Regular readers of this blog will know that, as well as possessing many other talents, I am also a fully-qualified Reiki Master – the highest rank one can achieve in this form of esoteric healing. I would love to claim that this means I spent many years in dedicated study, pondering the inner mysteries of the universe, and engaging in harsh ascetic practices of mind and body. That is, after all, what mastery in other Eastern arts often involves. T’ai Chi masters (that’s a title I don’t even come close to claiming!) have usually spent thirty to forty years perfecting their techniques. Masters of Shodo may devote hours each day to practicing a single stroke of the brush. A master of the Tea Ceremony, of Chado, will have attained that lofty title only after decades of detailed study.

To become a Reiki Master, I paid £100 to attend a four hour seminar in a suburban front room. Together with three other prospective “masters”, I learned the “Master Symbol” (three Japanese kanji characters which I already knew and which the teacher drew very poorly), learned how to create a “crystal healing grid” (point some crystals at each other), made my own “Reiki wand” (a twig with a crystal on the end) and had a crack at “psychic surgery” (big on puffing and grunting, somewhat short on anatomical accuracy). Most importantly, I received the “Master Attunement”, which involved the teacher waving his hands around and blowing on my head – he’d had garlic for lunch, so that was pleasant…

After that, we were given a certificate and informed that we had attained Master status. This process, or one very similar, is the usual qualification for mastery in Reiki, and whilst practitioners would have you believe that such an honour is only granted to the truly worthy, in reality anyone with fairly deep pockets and a spare Saturday could qualify.

For those of you who’ve never embraced the woo, I suppose I should give a quick explanation of what reiki actually is, and where it came from. Practitioners describe it as an “energy healing system” – the basic idea is that illness is caused by a lack/imbalance of energy in the body, and can be cured by tapping into the ethereal power of Reiki, a sort of universal back-up generator. The man who first came up with this bobbins was a Japanese gentleman named Usui Mikao, who in 1914 supposedly spent a week or two fasting up a mountain, and came back down with magic healing powers. I say supposedly, because the history of Dr Usui’s life is hotly debated in reiki circles. Some say he was a Christian, others a Buddhist. Some claim he spent a week on the mountain, some reckon it was twenty days. Some say he taught only his student Hayashi Chujiro the true secret of reiki, others that he taught it openly. All the evidence we have regarding the founder of Reiki comes to us from his students, who tell many conflicting stories about him – a bit like Jesus, really.

Reiki students are “attuned” by a master to the Reiki energy, and after this are able to use it and direct it at will; at least that’s what they’re told. Higher levels of initiation involve further attunements, which cost progressively more; some masters charging hundreds of pounds for these sessions. Actual practices vary widely between different schools – some use special symbols, some incorporate elements of crystal healing or ayurvedic medicine, some include therapeutic massage in their curriculum. Some chant mantras. When you visit a reiki healer, be prepared for all manner of strangeness…

The fundamental problem I have with reiki is the general refusal of its proponents to submit to clinical trials. Dr Ray D’Alonzo of Procter & Gamble’s Research Division has published a couple of (necessarily) sparse but interesting meta-analyses of the small amount of clinical work done – see here and here. The few tests which have been carried out suffer from severe bias, since they tend to be sponsored by organisations dedicated to complementary therapy. Advocates of reiki, however, generally shy away from controlled trials, arguing that reiki cannot be understood by scientific means – although they are happy enough to circulate triumphantly those few papers where science “proves” the treatment is effective. This, to my mind, is woo-speak for “please don’t expose us for the frauds we are”, and until I see acceptably neutral, peer-reviewed randomised controlled trials that demonstrate reiki’s value as a medical treatment, my Master’s Certificate will remain unframed at the back of a dusty drawer.