More and more, people are choosing Reiki as a complementary cancer care tool, employing it both on its own and in conjunction with traditional treatments. With its potential to ameliorate both the symptoms of disease and the potentially debilitating side effects of chemotherapy and other conventional methods of care, Reiki is a powerful holistic method that works to heal the body as a whole, without a narrow focus on only outward symptoms.

Reiki practitioners do not purport to diagnose or cure cancer. Positive outcomes are not promised, and a lack of expectations is encouraged, the testimony of those who have been personally touched and healed through Reiki can be both moving and convincing. When Michael McCarty was diagnosed with cancer in 1999, he looked to Reiki to provide support through surgery and 37 rounds of radiation. “I don’t know how it works,” he says. “All I know is that it worked for me.” Michael’s enthusiasm for Reiki garnered the support of his radiologist, who told him that he was “all for anything to keep you emotionally and mentally stable while going through something so threatening to your body.”

The growing acceptance of Reiki in hospitals, many with strong reputations and an outstanding staff, shows that, no matter the exceptional competence of an institution, curiosity about incorporation of complementary care methods is growing. Any hospital, even a prestigious one, is always looking for ways to improve, and complementary therapies are becoming a more and more popular route. Recognition is growing that curing cancer is an objective goal, but healing and bringing balance to the body is an ongoing process, holistic in its application and not constrained to the limitation of one proposed outcome. Reiki can not only support cancer patients, but has the potential to nourish a hospital’s staff, too, combating exhaustion and burnout.

As a complementary cancer care tool, Reiki can ease the body in various ways. People turn to Reiki to “bring healing into their often-rigorous cancer protocols, seeking relief from symptoms such as pain, anxiety, fatigue, nausea, and depression, and to improve quality of life, reduce feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, slow disease progression, improve immune function and overall health, participate actively in their healthcare, and regain a sense of control.” Reiki can be incorporated into a person’s healing process at any point, and its simplicity is appealing. As one Reiki Master explains, “Reiki is not esoteric. It’s basic, simple human communication. You lay your hands on someone and align yourself: you offer your best intentions for this person, and you encourage them to think of it that way.

People often fee that they are “drowning in their diagnosis,” suffocating in the fear that accompanies it. Other than working to heal bodily symptoms, one of the goals of Reiki it to remove agitation, replacing it with hope. Reiki soothes and calms like a deep exhalation, providing a contrast to the anxious tension of the body, often tight and contracted with worry. It has an energizing effect, allowing the person to think more clearly and to bring new invigoration to the protocols and conventional treatment.

Reiki has the potential to empower, allowing a person to feel in control of the situation and involved in their healing process. By asking “Howe was that for you?” after a session, the practitioner allows a conversational dialogue to develop. Out of this space of interaction and empowerment, coping strategies are born, in which a person’s participation in the process of healing is encouraged.

Methods of coping are always personal and can take many forms. Bringing supportive people and objects along with you can allow you to make your environment soft, soothing, and conducive to healing. One woman took flowers to her chemotherapy sessions, sometimes giving them to the staff of the oncology department as a thank you. She also brought her son with her, and on another occasion her mother-in-law. By re-envisioning her chemotherapy as “liquid love,” she came to see it as bringing only good to her body and empowering it to heal. Methods like this, often born out of the new hopeful viewpoint and clarity of thought brought by Reiki, can ease and promote the healing process throughout its more stressful stages. As one Reiki practitioner and advocate put it, “conventional cancer treatment can be experienced as a war against the disease, a fight for life in which the body becomes a battlefield. The balancing effect of Reiki treatment can help the person recover from the collateral damage of treatment without compromising the effectiveness of conventional protocols. At a time when so much hangs in the balance, Reiki treatment can help tip the scales in the patient’s favor.”

By choosing it, patients are becoming an important contributor to their own healing process, and, through their choice, often make that process a more personal one. In what can be an impersonal environment, Reiki provides the close connection and comfort of touch, an acknowledgement of you and your needs.

Many people report that this close connection makes them feel important and cared for, a person, not an object. In one hospice study of alternative healing modalities, one of which was Reiki, participants reported that their care “seemed very personal…you are not a cog in the wheel.” “It’s like…people nowadays…most people don’t care anymore and when people come up and want to give you touch therapy [or other complementary therapies]…then that means that they want to take time to get to know you and meanwhile you get to know them.” One man said that staff provided care “in a way that you know it’s genuine…you just get the feeling that if you don’t take advantage of this, you’re passing up a gift.”