Blue Star Reiki

Usui Reiki as the documented reference point

Reiki is generally traced to Mikao Usui, who taught in Japan in the early 1920s. A University of Minnesota wellness resource describes his teaching as dating to that period and says his realization most likely occurred in 1922. The same resource states that Usui trained 16 students as Reiki masters, and that one of them, Chujiro Hayashi, later opened a Reiki clinic in Tokyo. It also says Hawayo Takata brought Reiki to Hawaii in 1937 and that the practice later spread to the US mainland.

The sources opened for this draft do not give an independent biography of Usui, so no biographical dates are stated here. The Minnesota resource also notes that Reiki is now practiced worldwide, although not usually in the traditional form Takata taught. That observation concerns variation between schools, not the reliability of the historical account.

Blue Star as a named lineage

The name Blue Star Reiki does not appear in the Reiki reference sources opened for this draft, and a PubMed search for the name and two closely related labels returned no records. Course listings and teacher pages that use the name were found through web search. None could be used as a source under this page's standards, because they are vendor or teaching promotion rather than independent description. The founder, founding date and first teacher of Blue Star Reiki therefore remain unverified.

Course listings found in the search describe the system as channeled or as tied to non-human sources, and describe multi-level training with additional symbols. Those are attributed claims made by sellers and teachers. They are not established history, and this page does not repeat them as facts. Similarly named groups that appeared in the same searches belong to other traditions and are not treated here as the same lineage.

The Reiki family and its labels

Reiki is a Japanese-derived name for a hands-on or near-body energy practice. Many styles and lineages use the name, and they vary in symbols, levels and teaching content. Machipedia places Blue Star Reiki within the Reiki family, with the general Reiki entry covering the shared practice and the Usui-derived lineage described on its own page. The label Blue Star Reiki is not an established term in the reference sources reviewed, so it functions more as the name of a teaching brand than as a documented technique.

Names that resemble it

Readers searching for Blue Star material may encounter names that look similar but refer to different things, including a Wiccan tradition and a mystery school. Labels such as Blue Ray Reiki are also distinct from Blue Star Reiki in the material found. This page does not treat any of these as the same practice, and a reader should check which teacher or organization is meant before drawing conclusions from a course or a claim.

What the Reiki family involves

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) describes Reiki as a practice in which practitioners place their hands lightly on or just above a person to support that person's own healing response. NCCIH states that the practice rests on an Eastern belief in an energy that supports natural healing, and that there is no scientific evidence for the energy field it relies on. Descriptions of session format, duration and number of visits vary between schools and are not standardized across the family.

How Blue Star teaching is described

Teachers who use the Blue Star name describe training in graded levels, with symbols and attunements introduced at each level and with claimed access to additional energies. The sources reviewed do not document which symbols, levels or teaching content are used, and no independent description of Blue Star training was opened. A reader comparing it with Usui-style Reiki should expect the stated differences to rest on the teacher's own account.

Uses proposed for Reiki in general

NCCIH reports that Reiki has been studied for pain, anxiety and depression, and that it has not been clearly shown to be effective for any health-related purpose. The same summary describes most of the research as low quality with inconsistent results.

Recent systematic reviews have examined Reiki for symptoms in cancer and palliative care, including fatigue, pain, mood and quality of life. Their authors report some improvements in these outcomes in individual studies, and they describe the certainty of the evidence as low or very low because of small samples and differences in design.

Claims specific to Blue Star Reiki

Claims specific to the Blue Star lineage, such as access to higher-frequency or non-human energies and accelerated spiritual development, appear in teacher and course descriptions. The sources reviewed contain no independent evidence for these claims and no study tested them. They should be read as the teaching community's own account of the practice, not as established findings.

Controlled trials of general Reiki

A Cochrane review by Joyce and Herbison, with searches to November 2014, found three randomized trials of Reiki in adults with anxiety or depression. Those trials provided data for 25 people with anxiety, 17 with depression and 20 with either condition, and the data were too sparse for pooling. The review found no evidence that Reiki is either beneficial or harmful for these outcomes and concluded that the evidence is insufficient.

A 2025 meta-analysis of randomized trials by Liu and colleagues, with a search cutoff of September 2024, included 661 participants and found a small improvement in quality of life after Reiki (standardized mean difference 0.28, 95% confidence interval 0.01 to 0.56). Its abstract does not report risk-of-bias ratings, so the strength of the pooled result cannot be judged from the abstract alone, and the trials it pooled test general Reiki rather than any named lineage.

Recent reviews in cancer, palliative and surgical care

A 2026 systematic review in palliative care located nine studies with 415 participants, including three randomized trials, and reported that reporting of harms was limited. Its authors judged the certainty of evidence very low and said it precludes firm conclusions about effectiveness. A 2026 review in breast cancer found four studies with 339 participants and described the samples as small and the methods as varied.

A 2017 meta-analysis of randomized trials examined reiki and prayer for pain during hospital stays for cesarean section. It reported a lower pain score in the pooled groups, with high heterogeneity (I squared 92 percent), but the evidence was rated as having a high risk of bias. The abstract pools reiki and prayer together, so the Reiki effect cannot be separated from the prayer comparison in that summary.

Blue Star Reiki specifically

No study of Blue Star Reiki was found. A PubMed search for the name and two related labels returned no records, and the NCCIH summary does not discuss lineages. The trials above tested Reiki as delivered in each study, which may or may not resemble Blue Star teaching, so their results should not be transferred to this lineage.

Reported harms

NCCIH states that Reiki has not been shown to have any harmful effects. That statement reflects the research reviewed by NCCIH, which is small. The 2026 palliative care review found that reporting of harms was limited, and that only one study monitored adverse events and reported one serious event considered potentially related to the intervention. The breast cancer review describes Reiki as appearing safe and well tolerated in its included studies.

Absence of reported harm in small trials is not the same as evidence of safety. The sources reviewed do not examine harms for Blue Star Reiki, and the reported harms of general Reiki do not establish the risk profile of added symbols, levels or practices that differ from those studied.

Care boundaries and when to seek help

NCCIH notes that its information is not intended to substitute for the expertise and advice of a health care provider and encourages people to discuss decisions about treatment or care with their clinicians. Reiki is not a replacement for medical assessment, for a diagnosis, or for treatment that a clinician has prescribed. Chest pain, fainting, new neurological symptoms or other concerning changes in health warrant prompt medical assessment, whatever complementary practice a person is using.

Training and practitioner standards

No professional body's register, code of ethics or training standard that names Blue Star Reiki was found in the sources searched. This is a finding about the sources searched, not a statement that no such standard exists. Readers considering courses should ask the teacher or organization for their training content, their qualifications and their cancellation terms, and should be cautious where a course promises specific health effects.