Energy healing in hospitals: Why Reiki works with Dr Ann Baldwin

Energy healing is a controversial topic. Many dismiss the idea that one person can help another person get better through channeling some unseen force into a patient. But, Reiki, a Japanese energy healing tradition, is actually used in some 15% hospitals across the US, with peer reviewed research showing that it can be an effective complementary medicine for conditions like pain, infection and inflammation.

Today's guest, Dr Ann Baldwin, has a PHD in physiology from Imperial College London, and spent decades in vascular research, before a chance encounter led her to discover Reiki, and the seemingly positive effect it was having on lab rats she was studying.

Today she’s the research advisor at the Reiki Healthcare Research Trust, which aims to support clinical research into Reiki, and better integrate it into modern healthcare settings. She’s also the author of Reiki in Clinical Practice, which unpacks peer reviewed research into the technique, laying out how it’s been found to have positive effects on pain, infection and inflammation in the body.

In this episode, Tim and Dr Baldwin discuss the evidence that suggests Reiki works, the very physiological conditions it can treat, and theories for how it might act in the body.

Artwork: Justine Hyde-Mobbs

Transcript

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The person that I hired turned out to be a Reiki master and I'd never heard of Reiki before. And she said, well, if the rats were stressed, why don't we try Reiki on the rats? We did find that if they had 15 minutes of Reiki treatment every day for three weeks, that the problems with the noise, that the inflammation just disappeared. There's a quite substantial amount of high-quality research that is meaningful that does show that Reiki is good for reducing pain, anxiety, depression, infection, improves immune function, and it's really helpful for people undergoing surgery and chemotherapy. Interviewing credible researchers who many people would say are exploring incredible things with what they're studying. So today we're talking about a controversial topic: energy healing, and specifically a Japanese technique called Reiki. And I can totally see why for many, energy healing is a term that's often associated with grifters, perhaps people who are taking advantage of vulnerable people, overstating the claims of what they can do. But as we're here today, one recent study shows that energy healing is actually used in 15, that's one five, but still quite a lot percent of US hospitals, showing that there are many medical practitioners and professionals who believe that this is not total woo-woo snake oil nonsense. And another person who doesn't is our guest today, Dr. Anne Baldwin, spent decades in vascular research before a chance encounter led her to discover Reiki, as you heard in that intro clip just there. And this is interesting to me, this idea that rats can benefit from Reiki as well, because I think one easy dismissal of energy healing comes around the idea that it could just be the placebo effect. But rats obviously don't know what Reiki is, so the idea that they're getting better from these treatments isn't just because they know they're getting Reiki, it does suggest that there's something more going on there. And a bit more about Anne, after that long career in mainstream research, she is now the research advisor at the Reiki Healthcare Trust, which aims to support research and better integration of Reiki into the medical field. She's also the author of Reiki and Clinical Practice, which is a really comprehensive book exploring the peer-reviewed research into the benefits of Reiki and also why it might work in the body. So before we hear from Anne, I'm just going to do a quick upsum of what Reiki is, and it's worth saying that some of the studies that she talks about don't only focus on Reiki, there are other energy healing techniques that often get included in similar research papers. So Qi Gong is one, and yes, there are other energy healing techniques available. So we are focusing on Reiki today, but that is not the whole picture of this story. So Reiki came about in the 1920s, it was founded by a guy called Dr. Mikaho Sui who started the first Reiki clinic in Tokyo. And the idea of how Reiki works is essentially that there is this universal life force which is all around us, which can be channelled by the Reiki practitioner or Reiki master as they're known into the recipient. And a lot of people might hear the term universal life force and think that really does sound like pseudoscience, but as Anne points out, it's not actually totally incompatible with what we know about science. We know that our bodies emit energetic fields, electromagnetic frequencies, and that we receive those from the environment around us. So the idea that a human could influence another person's energy field and that that might have biochemical impacts in the body is not crazy. So we talk about how Reiki might act in the body, there's a lot of stuff around the vagus nerve, and there's a lot of modern treatments to stimulate the vagus nerve to promote natural healing. As Anne points out, we perhaps don't need these kinds of gadgets, and actually, our body has everything it needs to support better natural healing and support the body's own healing functions. So without further ado, let's hear from Dr. Anne Baldwin. Okay, so Anne, uh welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. Uh, there's a lot to get into with you today in terms of what we know about Reiki can do for people, theories of how it might work, but I wanted to start by just getting you to talk a bit about your background before getting into the world of Reiki and how this practice sort of crossed your path. Okay, so um it all began with the rats. I was working on a project with um blood substitutes to use instead of whole blood for transfusions, and I was injecting them into the rat circulation and testing to see what they did to the uh blood vessels in the gut and the gut itself. And what I found was it caused inflammation in the gut and leakiness in the blood vessels. And when I used a control substance, saline, I got no damage. Well, then I moved labs, I moved from the VA hospital to the University of Arizona, and my experiments didn't work anymore. So all of the groups of rats, it didn't matter whether they were getting the blood substitute or the saline, they all showed leaky blood vessels and an inflammation. And the only thing that had changed was where I was keeping the rats. And I realized that the animal facility at the university was much more noisy and lots more going on than um at the VA. And I did get a grant to study the effects of noise on um on the blood vessels of the rats, and I found yes, it was the noise that was causing the damage. The noise was stressing out the rats and causing inflammation in the intestine and in the blood vessels. So I needed to hire a technician to help me analyze all the data, and the person that I hired turned out to be a Reiki master. And I'd never heard of Reiki before. And um she said, Well, if the rats are stressed, why don't we try Reiki on the rats? So we got a grant from the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, two-year grant, to look at the effects of Reiki on the rats that are stressed by noise. And um we did find that if they had 15 minutes of Reiki treatment every day for three weeks, that the uh problems with the noise, that the inflammation was uh would just disappeared. And um, we also had a group that had sham Reiki where someone was not trained in Reiki, but they were just sitting there pretending to give Reiki. And there was a slight improvement in those animals, but not significant. And then we had one group that had nothing, and uh they showed the normal damage. So that's what really got me interested into Reiki. And uh when I realised what it was doing to the rats, I after a while I decided that maybe I'd learn how to do it too. And I guess it's worth pointing out at this point that you know you had had a career in sort of mainstream sort of clinical research and physiology. What was your sort of I guess worldview of you know how the body operates, how things work on a scientific basis, and then like what was your sort of reaction when y you came across this new colleague, Reiki? Like how how did it sort of meet you? Well, I was um a kind of traditional physiologist. I was uh apart from the blood substitutes project, I was working more generally on the mechanisms of transport of materials between blood and tissue. And I'd never heard of Reiki. I had little interest in um complementary and alternative medicine. And I can tell you that when I first learned about Reiki before we tried it on the rats, I was a skeptic. I really didn't believe it was going to do anything at all. So I was very surprised to see that it it did affect the rats in a good way. And then after I learned how to do Reiki, I had what's called an attunement. I still didn't really believe it. But um I just watched what happened when I did Reiki, and things just added up. For example, I was um at the stable with my horse, and one of my friends, her horse had been bitten and had a lump on his uh shoulder. So I said jokingly, Oh, let me try Reiki. So I tried Reiki on on the horse, and I could see the lump disappearing. And I didn't say anything. In front of your eyes. Yes, I didn't say anything. And I then she said, Oh, it's going. So so little things like that kept adding up, and um gradually I became um more believ believing of it. Yeah, amazing. And I suppose that's all translated into the work you're doing with the Reiki Healthcare Research Trust, which we'll get into. And that I suppose goes beyond these kind of anecdotal stories into trying to, you know, assess research. But uh at that point, like how were you describing Reiki as you were kind of witnessing and experiencing what you saw as the effectiveness of it? How would you describe it to colleagues? Like, what was your way of kind of introducing it to people who like you had been sceptical? I just said it was um a sort of a bit like meditation, you know, that sort of made you relax and and quiet down your system. Um I didn't use the word like energy healing or anything like that. I just said more like a meditation that affected the blood vessels. And was that your belief at the time, or was that just a way of sort of making it more palatable, perhaps? That was a way of making it more palatable. Okay. We'll get into some of the peer-reviewed research later, but you know, a lot of it does concern things like anxiety and stress, and I suppose people might say, like, well, yeah, if if you sit there for an hour in a nice calming situation, that could make you less anxious, reiki aside. But I suppose, you know, that example with the rat shows that whether that's true or not, there are also observable physiological outcomes to it. Yes, um, absolutely you're right that um there is a what's called a placebo effect to uh with the Reiki. Um, even so Reiki um can involve touch, it doesn't have to involve touch, but usually you place your hands at certain positions on the person's body, and touch alone can be comforting. So the best experiments have a control arm where somebody is pretending to give Reiki. So the best experiments of all have three arms: one with the Reiki, one with what's called sham Reiki, and then one with no extra treatment. And yeah, we'll come on to some of those later. But I also thought um in your book, Reiki and Clinical Practice, it sort of points out that there are some advantages of these animal studies, and I guess part of that is that uh animals and rats haven't heard the word Reiki in a way that they can understand it. Why are animal studies interesting to you? Oh, for that reason, because um you can really minimize that placebo effect. I mean, obviously, when animals are touched, that's still going to affect them, but they don't come in with preconceived notions. Um, so they don't come in believing Reiki or they don't come in skeptical of Reiki. They have no idea what I'm doing. Is it possible, I suppose, that you know the sham Reiki handle is perhaps handling the rat in a sort of less trained way? Is that one way of explaining the results, or do you think that's not significant? Um Well using the sham, you don't always touch touch the person or the animal. Um you so in fact with those rats, we weren't touching them. Um they were in pairs in cages, and the Reiki practitioner and the sham practitioner, they would just sit close to the cage and hold their hands up like that a few inches away. So it's nothing to do with with the actual touch in those experiments. And we still we still did get a slight um beneficial effect of someone just being there and giving them attention. That's another thing. You don't have to touch, you just have to pay pay them attention, even if they're rats, they still know if a person's there um paying attention to them. And that's something that we'll be touching on this podcast with extra guests, but this kind of uh I guess, you know, phenomenon that people can like sense and feel things beyond what we like, you know, what's referred to as extrasensory perception, and I suppose that kind of falls into that category as well. Let's talk about the Reiki Healthcare Research Trust. So this, you know, is an organization that essentially tries to bring, I suppose, this ancient healing practice into our modern clinical healthcare system. Just tell tell me a bit about your involvement with it and what what you're hoping to do. I was contacted by Fiona Gray, who was the director. Unfortunately, she passed away, but um, she was the director, and um she and her colleagues asked if I could help them with research so that we could get more evidence that um hard evidence that Reiki was actually benefiting patients. And I was very impressed because she told me about the Reiki Medicare program in which Reiki practitioners are trained to operate in hospitals, trained to give Reiki in hospitals under um clinical conditions. So they know all they know the jargon, they know how to communicate, they know what to do and what not to do. And um I think the training was like about six months. So on top of their Reiki, they had this special training for working in hospitals, and I think that's very, very important. You can't if you just have Reiki practitioners going in without any clue how to um how to uh interact with the the medical professionals, then it can not work out very well. So I think that's a wonderful program. And um I I and some colleagues from the US and uh Fiona and Rosemary Farrow, her colleague, we got together with this um doing a project during COVID actually. So um as you know, in in hospitals, especially in the UK, it was just horrendous what was what was going on during COVID, and people were so stressed out, both the patients and the people caring for them. And so we set up this project where Reiki would be sent from a distance. Now you can mostly Reiki is done hands-on, but this is an even more um way out form of Reiki, distance Reiki. So there's some research now, not so much as for hands-on, but there is some research showing the effectiveness of distance reiki, where you actually project it from a remote location. So we recruited healthcare professionals, including nurses and physiotherapists and doctors, and they signed up to receive four consecutive sessions of Reiki from a distance. So they didn't see it, but they knew when it was going to happen. They could choose the time that was convenient for them, and they could make themselves comfortable, and they knew it would be 20 minutes, and they would be receiving this distance Reiki. And they would um fill out forms before and after about how they felt, evaluating on a scale of like one to five, how they felt with pain, anxiety, tiredness, etc. And then after the four days, they would do that again. And I think we had 40 people who finished the study who did before and after the four days, and we got data from them. And um, it was quite amazing. Everything that we measured what showed a statistically significant improvement, even though it was distance Reiki. Um, each person had eight Reiki practitioners working simultaneously on them, so that was another um advantage of doing it this way. That's amazing. And uh yeah, we got that study published, and we just found out that it was actually one of the most cited papers this year in that journal. So let's talk a bit more about the work that is happening in hospitals with Reiki, and your book points out some of the examples of this. One example is the Mayo Clinic in the US, where at the time of writing was the number three cancer care hospital in the country, which is somewhere that uses Reiki. How is it being received in the hospital setting today? Well, I have a colleague, Natalie Dyer, and um she's in the process of doing a project right now answering that question how extensive is the use of Reiki in hospitals in the USA? And um so far they're they're finding 30%, which we we thought was quite high. We didn't expect it to be that high. That 30% of the hospitals in the USA that she's asked are using some kind of Reiki in their um treatment programs. And what are some of the stories that you're hearing about how Reiki is helping patients? Well, Reiki really helps people going into surgery because one thing Reiki does, it works on all different levels, not just physical. So um it works on emotional and mental and spiritual levels as well. So it really does help with things like anxiety. And of course, when people are in hospital or anticipating an operation, they're very anxious. So reiki has been shown to really help them calm down, and if they're calmed down, they respond much better to the treatment, whether it's an operation or medication or chemotherapy. It's been used a lot for patients undergoing chemotherapy. And I must really state here that the Reiki is not to cure the tumour. No way can you say Reiki is going to cure the tumour. What it does do is that it helps you with pain relief and also with anxiety and puts you in a better frame of mind. Yeah, and there was one example from the book that talked about how also in cases of sort of acute infections that Reiki can be helpful, which again just feels like a very sort of physiological thing to be impacting from a treatment like this. Right, because our experiments have shown, not not just ours, but um all the experiments that have been done have shown that Reiki seems to work through what's called the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest part of the autonomic nervous system. And uh the vagus nerve is the key is the longest nerve in the body and it branches into all the organs. And that's the nerve that helps calm you down and it helps with digestion and uh it also causes release of acetylcholine, which is an anti-inflammatory agent, and many other hormones and and neurotransmitters that help with healing. So I guess, yeah, that's an example, kind of an explanation for how calming down your nervous system isn't, you know, it does have these real physiological sort of effects as well. Yeah, because um if you're stressed, it really does a number on your immune system. And you're um you don't make as many immune cells, they're not binding to the right receptors. And so if you can relax, that will help you with your immune function, and that would also help with recovery. Yeah, and on the sort of pain side of things, I read one interview with you about this uh case of a woman in the Tucson Medical Center in Arizona who had had her leg amputated, which, you know, obviously an incredibly painful, invasive thing to happen to someone. Tell tell us about how Reiki helped her. Well, uh it it really once again, Reiki is really good at reducing pain. It even in um reduces the number of pain receptors, but uh mainly it acts through through your uh your perception of pain. So i the Reiki puts you into a more of a state of ease. And I think that is through the the vagus nerve, once again. She felt more at ease, and she and if you're at ease, you can accept things better, even horrible things, than if you than if you are in pain and in stress. And massively reduced her need for medication post-operation. Yes, that happens a lot too. Then reduces the need for medication, and then other studies have found that reduces the length of time needed to stay in the hospital. And coming back to the Reiki Healthcare Research Trust, so you know, one of the big bits of work that you do is reviewing the research into the effects of Reiki. Can you get Give a bit of an overview of where research is into these effects. Yeah, so actually I'm a member of the Center for Reiki Research as well and in the USA, and we have a system where we evaluate all the original research papers published in peer-reviewed journals on Reiki. We have two evaluators for each one, and then we summarize the critiques. At the moment, there are about 166 research studies that have been published in peer-reviewed journals. And of those, I would say maybe 30% are giving us useful information. So they're not all brilliant. Let me just say that right at the end. They're not all brilliant. But I think enough of them are to give us some credibility. So, for example, the gold standard for scientific research is placebo controlled trial, clinical trial. And you say you need a Reiki group and a couple of control groups and also sufficient numbers of people in each group to allow for statistical analysis that's meaningful. And looking in that way, with those criteria, there are at this point, I think, 17 clinical trials that have sufficient numbers in them. And in addition to that, there are other high-quality pilot studies with 20 or more people in them. So at this point, as I said, there, there's a lot. If you're nitpicking or if you're cherry-picking, you can find the studies that are no good. But you can also see that there's a quite substantial amount of high-quality research that is meaningful. That does show that Reiki is good for reducing pain, anxiety, depression, infection, improves immune function, and is really helpful for people undergoing surgery and chemotherapy. Also, it's good for self-care because when you give Reiki, you also receive it. So Reiki is an energy that passes through you and out to the person you're healing, but you get it too. And so all Reiki practitioners do self-reiki. It's just like on the plane when you're told that you must put your life jacket on first before you help other people. So the Reiki is helping you become a better healer for the person that you're healing. If you were to sort of pick one, like do you do you have a favorite study or research paper that, you know, is the one that you kind of come to when you think this was a piece of work that really does provide credibility to what you do? Well, there was one study that I was involved in, and that was on people having knee surgery. And so it's quite an extensive surgery. And we did had uh a Reiki project on these patients undergoing surgery. We had three groups: Reiki, sham Reiki, and no extra treatment. And I think we had about 20 in each group. So this was still a pilot study, but it was um it was a very uh robust study. And they received Reiki before their surgery, but they had measurements made on heart rate, blood pressure, evaluation of anxiety before and after their procedure. They had Reiki several times during those few days. And what we found was that the ones who had Reiki, but not the ones who had sham Reiki or no treatment, they showed reduced anxiety, reduced blood pressure, reduced heart rate, and most importantly, they didn't need so much pain medication and they got out of hospital faster. So that was that was a very successful study. I suppose what this kind of research points to is that Reiki is sort of activating the body's own natural healing abilities. Like you say, the uh the immune system is so impacted by factors like stress. So is that how you see it? That it's you know helping the body do its own thing, and our bodies are amazing at healing themselves. Yeah, absolutely. That's why it's referred to as a complementary therapy. It helps you along with your other therapies. So it's an additional um tool. It's not alternative. It used to be called you know complementary and alternative medicine, but I'm very I find it very important to stress that it's not alternative, it's helping the body do what it normally does, plus helping drugs work better, helping surgery healing from surgery faster. Because it puts you into that relaxed state so the body can do its job better. How have you found, as you kind of, you know, worked in this world for longer and longer, is is that something that you find that I perhaps you know more skeptically minded clinicians is is that something that they can kind of resonate with? That's that's an interesting question because usually clinicians are either they're either kind of neutral, oh fine, you know, if it doesn't do any harm, because Reiki doesn't do any harm, if it doesn't do any harm, that's fine, you can you can do it. Um occasionally you'll get um and a clinician who might say that's you know that's just um pseudoscience, there's no real backing for it. Um and yeah, a lot of people still say that, and that it kind of helped it impedes the progress of introducing Reiki to um clinical situations when you have people saying it's no good and it's not um supported by science because I think it is supported by science right now. And that kind of weight of scientific research behind it seems to be accelerating so much. Your book kind of makes the point that the the number of studies has really accelerated in the last couple of decades. Like how how is that sort of changing? Yeah, we're getting more studies. Um, interestingly, we're getting a lot of studies from not from the US and not from the UK because it's so difficult to get funding. But interestingly, Turkey, they their government decided to make money available for Reiki research. And so then we have all these studies coming out from Turkey. Is there any uh any theory why Turkey have got so many space? I don't I don't know. Okay. So, yeah, so one big problem that is really keeping um the research back is lack of funding. And that's why so many of the studies are not you know huge studies with hundreds and hundreds of people in, which is what the skeptics say they want. Um they you know they have fewer people in each group than that. So that's that's a problem. Is that something that you know does momentum sort of help that? That you know, the more the sort of weight of research there is, the easier it is to get funding, or is that still something that remains as challenging as it always was? It's still very challenging. Um I think this is my opinion, but I think that maybe the public, maybe the public can turn things around. I had a very interesting experience um in academia. So I was a professor of physiology at the University of Arizona. I'm a professor emeritor now because I've retired. Um and when I started working on Reiki, I had a terrible time. My colleagues did not appreciate what I was doing. It was hard to get published, it was hard to get funding, and I really felt low morale, I felt kind of a failure. And so at that point, I decided to give up my tenure, which is a big thing, gave up my tenure and started my own business, Mind Body Science, so I could offer Reiki and biofeedback and other complementary therapies to the members of the public. I still kept my connection with the university, so I had part-time projects going on there, but I found that my academic colleagues thought I was just I'd lost my way, whereas members of the public were so thankful, they were thanking me for what I was doing. And it was, I felt so much healthier in that environment. Yeah, and it's it's sad to hear, isn't it? Because there is this kind of dogma in the academic scientific world that is so sort of reliant on this materialist paradigm that you know we have to be able to explain things in a way that sort of discounts that um something that comes from a spiritual paradigm might have any sort of value. Yes, because people have their own world view of how things work and Reiki doesn't fit it. And so they they just close the door. But interestingly, you know, if if one of these people, if they could actually have a Reiki session, and and I've heard that this this happens sometimes, um, people in the hospital or doctors, they have a Reiki session, and then suddenly, oh, it makes me feel so good. And um and then they're more open to it. So I think maybe that's the way to go. Yeah, making it more available. And it's um yeah, it it's quite, I would say, heartwarming that in your book there's a section where it kind of um provides some sort of quotes of people who have had Reiki in hospital, you know, saying how they're so grateful for the Reiki volunteers, and and so much of this does seem to be done on a voluntary basis. That does say something about, you know, that this is not big pharma where you know drugs are being sold at a profit. There there is a, you know, there is a holistic sort of belief that this works that doesn't just come from sort of profit-based medicine. Yeah, that's true, and that could be why here in the US um we have a very the the pharmaceutical companies have a big hold uh on the medic medical field, and um Reiki does not make money, so they are not interested in anything to do with Reiki because it's not going to make them rich. Yeah, and I guess you know it's no secret about you know the sort of lobbying influence that large companies have in the US, and I suppose that that has a big sort of drip-down effect into policy and as you say, like funding availability. Let's come on to a chapter in your book, which it it sounds as though the the effects of Reiki are measurable, and as you say, there's more and more research that shows that there are measurable positive impacts of Reiki. Your book points this out, but in terms of how that's actually happening, how Reiki works, it's not something we can necessarily give a definite answer to, is it? Well, that's a big problem. Um, so we we think that Reiki does work, as I said, by activating the vagus nerve. As I said, the vagus nerve infiltrates all our organs, so it's going to affect um it's going to affect digestion, it's going to affect respiration, it's going to affect everything, it's going to affect um your immune system. So we know the kind of the nuts and bolts of how Reiki works. So it's going to make you more relaxed with the vagus nerve and also through the endocrine system. So it will cause release of dopamine and um and uh serotonin and all those feel-good hormones. But what we don't know is where is it? What is it? The characteristics of Reiki. We haven't been able to find a Reiki measuring device and measure the Reiki coming from someone's hands. And so that is the big problem. We have not been able to measure the actual Reiki energy or characterize it. Your book does point out some studies that have been done with sensors to um extremely low frequency fluctuations around the hands of Reiki practitioners. Can you speak a bit about that? Yes. So those studies were done a while ago. One was done by Zimmerman, and um he had a device that could, I think he had Qi Gong practitioners, um, they've had some Reiki as well, and he could measure these fluctuations of extra low frequency electromagnetic energy from their hands. The trouble with those experiments was is that it's very easy to have other electromagnetic effects that interfere and contaminate your what you're trying to measure. So he didn't do it in an electromagnetically shielded room. So I decided I would repeat that experiment using a much more modern detector in an electromagnetically shielded room. So this is called a superconducting quantum interference detector, or squid for short. And I used one they have in the Scripps Institute in San Diego. And we had Reiki practitioners and non-Reiki practitioners, and we had them one by one go into the building and into the room where the device was, and do self-reiki, or send Reiki, distanced Reiki to a person, or send Reiki to another person in the room. And we measured what was coming from their hands and from their heart. And so the records, the recordings, showed the change in the electromagnetic field that was produced by each heartbeat. So we could pick up that, we could pick up that frequency. But when they did Reiki compared to not doing Reiki, we didn't notice any difference. So that was kind of disappointing. That did not fit our hypothesis, but that's I mean, that's how it was. So that's that's the data. And so we we published that. Yeah, and I read that perhaps one sort of theory for that is that I mean, perhaps this is a good opportunity to kind of explain sort of the you know what what Reiki is in terms of those who practice it teach, that it's channeling an energy that is not necessarily from you, that this is like an energy that is uh you know around us and being channelled by the practitioner who's been attuned to it. So was an explanation potentially for the lack of measurability that that the am I right in saying that this was done in a room that sort of blocks energy from the outside? Absolutely, yes. Yeah, so that's one possibility that maybe when you're doing Reiki, as you know it, the Reiki isn't your energy. So when you do Reiki, you don't get tired and drained because it's not you're not using your energy, it's energy that's passing through from an external source through you. And one possibility is um something called Schumann resonance. So when lightning is is um being reflected off different layers of the atmosphere, it produces this um energy, this radiation called Schumann. And it's very extra low frequency, it's um between seven and ten hertz. Some people say it's 7.8 hertz to be precise, but anyway, somewhere between seven and ten hertz. And um the theory is that maybe it's that energy that people Reiki practitioners are attuning to. And the alpha brain waves, so alpha brain waves are the waves of energy, of electromagnetic energy formed in the brain during meditation states when you're quiet and peaceful. You have these alpha brain waves, and they are actually 7.8 hertz frequency, exactly the same as the Schumann resonance. So one theory is that maybe this external energy from the lightning, because there's lightning happening all the time, somewhere in the world, um, can amplify these alpha brain waves that you already have. It kind of resonates, that's why it's called Schuman resonance. Your alpha brain waves resonate with this external energy, and then that passes what's called through the perineural system that sheaths around the nerves and fills your whole body, and then this energy can then come out and help heal people. Interestingly, this very extra low frequency energy can be made artificially so you can get generators to make energy at different frequencies, and then you can use them to heal. And so experiments have been done to show that, for example, certain specific energy frequencies like maybe three hertz or seven hertz heals particular parts of the body, like maybe seven hertz. I'm I'm probably not getting this right, but maybe seven hertz would heal bone, or maybe three hertz would heal ligaments. And um, it's the theory is that each part of the body and each constituent and each organ has its own then own um frequency that is optimal for it. And when things go awry, when you get sick, then the the frequency is off and you have to bring it back again. And the theory is that when you're doing Reiki, you are um enforcing the natural frequency of the bodies in different areas, so it's bringing it off from off balance into a more balanced frequency. Yeah, suppose that one element of the conversation around this is that the more sceptically minded will hear a term like energy healing, and just even the mention of the word energy, it's just immediately puts people off. But as you said, there are like you know, devices that are used that use frequency energy for healing different parts of the body. And your book also points out that our bodies uh emanate these energetic fields like electromagnetic fields from the brain and the heart, and I suppose people who dismiss the idea of energy healing perhaps also forget that our bodies are energetic entities that we create energy, and then presumably those fields can be influenced by the outside world. Like, is that one of these kind of core sort of pieces that people kind of forget when they think about why Reiki must be pseudoscience? That's exactly right. I mean, every time your heart beats, your heart's electric, there's an electric current. If you have an electric current, it creates an electromagnetic field. And um using that squid or you know, squid's superconducting quantum interference detectors, they show without a doubt that these fields from your heart can spread out as far as ten feet. And um that field resonates with uh at different frequencies according to your emotions. So each emotion that you have actually has its own frequency, um characteristic frequency, that influences this field, the pulsing of this field. Then so is it your belief that then someone who is attuned to Reiki energy can then perhaps it's this human frequency, but is then their energy field and the energy that they are channeling from wherever that is, like do you see a scientific way that one person's energy can then affect that of someone else's? Yeah, I I do see that. As you know, we have the the the big we call it the heart field, and your heart field is is vibrating at certain frequencies depending on your basically your emotional state and physical state as well. And if somebody comes near you who is ultra calm and we what we call it coherent, when their heart rate their heart rate variability, how the heart rate changes with time, is synchronous with their breathing. We call that a coherent state, and that's an optimal state for body function. And when your heart rate is in sync with your breathing, then that means the pulsing of the field is also in sync with that. And in interestingly, um you go into alpha brain waves as well, so everything is synchronized. So if someone comes near you who is in that synchronous state, this coherent state, it's possible that they can induce changes in your field. But that has not been proven scientifically, that is a hypothesis. But it's a it you know i it's a way of explaining th how it could happen. And also I it's one of these like very sort of you know familiar phenomena to people that you know energy like if someone is stressed out that can be infectious and that you know when people are relaxed that kind of also helps uh make other people relax. So it's not hard to uh you know, it's not hard to see it in action, is it? No, in fact, um I work with horses as well, and so I can get people so I've I've worked with students and I have many videos of um a student and a horse. A horse is free in a in a round pen and the student's sitting there, and they have a device showing when they are in this coherent state because they're they're relaxing, they're breathing slowly and deeply, and then the device shows when they reach this coherent state, and the horse picks up on it. So remember, when they're in their coherent state, their field, it's affecting their field, their energy field. And I have a video that I show all the time. The the student reaches coherence and she knows it because the device goes green, and you can see the horse's ears go towards her, the ears just go towards her, the horse turns around and walks straight over to her and puts his head on her lap. They're very for very sensitive to people's energy. Yeah, I mean, there's always been that sort of idea that horses can sort of sense fear, can't they? And that you know, that's not a good way to approach a horse. So that's that's really interesting that that's kind of also being borne out with uh you know that that kind of perspective. Um and coming back to the sort of the research gap, like are there any particular areas that you know studies that are happening at the moment you're excited by? And if you know, if money were no object, where would you like to see um you know efforts being directed to to kind of reinforce the the sort of credibility of these treatments to get them more widely accepted? Yeah, um there are lots of places for Reiki. One big thing is to do more long-term studies, follow-up. How long does the Reiki treatment last? Very little research has been done on follow-up, so I think that's very a very important next step. Some studies have followed up from you know a matter of months, but um not any more than that. And what happens, so after three months, say you're still showing some beneficial um effects of Reiki, what if you have another Reiki session then? Does that how long does that help you manifest those those benefits? Or what happens if you don't have another session then? So we need to find more follow-up. Also, it would be wonderful to um do some experiments with an MRI, put a Reiki practitioner or maybe a Reiki receiver in an MRI and seeing what is going on with their their brains, um, what parts of their brains are being activated by receiving Reiki energy or giving Reiki. So I think those would be very exciting. And is there anything so ongoing at the moment that you've particularly got your eye on research-wise? Yeah, um, so COVID, a lot of um problems occurred during COVID, and uh there are still some um researchers looking at effects of Reiki on long-term effects of COVID. So I think that's quite exciting. How much do you feel that you know Reiki is a tradition from Asia, and I think it feels as though that there's a general discrepancy in terms of, you know, uh European, American cultures around traditional medicine where we seem to have less of a connection with practices that have been used for, you know, centuries, if not longer, by people. Do you feel like well have you have you heard about differences in terms of the way that I guess mainstream medicine and healing accepts these differently in different parts of the world? Um, I have the whole story of of uh Reiki, it's you know it was it was kind of redeveloped by uh Mikhail Usui in the um beginning of the 1900s, and he he learned about Reiki through his meditation and through um uh reading. He learned a lot of languages so he could read all the ancient texts. So of I don't know if it was actual Reiki, but energy healing has been going on for for many, many, many hundreds of years, and so he kind of brought it to fruition in um Japan at that time. And then he taught other practitioners, and then during the Second World War, it kind of went underground. And there was a practitioner called Mrs. Takata, who came from the States, from Hawaii, actually. She came from Hawaii because she had relatives in Japan, and she was trained in Reiki when she was there, and she was responsible for bringing Reiki to the West. And we have found out people who study Reiki have gone back, and they're they're from the States and also from Europe, they've gone back to Japan and hooked up with people who are relatives or descendants of um the original Reiki scholars, and found out that a lot of what Mrs. Takata um learned, she kind of dropped. And she didn't bring all of the Reiki techniques and Reiki beliefs over with her. She kind of simplified it for the for the dumb Westerners. Um and now we're finding out more about what else they did and other very useful techniques that they had. So it's a continual learning experience. And I think in answer to your question, different do different people in different parts of the country accept these older teachings? I don't think it's maybe so much what country you're in, just whether you're open or not. Um and I know interestingly, Russia, they seem to be way more ahead with regards to openness to complementary therapies than we are. I've worked in other areas and uh they are way ahead. So when you go to um a doctor in Russia, not only do they um measure your blood pressure and and heart rate, they also image your biofield. Okay, and yeah, perhaps we we've sort of we've talked around it, but tell tell us about this idea about the biofield, what it is, and and like what's the sort of scientific consensus around it if there is Okay, well, um the biofield, there's there's various ways to describe it. The way that I usually describe it is just the electromagnetic field that's surrounding your heart and your brain, as I said, they're electric organs and they create this electromagnetic field. Some people say it's not just electromagnetic energy, but other forms of energy that we don't know yet. But um for sure it's electromagnetic and it's possible that there are other forms of energy associated with this biofield. And the important thing is that when you um receive some kind of illness or problem, the theory is that it affects your biofield before it actually affects your your own body, your physical body. And so it's possible to make alterations in that biofield through various um therapies like energy healings that can prevent you from actually manifesting that illness. So it's looking at the body in terms of electromagnetism rather than and and other kinds of energy, rather than chemicals and receptors and drugs. And this has been known for many, many years. Um in the 19, I think it was the 1970s, or maybe even earlier, Harold Saxton Burr, he he wrote about um the energy, the electrical energy of the of the body. He did some extensive experiments, and then that was kind of lost, and people got seduced by the world of chemistry and receptors and drugs. But the sort of follow-on to that is that these energetic fields, electromagnetic or otherwise, go on to affect the chemistry of the body, and that these these aren't two separate systems. Right, exactly. Yeah. Totally. So when when if you have an alteration in your electromagnetic field, that is going to alter the chemistry, it's going to alter the the nervous system, the neurotransmitters that are being released, it's going to alter the endocrine system, the hormones that are being released. Absolutely. And is that something that a sort of you know, a skeptically minded mainstream clinician would accept that, you know, electromagnetism affects these chemical interactions? Oh, absolutely, yeah. And like one thing that sort of sprung to mind, and talking about the vagus nerve, is that I feel like there's, you know, and but perhaps this is something that might help the sort of acceptance of Reiki in some way, but I think people are very into sort of bio-optimization now and these sort of complementary, you know, often sort of devices. And one of them, I've seen ones for like the vagus nerve that stimulate the vagus nerve. Have you come across these? That oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. You can get wearable devices, um, they're still researching into those, and then you can get the implants. But um you don't really need to do that. You can activate your vagus nerve by yourself. Um, do uh doing Reiki will activate your vagus nerve, and also just doing that deeper, slower breathing will activate just an exhale, just going, that will activate the vagus nerve. But I suppose the sort of the development and market for those products goes to show that you know there is a sort of developing acceptance that the the sort of theorized mechanism of Reiki has value, and I guess some people need it packaged up in a box and in the kind of uh vehicle of technology to believe in it, maybe. Absolutely, yeah, whatever works. Yeah. Do you think those do work, those machines? Even if it we can do it without them? Oh yeah, I think so. How do you say that this journey that you've been on uh going from you know skeptical to curious to uh now extremely well informed about Reiki? How how has that changed you as a person in the way you see the world? Uh a spiritual lens on things, as how spirituality can interact with science. Like how how are you different to before you met your research assistant? Oh well, totally different. As I said, the first thing I did, the first effect was to help to make me give up my tenure at the university, which is which is a very, very big decision to make. Um voting with your feet and your wallet, I guess. Right, yeah. So I'm I'm much more open and aware of so many other things that and possibilities, it makes you more open to different possibilities that can happen. Instead of focusing on one one route, you're open to, hey, we could do it this way, or maybe that way, or maybe um this would work. I think it's it's changed me because I'm much more open and adaptable. I can think on my feet better, um, I can see what's going on, I can read a room better. Yeah, it's it's just being able to take in more information instead of just shutting the doors. And has it affected your kind of spiritual lens on life? Find that word difficult, spiritual, because uh I was brought up in England and uh at school we had hymns and prayers and Bible readings and uh every day, and it really just put you know, organized religion really just put me off that word spiritual. So now I when I hear that word spiritual, it it kind of throws me in a loop. So I really do believe in an in a higher power, and a higher power, and I think that's where Reiki comes from, some higher power. But I have no idea what it is, but I'm I'm open to something bigger than we are, of course. But I d I am interested in um a more spiritual aspect of life. I did a project with um the UK Reiki Federation. We um made surveys and we sent them out to their Reiki practitioners, members of the UK Reiki Federation, so I think hundreds of practitioners, and we were interested to see if spirituality, one question there was about spirituality, and I think we had 700 um replies for that one. And how Reiki and spirituality combine together, how important they found some kind of spiritual connection in order to do Reiki. And um it was overwhelming. Almost all of them felt that they needed some kind of spiritual connection to be able to practice Reiki. So if you can define spiritual as um connecting to a higher power, I think that that has changed my outlook. Yeah, connecting to some higher power. Before I was a total atheist. After being at school, I was a total atheist. And now I am open to a higher power, so I'm more open. The other survey we did on the UK Reiki Federation practitioners was meditation and how important meditation was to Reiki practice. And once again, um, almost all Reiki practitioners meditate. So I think to be a Reiki practitioner, you do have to be open to something else, something higher. And in order to get yourself into a frame of mind where you can connect with something higher, the meditation really does help. So we found that both meditation and um uh a link to something more spiritual were essential for for Reiki practice. Okay, well, that's a great place to end. An thank you so much for your time and for all the work that you're doing. And yeah, I guess best of luck with trying to keep the momentum going behind this research. Yeah, thank you very much. We need it. Thank you so much, Anne, for joining Hidden Variables. Please do like, subscribe, and review the show if you enjoyed this. And we'll be back very soon with more episodes. We've got some really exciting guests in the pipeline, so I hope you tune in for those. Thank you again for listening, and we will be back soon.