Reiki versus Fakey | A Clinical Trial on Chronic Pain with Harvard and the University of Utah

Rick Axelson spent his career teaching research methods at medical colleges. He also spent decades suffering from debilitating migraines that even his team at the Mayo Clinic couldn't resolve. Then he tried one session of Reiki with a practitioner named Natalie Dyer. Forty-five minutes. And his migraines have never come back. That story on its own might be easy for some to dismiss. But new research from the University of Utah and Harvard—the most comprehensive study of its kind ever conducted—sheds new light on the possibilities of Reiki for chronic pain. What they found in patients with chronic knee pain matched the effectiveness of treatments medicine already accepts, like opioids. Lead researcher Dr. Adam Hanley puts it simply: he didn't expect to see anything. Now he's scrambling to understand what happened. And there's one more thing about Natalie Dyer that changes this story in a way that is fascinating. She’s not just a healer, she’s also a neuroscientist. Produced by Sounds True Studios. Music composed by Dan Baboulene.