Reiki, Energy Work, and the Nervous System

A Grounded Exploration of Subtle Healing

By Andrée Noye, MA, Clinical Herbalist. Reading Time: 6 minutes

A practitioner performs Reiki healing, gently hovering hands over a relaxed patient in a calm setting.

In the context of holistic health care, few modalities generate more quiet transformation (or more public skepticism) than Reiki. For those who have experienced it, the effects are often subtle but undeniable. For those who haven’t, it can seem mysterious or even implausible. But in my experience, as both a clinical herbalist and someone committed to evidence-informed care, Reiki deserves its place in the circle of complementary therapies.

This blog offers a grounded perspective on Reiki and energy work, through both clinical understanding and personal experience. I have never felt especially “gifted” in energy sensitivity. I don’t see auras. I don’t always feel the energy moving during a session. But I do feel what follows: clarity of mind, emotional steadiness, deep sleep, and the sense of having released something I didn’t know I was holding.

These experiences are real. They’re also hard to quantify, which is why it’s worth taking the time to unpack what may be happening and why it matters.

What Is Reiki, Really?

A practitioner gently performs energy healing by hovering hands above a relaxed individual, promoting balance and wellbeing.

Reiki is a structured form of energy healing that originated in Japan in the early 20th century. The term loosely translates to "universal life energy," and the practice itself involves light touch or near-body hand placements intended to facilitate flow, calm, and energetic balance.

A Reiki practitioner is trained (or “attuned”) to work with this energy. This is not a supernatural gift but a cultivated sensitivity and deepened presence. A typical session takes place with the client fully clothed, lying or seated in a quiet space. There is no manipulation of tissue, no diagnosis, and no goal-setting in the conventional sense. Rather, the practitioner holds a non-judgmental, regulated field, allowing the client’s own system to settle, shift, and respond.

Reiki, the Biofield, and the Science of Subtlety

In clinical terms, Reiki falls under the category of biofield therapy, a group of non-invasive treatments that aim to balance the body’s energetic field. While Western medicine does not yet fully define or measure the biofield in consistent ways, researchers have observed meaningful effects in studies of energy medicine, including Reiki.

Peer-reviewed research has found Reiki to be associated with:

• Reduced anxiety and depression

• Lowered heart rate and blood pressure

• Decreased pain perception

• Improved sleep quality

• Increased heart rate variability (a marker of parasympathetic activity)

These outcomes are often described in the literature as non-specific therapeutic effects, meaning they don’t target a single condition but help the client shift into a more adaptive, relaxed physiological state.

Three Reiki symbols are depicted, each with distinct shapes and lines, representing different elements of the spiritual healing practice.

This doesn’t make Reiki vague or unscientific. It makes it systemic. Much like meditation or trauma-informed bodywork, Reiki may work through the nervous system rather than against it, supporting the shift out of sympathetic activation (fight-or-flight) and into parasympathetic rest and recovery.

But Is It Just the Placebo Effect?

Let’s talk about the placebo effect... not as a dismissal, but as a lens. In biomedical science, the placebo effect is often misunderstood as "nothing happened except belief." But this view ignores what belief actually does in the body.

Placebo responses can activate:

• The prefrontal cortex (focused attention)

• The endogenous opioid system (natural pain modulation)

• The dopaminergic reward circuit (mood and motivation)

• The parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system (rest, digest, and repair)

In other words, belief changes biology. The brain and body respond to perceived safety, presence, and intention — all of which are central to the Reiki experience.

So if Reiki works partly through mechanisms that overlap with placebo, that does not make it fraudulent. It makes it one of many therapies that engage the body’s own capacity for self-regulation and healing, especially when offered in a trusting, attuned therapeutic relationship.

Why Some People Feel Energy and Others Don’t

Energy perception is variable, just like pain tolerance or emotional attunement. Some clients feel waves, heat, or tingling. Others feel nothing during the session but report profound clarity or physical ease in the days following.

This doesn’t mean Reiki is inconsistent. It means it works with what the client’s system is ready to process... not what we expect or demand.

For practitioners, the emphasis is not on “doing” something to the client, but on holding space with neutrality, presence, and care. That in itself is a powerful act of healing.

The Role of Practitioners Like Brenda Deveau

We are honoured to have Brenda Deveau, a full-time Reiki practitioner, now working at our Community Wellness Centre. Her approach is gentle, compassionate, and skillfully attuned to each individual she works with.

Brenda doesn’t chase outcomes. She holds space in a way that invites the nervous system to exhale. Her clients include people living with chronic pain, grief, fatigue, trauma, and autoimmune conditions. Reiki does not replace medical care or clinical herbalism but in Brenda’s hands, it enhances those pathways by making the body more receptive to healing.

I often say that herbs open doors. Reiki helps us walk through them.

Clinical Perspective: Where Reiki Belongs

Reiki will never show up on a blood test. It won’t replace pharmaceuticals, and it doesn’t claim to. But it can support clients who are:

• Stuck in a loop of chronic stress or sympathetic overdrive

• Struggling to feel safe or embodied in therapeutic settings

• Experiencing subtle emotional or energetic distress that resists words

• Needing restorative, non-verbal care in a trauma-aware environment

In these contexts, Reiki is not only appropriate, it’s often necessary.

Healing is not always about fixing what is broken. Sometimes it’s about listening to what is whispering. Reiki helps people hear that whisper.

Final Thoughts

Reiki may not fit easily into existing biomedical categories, but it aligns with what emerging research in polyvagal theory, somatics, and trauma-informed care continues to show: that presence, regulation, and gentle attention to the body’s subtle messages are vital for healing.

If the goal of healthcare is to support well-being, ease suffering, and restore agency, then Reiki has a valid and valuable role to play.

Reiki is not a myth. It is not “woo.” It is not magical thinking. It is a subtle, client-centered therapeutic process that works in cooperation with the body’s existing intelligence.

It does not replace science — it complements it. It does not replace medicine. It prepares the ground for it to work more deeply.

And it does not require belief, only the willingness to receive.

Practitioners like Brenda remind us that the most powerful healing often happens in silence, in stillness, and in presence. Reiki offers that. It is not loud. It is not linear. But it is real.

In care,

Andrée Noye, MA Clinical Herbalist, Owner Circé + Medée