by Karen M. Rider, M.A
Women navigate through competing demands on their time and energy, managing households, businesses, family and friendships. When we describe how we feel, we talk in the language of energy, using terms like “drained,” “depleted” or “blocked.” Likewise, when energy moves harmoniously, we talk about “being in the flow” or “feeling clear.”
Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could influence and direct the flow of energy within your bodymind?
According to Donna Eden, bestselling author of Energy Medicine for Women and a pioneer in the field, “women do have the power to direct the flow, balance, and harmony of the energy that creates and sustains the lifeforce within. We can influence how this energy affects mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing.”
For more than three decades, Donna has been teaching people how to work with the body’s energy systems to reclaim their health and natural vitality. In this interview, Donna talks about her personal healing journey—defying medical odds by overcoming a seemingly fatal condition in her early thirties. She shows how energy is the foundation for all of life and discusses the shift occurring in Western medicine. Finally, to help you keep your energy flowing and vital, Donna shares one of her favorite techniques.
Karen: Donna share with our readers how you faced health challenges and, as a last resort embarked on a healing journey to, literally, save your own life.
Donna: As a young child, I was stricken with tuberculosis. I also had severe food allergies, including to root foods—the foods that are supposed to be healthiest to eat. At age 16, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and by my late twenties there were days when I could not speak and other days when I could not walk would just lie in bed spinning and nauseated. Then, at age 27, I had a heart attack because all my organs were breaking down. In my early thirties, several doctors told me to put my affairs in order.
I had heard from various specialists, that they couldn’t heal me; there was no hope. Allopathic doctors are the first to admit that they can only try to mask the symptoms of autoimmune illnesses. When the body is fighting the body, Western Medicine doesn’t have the tools to teach the body to heal itself.
Karen: Yet, you were empowered with remarkable hope and perseverance.
Donna: I was desperate to be the one who brought up my young daughters. I’ve always been able to feel the movement of energy in my body—to vividly sense subtle energy. I was determined to discover and use everything I knew about energy to try to heal myself.
I would lie on the bed and just try to move the energies down my leg. I’d use my hands and my mind. Slowly, I regained my ability to walk. I was also lucky to encounter some non-traditional healers who really helped me, but largely I was on my own.
Once I regained my strength and vitality, I wanted to help others and began to study healing traditions from other parts of the world. I studied with John Thie’s Touch for Health Foundation. They showed me how to demonstrate the energies I could feel and see using procedures such as muscle testing or energy testing.
Karen: There are many misconceptions about Energy Medicine. What is it, as you have studied and experienced it?
Donna: Energy Medicine is both a complete system for self-care and self-help and a complement to other approaches to medical care. In energy medicine, energy is the medicine and energy is the patient. That is, the body heals by activating its natural energies (energy as the medicine). You also restore energies that have become weak, disturbed, or out of balance (energy as the patient).
Energy Medicine can address physical illness and emotional or mental disorders, and can also promote high-level wellness and peak performance. It utilizes techniques from healing traditions such as acupuncture, yoga, kinesiology, and qi gong. Energy Medicine is the science and the art of optimizing your energies to help your body and mind function at their best. Controlling your chemistry by managing your energies is the fast track for helping your body adapt to the challenges of the 21’s century.
Karen: What are the subtle energies?
Donna: Subtle energies are energies that we don’t know how to detect directly or to measure scientifically; yet, we know them by their effects. Gravity is the most well known force that we can’t detect or measure directly, but we know it because of its effects.
In my work, there are many forms of energy that we don’t know how to measure, but can be engaged to bring about healing. These energies also have an intelligence that I find amazing. Your body’s subtle energies are smarter than your intellect when it comes to healing you. They know how to mobilize themselves to do what is needed. No instructions from you required. Certain energies also carry information. Past trauma is carried in the chakras in as much detail as it is carried in the brain.
Karen: You were a pioneer, practicing E.M. in the 1970s? Tell us about that.
Donna: When I began my practice in 1977, EM was not even in the vocabulary of conventional health care. I was even brought to court by a group of physicians who got the DA to charge me with practicing medicine without a license. The witnesses they called were their own patients who had also come to me. They testified that I had worked with them on illnesses that only licensed medical professionals are supposed to treat. But, the witnesses backfired for the doctors because they all said that they were helped by the energy work more than by the doctors. The judge asked the doctors to produce one witness who said that working with me hadn’t helped them. They couldn’t. The judge dismissed the case and gave the doctor’s a stern lecture about being more concerned with protecting their turf than the well-being of their patients. Ten years later, the same doctors brought me to their hospital to teach a class to their staff.
Karen: What shifts do you see in Western Medicine, today?
Donna: The wonderful thing is that shifts are taking place so rapidly now. Doctors have amazing skills and tools, but growing numbers have begun to recognize the limitations of a mechanistic model that ignores the body’s energies and fails to teach effective self-care. I’m humbled now as more physicians attend my classes. They are willing to become beginners again and learn something that is outside of the frameworks they mastered in their own training.
Karen: What is the essence of your work, now?
Donna: It is and has always been to empower people to help themselves. What is new is that so many of the people who have studied with me now have their own healing practices and are teaching classes on Energy Medicine in their local communities. We’ve developed a 2-Year comprehensive Certification Program in Energy Medicine and hundreds of people are enrolled at any point in time.
What is also great is how many people write us to tell us what they accomplished based on what they learned simply by reading the Energy Medicine book. We received a note from someone in a cystic fibrosis blog that people who have had lung transplants were realizing great benefit from studying what is in the book alone. None of them ever studied with us or had private sessions. People I’ve never laid eyes on say they have learned to harness and manage their energies in all manner of situations.
Karen: Describe the energy practices for women that you suggest as part of a wellness plan.
Donna: Like most all techniques in EM, the routines in my books include tapping, massaging, twisting, or connecting specific energy points on the skin. You also will learn how to move the hand along specific energy pathways. There are movement exercises and postures designed to achieve specific energetic effects. I also show techniques to focus the mind. There are techniques for surrounding an area with healing energies and I show how to have a positive impact on the energies of your friends and family and, if you are a health care professional, on your clients.
Freelance writer Karen M. Rider has interviewed many respected medical pioneers including Andrew Weil, Joan Borysenko, Caroline Myss, Wayne Dyer and Judith Orloff. Her articles on health, integrative and energy medicine, conscious parenting, and creativity appear in leading print and digital magazines. An accomplished writing coach, Karen is passionate about helping holistic business owners and “soulpreneurs” communicate to their target audience with clarity, integrity and creativity. Ask Karen to write for you.
