Reiki Alongside Cancer Treatment: What It Can and Cannot Do

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Reiki does not treat cancer. It does not shrink a tumour, improve the response to chemotherapy, or influence remission or survival. What it can accompany is everything around the illness: the fear, the fatigue, the long nights. Always alongside oncological treatment, and with the knowledge of the team providing it.

Who usually writes to me when there is a diagnosis

Almost never the patient.

It is the daughter. The husband. The sister who lives in another country and can do nothing from there. People who have spent weeks in waiting rooms learning words they never wanted to learn, and who at some point in the small hours open their phone to search for whether there is anything else they can do.

I understand that impulse and respect it deeply. It is love looking for somewhere to go. And precisely because of that, I have to be honest about what follows. At a moment like that, an exaggerated promise is not just sloppy. It is an abuse.

What Reiki cannot do here

I will say it first, without softening it, because it is what you need to know before anything else:

Reiki does not act on the tumour.
It does not replace chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, immunotherapy or any treatment your oncologist has indicated.
It does not improve the response to treatment and does not change a prognosis.
It has no influence on remission or survival.
It does not diagnose anything, detect anything, or know "where the problem is".
It is never a reason to delay, reduce or stop any treatment.

If you ever read or hear otherwise, you know what you are dealing with. I will come back to that, because it is the most important part of this article.

So what can it actually offer?

A cancer process is not only the disease. It is also everything that surrounds it, and that takes up enormous space in a person's life.

It is the sleeplessness the night before a scan. It is the exhausted body you no longer recognise. It is the dry mouth of waiting for a result.

That is where a Reiki session can have a small, honest place:

A stretch of stillness where nothing has to be decided and no one has to be answered.
Kind physical contact, in a body that lately has only been touched to be examined or punctured.
A sense of calm, which many people describe during and after a session.
Rest. Sometimes people simply fall asleep, and that alone is worth it.
Company without demand, and the experience of being cared for rather than treated.

That is not nothing. It is also not a cure. It is exactly what it is.

What Reiki does NOT do	What it can accompany
Act on the tumour	The fear before a scan or result
Replace oncological treatment	The nights when sleep does not come
Change a prognosis	The fatigue treatment leaves behind
Diagnose or "detect" anything	The feeling of being alone in the process
Justify postponing a medical appointment	The exhaustion of the person caring

That last row matters more than it looks. Caregivers break down quietly, and almost nobody asks them how they are.

What the evidence says, with its limits

I am not going to dress this up.

The NCCIH, the complementary health centre of the US National Institutes of Health, is explicit: Reiki has not clearly been shown to be effective for any health-related purpose, and it has not been shown to have harmful effects. You can read it at the source: nccih.nih.gov/health/reiki.

The Cochrane review by Joyce and Herbison (2015, CD006833) looked at Reiki for anxiety and depression. It found only three randomised trials, around 62 participants in total, and concluded there is insufficient evidence to say whether Reiki is useful. That cannot settle anything, in either direction.

The meta-analysis by Liu and colleagues (2025, Systematic Reviews 14:72) pooled 11 trials and 661 participants and found a small but statistically significant improvement in quality of life (SMD = 0.28; 95% CI 0.01–0.56), with high heterogeneity between studies (I² = 65.1%). The subgroups that did best had eight or more sessions of sixty minutes or longer.

The meta-analysis by Demir Doğan (2018), on pain, found a positive signal, also with acknowledged methodological limitations.

The honest summary is this: there is limited-quality evidence of small improvements in quality of life, relaxation and perceived pain and anxiety. There is no evidence of any effect on a cancer. None. And there is broad agreement that the practice is safe as long as it does not replace medical treatment.

If you want the full picture of what the research does and does not show, I wrote it out in this article on the evidence.

Why many cancer centres offer complementary therapies

This causes confusion, so it is worth clarifying.

It is true that many cancer centres run integrative or supportive care programmes, and that some include practices such as Reiki, massage or meditation. But look closely at the frame. They are not offered as cancer treatment. They sit inside supportive care: the measures aimed at keeping a person as comfortable as possible while they receive the treatment that does act on the disease.

That is the same logic as this article. Accompanying the process, not treating it.

I will put this as plainly as I know how.

If someone offers to cure cancer with energy, leave.

Do not argue, do not give a second chance, do not assume they simply overstated it. It is the gravest red flag in this work and it admits no nuance.

The same goes for every variant: "with this you won't need the chemo", "cancer is emotional, let that go and it goes", "stop that treatment, it's poisoning you", "I've seen tumours disappear", "you need ten sessions, paid up front".

Each of those sentences can cost a life. And they are said to someone frightened enough to do almost anything.

No Reiki practitioner has any standing to advise on your cancer treatment. None. Nor do I. If you want help telling serious practitioners apart from the rest, I wrote a guide on how to choose a practitioner.

Why your medical team needs to know

There is an idea that circulates and it is wrong: "better not tell the doctor, they won't understand." Tell them. Always. For three reasons.

The first is safety. Your oncologist needs the full picture of what you are doing. Reiki puts no substance into your body, but many people who come to complementary therapies are also taking supplements, herbal preparations or natural products, and those can genuinely interact with treatment. That conversation has to happen.

The second is practical. There are days in a cycle when a person can manage very little, and your team can tell you whether your timing makes sense.

The third is deeper. If you feel you have to hide something from your doctor, something about it is not right.

On the relationship between Reiki and medication — and why it is never a reason to touch a prescription — I go into detail in Reiki and medication. On support around surgery and procedures, see Reiki and medical interventions.

When to call your team without waiting

Fever, new or severe pain, bleeding, or any symptom that frightens you.
A deep or sustained change in mood: anxiety and depression during cancer treatment are treatable.
If the thought of stopping treatment appears. Talk to your oncologist that same day.

What a session like this looks like in my practice

Before booking, I ask where you are in the process and whether your medical team knows. If they do not, the first task is to tell them. From there, the session adapts entirely to the person.

If there is fatigue, we skip the table: it happens seated, in an armchair, with a blanket. If there is a port, a catheter, an operated area or skin made sensitive by radiotherapy, that area is not touched. No contact over dressings or devices. If physical contact feels uncomfortable, I work with my hands a few centimetres away, without touching at all.

The body sets the length. Half an hour is fine. Twenty minutes is fine. If someone falls asleep, I let them sleep and the session ends there.

In Medellín I have accompanied people who came straight from a check-up still wearing the hospital wristband, and relatives who booked for the patient and ended up asking for a session for themselves. I have seen that second scene many times. In Santa Elena — a cloud-forest village in the mountains above Medellín, about forty minutes from the city — some families have come together simply to sit quietly for a while.

I promise nothing. I do not talk about the tumour. I do not interpret symptoms. I do not comment on treatment. And if someone arrives looking for an alternative to medicine, we have that conversation before they lie down, not after.

Sessions can also be held at a distance, which is sometimes the only option when someone is in hospital, and they can be held in English.

Frequently asked questions

Can Reiki help with chemotherapy side effects? There is no evidence that allows that claim. What many people do describe is a sense of calm and better rest after a session, and that can make a hard day more bearable. Any treatment side effect — nausea, pain, fever, mouth sores — should be reported to your oncology team, who have specific measures for each one.

Can I have Reiki on the same day as chemotherapy? That is a question for your medical team, not your practitioner. They know your cycle and how you tend to react. Many people prefer the days before, or the middle of a cycle, when there is a little more energy. If they tell you to rest that day, rest.

My relative does not want Reiki. Should I insist? No. Their free will always comes first, and during cancer treatment that autonomy matters especially, because so much is already decided for them. Offer once, calmly, and accept the answer. If it is no, perhaps what they need is something else: for you to sit beside them without talking.

I am the caregiver and I am exhausted. Is this for me? Yes, and you are probably the one who has considered it least. Accompanying someone through cancer wears people down in a way that is almost never named. An hour in which nobody needs you can hold quite a lot. If there is also sustained sadness or insomnia, seek psychological support too: that is maintenance, not weakness.

What if my relative is in palliative care? The frame is the same and clearer than ever: comfort, calm, company. Very gentle, very short, and always with the palliative team informed, since they know the situation. On what comes after, I wrote Reiki for grief.

Disclaimer

This article is for educational purposes and does not replace diagnosis, treatment or follow-up by a healthcare professional. Reiki is a complementary practice: it accompanies, it does not substitute. If you are under medical or psychological care, continue it and talk to your treating professional before adding any complementary therapy.

If you are accompanying someone and are unsure whether this fits where they are, write to me on WhatsApp at +57 314 811 7561. We can talk it through, with no commitment, and if what they need is something else, I will tell you.