The Science of Reiki
Reiki in its own words, set beside what science has measured in and around a living body: the electricity running your nerves, the magnetic field your heart throws off, the light your cells emit, and the nerve that drops you into rest when you are touched with care. Every claim is checkable.
Physical book · Delivered to your door · Available now
The Problem
That is what most Reiki students are told about the energy, and most of them do feel it. What they are rarely given is a way to understand it, or to explain it to a doctor, a client, or someone who thinks the whole thing is nonsense. Belief on its own is a hard place to practise from.
Yet the world is full of energy nobody can perceive: radio, television, the signal holding a phone call through walls and through your own body. Every culture on earth described something moving through a living body, from ki and qi to prana and mana. And modern instruments now measure the electricity, heat, fields and light a living body gives off. The Science of Reiki brings all of it together.
Training in Japan under Grandmaster Masaaki Hatsumi
The Manual
42 chapters in seven parts. Reiki speaks first, in its own language: where it came from, what it is, what a practitioner actually does. Then the book sets it inside what the rest of the world has understood about energy, frequency and vibration, and alongside the science that could be the machinery underneath.
Who It's For
Meet Rob Baard
Rob Baard didn’t go looking for Reiki. It came looking for him, as a grading requirement at Dan level. He trained at the Usui Reiki Clinic in Geelong, weekly, for years, through to Master level, then Kundalini Reiki and other lines, long after the grading had stopped being the reason. A 14th Dan Shihan who trains each year at the Hombu Dojo in Japan, he has spent a working life reading people on cinema floors, in a surveillance van, on film sets, and at the bedside. He needed Reiki to make sense before he could practise it properly, so he went and found out.
On Set with Danny Glover
Rob Baard — Usui Reiki Master & 14th Dan Shihan
Get the Manual
Physical Book on Amazon
From mysticism to measurement. 42 chapters putting Reiki in its own words beside what science has measured, with every claim referenced.
Get it on AmazonQuestions
Is this a Reiki training manual?
No. It is an inquiry into what Reiki says about itself and what science has measured in the same territory. Practical detail appears where it helps explain something, and the appendices include the hand positions, the precepts and a one-page table of Reiki concepts beside the measurements.
Is it for practitioners or for sceptics?
Both. Practitioners get a way to explain what they do to a doctor, a client or a doubter and hold their ground. Sceptics get Reiki in its own words, set beside real measurements, with every claim referenced and checkable.
What does the research actually show?
The record is not empty. Pain and anxiety are the most consistent areas of positive results, a 2025 meta-analysis found quality of life improved, and the book walks through the trials and reviews study by study.
Does it cover the symbols, the attunement and distance Reiki?
Yes. Part V covers the attunement and reiju, the precepts, the symbols, meditation and breath, the twenty-one days, and distance Reiki, alongside the research that sits closest to each.
Is it medical advice?
No. Reiki is a complementary practice. It does not replace diagnosis or treatment by a qualified medical practitioner, and the book says so plainly.
Start Here
Not ready for the full book? Start with the free guide: six places the practice and the measurements meet, from the heat in the hands to the heart’s field.
Shihan 14th Dan · Japan-licensed Shidoshi