The International Congress on Integrative Medicine & Health (ICIMH), held April 20-23 at the Hyatt Regency in Salt Lake City, Utah, was exhilarating and informative. Held annually, ICIMH is the flagship gathering of the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine & Health‘s 80+ member institutions from around the world. Clinicians, researchers, educators, and policymakers from as far away as Japan, China, and Australia joined together to explore this year’s theme, Revolutionizing Health Care: Measuring What Matters, Scaling What Works. The conference was robustly attended, and participants and presenters formed a collegial and upbeat community.

This was the first time CRR has attended ICIMH, as both a presenter and an exhibitor. Our President, Dr. Natalie Dyer (above left), spoke about the study she co-authored with CRR Board member Dr. Ann Baldwin and our UK Reiki colleagues: Evaluation of a Distance Reiki Program for Frontline Healthcare Workers’ Health-Related Quality of Life During the COVID-19 Pandemic. The paper was the most-cited article for 2023 in Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health,a peer-reviewed, open access journal of evidence-based research on integrative medicine.  Dr. Dyer also presented a poster on a new study, An Evaluation of a Reiki Program for Healthcare Workers at Multiple Cancer Infusion Centers, set to be published this year.

CRR invested in a banner display, brochures, and pens for our exhibit table. Dr. Dyer and CRR board member Ann Thompson (above right) staffed the table, which attracted multiple attendees from universities, health centers, and high-level medical institutions — all of whom showed great interest in Reiki and in CRR’s mission. Many people were delighted to learn about the growing evidence base of hard science-based research on Reiki, and several researchers and educators expressed eagerness to collaborate with CRR to further expand research and outreach related to Reiki.

“It was a wonderful opportunity to talk about Reiki and raise our profile as an organization,” said Thompson. “I was encouraged to see how many smart, engaged professionals are supportive of Reiki as an evidence-based integrative health modality.”

CRR, in collaboration with World Reiki Research and Harvard University, has just published the results of a landmark study evaluating whether specific subjective Reiki experiences are associated with changes in health-related symptoms using regression and mediation analyses. Ninety-nine Reiki practitioners had clients complete a survey before and after 1,284 Reiki (60-minute in-person) sessions.

Linear regression analyses explored associations between subjective Reiki experiences and changes in well-being, pain, and anxiety, while controlling for age and gender. Mediation models tested whether pain and anxiety changes mediated the relationship between subjective Reiki experiences and improvements in well-being.

Experiencing positive emotions was significantly associated with higher well-being and reduced anxiety, and experiencing such body sensations as tingling or warmth was significantly associated with greater pain relief. There was a significant indirect effect of body sensations on well-being via pain relief, a significant indirect effect of positive emotions on well-being via anxiety reduction, and a significant indirect effect of emotional release on well-being via anxiety reduction.

The results suggest that the subjective experience of receiving Reiki is related to changes in different psychological and physical health symptoms. More work is needed to confirm these findings while addressing the limitations of the current study.

This study is a novel contribution to biofield therapy research in several ways. First, it explores how Reiki works through specific psychological and physical pathways through employing a mediation analysis to quantify both indirect and direct effects, providing robust empirical support for the underlying mechanisms. Second, this study integrates both psychological (anxiety) and physical (pain) mediators, offering a more holistic understanding of Reiki’s effects. Third, it offers a framework to provide evidence for Reiki’s acceptance in clinical settings by linking subjective experiences to measurable changes in physiological and psychological health. Importantly, by identifying how Reiki may exert its effects (e.g., through pain relief or anxiety reduction), this analysis begins to answer the “why” question often missing in complementary and integrative medicine research. Understanding not only whether Reiki improves outcomes, but also how and why it does so, is central to advancing the evidence base for complementary and integrative medicine. Most prior Reiki research has demonstrated symptom improvements without clarifying the underlying processes. By employing mediation analysis, the present study provides a step toward explaining the why. When participants experience physical sensations (such as warmth or tingling), this is linked to reductions in pain, which in turn enhances overall well-being. Similarly, when participants experience positive emotions or emotional release, these appear to lower anxiety, which then improves well-being. In this way, the “how” is represented by the mediating pathways (pain relief, anxiety reduction), while the “why” lies in the role of subjective experience as the active ingredient that drives those changes. This shift from describing Reiki’s effects to explaining them is a step toward building evidence and integrating Reiki into broader models of health care.

Congratulations to the authors: CRR Research Assistant Elisenda Cama i Gibernau, CRR Director Akleema Ali and CRR President Natalie Dyer.

Read the paper here.