer so much more to our members, over and above organised events and a sense of community.
Reiki practitioners at all levels join Reiki Australia for a range of reasons, and particularly the support of a recognised, professional organisation.
Our pursuit of excellence affords us a real voice in the industry and an opportunity to position ourselves as a professional organisation which our members can leverage in their own clinics.
Many join Reiki Australia because their goals and aspirations for Reiki as a whole are aligned with ours. There is a real desire to see the legitimatisation of Reiki as a treatment choice in a holistic health plan – sitting confidently alongside or hand in hand with other healthcare professions.
In order for doctors and other healthcare practitioners to recommend a treatment or a complementary healing practice to patients, they need evidence that it is safe and effective. So is Reiki effective? Or more precisely, from a research standpoint, what is Reiki effective for?
Generally speaking, a Reiki Practitioner may respond to such questions by saying, “Reiki is effective for restoring balance in the individual. Balance brings about its own benefits – its own ‘knock-on-effect’ – to the whole body – but how that actually manifests will vary from person to person.”
Of course medical researchers prefer to work with something more substantive, because they are in the business of studying treatments for specific illnesses rather than treatments that, rather ‘ambiguously’ bring our bodies back into balance.
It’s worth remembering, respected medical research is designed to address very specific questions within defined parameters. Although conventional medicine has long included a concept of ‘balance’ in its messaging to the public, there has historically been no clear definition of this concept that can be used to test the claim that Reiki promotes balance.
Given the vagueness of the term stress and the differences in human bodies and the circumstances in which they live and function, how could science realistically measure an individual’s ‘balance’? It’s a tricky area and practically impossible to use a ‘control’ group scenario.
To date, the primary outcomes studied in Reiki research have been measures for pain, anxiety, and stress, including heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol, as well as measures for things like job/life burnout. More specific measures have been used to evaluate outcomes for stroke rehabilitation, depression, and other chronic health conditions.
Given the relatively subtle and complex nature of Reiki practice, these measures may not adequately illustrate the whole experience for the person receiving Reiki. Measures that incorporate quality of life, patient satisfaction, and stress reduction may have the greatest potential for demonstrating the benefits of Reiki practice.
The good news is the debate on how best to study complementary therapies is gaining traction (though this depends on the Government of the day), and it’s still very early days for Reiki.
We hope this will change soon, and the pursuit of raising the profile of Reiki underpins our strategy now and in the years ahead.
Over the years, Reiki Australia has collated a wide range of research papers over the years, many of which in the interests of space, have been Archived. If there is a specific area of research you are interested in, do get in touch and we will locate what we can for you.
Alternatively, we hope you find value in some of the papers posted here.
Reiki Medicine and Self Care – Pamela Miles
Reiki Healthcare Research Trust – General Research
Connecting Reiki With Medicine
Reiki in Hospitals and Clinics – Samantha Avery
Original source article – Harvard University Study on Reiki Sessions – The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.Dec 2019.1156-1162.
What Is Reiki And How Does It Work? – Forbes Health
All About Reiki: How This Type of Energy Healing Works, and Its Health Benefits – Everyday Health
Harvard Neuroscientist Explains Reiki – luminousreikioc.com