There have been numerous studies completed over the last three decades on the efficacy of energy healing. Researchers have investigated energy therapies including Healing Touch, Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, Craniosacral Therapy, Gentle Touch, and Johrei, including studies funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. This research has explored effects on: chronic pain, wound healing; pre-term babies; stress in healthy adults; fibromyalgia; dementia; pain and anxiety in patients with HIV/AIDS; depression, use of pain medication and length of hospital stay following surgery; pain and fatigue in cancer; alleviation of suffering and symptom distress in oncology nursing; coronary bypass surgery recovery; heart rate modulation in stressed rats; microvascular damage in mice exposed to loud noise; hemoglobin; bacteria; fungus; immunoglobin; and mineralization of human bone cells in culture.

The studies varied in size. Most were small or pilot studies, some were systematic reviews, and many showed positive results, with larger studies often recommended. They varied in design, with some having controls or blinding, and others not. There is more research to be done, but the existing body of inquiry into energy therapies is promising.

There are inherent challenges in conducting standard randomized clinical trials (RCT’s) on complex therapies such as energy healing. Scientific research is by nature reductionistic, looking at a single variable as the cause of a limited number of pre-determined effects, and assuming a sameness among research subjects that may not be valid. This works better if one is researching the effects of a pill on patients with diabetes, but even two individuals with diabetes vary in a thousand different ways. In truth, people are not identical, and have different responses to, and different outcomes with all therapies.

For a good example of the limitations of standard research protocols in energy medicine, and the need for “whole person” outcomes, here is a study on Healing Touch done at Kaiser.

A person’s unique life experiences and web of relationships are important variables in the healing process, and cannot be easily subtracted out. In energy healing, one’s subjective or personal experience of the therapy is as highly valued as more objective measures. While it is important for a number of reasons to demonstrate that a particular therapy changes hemoglobin in vitro, reduces the pain of a surgery patient, or increases para-sympathetic activity in premature infants, it is also essential to note outcomes of healing that are not so easily quantifiable.

These might include: an opening up or deepening of awareness; a greater sense of balance, resilience, and well-being; changes in self-perception: a greater preference for behaviors that support health; and feeling more integrated in one’s mind, body, spirit, and emotions. As energy healing is highly individualized and addresses the whole person, a practitioner is less like a pill, and more akin to an ally on a venture of self-discovery.