Chronic pain not only limits a person’s ability to work and enjoy leisure time, it’s also linked with anxiety, depression, and other health problems. Experts estimate that as many as one in five people live with chronic pain, which is defined as pain on most days lasting six months or longer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

More and more people are choosing complementary health approaches such as acupuncture, massage, and Reiki to help manage pain. Complementary medicine usually refers to treatments that fall outside traditional Western medical care and are used alongside more conventional medical treatments.

The practice of Reiki — a form of energy healing — is now being utilized in major healthcare systems around the United States, including the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and UW Medicine in Seattle.

What Is Reiki?

Reiki is an energy transfer technique that comes from Japan, says Kenneth Martay, MD, an anesthesiologist at UW Medicine in Seattle. Dr. Martay practices Reiki at the Bioenergy Treatment Service at University of Washington Medical Center. “Usually it’s performed by a 'laying on of hands,' though it doesn’t have to be done that way; it can be performed remotely as well,” he says.

A typical Reiki session is intended to guide energy throughout the body to encourage self-healing, and begins at the head or feet with light touch or even no touch, with the practitioner’s hands a few inches above the client's body, according to the International Association of Reiki Professionals.

“Nobody knows exactly why it works, but it can be beneficial to people,” says Martay. “How effective it is is up to the patient. In my opinion, the patient is the healer; as practitioners, we can only offer treatment and see what comes out of it,” he says. While the clinical research evidence on efficacy is variable, Reiki is considered safe and has not been found to have adverse effects, according to the University of Minnesota's Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing in Minneapolis.

How Can Reiki Address Chronic Pain?

Reiki can be used as a complementary therapy to treat different kinds of pain, including chronic pain, says Martha Lacy, MD, a hematologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and a Reiki master. “I wouldn’t recommend Reiki instead of Western medicine, but I think it could be used as an adjunct or a complement to those therapies,” says Dr. Lacy.

“Chronic pain is a complicated issue. There is the anatomical physical aspect and then there is the emotional one,” says Martay. Of the five pain centers located in the brain, two of them are located in the limbic system of the brain, he says. “The limbic system is where emotions are processed, and that makes a tight connection between pain and emotions,” says Martay. Reiki can potentially address that aspect of chronic pain for some people, he says.

Reiki can’t be used to change what is basically an anatomical problem, says Martay. “For example, if somebody has chronic back pain and we look at the MRI and see that there is an eroded disc — there’s an anatomical problem; you can’t improve or change that aspect with Reiki. Reiki works more on the emotional level by calming people down,” he says.

Studying Reiki Proves Challenging for Researchers

Although there isn’t an abundance of studies to show Reiki’s impact on chronic pain, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t effective; the dearth of evidence could also be due, at least in part, to the difficulty in recruiting people and executing studies for the therapy.

To prove the benefits of Reiki in a randomized controlled clinical trial, researchers need to include an arm where “sham” Reiki is performed. Sham Reiki is typically performed by an actor or a person who isn’t trained in Reiki and doesn’t believe in the concept of biofield energy, that there is a field of vibrational energy surrounding and affecting the body.

Recruiting enough participants for these trials can be challenging, according to the authors of a Reiki meta-analysis published in December 2014 in Pain Management Nursing. It took some studies up to two years to gather just 24 subjects because participants refused to be in the trial unless they could be placed in the Reiki group rather than the sham group.

The meta-analysis did find that although the number of studies is limited, there is evidence to suggest that Reiki may be effective for pain and anxiety. The authors believed that there might have been improved findings if trials had lasted longer — some studies lasted less than a week.

Is There Evidence for Using Reiki in Treating Chronic Pain?

Authors of a review published in October 2017 in the Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine speculate that Reiki may trigger the vagus nerve to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which controls mood, digestion, heart rate, and even the perception of pain.

The authors of that review analyzed two studies that looked at Reiki as an adjunct treatment to help with acute or chronic conditions and concluded that there was “strong evidence for Reiki being more effective than placebo, suggesting that Reiki attunement leads to a quantifiable increase in healing ability.”

In Martay’s experience, there are times when Reiki can be effective, not necessarily in the ways the patient was seeking, but rather where the patient’s body felt that it was needed. “We had a woman come in with severe arthritis in her knees. The patient was in physical rehabilitation and came to Reiki sessions, but her knees didn’t improve. However, she had suffered from constipation for many years and that disappeared. The patient attributed that improvement, at least in part, to Reiki,” says Martay. In Reiki, the body may take the energy to another part of itself other than where you intended it to go, he adds.

Can Reiki Help With Neuropathy Pain?

Research is limited on Reiki’s benefits for neuropathy, the nerve damage that can result from diabetes among other causes. A study published in Diabetes Care compared Reiki, sham Reiki, and usual care for people with painful diabetic neuropathy. Investigators found that after 12 weeks of treatments there was no difference in the perception of pain or improvements in walking distance between the groups that received real Reiki and sham Reiki.

Reiki can sometimes provide pain relief in neuropathy, though how long that relief lasts may vary from person to person, says Martay. “Often when people try a therapy like Reiki they have usually gone through a plethora of orthodox medicine, and this may be their last hope,” he says. “I’ve seen people who this has helped, and they were happy with the incremental benefits,” he says.

How to Prepare for a Reiki Session

If you decide to try Reiki, wear loose-fitting and comfortable clothes to your first session; you’ll remain fully clothed throughout the process. In most cases, you will be semi- or fully reclined on a massage table.

Martay suggests that the best preparation for your first Reiki session is none at all. “Come completely unprepared, because then you have no expectations," he says. "The first session is often the most successful one for the patient for this very reason; whatever happens, happens. Sometimes it’s best to have no preconceived ideas, then there are no barriers in the way."

The University of Minnesota offers tips to help you find a qualified Reiki practitioner near you. The Center for Reiki Research also has a list of hospitals and clinics in the United States where Reiki is offered to patients.