TL;DR
The case against energy healing is real and worth hearing. Reviews find no solid clinical proof. Placebo is a genuine effect. Many supportive studies are weak. The "energy" isn't energy in the physics sense. Distance-healing trials are mixed. The field has frauds. And skipping real medicine for it can be dangerous. I agree with most of that. What I offer instead of big claims is a small, honest one: clients rate themselves 0 to 10 before and after every session, energy healing works alongside medical care and never replaces it, and you're welcome to stay skeptical while you find out for yourself.
If you're skeptical of energy healing, good. You should be. A lot of what gets said about this work is oversold, and people who are hurting deserve straight answers more than they deserve a sales pitch.
So here are the seven objections I hear most often. Most come straight from the standard skeptical case, the kind you'll find summarized in any encyclopedia entry on energy medicine. For each one I'll tell you what the criticism gets right, because it usually gets something right, and then how I actually work with it after 20 years of practice.
1. "There's No Clinical Evidence"
This is mostly fair. When researchers pool the trials, they don't find solid proof. A 2015 Cochrane review, "Reiki for depression and anxiety," found only three small studies that met its standards and concluded there wasn't enough evidence to say whether Reiki helps or not. Cochrane reviews are about as careful as medical research gets, so I take that seriously.
I won't claim proof I don't have. What I can tell you is who tends to find me: people whose tests came back normal and who still don't feel right. Clinical trials are built to measure one condition at a time. The people in my practice often don't fit neatly into one box, which is part of why they ended up looking for something else.
2. "It's Just Placebo"
Maybe some of it is. Placebo isn't fake. Expectation, attention, and a calm setting change how people feel, and that's well documented in mainstream medicine. Ted Kaptchuk and Franklin Miller made that case in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015, in "Placebo Effects in Medicine."
I don't try to argue placebo away. I'd rather pay attention to what lasts. A good feeling at the end of a session is nice. A change that's still there a week or two later, by the client's own report, is what I watch for.
3. "The Supportive Studies Are Flawed"
Many of them are. The 2000 review by Astin, Harkness, and Ernst in the Annals of Internal Medicine, "The Efficacy of 'Distant Healing'," found positive results in a majority of trials but flagged real methodological problems. The 2015 meta-analyses by Roe, Sonnex, and Roxburgh found small effects and also called out wide variation and weak study quality.
Bad studies help nobody, including healers. My own evidence is much smaller, and I try to keep it honest: every client rates what they came in with on a 0 to 10 scale at the start and the end of every session. You give the number, not me. I explain how that works in my piece on the SUDS scale.
4. "That 'Energy' Isn't Real Physics"
Agreed. The energy healers talk about is not the energy a physicist measures, and I don't claim it is. When practitioners borrow physics vocabulary to sound scientific, critics are right to call it out.
Not knowing the mechanism doesn't settle whether something helps, though. Aspirin went on sale in 1899, and nobody knew how it worked until John Vane showed in 1971 that it blocks prostaglandin production, published in Nature New Biology. For more than 70 years, people relied on a medicine that worked before anyone could explain why. I'm not saying energy healing is aspirin. I'm saying "we don't know how" and "it doesn't do anything" are two different statements.
5. "Distance Healing Failed in Trials"
Some trials did find nothing. In a 2001 study in the journal Pain, Abbot and colleagues compared healers with people only pretending to heal, for patients with chronic pain. Pain went down in both groups, and there was no meaningful difference between them. Other research, including the two reviews above, found small effects.
My honest summary is: small, real, and not yet explained. I wrote about this in more depth in Distance Energy Healing: Does It Actually Work?, including what a remote session actually looks like.
6. "The Field Is Full of Frauds"
It has some, and it's worth knowing how to spot them. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's consumer guide "6 Tip-offs to Rip-offs" lists warning signs that apply well beyond supplements: miracle cures, quick fixes, and one product that supposedly treats everything.
What an honest practitioner looks like
No promised cures. No pressure to stop your medication or skip your doctor. No special devices you have to buy. Prices you can see before you book. A way for you to judge the results yourself. My prices are on the homepage, and every session is tracked with your own 0 to 10 rating.
7. "It Replaces Real Medicine"
It can't, and it shouldn't. This is the one I care about most. A 2018 study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute by Johnson and colleagues found that people with curable cancers who chose alternative medicine instead of conventional treatment had a much higher risk of dying. That's the real danger critics are pointing at, and they're right to.
Keep your doctor. Take your medication. Energy healing works alongside medical care, never instead of it. If anyone, including me, ever suggests otherwise, walk away.
"Skeptics and I want the same thing: for people not to get hurt, and not to get sold something that isn't true."
The Short Version
- 1No clinical evidence: true. I don't claim proof.
- 2It's just placebo: maybe partly. I watch what lasts.
- 3The studies are flawed: many are. Clients rate themselves 0 to 10.
- 4It isn't real physics: agreed. I don't claim it is.
- 5Distance trials failed: some did. Small, real, not yet explained.
- 6Full of frauds: some. Know the red flags.
- 7Replaces medicine: never. Keep your doctor.