Reiki may sound new age to some, but its anything but new. In fact, its a form of energy healing with roots in ancient cultures. Reiki uses whats known as universal life force energyki or qito improve peoples lives and ailments.

The term reiki comes from the Japanese words rei, meaning universal, and ki, which means vital life force energy that flows through all living things. Some practitioners describe reiki as acupuncture without the needles.

Reiki is a complementary health approach in which practitioners place their hands on or just above different areas of the body. Its based on an Eastern medicine belief that living beings have energy fields that support their health and vitality.

Energy blocks, on the other hand, impede innate flow of energy, causing not only health problems, but also negative life circumstances like financial troubles or relationship problems, according to belief. Energy blocks of any living being can be treated, according to belief, which is why some practitioners also work on animals and plants. Reiki practitioners focus on sensing energy blocks and moving the energy for the greatest good of the client.

There are at least 30 slightly different branches of reiki, but Usui is by far the most popular form. Usui is the method practiced and taught in Japan as early as the 1900s by Makao Usui, who is credited as the founder of modern reiki.

Usui reiki came to the West via Hawaii in the 1930s thanks to a Japanese-American woman named Hawayo Takata. She traveled back to her native Japan to seek healing for her own physical and mental ailments, including a lung condition, asthma and a nervous breakdown after the death of her husband. One of Makao Usuis students, Dr. Chujiro Hayashi, taught reiki to Takata. Her healing experience was so profound that Takata returned to Hawaii and became the first person to teach reiki in the West.

However, due to the abundance of anti-Japanese and anti-Asian sentiments in the United States around World War II, Takata shied away from using the name reiki and instead referred to her establishment on the island of Kauai as a healing studio, according to researcher Nat Newton, Ph.D., a Usui reiki master in Orange County, California.

Takata modified some of the teachings for her English-speaking students and ended up training 22 students in reiki as we know it today, says Newton. Today, thousands of people worldwide are trained in Usui and similar reiki methods.

While reiki can easily be done in just about any setting, a typical reiki session takes place in a relaxing environment or treatment room, akin to massage therapy. Newton holds some of her reiki sessions in well-ventilated outdoor spaces. Meanwhile, many reiki practitioners do remote healing where they arent even in the same building as the client.

In a typical treatment room setting with a reiki practitioner and a client, the client begins face up and fully clothed. They might briefly discuss their ailment or situation they hope to heal. The session might begin with a brief meditation, and then the practitioner uses various hand movements to lightly touch or hover over various parts of the clients body while they are face up and face down. Throughout the session, the practitioner focuses specifically on their intent for healing.

We usually think about activating whatever is in the highest good for the client, says Newton. Sometimes well visualize the client as healed. But always well set a positive intention for whatever they need at the moment that would serve their highest good. We dont know what that is and dont presume to know. We let reiki do what it needs to do.

A typical session lasts 30 minutes to an hour, and a client-practitioner discussion uses a good amount of that time, according to Newton. After the session, I always spend time talking to my clients about what came up for them and perhaps also what I intuited, she says.

The most well-documented benefits of reiki revolve around the relaxation response, which practitioners say invokes the bodys natural healing process.

Dr. Rachel Lampert, M.D., a professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine, and her colleagues studied 37 patients after having a heart attack. The patients were randomized into three groups: patients who simply rested, those who received a single session of reiki treatment from a nurse trained in reiki and those who listened to relaxing music. The researchers measured activity of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which regulates heart rate, breathing, blood pressure and digestion.

Lamperts team zoomed in on heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of the pattern of heartbeats thats controlled by the ANS. The higher the HRV after a heart attack, the better the outlook for the patient, explains Lampert.

In the Yale study, patients who received reiki had a higher HRV and improved emotional state. Our study was a very nice demonstration that doing things that are relaxing has benefits, says Lampert. We showed increased activity of the healthy arm of the nervous system.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School followed 99 patients at multiple sites to determine the effects of a single reiki session. The studya single arm effectiveness study published in 2019 in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicinefound statistically significant improvements in anxiety and depression symptoms, as well as pain and nausea.

Additional research suggests reiki helps with depression and insomnia. A 2012 study in the Indian Journal of Positive Psychology looked at 40 women who suffered from depression and anxiety. Half of the group received a reiki treatment twice a week for 10 weeks and the other half received no treatment. The women who received reiki saw significant improvements in both their depression symptoms and sleep quality.

A range of studies address reikis role in pain alleviation after knee surgery, the restoration of range of motion in injured shoulders, post-cesarean section recovery, hypertension management and the improvement of quality of life for patients with rheumatoid arthritis or patients undergoing various cancer treatments.

Portuguese researcher Zilda Alarcao and her colleagues looked at the impact of reiki treatment versus sham or fake reiki in two groups of patients with blood cancer. Each group contained 58 patients who received an hour-long treatment once a week for four weekseither someone trained to administer reiki worked on them or someone pretending to do reiki (sham reiki) spent an hour with them.

The researchers found the patients who received real reiki showed significantly more improvements than the other group in general, physical, environmental and social dimensions of quality of life using the Portuguese version of the World Health Organizations Quality of Life survey (WHOQoL-Bref), a well-regarded research tool that measures pain and other quality of life issues after undergoing an intervention. They published their results in 2016 in the European Journal of Integrative Medicine.

Multiple studies report no adverse effects of reiki, likely because its a noninvasive treatment. Practitioners note clients usually report feeling relaxed after a session, but some feel energized. Depending on the nature of the problem, Newton says some clients also may feel more emotional or have other intense feelings in the days or weeks following a session.

While there is a professional code of ethics that governs reiki practitioners, there are no licensing boards like there are for doctors, nurses or even hair stylists. Reiki master is the highest level of training, but theres a wide range of training and expertise among practitioners. To ensure the best result, practitioners advise clients to do their homeworkask a practitioner about their training and credentials, but also find someone you connect with and trust.

One potential risk is that clients can misunderstand the role reiki should play in a treatment plan. The code of ethics of the Reiki Alliance, a professional reiki association, clearly states that reiki practitioners work as a complementnot a replacementto the medical care a patient receives. Reiki is also not a practice intended to instill doubt in other medical treatments and interventions. Clients are strongly discouraged from viewing reiki as a substitute for medical doctors, surgery, therapy or prescribed medications.

Clients should also be aware that while reikilike yoga or meditationmay have roots in spiritual practices from long ago, modern reiki is not a religion. Practitioners and clients come from all walks of life and belief systems. Receiving reiki is not intended to interfere with or change a clients spiritual or religious beliefs.

According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, reiki has been studied for a variety of conditions, including pain, anxiety, and depression, but most of the research has not been of high quality, and the results have been inconsistent.

Naturally, scientists who study reiki beg to differ with that assessment. They say institutions simply need to catch up with the rapidly evolving science. At this point, there are probably 60 or more published studies that I can point to that show reikis benefit, and yet theres still this persistent myth that no credible science backs reiki, says neuroscientist Natalie Dyer, Ph.D, president of the Center for Reiki Research, a nonprofit that aims to advance the scientific knowledge and study of reiki.

Dyer acknowledges, however, that some studies have lacked rigor and some have not found statistically significant benefits with reiki. She calls for more high-quality research to understand the practice, how it works and its limitations.

In the Yale study of reiki following a heart attack, researchers note that its unknown whether the beneficial effects of reiki treatment over music stem from the presence of another person, the presence of a person with healing intention, the light touch technique, or a combination of factors.

Like any intervention, reiki practitioners warn it isnt a cure-all and shouldnt be viewed as such. But its deemed safe and potentially effective enough that a considerable number15% and growingof U.S. hospitals offer reiki healing specifically. Leading institutes like Yale, Harvard, the University of Minnesota, the University of Arizona, UCLA and others offer reiki as a complement to medical interventions.

Costs for reiki sessions vary nationwide, but expect to pay about what youd pay for a massage. In a major metropolitan area, you might pay $80 to $150 for a one-hour reiki session.

Professional associations are a great way to locate reiki practitioners and teachers who take the practices and training seriously. The Reiki Alliance, the International Reiki Association and the International Association of Reiki Practitioners all offer online tools for locating a practitioner in your area.

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What Is Reiki And How Does It Work? - Forbes