Donna Eden - Energy Medicine for Women

Table of Contents

Other books coauthored by Donna Eden and David Feinstein

JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN
a member of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
New York

Jeremy P. Tarcher, who has been the trumpet for hundreds of our cultures most inspiring voices, has brought special notice to my own voice as well. I am grateful for his encouragement, his wisdom, and his pioneering spirit.

Sara Carder at Tarcher/Penguin has been a dream of an editor.

The late Jeffrey Harris, M.D., was a wise and wonderful source of guidance and support to me throughout this book.

Every person involved in our growing energy medicine teaching community has contributed in his or her own special way to the development of the ideas presented here.

Credits

Photographs by Christine Alicino

Illustration Models
Christine Alicino
Infant Audrey Dahle
Cindy Dahle
Dondi Dahlin
Tanya Dahlin
Donna Eden
Rose Harris
Catherine Potenza
Beate Priolo
Tia Via

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.

MARTHA GRAHAM

Foreword

I began experimenting with energy medicine in my gynecological practice many years ago, using it when I had to perform invasive office procedures such as endometrial biopsies, the removal of IUDs, or tests that involved injecting dye into the uterus. I sensed how disruptive these routine procedures were to the bodys natural energy fields, so as the final part of the treatment, I would have my patient lie down and I would move my hands in long passes above her body. Something in this simple act seemed to help restabilize the bodys energy fields. Many women would report immediate relief of pain or cramps, pleasurable tingling sensations in the areas that had been traumatized, or a deepening calm throughout their bodies.

While about as simple a technique as exists, it was pleasant, noninvasive, and effective. Now, even as the field of hands-on energy medicine has developed far more sophisticated procedures than my early experiments, the approach has retained these basic qualities: simple, pleasant, noninvasive. But dont be fooled. Your hands hold powerful medicineenergy medicinethat beyond just soothing the body after an invasive procedure is able in itself to prevent or help overcome challenging illnesses.

Energy medicine is moving into our health care system quickly, powerfully, and none too soon. We have as a society come to the end of our journey in Newtonian medicine, a perspective that looks at the body more like a bag of organs and bones than a miracle of animation; that focuses on illness rather than optimizing health; and that often futilely seeks to identify simple cause-and-effect relationships rather than to grasp how body, mind, and spirit are profoundly interrelated. We have as a result built a medical system based on drugs and surgery that usually doesnt become meaningfully involved in health care until after the person is already sick. We are like a river patrol that sends powerboats out into the rapids to rescue people who are drowning rather than going upstream and figuring out how to keep them from falling into the rapids in the first place.

We cant go much further with this model. It isnt working, as Michael Moores documentary Sicko makes abundantly and compassionately clear. The old paradigm is breaking down before our eyes. But we also see the emergence of a new paradigm and, happily, one whose ancient roots have withstood the test of time. The new paradigm, as this book beautifully articulates, addresses biological processes at their energetic foundation; gives rise to methods that are precise, practical, rapid, and noninvasive; optimizes health as well as countering illness; empowers the person with effective methods for back-home self-care; and integrates body, mind, and spirit.

But perhaps the best news about energy medicine is that even though many leading-edge thinkers in health care believe it to be the medicine of the future, it is available today. You dont have to wait. So what if its not yet in your town! So what if its not yet in your hospital! So what if your doctor doesnt yet believe in it! You can learn the basics from the book you are reading. And you can use it with any medical regimen you are currently on. Any regimen! A beauty of energy medicine is that it wont interfere. There are no side effects whatsoever. So why wouldnt you try it? There is nothing to lose!

This book is a wonderful introduction to energy medicine. It distills the experiences of one of the fields most joyous and effective pioneers into a heartful, user-friendly, enormously practical guide. I agreed to write this foreword before I met Donna Eden or had a chance to see her work. While I review many well-written books that provide good information, there is a deeper ring of truth that is precious and rare. This book sang with it. When I finally had the pleasure of meeting Donna, it was evident that the compassion and wisdom I felt in her book reflect the integrity in the being of its author. Incredibly youthful in her sixty-fifth year, Donna is her own best advertisement. She is ebullient with energy. And she is very, very fun to be around.

Writing this foreword is part of a full circle in my relationship with energy medicine. I have always recognized the importance of the bodys energies in my medical practice. I intuitively understood the influence of my patients thoughts, fears, desires, relationships, family history, jobs, diet, use of exercise, and overall lifestyle on their bodys energies and the powerful impact of those energies on their health and their illnesses. But this fundamental dimension of health care isnt taught in medical schools, and as I began to speak with my colleagues about its importance, I felt like the proverbial voice in the wilderness. In the early part of my career, I didnt think this perspective would be accepted during my lifetime. But now, with the embrace of these ideas reflected in many arenas, including in my own life from having my books on the New York Times best-seller list to multiple appearances on OprahI have clear-cut, measurable evidence that a broad population is ready to hear about the principles that have guided my work. And the medical community is listening as well.

The world is in fact changing faster than most of us imagined could be possible even a decade ago. While many of the changes are shaking us down to our foundations, a hopeful landscape is also emerging. Energy medicine is one of its contours. It is not just the latest fad in alternative health care. It is a fundamentally new way of grasping who we are. During this precarious time in our history, as you will read in Donnas introduction, a book about the energies that animate a womans body is obliged to mainline you into a deeper connection with the archetypal feminine principle that must be re-embraced if our species is to survive.... The archetypal feminine is not just a set of ideas and values somewhere out in the ethers. It is coded, yes, in your energies, but also in your genes, your hormones, and the actions they cause you to take. [At their core] our feminine instincts are toward love, cooperation, justice, compassion, family, nature, and peace. Energy medicine brings these values into health care, and it is not just for women or just for healers. Every mother, father, teacher, police officer, and politician needs to become a quick study in energy medicine to better cope with the challenges we all face in todays world.