Reaching for science to make an impressive case for Reiki treatment can backfire if you are not a scientist. Here are a few suggestions to keep you off the hotseat, and help you avoid discrediting both yourself, and Reiki practice.

Yale researchers found that a 20-minute Reiki treatment offered in the acute cardiac care unit improved patients’ mood and heart rate variability (HRV) less than 3 days after suffering a heart attack.

Reiki practitioners wanting to champion Reiki in health care understandably look for studies that prove Reiki.

Let me save you some time: there are no such studies.

Nor is it necessary to prove Reiki in order to communicate the value of Reiki treatment in health care.

This could be a very short post, because when it comes to the science of biofields, there isn’t any. Until such time as doctors are ordering kirilian photographs instead of CT scans and MRIs, don’t risk running your argument aground by confusing frontier science and conventional science. But here’s what science is telling us thus far…