Oncology units are one of the more unexpected places Reiki has ended up. Cancer centers in the US and Europe now regularly offer it alongside chemotherapy, and that’s not just a wellness gesture — a fair amount of research has actually looked at whether it does anything for pain, anxiety, and the general misery of cancer treatment. The results are more interesting, and more mixed, than either the skeptics or the enthusiasts tend to admit.

In the infusion chair

One of the more recent reviews looked at 392 Reiki sessions given to 268 patients during chemotherapy infusions between 2022 and 2024. Before and after each 15 to 20 minute session, patients rated their pain, fatigue, anxiety, nausea, and general well-being. Every single measure improved, and not by a trivial amount — pain dropped by nearly two points on a standard symptom scale, anxiety by over two points. This wasn’t a placebo-controlled trial, so it can’t rule out that just sitting quietly for 20 minutes during an infusion would have helped almost as much. But the size of the shifts is hard to wave away entirely.

Earlier work backs this up in smaller ways. In one chemotherapy unit, 22 patients who received four Reiki sessions showed significant drops in both anxiety and pain compared with patients who didn’t. Another trial with cancer-related fatigue patients found reductions in pain, fatigue, and anxiety, plus better quality of life, in the Reiki group compared to a resting control group. A three-armed double-blind trial in Turkey — real Reiki, sham Reiki, and progressive relaxation — found the sharpest drop in pain and anxiety in the real Reiki group, though all three groups improved somewhat.

The wrinkle: sham Reiki sometimes works too

Here’s the part most Reiki websites leave out. In a double-blind trial at a chemotherapy infusion center, researchers compared standard care, real Reiki, and sham Reiki — where a person went through the same hand positions and timing but wasn’t trained in the practice and wasn’t attempting to do anything energetically. Both the real and the sham version significantly beat standard care on comfort and well-being. They didn’t really beat each other.

That’s not necessarily bad news. It suggests some of the benefit comes from quiet, dedicated one-on-one attention during an otherwise clinical, impersonal hour hooked to an IV — which is still a real, useful thing to offer someone, whatever you call it. It does mean the “energy transfer” explanation is on shakier ground than the pain-reduction numbers alone would suggest. A 2023 systematic review covering 572 cancer patients across multiple studies still concluded Reiki was associated with meaningful pain relief. It just couldn’t fully separate that from the effect of calm, focused human contact.

Where it didn’t hold up

It’s worth saying plainly: not every study finds an effect. A 2022 randomized trial comparing acupressure, Reiki, and standard care in 156 patients with stage III and IV cancer receiving palliative treatment found no significant effect on pain or fatigue in the Reiki group. That’s a real result from a well-sized trial, not an outlier to explain away. Advanced, late-stage cancer pain is a different animal from the anxiety and treatment-related discomfort that shows up earlier in a diagnosis, and it’s possible Reiki’s effect — whatever its source — is more suited to the emotional weight of cancer treatment than to controlling severe physical pain on its own.

What this actually means if you’re considering it

Nobody should swap Reiki in for pain medication or cancer treatment, and no oncology nurse recommending it is suggesting that. What the research supports is narrower and still genuinely useful: as a low-risk addition to standard cancer care, Reiki shows up again and again as something that measurably eases anxiety, and often pain and fatigue too, with zero reported adverse effects across the studies that tracked them. It doesn’t work the same for everyone or every kind of pain. But for the specific, miserable experience of sitting through infusion after infusion, the evidence for it doing something real — even if science hasn’t nailed down exactly what — is stronger than most people expect.

For those using Reiki as part of a broader wellness approach, a supportive crystal set or a book on integrative wellness during cancer care may be of interest. (Amazon affiliate links — we earn a small commission at no cost to you.)

Reiki Works

Reiki Works shares clear, well-researched information about Reiki, Shamballa, and energy healing to help you make informed decisions about your wellness journey. We’re part of the CrystalWind.co family of holistic wellness resources, and you can find more energy healing articles in the Reiki section on CrystalWind.ca.