David Feinstein and Donna Eden
by David Feinstein, Ph.D.
Energy Medicine recognizes energy as a vital, living, moving force that is at the foundation of our well-being. The human body is composed of some 100 trillion cells, each connected electrochemically with up to 10 thousand other cells. Energy medicine works directly with the electromagnetic and more subtle energies that orchestrate health, emotions, and behavior within this incomprehensibly complex network. It is proving to be an effective, powerful, and surprisingly precise way of improving health, enhancing performance, and increasing the joy in ones life. Energy medicine draws upon ancient healing and spiritual practices (e.g., acupuncture, qi gong, and yoga), combines them with scientific procedures (e.g., empirical research, biofeedback, EEGs, and MRIs), and adopts them into modern contexts. Its applications extend far beyond the health care setting, into business, education, government, and family life everywhere that people wish to be more effective, vital, and creative.
Donna Eden leading workshop in Cost Rica
Energy Medicine is a very new field with very old roots. It borrows from a hundred traditional healing methods, integrates them into a hundred types of modern settings and perspectives, and is practiced in a thousand different ways. Quality varies. The field is still finding itself, its standards, and its efficacy studies. Yet even in this early stage, commentators such as the renowned physician Norman Shealy are making statements such as “Energy medicine is the future of all medicine” (part of his endorsement of Donna Edens Energy Medicine).
Energy medicine is both a complement to other approaches to medical care and a complete system for self-care and self-help. It can address physical illness and emotional or mental disorders, and can also promote high-level wellness and peak performance. The essential principles of energy medicine include (excerpted from Energy Medicine):
Donna Eden with Daughters, Titanya & Dondi
Energies, both electromagnetic energies and more subtle energies, form the dynamic infrastructure of the physical body.
The health of those energies — in terms of flow, balance, and harmony — is reflected in the health of the body.
Conversely, when the body is not healthy, corresponding disturbances in its energies can be identified and treated.
To overcome illness and maintain vibrant health, the body needs its energies to:
Move and have space to continue to move — energies may become blocked due to toxins, muscular or other constriction, prolonged stress, or interference from other energies.
Move in specific patterns — generally in harmony with the physical structures and functions that the energies animate and support. Flow follows function.
Cross over — at all levels, from the microlevel of the double helix of DNA, extending to the macrolevel where the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and the right side to the left.
Maintain a balance with other energies — the energies may lose their natural balance due to prolonged stress or other conditions that keep specific energy systems in a survival mode.
Learning Energy Medicine
Flow, balance, and harmony can be non-invasively restored and maintained within an energy system by:
- tapping, massaging, pinching, twisting, or connecting specific energy points on the skin
- tracing or swirling the hand over the skin along specific energy pathways
- exercises or postures designed for specific energetic effects
- focused use of the mind to move specific energies
- surrounding an area with healing energies (one person’s energies impact another’s).
