Proving Reiki or Reiki Proving

May 1, 2021 Health & Healing No Comments

Nothing in reiki is scientifically proven, and any esoteric explanation of it is extremely implausible. Does this situation prove anything else?

Rei – ki = spiritual – flow (of energy)

Increasingly more people in the US and the UK go to reiki practitioners.

Reiki, a healing style created in Japan, is also increasingly administered in prestigious Western hospitals and taught at academic medical centers, including Harvard and Yale.

Motives may be mainly negative: many people’s disillusionment with established medicine, its rising costs, and depersonalized care.

Also, many have the intuition that the real cause of much illness lies elsewhere and that in many such cases, the illness is not solvable within the generally materialistic view of medicine on health and healing.

Reiki explanations

These go from very esoteric (quantum, magnetism, biophotons) to ‘generally spiritual:’ not knowing how it happens but with a healing side effect.

There is no evidence at all of any substance or energy flow, no measurement of reiki efficacy above placebo. Of course, performing double-blind studies with reiki is difficult. Practitioners and patients generally know what they are doing and receiving – or not – in a study compliant to patient consent. What would a reiki-placebo be like if not very much reiki itself?

This way, no state-of-the-art study has yet proven or disproven reiki’s efficacy. Scientifically, placebo is seen by many as the explanation of what happens in the real world. To many in the ‘scientific camp,’ this is also where it ends.

Compassion

To me, if performed well, it is a clear example of mainly Compassion at work. If done very well, it becomes an art. [see: “Is Compassion Art?”] Of course, to some degree, there is also always some placebo involved.

The reason that Compassion is not generally seen as the crucial factor lies in a general misreading of Compassion itself as a force of healing. [see: “Only Compassion Works”]

This also makes it essential to get beyond any supernatural explanation of reiki, apart from the blatant non-science itself.

Beyond reiki

Call the mysterious ‘Chi’ force ‘Compassion.’ It doesn’t come from the external universe, but from the universe inside, the one that we should urgently find out more about since it is us.

Reiki belongs to the domain of poetry, which is principally OK, but it should be open. Don’t let poetry and rationality be enemies to each other. This means getting rid of placebo-lies. They are not durable in the long term and have many side effects. [see RG: ”Placebos have many ‘side-effects’ “] They set up rational thinkers against the more poetically inclined.

Not recommendable. Moreover, if science stubbornly sticks to the merely conceptual, people will increasingly turn to reiki and stuff.

The only way out

seems to be to scientifically delve into Compassion, even if that means that we have to broaden the science. It’s better than to throw half of healthcare into a wasteland.

Also, if reiki-as-placebo is administered with Compassion, the placebo will increasingly be less needed. We’ll get rid of non-scientific esotericism from the inside out. No such explanation is required. This way, we may develop a better view of underlying factors and deploy them towards inner strength and better health with less cost.

It matters whether “reiki is real.” It also mattered concerning astrology and alchemy, opening doors to astronomy and chemics. Or should we throw those out? No way. Even more so concerning us.

This is also my answer to acupuncture and any other deep-yet-irrational/non-scientific healing method. [see: “Chi: Poetic Energy”] The future belongs to science. We can go there either fighting or Compassionately.