People who generally ask this question when they see studies in medical journals, instruments that can measure and quantify things, and predictable result from specific treatment protocols. They don’t accept anecdotal reports or historical evidence of these types of treatments being used effectively for thousands of years. To these people, I have one question.
“What if it is?”
The placebo effect is a powerful mind-body process whereby an inert treatment produces powerful healing response simply because they were told it would. The person believed they would be cured and their mind produced the healing response.
Belief is a powerful thing. A patient’s belief in the treatment – be it a drug, surgery, or Reiki treatment – affects the outcome. From my own experience, the more the patient believes the Reiki will help them, the more it does help them. That is why patient’s belief is one of the seven factors in a successful energy healing.
So this is where the doubters and skeptics come in. They say it is all in their head. It is all their belief and has nothing to do with the actual Reiki treatment. And to them, I say this.
“So what?”
We should be looking for more ways to engage the placebo response – not trying to eliminate it with double-blind randomized studies. There should be a thousand studies going on trying to figure out how to engage the placebo response in patients so they don’t need dangerous procedures or toxic drugs to cure their illness.
But let’s consider this from another angle. They say a Reiki energy treatment is invoking a placebo response. They say the person believes so strongly that the Reiki energy will cure them that it does in fact do so. But what if it’s the other way around.
I think the placebo response is simply the person’s belief tapping into the Universal Life Force Energy and healing their own energy body to affect physical healing. Think about it.
We know that some people are natural energy healers, i.e. can channel Universal Life Force Energy through themselves and into patients without ever receiving a Reiki attunement. Isn’t it also possible that some people can naturally tap into that same energy to heal their own bodies through the power of their own belief? I think they can.
Reiki is a powerful technique that engages the mind-body healing mechanism. But if you want to say that healing from Reiki treatments is just the placebo effect, I am okay with that. It’s all semantics.