Study
Self-Reiki, Consideration of a Potential Option for Managing Chronic Pain during Pandemic COVID-19 Period.
Maxime Billot, Maeva Daycard, Philippe Rigoard · Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2021
Read the original paper ↗The short version
This brief opinion piece asked a practical pandemic-era question: when people with chronic pain cannot reach their usual care, could self-administered Reiki help fill the gap? Reiki is an energy healing practice in which a practitioner — or in this case, the person themselves — places hands on or near the body with the intention of supporting the body's own balance. The authors, pain researchers in France, note two things at once. First, practitioner-given Reiki has shown promising results in studies for reducing pain and psychological distress and improving quality of life. Second, the self-administered version has not been properly tested, and they say so plainly: self-Reiki "needs evidence-based medicine to be disseminated." There is no experiment here — no participants, no measurements, no statistics. The paper is a reasoned argument that self-Reiki is worth studying because it is free once learned, always available, requires no travel or contact, and would run alongside conventional pain treatment rather than replacing it. The takeaway is honest and small: a hypothesis worth testing, not a treatment recommendation. The sensible reading of this commentary is that self-Reiki is a low-risk practice some people with chronic pain report as helpful, while the clinical trials that would prove or disprove its benefit still need to be run.
Key findings
- Self-Reiki means practicing Reiki (an energy healing method using hands placed on or near the body) on oneself, without a practitioner.
- The authors argue pandemic-era barriers to pain care make self-administered complementary options worth studying.
- Practitioner-given Reiki has shown promising results for pain, distress, and quality of life in earlier studies the authors cite.
- No experiment was conducted in this paper — it is a reasoned proposal, and the authors state plainly that self-Reiki lacks an evidence base.
- The proposal frames self-Reiki as an addition to conventional pain care, never a replacement.
Common questions
What healing modality was studied?
None was tested. The paper discusses self-administered Reiki, an energy healing practice, as a candidate for future chronic-pain research.
What condition was addressed?
Chronic pain, in the context of pandemic-era barriers to accessing usual pain management.
What were the main findings?
No findings — the authors argue self-Reiki is plausible, low-risk, and accessible, while acknowledging it lacks the evidence base needed for dissemination.
How strong is the evidence?
Expert opinion only (level V). The cited support comes from practitioner-administered Reiki studies, not from self-Reiki trials.
What are the clinical implications?
Self-Reiki may be a reasonable low-risk complement to conventional pain care for interested patients, but no efficacy claim is supported until trials are run.
This summary and its findings were generated by AI from the published paper and may contain imperfections. It describes a study and is not medical advice — talk to a qualified clinician about your own health (terms). The original study is always the source of truth — read it above.