A few years ago, a review of 30 studies of healing touch concluded, “no generalizable results were found.” In plain English that means there was no disease nor any group of patients with a disease where healing touch was a reliable treatment alternative.
A new study of healing touch in 12 veterans with neuropathic pain and the associated psychological distress from post spinal cord injury comes to the same conclusion.
Actually, it’s not that easy to do. Dr. Pamela Potter is a post-doctoral fellow in the University of Washington Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Systems Department. Several years ago she was supervising Reiki volunteers at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut as doctoral candidate in the School of Nursing at Yale University.
She’s qualified, if anyone is, to distinguish between these two disciplines.
Medscape has published a 
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Professor Michel Tournaire and Dr. Anne Theau-Yonneau have