Reiki does not speed up healing, prevent complications, reduce surgical risk or replace any instruction from your medical team. What it can accompany is the fear of the days before and the rest of the days after — always with the knowledge of the people operating on you.
Who asks about this, and when
The question tends to arrive at two moments.
One is the week before. Someone has a surgery date, has signed a consent form, has read the list of risks, and is not sleeping. Sometimes the patient writes. Just as often it is the partner, or the daughter, who sees the fear and does not know what to do with it.
The other moment is afterwards. The surgery went well, recovery is on track, and yet the mood has collapsed. Tired body, house on pause, patience gone.
Two different situations, two different answers. But the same thing has to be said first in both.
What Reiki does not do around surgery
Plainly:
- It does not speed up wound healing.
- It does not prevent infection, bleeding, clots or any other complication.
- It does not reduce surgical or anaesthetic risk.
- It does not replace pain relief, antibiotics, prophylaxis or any post-operative instruction.
- It does not replace physiotherapy or rehabilitation where those are indicated.
- It is never a reason to skip a check-up, a dressing change or a medication.
If a practitioner suggests that with Reiki "you'll need fewer painkillers" or "you'll recover in half the time", they are saying something they cannot support.
Everything your surgeon tells you comes before any complementary therapy. No exceptions, no negotiation.
What it can offer before the operating theatre
The days before surgery have a particular texture. Lists, fasting, tests, paperwork. And underneath all of it, almost always, fear.
Fear of the anaesthetic. Fear of what they will find. Fear of not waking up, which people rarely say out loud but which shows up at three in the morning.
A session there changes nothing medical. What it can offer is an hour of calm in a week that has none. Many people describe leaving with a looser body and sleeping better that night.
That is what is on the table. No more, no less.
If the fear is intense, persistent, or stopping you from functioning, that conversation belongs with your doctor or a psychologist. Pre-operative anxiety can be addressed with concrete tools. I wrote more about this in Reiki for anxiety.
And afterwards: rest, calm and patience with the timeline
Recovery has a part almost nobody warns you about: the boredom and the low mood.
An active person who has spent twelve days on a sofa, depending on others for basic things, usually hits a low point around the second week. It is not a medical complication. It is human.
An adapted session can offer three modest things there: a stretch of stillness, kind contact well away from the operated area, and the sense that someone is looking after you rather than the wound.
On pain, precision matters. The evidence on Reiki and perceived pain is limited, and in no case does it justify reducing analgesia. If pain increases, changes character, or does not respond to what you were prescribed, that gets reported. Full stop.
The rules that are not negotiable
This is the practical part, and the most important in the article.
| Situation | What is done | What is NOT done |
|---|---|---|
| Recent surgical wound | Work away from the area, no contact | Hands on the wound |
| Dressings, bandages, stitches | Leave them exactly as they are | Lift, adjust or peek under them |
| Drains, catheters, lines, ports | Keep distance; short seated session | Touch, move or work over them |
| Cast, splint, immobiliser | Work on free areas | Manipulate or remove anything |
| Pain increasing | Stop the session, call the doctor | Read it as "energy moving" |
| Fever, redness, discharge | Stop and seek care that same day | Wait and see |
Three more rules, in plain language:
Nobody who is not a healthcare professional touches a wound. Not to clean it, not to look at it, not to "feel the energy". A Reiki practitioner has no standing to assess a scar.
If anything feels off, say so in the moment. Discomfort, an awkward position, contact you do not want. The session stops and adjusts.
When in doubt, postpone. Waiting another week costs nothing. No session is urgent.
I set out the full framework for working around medical procedures in Reiki and medical interventions, the page where I explain how this kind of support is coordinated.
What the evidence says, with its limits
The same honesty as always.
The NCCIH, part of the US National Institutes of Health, states that Reiki has not clearly been shown to be effective for any health purpose, and has not been shown to be harmful. It is published at nccih.nih.gov/health/reiki.
The Cochrane review (Joyce and Herbison, 2015, CD006833), on anxiety and depression, found only three randomised trials with around 62 participants in total and concluded there is insufficient evidence to say whether Reiki helps.
The meta-analysis by Liu and colleagues (2025, Systematic Reviews 14:72), with 11 trials and 661 participants, found a small, 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 best results came from subgroups with eight or more sessions of sixty minutes or longer.
The meta-analysis by Demir Doğan (2018) on pain found a positive signal, with methodological limitations the author herself acknowledges.
Translated into this context: nothing allows anyone to claim Reiki improves a surgical outcome. There is limited evidence of small improvements in wellbeing and in perceived pain and anxiety, and broad agreement that the practice is safe as long as it does not replace treatment.
What to tell your medical team
Tell them before the surgery, not after.
Not because Reiki interferes with anything — it introduces no substance and acts on the body in no measurable way — but for two concrete reasons.
First: whoever operates on you needs to know everything you are doing, and the habit of telling them everything protects you on the day something genuinely relevant comes up. Many people who come to complementary therapies are also taking supplements, herbal preparations or natural products, and some of those can affect clotting or interact with anaesthesia. That conversation has to happen.
Second: your surgeon can tell you when it makes sense to resume sessions involving contact. It depends on the procedure, the area and how healing is going. That date is theirs to set, not mine.
On why Reiki is never a reason to touch a prescription, see Reiki and medication. On situations where waiting is wiser, see contraindications.
How I adapt a session before or after surgery
Before booking I ask what the procedure is, when it is, and whether your medical team knows.
Pre-operatively the session is fairly ordinary: table, clothes on, around forty-five minutes, gentle work. If anxiety is high I shorten it and give more room to the conversation beforehand.
Post-operatively everything changes. No table if climbing onto one is hard: seated, in an armchair, with cushions. Length drops to twenty or thirty minutes. I work on hands, feet, shoulders and head, always well away from the operated area, and in many cases without contact at all, hands a few centimetres above.
In my practice in Medellín I have accompanied people who arrived in a sling, and others who came three days before a scheduled operation simply so they could sleep that night. There is a scene I have seen many times: someone sits down, breathes out properly for the first time all week and says, "I hadn't stopped." Sometimes that sentence is the whole session, and it is enough.
If moving around is difficult, distance sessions are possible — no travel, no interruption to any care. Sessions can be held in English.
Frequently asked questions
How long should I wait after surgery before having Reiki? There is no general rule, because it depends on the procedure. The sensible move is to ask your surgeon at the post-operative check-up. Many people start with very short, no-contact sessions once they are home and stable, and leave normal sessions until the wound has closed and the doctor has given the go-ahead.
Does Reiki help wounds heal faster? There is no evidence for that and I am not going to claim it. Healing depends on your general health, the surgical technique, nutrition, wound care and factors neither of us controls. What a session can accompany is rest and mood during that process — not the same thing, but not nothing either.
Can I have a session the day before my operation? Yes, provided your medical team knows and it does not interfere with that evening's instructions: fasting, antiseptic shower, arrival time, prescribed medication. All of that comes first. The session fits around the schedule, never the other way round.
I have drains and can barely move. Is anything possible? A very short session is possible, seated or lying however you are, with no manipulation and hands kept away from any device. Distance sessions are also an option. If you are in hospital, this only happens with the treating team's permission and within their rules.
Does it help with fear of anaesthesia? It can accompany it. Many people describe more calm afterwards. But if the fear is intense, raise it with the anaesthetist at the pre-op assessment: it is a conversation they have daily and they have concrete resources for it, including medication if needed. The two are not mutually exclusive.
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 have surgery coming up and want to know whether this fits where you are, write to me on WhatsApp at +57 314 811 7561. We can look at it calmly, and if waiting is the better option, I will say so.
Share this read
Written by
Sananda Reiki
Spiritual support and Reiki therapies in Medellín and online.
Learn more about Sananda
