June 15, 2011

Re Energize with Donna Eden

Let the body think of the spirit
as streaming, rushing,
pouring, shining into it from

all sides.
Plotinus

If you have not discovered Donna Eden before, you are in for a treat. If you already know her, then you’ll realise that she is a powerhouse of light that shines into the field of energy medicine. She is a pioneer of the ideas that the body wants to heal. It is more intelligent than the brain. It is just that we often get in the way or fail to understand its energies. Her work is accessible, without dumbing down, and holds profound implications for the way we conceive of health and the human body. So when she was doing an energy medicine workshop in London, I knew nothing would keep me away. I had to meet this phenomenon. Her energy precedes her and you notice her 'effect' as she bounces on to the stage, grinning endlessly and laughing infectiously. You could - as the announcer said- feel her presence even before you arrived. You just knew she would be a effervescent personality, and that has a tonic effect on your general spirits. 

Donna Eden

What is immediately evident is this radiance that makes the electromagnetic field around her almost tangible. After about five minutes of this people were feeding off the energy like vampires. Her spontaneity and fire was in full force. This Eden 'sparkle' most likely comes from working with her own body and charging up its vital force- call it chi or prana – in all its forms.  She talks of nine systems, including the meridians lines as used in acupuncture, the triple warmer, the aura, the strange flows ( which align us with longer cycles of nature) and the Celtic Weave. The  more people know about these invisible channels of energy, the more likely they are to be of radiant health as Taoist doctors have maintained for centuries. 

She is a recoveree from multiple sclerosis and other debilitating diseases. The message is especially relevant in this current era- that your personal wound is exactly the one you heal in order to teach others the same. She is a 'wounded-healer' teacher of first rank. More than anyone else I have come across, Eden has increased my awareness of the body’s hidden lattice work of energies and kept me on the track of good health.

Many remain unaware, or have only a dim recognition, that these energies exist. What? You can't 'see' them ergo they are not there!! But they are there. One reason we fail to see them might be that in Western medicine the body is regarded as a concrete, solid object, full of discrete parts to be surgically removed when they go wrong. Yet there are many signs of major shift in the perception towards an more subtle organising energy principle like an electromagnetic field, a life force that governs the overall vital health. Kirlian photography shows that heat lines travelling along these meridian lines.
David Feinstein

David Feinstein, her partner, was also presenting, and commented every so often, adding points, sharpening the blurry edges of Donna's explanations. They make a great double act: right and left brain working in a dance of complementary modes. He looks distinguished, tall with grey hair and she obviously loves him being around. In his very ill-fitting suit, he was the left brain, calming and organising, giving the scientific bases underscoring the energy medicine philosophy. Donna was the visual/kinaesthetic, emotional core; wilder and freer- getting it out of sequence in her enthusiasm, having to ask what she was doing in the middle of doing it- but her assistants were there to help her out, yet she was  help taking it all in, and did not forget anyone who asked for help. She is the planetary sun in solar system of the Eden family. While, he wore grey, black, purple; she wore bright orange; plum and pink.

Donna certainly delivers. She dealt promptly and effectively with people who had headaches, back aches, breathing problems, chronic fatigue, and even lock jaw. She descrambled people whose energies were not fully integrated, and thus not working at full potential. She was very unplanned, gauging what she would do on the basis of what the audience wanted, fielding questions that went off at every tangent.  She would bring anyone who asked a question up on stage. She worked on them directly often with startling effect. Then she would laugh and say, ‘that’s it you’re done now, you are healed, you can go.’ Usually they were ‘fixed,’ at least temporarily, and happy to have received their super ‘hug’ from Donna.

Titanya Eden
Then there was Donna's daughter, Titanya floating around. On first sight, almost a carbon copy of Donna herself, with the same recognisable frizzy-blonde hair, but Titanya has her own unique vibe with her music and quasi-oriental dance moves. Titanya having grown up with Donna has made her own version of energy medicine - energy dance. This involved twining your hands around in figure eights, and shimmying your hips like jelly, needless to say very popular. She is co-authoring a book with her mother on Energy Medicine for children. Yet some, no doubt, would find the eternal grinning off putting thinking Donna can't be this happy ALL the time. But it seems she is. Plus she always tests positive for a hot fudge sundae- her favourtie dessert.

If you have already read the book Energy Medicine (1999) the workshop brings it all to life.  She showed how someone with homolateral (not fully integrated energies) reads in front of someone it redirects their energies. She showed how in couples, if one reads strong and the other weak, they have an alternating current effect on each other- the one matching and complementing the other, switching as needed. She showed how the most ‘difficult’ people just had crossed energies which could affect your own. Empathic people with sensitive auras should stay away from Shopping Centres unless they know how to do the Zip Up. Also, if your spleen energy is low you can borrow energy from the Triple Warmer to top it up and vice versa. 

I’ll not forget now that Spleen and Triple Warmer are polar opposites, like tides on opposite shores on an ocean, when one is low, the other is high. Interestingly, Caroline Myss herself has written a foreword to the new edition of Energy Medicine, but I think it does not quite do justice to Eden's contribution. It sounds terrible ‘dry’ somehow to say only that Donna provided a 'backbone  study' for this field. There is a sternness in Ms Myss, a steely core that is somewhat unflinching. Donna is 'juicy' and full of 'pizazz,' but you'd never guess that from Myss' introduction.

The infectious laughter and puppy-dog grin should not put you off from realising that Donna Eden has achieved a remarkable feat of bringing this intimate knowledge of the body and its energy systems to the attention of the world.One easy way to enjoy an increase in energy is to follow Donna's simple Five-Minute Energy Routine.

Donna signing books
I enjoyed my day with Donna Eden and felt energized by it. She showed us some simple observable phenomena that can be tested by tracing or locking meridians up and down.  If you trace a meridian line backwards, people lose energy- which they did. Also, if your energy is scrambled and you have to talk, or teach people, your scrambled energy scrambles theirs and reverses their flow.

We come across people who are like this all the time. These are things we all experience and even sense vividly, but have no other way of explaining except through energy flow and energy medicine has some useful, easy-to-learn techniques  to help improve the level of body awareness on the planet.



© Kieron Devlin, June 2011, all rights reserved.