Warner - The magic feather effect: the science of alternative medicine and the surprising power of belief

Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

ALSO BY MELANIE WARNER

Pandoras Lunchbox

Scribner

An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2019 by Melanie Warner

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Scribner hardcover edition January 2019

SCRIBNER and design are registered trademarks of The Gale Group, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publisher of this work.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or .

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Interior design by Jill Putorti

Jacket design by Jaya Miceli

Jacket artwork by NE2PI/Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-5011-2149-4

ISBN 978-1-5011-2151-7 (ebook)

For Harry, my dad, whose curiosity for alternative medicine I like to think lives on in these pages

Dumbo, look! I have got it! The magic feather! Now you can fly!

TIMOTHY Q. MOUSE

Under the influence of an energy healer

Its Friday night in Asheville and the banquet hall is nearly full. The room buzzes with a giddy hum as people gather in little communities along a neatly assembled perimeter of chairs. Middle-aged women are the best-represented group, but I spot a few men and some young people, too. A few even look like teenagers. Above us, three chandeliers disperse a warm glow over the room.

I make my way past the tables scattered with paraphernalia about the weekends Introduction to Energy Medicine and notice that, to everyones delight, Donna Eden, the woman we have all come to see, has made an impromptu appearance on the stage. She darts from end to end, seemingly to retrieve something. Then she turns to the crowd, gives an enormous smile, and hoists her arms up over her head in a two-handed wave. The room erupts in applause.

When the program starts for real some fifteen minutes later, there is no introduction. Donna simply marches onto the stage with her husband, David Feinstein, who was once a psychologist on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is now an enthusiastic proponent of energy psychology. David takes a seat at the back of the stage. Donna glides to the front, arms outstretched.

Hello, everyone! she says, beaming. I welcome you all sooo much. Im so glad you came. Im so glad I came. I feel like theres a part of Asheville thats home for me. My mom was born here.

I love teaching this. The world needs some really good healing tools that we can all use and depend on, and these are simple. They look like magic sometimes, but they work.

Donnas head is framed by a halo of blond curls, and as she speaks, her face lights up with a perpetual smile. Our bodies produce the most profound medicine inside us already. Its energy. Energy is the oldest medicine there is. Its the safest and most organic and its free. We need a medicine thats free. We need tools to be able to heal ourselves.

David gets up from his chair and moves to the front of the stage. Donna isnt just talking here, he chimes in. Shes living proof of how energy medicine works. Several weeks ago, she celebrated her seventy-second birthday.

Around me, I watch a few eyes widen at the thought that this spunky, effervescent woman onstage is one of the oldest people in the room.

What Im going to share with you this weekend are basic hands-on techniques you can use every day to give you more vitality and joy. These can clear energy blocks, help you feel younger, and relieve pain.

As Donna talks, shadowy streams of pedestrians glide past the windows, which are dark now apart from the starry blips of light from the chandeliers. Ashevilles streets are like this, never crowded but always busy. Nestled into North Carolinas ancient Blue Ridge Mountains, the town is populated by a motley assortment of college students, artists, hippies, retirees from the Northeast, and those who want to go to healing sanctuaries and open stores selling gifts for the soul. It is a fitting place for energy healing.

Energy healing is a nebulous category. It encompasses older practices such as Reiki and newer ones such as Therapeutic Touch, Donna Edens Eden Energy Medicine, and many other approaches you may never have heard of, such as polarity therapy, BodyTalk, Matrix Energetics, and Quantum-Touch. The simplest way to think of it is as a practice in which adherents believe the human body possesses a subtle force that can be harnessed for its own rejuvenation and repair. Energy healers say they manipulate this force through some combination of light touch, moving their hands at a distance over their clients bodies, and merely holding a thought or intention about how they want someones energy to move.

Although this mystical energy has never been validated by scienceby which I mean replicated, rigorous, controlled studiesI havent come here as a debunker. Im not interested so much in how Donna Eden and other alternative practitioners are wrong, but in how, against the odds, they may be right. I am trying to stay open to possibilities.

Donna looks out into the audience. Im going to need a volunteer. Most people understand all this a lot better if I demonstrate it. Over the course of the weekend, I hope to have a lot of you up here.

About thirty hands shoot up, and Donna picks a stocky woman named Penny. When Penny arrives onstage, Donna reaches affectionately for her hand.

Im going to use a biofeedback tool thats built into our bodies. Its called energy testing. Sometimes its known as muscle testing, but were not testing muscle strength; the strength of a muscle doesnt change from moment to moment. What changes is the muscles ability to resist pressure based on the amount of energy flowing through it. Were testing energies and how theyre flowing and where theyre stopping.

Donna looks intently at Penny for a few seconds. Okay, now put your arm out like this. She props Pennys arm up at a ninety-degree angle from her body and puts one hand on Pennys shoulder and the other on her outstretched arm. Now Im going to push down on your arm and you try to resist.