Reprinted from InnerResources Magazine

A Day in the Life of Donna Eden David Feinstein When Jana asked me to contribute a story that reflects "Donna's spirit," I only had to think back to yesterday (Saturday, March 6, 2010): We are, as I write this on the evening of March 7, in the midst of one of the many whirlwind teaching trips we do each year. Based on current enrollments, we will be working quite intensely with more than 700 people over 9 days in 5 different states. While these presentations certainly get the word out and seem to inspire enthusiastic and appreciative audiences to relate to their bodies and their energies in more wholesome and conscious ways, they are also exhausting, stretching us not only physically but making it a challenge to keep the very life force we teach people to cultivate from being drained out of us. With Donna having just had her 67th birthday, everyone who is close to us is telling us to slow down, but it hasn't happened yet. Having a grandson is however, I must say, giving our missionary zeal/willingness to travel so much a run for its money. To complicate our travels are heart-wrenching requests, almost everywhere we go now, from people wanting to have a session with Donna--often people with horrendous physical conditions for which no one has been able to provide effective help. Those of you who have seen the pace of our workshops up close know that it is simply not possible to accommodate requests for individual sessions on top of all the other pieces - the teaching, the book signings, the planning before each segment based on the previous segment, so that the class is truly attuned to the individuals in it, the meetings with TAs, the growing number of colleagues and close associates in each community we visit who present compelling reasons for us to meet with them, the organic encounters that invariably occur, the administrative meetings with Innersource staff, et cetera, make every moment a precious commodity. So what happened yesterday? We had been operating on all 8 burners trying to revise the Certification Program handouts for the upcoming Classes 1 and 5 (it's like editing two short books) before leaving on the trip, but we didn't make it. So that task was seeping into any free time we might have had on Friday, our first teaching day on the trip. The organizers had told us a couple of weeks earlier that they anticipated about 150 participants, but now the room was jammed with 300 after having had to turn

away another 50 or so. The 3-hour evening presentation had Donna shining. At 10 p.m., she started signing for a long book line. By the time we finally dropped into bed after midnight, she said, "I'm about as tired as I've ever been." But then she was up signing books prior to class yesterday, signed at every break, taught a fabulous all-day class, and was signing again from 5 til 7 p.m. Meanwhile, on a couch across from the signing line, patiently waiting, were a man and a woman who had both attended the class. When the last book was signed, Donna went over to them and greeted them with the embrace of someone whose energy is fresh and rested. She was fully present as the woman reviewed her story. We had already been briefed, and Donna had agreed to meet to see what she could discover in the woman's energy field that might be a key to her problems [the woman has reviewed this essay and given permission for her story to be told]. Donna had also invited five of her most advanced practitioners in the area to watch, with the hopes that one would be able to take the woman on as a client; as we were leaving early the next day. The woman's story was horrific! Five years ago, she suddenly and inexplicably gained 30 pounds. Doctors told her it was her thyroid and convinced her to have it removed. She did, and shortly after that she developed a skin rash on her chest. The rash became incredibly itchy and over the course of months spread to cover her entire body. She also began to develop boil-like welts on her upper thighs and buttocks. She visited 30 different dermatologists, none of whom could agree on a diagnosis. Finally one of them convinced her to try a very strong psoriasis drug for several months. The drug made her skin condition much worse. What was a rash became spiny growths with little "horns" sticking out of her skin all over her body. Her hair began to fall out, and her boils grew out of control. Throughout this ordeal, she also visited many different alternative healing practitioners, including a natural pharmacist, Reiki and Quantum Touch practitioners, chiropractors, medical intuitives, one of our own EEM practitioners, and several others. Then she was accepted into the NIH "Undiagnosed Disease Program." She, in fact, has the dubious honor of being the only patient to ever be asked back for a second round through the program. While in the NIH program, she was given a wide variety of tests, from PET scans to MRIs to blood work and cell cultures, DNA analysis, electron microscopy, and cutting edge technologies that are still in an experimental stage. NIH could not find a clue as to the cause of the mysterious disease that was becoming more and more painful to live with each day. By the time of our meeting, the woman had become completely bald and was walking with a cane due to necrosis of her hip. She could

barely sit due to the boils. It became virtually impossible for her to keep from scratching and picking at herself, and the horns would painfully catch on her clothing. She also had strange growths from her fingers, had been on pain medicine for almost 3 years, and was losing interest in continuing on in her life. Through the NIH program, she had been studied by over 100 dermatologists, some of the best in the world, and none of them could tell her what she had, what mechanism was causing the problems, or how to get any relief. She was also by this time deep in debt from her medical bills and was on disability, receiving a third of the income she had been earning when she was able to pursue her career. I sat and watched as Donna listened with a depth of compassion that was already bringing healing and hope. Then she went into action. I wish all of her practitioners and students could have been there watching. It was a stunning "grand rounds"-like teaching experience. Donna began by showing how lung meridian was overwhelmed, with parts of it over-energized and parts under-energized. She explained that the lung and kidney meridians relate to hair, skin, and bones (the three sites of the woman's symptoms) and described how hard both meridians are working to get toxins out of her body. She also focused on how triple warmer, not surprisingly, is overcharged, but beyond that, how its energies had become frozen. Spleen meridian, in turn, was seriously compromised. Then Donna turned her attention to the way the woman's chakras are in turmoil, with their energies holding on desperately to patterns that aren't working. Donna said the chakra energies were in such disarray that it was almost like the chakras in the woman's body weren't hers. As the woman was starting to feel overwhelmed with the number of systems that were in trouble, yet hopeful that someone was finally naming possible causes for her ailments, and that they were causes that could be addressed, the practitioners were watching with rapt attention or taking notes. Donna now directed her comments to them as well as to the woman, beginning to describe the needed corrections, from basics like clearing the chakras and neurolymphatics, sedating and then strengthening lung and kidney meridians, and strengthening a totally depleted spleen meridian, to more complex operations such as working with the freeze in Triple Warmer, testing for various herbs, and recommendations for Grid sessions further down the line. The woman, who was now taking notes, seemed relieved that some steps could be taken. But Donna wasn't done yet. While encouraging the woman to do all she could on a back-home basis, she also took steps to be sure the woman wouldn't become overwhelmed with the sheer complexity of what was required. This included making a firm connection between the woman and two local practitioners who were agreeing to

work as a team in treating the woman. Donna offered the practitioners her e-mail address and an invitation to consult with her as needed. Finally, after 12 hours of nearly non-stop, highly charged Donna output, the class and the day were done. The next morning, we would be traveling across the state to our next class, which began at 1 p.m. It was another strong success with an appreciative audience, sponsored by the publisher of the Chinese edition of Energy Medicine, (with the interesting twist of simultaneous translation into Chinese via headsets). I am writing this late the night of that class. While the outcome of the skin condition is now mostly in the hands of others, I can only marvel that if yesterday evening was the start of a healing process that was able to turn this long, painful, "can't-get-sleep-because-of-it," "can't-work-anymore-because-of-it-despite-having-had-a-high-level-career" condition around, it will be a level of service many doctors and healers never attain in their lifetimes. But why not! I've seen Donna turn around "impossible" conditions many times before. I feel hopeful for the woman, thankful that we have trained so many competent EEM practitioners, glad that we can leave her with good resources for ongoing care, and sit here feeling profoundly admiring of the woman who is sleeping right now by my side. FOLLOW-UP: Geoffrey White, LCSW, and Diana Warren, CMT, both Certified EEM practitioners, have as a team been providing sessions approximately once each week over the 4 months since the above was written. An immediate challenge involved the sores on the woman's skin and buttocks, the pain in her muscles, and the lack of mobility in her arms. As a result of these problems, she couldn't sit comfortably, lie down on the massage table, be touched, or be energy tested. Her boyfriend accompanied her to the sessions and helped with surrogate testing and back-home assignments. Diana and Geoffrey write: "Everything we did on her body had to be done very, very gently because her skin were very painful and full of sores. Each time we cleared a chakra or corrected a meridian, her body released tremendous amounts of toxic energy into her auric field. Still, we did lots and lots of clearing, more clearing, and then more clearing. We also used crystals so we could move the energies without having to touch her. By the end of the first session, her chakra energy was strong. She also by the end of that session felt enlivened and hungry for the first time in seven months. She and her partner went out to dinner following the session, something they'd not done in a long time. "In the seven months prior to her first session with us, she had been able to do little more than lie on her couch, managing occasionally to get up to do something such as the laundry. She had been on pain medication for three years prior and she had lost 60 pounds in the past two years. At the end of our first session, she not only had a return of appetite, she also said, 'I

feel like I want to jump on a trampoline!' Her session was on a Sunday night and she felt hopeful and reprieved. On Monday, however, she crashed. But as the week went on, diligently doing the energy techniques we'd assigned as homework each day, she began to feel more energetic and, by the weekend, she was able to do things she'd not done in a long long time. She went to dinner at a friend's home on Saturday and she shopped all day on Sunday. "At her second session, she arrived complaining that her hot flashes had returned. She was baffled when both of us responded, 'Great!' We felt this indicated a shift in her energies and an opening. By week three, all of her pre-checks were clear and her chakras were strong. In her fourth session, she had a crisis with severe pain in Latissimus Dorsi, and she was gasping for breath. Her meridians were freaking. Spleen was way over on the Yin side and Triple Warmer, Small Intestine, Gall Bladder, Liver and Lung were on another planet. Her feet were still too tender to touch, but she was responsive to the work and left the session feeling good. She also reported that the sores on her buttocks were getting better, and she was able to sit during the fourth session. Another milestone occurred in the fifth session. We were able to energy test without the surrogate! Pain in her feet (after five surgeries), which were too sore to be touched at the beginning, was another challenge where the progress has been marked. Her depressed mood also lifted after the first several sessions and she has since been feisty even to the point of playfully combative. "We just completed our fifteenth session in the four months we have been working with her. We always begin the sessions with the standard pre-checks and then check her chakras, meridians, radiant circuits, Five Elements, Tibetan Rings, and 'suckability.' We then do the Quickie Energy Balancer before deciding where to focus the remainder of the session. It has largely been a matter of following the energies. We have used the Tracker model as a guide. As you can imagine from her extreme physical symptoms, so many physiological systems were involved that her various energy systems were in chaos. Whatever energy system needed attention and seemed to make progress one week would often be followed by setbacks another week. For instance, one week she would leave the session with her chakras strong and her meridians balanced but by the next session her chakras would be weak and it would be as if the meridians needing attention had been playing musical chairs. It has also been an emotional roller coaster, between hope and new vitality and periods of happiness vs. fears and tears as the energies open and move through her after her five-year ordeal. By working with all of her energy systems, we are seeing cumulative benefits. From going out to dinner after her initial session til now, her life has opened remarkably. She no longer feels hopeless and disabled. After our twelfth session, she and her partner, having learned a lot about energy medicine from her sessions with us and their dutiful back-home practice, enrolled in the EEM Certification program in New Jersey and were excited after having attended their first class. For someone whose case has been reviewed by more than 100 of the country's top dermatologists with no diagnosis or viable treatment plan to show for it, the improvements in her skin condition have been more than encouraging. After our most recent session, she

announced her desire to return to work! During that session, her partner commented, with a wry smile, 'She's back!'" *** InnerResources is a magazine committed to offering resources that deepen personal and professional healing work. It grew out of the Eden Energy Medicine community and is still heavily oriented toward EEM. The above article is from a special issue called "The Spirit of Donna Eden's Energy Medicine.”

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