Reiki can’t possibly work, so why does it?

Place a log-periodic tooth antenna on the patient. Hook it up to a wide-band signal analyzer. Perform reiki. If no signal is read, electromagnetic energy in the frequency range of the antenna is likely ruled out. Repeat the measurement with identical touch that is non-reiki. No difference means that reiki does not use that energy band.

Repeat with photovoltaic cells, microphones, night-vision sensors, capacitative sensors, inductive sensors, magnetism sensors, etc.

My hypothesis is that reiki is 100% placebo effect, no difference will ever be measured between otherwise identical reiki and non-reiki movements, and the most effective investigation of reiki would be measuring the brain states of patients who think they are receiving treatments.

Activating the placebo effect is good. If we can study it enough, we might even be able to do it without any bunkum.

Thank you for taking the time for writing this.

I agree with you, subtle energy is not physical. I have written about it in other comments ... and like you, I feel fatigued about having to explain this all the time.

Since you took the time to write about it, I will try my best to write it here too:

I do not mean that the idea of subtle energy is a useful metaphor. Subtle energy is real. Subtle energy is not the same as the physical energy described in physics.

What I mean by "real" is not the same "real" as in a definitive, physical manner. That gets into the areas beyond "extraordinary". If you already find the idea of "subtle energy is real" is ridiculous, I don't really see the point in continuing down this line of discussion.

One of the characteristics about subtle energy that is not described by physical energy is that subtle energy carries information, among them, emotions, concepts, awareness, sentience, etc. It will move and change based upon the information it carries.

Consciousness (another problematic term) can experience and sense subtle energy, but it is in turn, affected by it.

In other words, the physical description of science is a useful metaphor for describing subtle energy. Unfortunately, you are right in that many people would borrow from authority implied by using scientific terms to lend validity to these claims. That is harmful, not just in the sense that people will take action on it and do stupid things. It is also harmful in the sense that it assumes the scientific method can describe everything ... and I don't think it is capable of the adequately exploring subtle energy or consciousness. (But there are people who are trying; more props to them).

There is no "energy gland". I get annoyed when I read up claims like that. Rather, consciousness is generating and receiving subtle energy. There may be such a thing as subtle anatomy -- non-physical structures that can transceive subtle energy; but they are a part of the makeup of consciousness. "Gland" is not really a useful metaphor to describe them, because it is more useful the distinguish the physical gland, and the consciousness of that particular gland.

I have serious doubts that this stuff can ever by objectively explored. I doubt any mechanistic form of technology can really measure it.

I started qualifying the term "energy" with "subtle energy". People are then free to agree or disagree, even reject the whole notion of "subtle energy".

I don't mean it as "qualitative energy" in the sense you are using, though there are qualities to it. It affects conciousness, and is in turn affected by consciousness. The consciousness can be trained to influence, even direct or focus the it.

So yes, people experience love, fill inspired, or feel exuberance, and those are subtle energy in different forms. But it also has substance. Someone skilled in its use can intensify it, purify it, project it, and influence someone else's mood with it.

My dad has spent almost all of his free time, for the last 40-50 yrs, as an amateur pseudo-scientist, including spiritism and syncretism, practicing a good subset of beliefs and rituals spliced from Christian, African and Asian religions.

He has been a part of different communities or groups at times (kardecists, candomblé and buddhists to name a few), as a teacher and practitioner (ie. "medium" and "doctor") but never did any of it for money (or power), afaik, but as a spiritually fulfilling hobby. Besides practicing things like issuing homeopathic treatments to the sick, having a very lively shrine at our different homes, reading and teaching at study sessions, and a hack-load of strange rituals, he also did plenty of charity and fundraisers for the needy in our different communities.

Now he's semi-retired and focus mostly on Reiki.

I grew up believing our home-equivalent of a "religion" (my mom is also a believer) to be the absolute and undeniable truth. It took me years to unlearn and today I'm quite the unattached, worldly person I've become.

After watching dozens of people benefit or suffer under these rituals, is that there IS more good in it than bad. In the case of Reiki specifically, it's the "science" of comfort. The amazing feeling of human proximity, human touch and humane social interaction is very energizing and therapeutical. Reiki is different from mindfulness and meditation (which my dad taught me when I was 7) but not unlike them, is tied to healing activities practiced since ancient times and has many psychological, or even evolutionary, explanations on where its benefits come from. But its science is not linked in any way to quantum physics or energy as such. There's just no way my dad is actually sending me Reiki from 8000 miles away! He does try, though.

Today I accept their beliefs, as I accept Reiki, and my only gripe is how my parents judgement was, at times, completely impaired by their faith, as they use it as a substitute (not a complement) to real science, in particular, as a proxy for a visit to a doctor. Or an "Earth doctor" like my dad used to say. As they've aged, they've also tuned down their rhetoric as only "Earth doctors" can install pacemakers.

And that's the real damage Reiki, as many other treatments, inflicts: it can easily become a proxy therapy to real medicine and science, out of fear, money, conspiracies or plain dumbness. Maybe the way forward would be for (Western) science to embrace the study of spiritual therapies, so it can be understood and applied by the medical profession, which would help hinder obscurity and quackery. But I guess that's just what makes them appealing to so many people.

My experiences with reiki were positive, but my practitioner mixed shiatsu (lots of touch) with reiki.

There's an article on HN today also on "Physical force alone spurs gene expression, study reveals", which might be an interesting angle to consider with any sort of therapeutic massage involving contact.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22757857