Is Reiki a Placebo?

Christian Stone | Standing Stones Healing Co.

How do you explain Reiki without people thinking it's just a placebo?

Thanks for this great question, and what if Reiki is a placebo? We know placebos work. I once was prescribed medication for a condition (that I thankfully no longer have), and it was the kind of medication that I needed to take every day. I didn't and instead only took it when I had a symptom. It seemed to me to make a difference and my symptoms went away. When I explained this to my doctor, she said that's now how the medication works, but "we know placebos work."

One study that is often cited about placebos is when patients needing knee surgery were split into two groups. One group received the actual knee surgery. The other group went into surgery and experienced everything the other group had, including anesthesia...except they only received the incisions on their knee for the surgery and not the actual surgery. But this "placebo" group had as much benefit from the "sham surgery" as the group who received the real surgery.

There was a study done specifically with Reiki in which one group received "sham" Reiki in which an actor simply waved their hands over the subject, while the other group experienced an actual Reiki session from a real practitioner. The study found that the real Reiki group had better outcomes than the placebo. Check it out from the National Library of Medicine here.

But what if Reiki really is "only" a placebo? I still think that's impactful. Prescribing placebos is commonplace in medicine, even without patient knowledge, and no one criticizes doctors for the practice. Yes, in western medicine, doctors knowingly prescribe placebos to patients without patient knowledge...they don't know they're receiving a placebo. Whether we feel this is ethical or not, it happens and is quite common.
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When someone says to me that Reiki is just a placebo, I say, "Maybe. But if it works, then who cares?" Sending blessings to the placebo effect!

This discussion on placebo from the Reiki Women Podcast may be interesting for you. I'm also including Build Your Reiki Business podcast episode on Talking about Reiki, and there is more discussion of talking about Reiki in my Reiki Business Ready book.