A New Survey Asks Who Actually Knows What Reiki Is — and the Honest Answer Is Uncomfortable for Everyone

Most research on Reiki asks whether it works. A study published this year asks something more basic and, to my mind, more revealing: how many people have even heard of it, and how many of those have any accurate idea of what it involves. As a Reiki Shihan (師範: master-teacher), I find this line of research more useful than another small efficacy trial — because it measures the thing my profession is actually failing at.

According to the published research, a 2026 study by Zadro and Stapleton in Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health examined awareness and use of Reiki, Reiki research, energy healing, and complementary medicine among both Australian health professionals and the general community. The paper looks at the gap between how widely these practices circulate and how well they are understood by the people around them, including clinicians.

I want to be careful about what I say next, because I have not read every table in the paper and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What interests me is the question the study chose to ask.

Why Awareness Research Matters More Than It Sounds

For years, the argument about Reiki has run on a single track: does it have measurable effects beyond placebo? That is a legitimate question and I have written about the evidence honestly before. But it is not the only question, and treating it as the only one has left a large blind spot.

Here is the blind spot. Whatever Reiki does or does not do, a great many people are already receiving it — in hospitals, in spas, from volunteers, from family members. That is a fact about the world, independent of any trial result. And if the people receiving it, and the clinicians around them, hold inaccurate ideas about what it is, then harm becomes possible in a way that has nothing to do with efficacy.

The harm I worry about is not the practice. It is the misunderstanding. Someone who believes Reiki treats disease may delay care. A clinician who believes it is a religious ritual may discourage a patient who would have benefited from an hour of rest. A spa client who thinks a certificate means clinical training has been misled about something checkable.

Awareness research measures exactly that gap. I would rather know how badly we are understood than run another underpowered efficacy study.

Related: Almost Everyone Knows Reiki, Few Know the Research: Reading the 2026 Australian Survey explains this in detail.

What I Suspect the Gap Looks Like

I will label this clearly as my impression from teaching, not as a finding from the paper.

In more than twenty years of teaching, the most common thing a new student believes about Reiki on arrival is that it is a treatment. Not a practice — a treatment, something done to you, like a massage with an added claim. The idea that it is primarily a daily personal discipline, and only secondarily something offered to others, is nearly always news to them.

The second most common belief is that it comes from a religion. It does not, and I have written about that separately, but the assumption is understandable and widespread.

The third — and this is the one that concerns me professionally — is that a certificate means something standardised. It very often does not. Anyone can print one. Working out what a given qualification actually represents requires asking questions most people do not know to ask.

If a survey of the general public found those three misconceptions to be common, I would not be remotely surprised. And notice that none of them would be corrected by an efficacy trial. They are failures of communication, and the people responsible for them are practitioners like me.

Related: What 1,284 Reiki Sessions Actually Show: An Honest Read of a New Study on the Subjective Experience explains this in detail.

The Clinician Half Is the Interesting Half

The part of this study I find most valuable is that it surveyed health professionals as well as the public, because that is where the practical consequences sit.

A hospital nurse who has an accurate picture of Reiki — a low-risk practice of quiet attention that may help a patient feel calmer, with no claim to treat disease — can make a sensible decision about whether to mention it to a patient. A nurse who believes practitioners claim to cure cancer will, quite correctly, keep it away from their ward. A nurse who believes it definitely has physical healing effects may overstate it to a patient, which is worse.

All three of those nurses may be equally well-intentioned. The difference is the accuracy of what they were told, and by whom.

This is why I keep insisting on the modest framing even when enthusiasts find it disappointing. Overstated claims do not just mislead patients — they make the practice unwelcome in exactly the settings where it is most useful and most carefully supervised. Every practitioner who promises health outcomes makes it harder for the next practitioner to be allowed near a hospital.

Related: An Engineer's Honest Take on Reiki: What I Am Willing to Claim, and What I Am Not explains this in detail.

What Practitioners Should Take From This

If I had one page to give every Reiki practitioner, it would be shorter than this article.

Say what it is: a practice of quiet, attentive hands, offered gently and with consent, that many people find helps them feel calmer and more settled.

Say what it is not: a treatment for illness, a diagnosis, a substitute for medical care, or a religion.

Say what you do not know: the mechanism. I do not know it, and neither does anyone else who is being straight with you.

And be checkable about your training. If someone asks what your certificate means, be able to answer specifically — what you learned, from whom, over how long, in person or remotely.

None of that requires an efficacy study to settle. All of it is within our control today, and the awareness gap this research examines is, in large part, a gap we created.

FAQ

Q: Does low public awareness mean Reiki is fringe?

A: It means it is poorly understood, which is not the same thing. A practice can be simultaneously widespread — offered in hospitals, spas, and homes — and widely misunderstood. That combination is arguably more of a problem than being genuinely obscure would be.

Q: If clinicians do not understand Reiki, whose fault is that?

A: Substantially ours. Clinicians form their impression from what practitioners say publicly, and a great deal of what is said publicly overstates the case. It is unreasonable to blame a busy nurse for believing the claims printed on our own brochures.

Q: Should Reiki be regulated so certificates mean something?

A: There are arguments both ways and I hold this loosely. Standardisation would make qualifications checkable, which I would welcome; it would also risk formalising claims that should not be formalised. What I am confident about is the interim step: individual practitioners being specific and honest about their own training.

Q: Does any of this change what Reiki does?

A: No. Honest framing changes how the practice is received and where it is permitted, not what it is. A few unhurried minutes of quiet attention is the same thing whether it is described accurately or not — but only the accurate description deserves anyone's trust.

A Shihan's Closing Thought

I have spent a lot of time reading efficacy studies and I will keep doing it. But a study that asks "do people know what this is?" gets closer to the problem I actually encounter, which is that most of what the public believes about Reiki was told to them by practitioners, and a fair amount of it is wrong.

That is not a research problem. It is a professional discipline problem, and the fix does not require anyone's permission. Describe the practice accurately, refuse the claims you cannot support, and be specific about your own training. If enough practitioners did only that, the awareness gap would close considerably without a single new trial being run.

If you would like to learn the practice described in those honest terms, my Reiki courses teach it from the ground up, with the same framing you have read here.

Sources & References

• Zadro & Stapleton (2026) — Awareness and Use of Reiki, Reiki Research, Energy Healing, and Complementary Medicine amongst Australian Health Professionals and the Community — Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health
• NCCIH — Reiki: What You Need To Know