THE JOURNAL OF ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE

Volume 11, Number 3, 2005, pp. 455–457

© Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Positive Well-Being Changes Associated with Giving and

Receiving Johrei Healing

KATIE REECE, B.A., GARY E. SCHWARTZ, Ph.D., AUDREY J. BROOKS, Ph.D.,

and GERALDINE NANGLE, B.A.

ABSTRACT

Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the effects of giving and receiving Johrei, a spiritual en-
ergy healing practice, on measures of well-being.
Methods: Participants (N
236) rated 21 items pertaining to feelings plus an overall well-being measure,
before and after a Johrei session.
Results: Receivers experienced a significantly greater decrease in negative emotional state than givers; however,
givers and receivers experienced a comparable increase in positive emotional state and overall well-being.
Conclusions: The practice of Johrei and other energy and spiritual healing techniques, may have positive
health effects for givers as well as receivers. Future research examining different energy and spiritual healing
practices (for example, Reiki and Therapeutic Touch) and using various control groups (for example, treatment-
naive subjects instructed to “send loving energy”) can explore the generality and mechanisms underlying these
apparently robust effects.

INTRODUCTION feelings (such as anxiety, stress, and depression) after re-

R esearch on the relationship between spirituality and
health is advancing.1 A positive relationship has been
reported between mental and physical health and religious
and spiritual experiences.2
Johrei is a practice that originated in Japan. It includes a
general belief in a higher power and is open to practition-
ers of all faiths. The Johrei belief system is based on the
idea that health and illness are related to a person’s spiritual
condition.3 Its focus is on the body’s ability to heal itself of
both physical and mental symptoms. The typical Johrei heal-
ing session consists of a giver and a receiver facing each
other. It is believed that universal (divine) energy comes
from a higher power through the giver and out the giver’s
hand to the receiver.
The Johrei Experiences Scale (JES) was created to as-
sess the experiences of individuals when they give and re-
ceive Johrei. It was hypothesized that participants would re-
port higher levels of positive feelings (such as relaxation,
hopefulness, and compassion) and lower levels of negative
ceiving Johrei. It was further predicted that givers would re-
port similar changes. Because there is no charge for Johrei
and the givers volunteer their time practicing something that
they believe will help others, it was plausible that givers
would experience positive effects of altruism.4
Because this exploratory research did not include com-
parison energy and spiritual healing groups (e.g., Reiki or
Therapeutic Touch) or control groups (e.g., treatment-naive
subjects “sending loving energy”), the findings do not nec-
essarily reflect the practice of Johrei per se. However, the
robustness of the findings obtained in a large sample of sub-
jects point to the potential importance of these findings.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Participants
In the first experiment, 61 questionnaires were completed.
Age and gender were not requested. In the second experi-

Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.

455
456
ment, 175 questionnaires were completed, 49 from male and
123 from female participants, and three not specified. The
average age of respondents was 54 (range 10–79). Partici-
pants were recruited from Johrei centers in Tucson, Tor-
rance, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, New York City, Washington
DC, and Juneau.
Materials
The JES contained 21 items; 14 were positive and seven
negative (Fig. 1). The JES items were selected based on re-
ported Johrei experiences according to a Johrei minister.
Participants rated each item on a scale from 1 to 5.
In addition, on the Arizona Integrative Outcomes Scale
(AOIS)5 participants rated a single overall well-being item
from 0 to 10.
Design and procedure
Each page of the questionnaire was identical; participants
filled out the first page before the Johrei session and the
second page after the session. Participants filled out the
forms on an anonymous basis.
RESULTS
Figure 1 displays the averages for the negative items (1–7)
and the positive items (8–21) separately for participants re-
FIG. 1. Preratings versus postratings for receiving and giving.
REECE ET AL.
ceiving (left panel; n
150) and giving (right panel; n
86)
Johrei. A significant interaction between session and group
(givers versus receivers) was found for overall negative emo-
tional state. Receivers had greater emotional distress before
the session test; however, this decreased to the level of the
givers after the Johrei session (F[1,234]
8.968, p  0.003).
The pre-Johrei mean for receivers was 14.04 which decreased
to 9.71 after Johrei, whereas for givers it decreased from 12.13
before Johrei to 9.22 after the session.
There were no significant group differences for overall
positive emotional state. However, there was a significant
effect for time, indicating that overall both givers and re-
ceivers showed an increase in their positive emotional state
after the session (F[1,234]
178.93, p  0.001; before,
mean 48.19; after, mean 55.09).
In terms of the total score, there was a significant group
effect (F[1,234]
4.786, p  0.03) indicating a more pos-
itive state overall for givers (givers, mean 83.5; receivers,
mean 80.9).
A similar group effect was observed for the AIOS mea-
sure F[1, 228]
6.047, p  0.015), with givers reporting
greater well-being overall (givers, mean 7.18; receivers,
mean 6.72). A significant effect for time was also observed
for the AIOS (F[1, 228]
207.48, p  0.001). The whole
sample of givers and receivers increased in overall well-be-
ing after Johrei (before, mean 6.28; after, mean 7.62).
Analyses were also run with member versus nonmember
as the group variable. Only receiving was examined in this
analysis, because nonmembers cannot be givers. Significant
group  time interactions were found for all three variables,
negative emotional state (F[1,141]
5.07, p  0.026), pos-
itive emotional state (F[1,141]
13.07, p  0.001), and to-
tal score (F[1,141]
14.59, p  0.001). Nonmembers ex-
perienced a greater effect (greater positive increase, greater
negative decrease) than members largely because of lower
ratings before the session, which attained the same level as
members afterward. A similar effect was found for the well-
being item (F[1,139]
13.68, p  0.001).
DISCUSSION
The hypothesis that participants would report signifi-
cantly higher levels of positive feelings (including feelings
of overall well-being), plus lower levels of negative feelings
(including symptoms of physical pain) after giving or re-
ceiving Johrei was confirmed. Givers appeared to be in a
more positive emotional state throughout the healing ses-
sion, whereas receivers seemed to be experiencing greater
distress, which receiving Johrei relieved. The stress-reduc-
ing effect of Johrei was also observed in a study of the ef-
fect of Johrei on stress biomarkers in a sample of students
at examination time.6
Nonmember receivers appeared to show the greatest ben-
efit from receiving Johrei, largely because of their poorer
POSITIVE WELL-BEING AND JOHREI
emotional state before the session. Future research needs to
examine whether this is indicative of a cumulative effect of
receiving Johrei (i.e., individuals’ baseline emotional state
improves as they receives Johrei over time). In addition,
participants were volunteers who choose to report their feel-
ings; future research is needed to determine the role that
belief and expectation play in the reporting of these experi-
ences.
Because the subject sample was limited to Johrei givers and
receivers in this experiment and no control groups were used,
it is not possible from the present design to determine how
general these observations are. It is not known to what extent
these findings are related to the specific practices involved, the
degree of experience of the givers, or personality characteris-
tics of the givers. Future research can determine whether sim-
ilar findings are observed even in naive subjects “sending lov-
ing energy” or engaging in sham treatment.
However, in separate studies similar increases in positive
affective experiences have been observed in practitioners
giving Reiki to humanbeings (Rubik, Brooks, and Schwartz,
in preparation), rats (Baldwin, Schwartz et al, in prepara-
tion) and Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria (Rubik, Brooks,
and Schwartz, in preparation). Moreover, differences in
emotional state and well-being in practitioners entering the
laboratory have been found to moderate the direction of re-
sponse (increase or decrease) in growth of E. coli bacteria
after Reiki treatment (Rubik, Brooks, and Schwartz, in
preparation). Changes in emotional state and well-being in
practitioners, when they provide energy healing sessions,
may play an important role in moderating the positive ef-
fects observed in the receivers of energy treatments. The
psychophysiology and bioelectromagnetics of emotional
state and well-being that may be fostered in energy and spir-
itual healing practices could play a moderating role in de-
termining the positive clinical effects of biofield therapies.
Future research in energy and spiritual energy healing could
benefit from the routine assessment of the emotional state
and well-being of practitioners.
457
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported in part by National Institutes
of Health (NIH) grant P20 AT00774 (GES) from the Na-
tional Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
(NCCAM). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the
authors and do not necessarily represent the official views
of the NCCAM or the NIH.
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Address reprint requests to:
Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D.
Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science
University of Arizona
Box 210068
Tucson, AZ 85721-0068
E-mail: gschwart@u.arizona.edu