Theatre of the Mind Podcast Episodes

Kelly Howell: Hey everybody. Welcome to Theatre of the Mind. I'm your host, Kelly Howell. Today's show is on Energy Medicine. In a few moments, Donna Eden, coauthor of the book, "The Promise of Energy Psychology" will be here with us to talk about this burgeoning field of healthcare.


Donna is one of the world's leading practitioners and educators of energy medicine. So it's pretty cool that it worked out for us to do this podcast today. I want to thank Joanie of the Ark Bookstore in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for helping to set this up.


Before we start the interview, I've got a couple of announcements. First I want to thank Shaun in the U.K., thank you, thank you Shaun. Shaun is working on a couple of great interviews right now, one with Dean Radin, author of "The Conscious Universe" and "Entangled Minds". Dean is one of the senior scientists at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.


Another interview that we have coming up is with Lynne McTaggart, author of "The Field", and she's going to speak with us about her master class "Living in the Field."


Hey, Mary. Are you listening? One of the reasons I have not been too forthcoming about the shows coming up is that organizing everybody's schedule has been a bit of a challenge, so as we get more shows in the can I'll be able to let you know what's coming up ahead of time.


What else do I want to talk about here? Oh, the forum board. I've noticed that a few people have jumped in with some great advice, answering other people's questions and I'd like to invite all of you who have been participating in that part of the site to feel free to answer questions. If I disagree, I'll come in and say something. But I know so many of you have a lot of knowledge to share and that is a wonderful place to share it.


Speaking of sharing, I'm going to share a story with you about mind mapping. Have any of you been mind mapping? I got a lot of emails and posts on that show and some of you said you were going to try it out. If you haven't done it yet, here's one more reason to try.


I discovered for myself that Michael is totally right on when he said that mind mapping could save you a lot of time and energy. I loved that idea, but honestly, I was a bit skeptical. So, I put it to the test. I recently came to the conclusion that I needed to hire a new person here in my Santa Fe office. I didn't want to put an ad in the paper because it just makes so much extra work.


One morning I got up, I made a cup of tea and I went outside with my giant pad and my colored pencils and started a mind map. I called my map assistance'. I don't care where it comes from. It had rainbows and shooting stars. It was pretty lame looking but it had a lot of very picky details about what I need. Part of my mind map was about the qualities and skills I wanted in a person. Another part of the mind map was about how it could all happen easily and magically without any trouble at all. I thought, wow, if a person like this shows up, it'd be a miracle.


Three days later, I get a call from a woman who is a friend of a friend of a friend who heard that I was looking. And the wild thing is she fit exactly with my mind map, right down to every detail. She had all the skills, the availability, the time, the money, and the whole bit. Everything.


The point is that you can use mind mapping as a very powerful visualization tool. Perhaps more powerful than just mentally visualizing because it integrates your whole brain. Try it out on something you want to bring into your life. Let me know what happens, OK?


All righty then. Let's go back to Energy Medicine. I have this book here that Donna is the coauthor of. It's called "The Promise of Energy Psychology". What I like about this book is that it pulls together all the research in a way that's easy to learn, understand and integrate. It's got exercises, clinical examples.


I'm just looking at a picture here that says stretch and bounce.' [Laughs] Kidding aside here, what energy psychology does is it melds together a number of different therapies. There is cognitive behavior therapy, thought field therapy, emotional freedom techniques and a number of eastern modalities.


So why don't we just launch right into the interview with Donna Eden? Here we go.


Well welcome to the show, Donna. I'm really happy you took the time to be here today.
Donna Eden: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Kelly: So last night, I was at the Ark and I saw your book and that you were coming to town to talk and I got really excited.


[Laughter]


I thought oh maybe I could get an interview!


So you are probably one of the leading authorities on energy medicine.
Donna: Wow, that's quite a title leading authority. Well, to tell you the truth and I say this humbly, it is my world of expertise, I would say, definitely. I couldn't have been a pianist or a secretary. I couldn't have done those things. But this I know down to my toes.
Kelly: How long have you been working in this field?
Donna: Well, professionally, since 1977. I had gotten very ill and Western medicine gave up on me. I've often thought that was the best thing that ever could have happened to me because I had to heal myself. All my life I was able to see energies. I didn't know what you could do with it.


Well I actually was 21 years old before I found out the whole world didn't see energy.
Kelly: So were you seeing auras or chakras or what do you see?
Donna: Yeah, it's not just auras and chakras; I can see energy better than I can see the physical thing. It's like I've always seen about eight different energy systems. Again, I thought everybody did. I thought that's how everybody navigates through life by seeing the energy systems.


But I did not know that I could use it for healing until I got so sick. I had multiple sclerosis and didn't walk for two years.
Kelly: Well, you're sure walking now!


[Laughing]
Donna: I had a heart attack at 27. I was allergic to everything under the sun. I had asthma so bad I couldn't walk into any area where other people were. I was just told that all my organs were breaking down so fast that I would not see another year.


And again, because I had two little girls to raise, I thought, nobody else is going to raise my kids.
Kelly: Good for you.
Donna: And I started applying. I knew that I could see energy so I needed to see energy travel across my thighs especially because that's where the energy break was. So I thought I had to figure out a way to get the energy to travel across my thighs so I can walk.


That was the beginning step for me. And I noticed by the way that I believe every human being on this planet can do it. We've just not been taught it. When I laid my hands there, it took almost exactly three minutes for the energy to connect. It would go away real fast. But then I could reconnect it.


So then I would figure out ways to keep it there so that I could walk.
Kelly: So when the energy connected you were able to walk?
Donna: In the beginning it was that I would notice there was more energy there and I could move my legs. I could stand up and move a couple of steps. Then the energy would want to dissipate. So I would have to figure it out. How do you build a new habit there?


That is the basis of my work is that I had to figure my own body out in order to live. I think when you figure something out on your own body you've got something to share. And I do. So in the beginning I think people with multiple sclerosis started coming to see me. I didn't have a shingle or anything. They just started coming to see me.
Kelly: Word got around, huh?
Donna: Yeah. And then other people with autoimmune illnesses or whatever it was. Because I had a handle on autoimmune illnesses and what happens in the energy systems and what gets blocked and why it isn't going and why is the immune system attacking the body and why it's doing it in certain ways on different bodies.


So that was my beginning. But I really want to give credit. I went off to learn how to do, in those days it was called and by many people still is called, muscle testing. But I'm telling you that you're not testing muscles. You're testing energy and how it is traveling across a part of the body. I learned that from Touch for Health' organization.


So when I was starting to get better, I needed a way, everybody was coming to see me, to show them what it was I was seeing in their energy. I found out that if I could use this kinesiology, this energy testing or muscle testing, I could show them what it was I was seeing.
Kelly: So even people that can't see the energy .
Donna: Couldn't see, yes.
Kelly: Can sense it or detect it, it's similar.
Donna: Yes. Yes. Yes. So that was the beginning and it's been going strong.
Kelly: Now you are teaching all over.
Donna: Yeah. Yes. From the beginning I was always teaching. I never saw a client that I didn't teach what to do. It was always, "You know, you've got to be empowered! You don't want to see somebody for the rest of your life to stay healthy. You've got to figure it out." And so I work with people.


Now what I'm doing is just teaching people how to heal themselves.
Kelly: That's wonderful. I saw on your website that you offer CE credits too.
Donna: Yes. Lots of CE credits to nurses and we're just now getting accepted for massage and for lots and lots of nurses can come. So it's really an acceptable route now. Like there's Cindy Anderson
Kelly: At some point do you think it will be covered by health insurance?
Donna: You know it is in Australia.
Kelly: Oh, that's amazing.
Donna: Yeah. Yes it is. 100% in Australia because they know it is such a preventive if you can get a handle on your energies and get them straightened out. Wait a sec, let me get it correct in 1/3 of all the school systems it is required that all children are energy tested to find out where their energy is blocked so that they might learn better.
Kelly: In Australia?
Donna: huh.
Kelly: Oh wow. I want to go there.
Donna: I know. I know.


[Laughter]
Donna: So, yeah it ought to be. I see that the wave of the future is that Western Medicine needs a partner. It can't do it alone.
Kelly: Well it's not working.
Donna: People are way over medicated, have too many surgeries, everything. They've got to have something that is kind of like our government is supposed to have checks and balances. In the town in which I have lived since 1980 in Ashland, Oregon, the doctors worked right alongside all of the healers in town. Half the town is healers healing the other half.


[Laughter]
Donna: And they have the best reputation. So doctors sort of kowtow. I shouldn't say they have the best reputation, but they do have a great reputation. So doctors, before they ever do surgery on anybody, they send them out to somebody. I would often see many, many people. Does this person really need surgery? Or is there anything we can do here?
Kelly: Are you teaching primarily just individuals that want to learn how to heal themselves or also people that are healers?
Donna: Both. I teach anybody who wants to learn. My dream is this world needs a medicine that people can actually afford. Energy is free. Once you learn it, you've got it. And you will have it for the rest of your life. So if you will take the time to learn this it will change your life. It'll make your experience of life immeasurably more satisfying and empowering.


You'll be able to take care of yourself and your children. You will not pop any kind of medicine just because it's there and will take this or that away. You'll work with your energies that are so brilliant and so amazing.


I think that maybe the smartest part of us is not our brains, but our energies that travel through the brain.
Kelly: Yeah, we really are energy beings.
Donna: We are. Yeah.
Kelly: Besides your miraculous healing, what kind of healings have you seen through the work that you're teaching?
Donna: Thank you that is a very good question. I have seen so many miracles things that aren't supposed to happen. I used to be a last ditch effort before somebody either went in for surgery or because everybody gave up on them.


I went overboard to make sure people did not see me as the magician. I wanted them to say, "This is your body! Your body valiantly wants to be healed." But you've got to be in alignment with it. You've got to learn how to speak the language your body is speaking, because it is talking to you all the time.


But we live in a culture that's never taught us what anything means or if it's even talking. The body will start talking and then you start hearing.


So there's been everything from cancer to heart problems. There hasn't been anything that I've seen that won't heal. Not anything. I used to work with AIDS people who backed up into HIV. Anything will work.
Kelly: Wow.
Donna: And again, I want to say so clearly it isn't that I'm the great healer. The truth is that we are all healers. We inherited it from or ancestors who had to heal themselves in order to survive. But this energy medicine of working with the energies to heal yourself just went underground. Maybe it began going underground when we killed off the witches, who knows.
Kelly: Yeah and we've also just given so much of our power away to the medical community.
Donna: That's right. So much. But it is not an elective anymore. [Laughs] We have to reclaim this ability and this capacity that's right there for us. Just learning how to learn this language again. Or else we're in for some real trouble because we live in a real world that we did not evolve to live in.


It took us maybe two million years to evolve this far. The world we evolved to live in ceased to exist about 100 years ago.
Kelly: What do you mean by that?
Donna: Electricity, every square inch of our atmosphere, is now manmade electromagnetics. Pesticides, additives in the food there are several thousand additives in our foods. So our body...
Kelly: Yeah, just all the electromagnetic waves we're bombarded with every day.
Donna: We are bombarded! So now we...
Kelly: I always worry about sitting in front of the computer for hours.
Donna: Oh, I know! So you need some tools to be able to counter that energy of sitting before a computer, because it is having to work off your energies.
Kelly: What would you recommend, say, for sitting in front of the computer?
Donna: There are several things. One, for myselfI want to say something firstthere are a whole lot of things I teach people that will work for everybody. Then there are certain things that you really get to see how unique your energy is.


That's importantyour energy is as unique as a thumbprint. For some people, their eyes might get tired.


So if you lay your finger sideways across your eyes and take you other pointer finger and tap it all along the sides, just all across the eye, it begins to create a wave that goes back through your brain and literally will calm things down. Because it's something that we didn't evolve for, was sitting in front of a computer. For me, my energies get scrambled. In front of a television set I go, after a while, something called homolateral. My energies quit crossing over.
Kelly: I've seen that in my 16 year old. He turns into a zombie.
Donna: I turn into a zombie! That's exactly right. Well that's actually dangerous. I mean it's not dangerous to a certain extent, because we can all live in that way for a while. But if you don't have really great genes, or if your body starts learning the habit of that, it will start kicking in that zombie energy at other times when it's not even necessary.
Kelly: Like the PlayStation. That really does the zombie thing too to people.
Donna: Oh, yeah. So there are ways to get out of it's called being homolateral when you go into that zombie...
Kelly: That thing that you showed me with your finger and the tapping, is that something that you developed? Is it based on Chinese medicine?
Donna: I would say that probably most everything I do is not new. But sometimes I think it is, because I didn't read it somewhere.
Kelly: [sarcastically] You discovered it.


[laughter]
Donna: Then I find out!
Kelly: There it is in a museum or something!
Donna: Right. But I think that because this was so known across every culture, it's not just Chinese. People often want to put Chinese on this, and Chinese is important because the meridian section is definitely very Chinese, but every other energy system I work with is not Chinese. It's like every culture, and for every one of them they've mapped the territory.


So what was the question?
Kelly: Well I was just wondering about the tapping...
Donna: So what this was aboutWhoops! No, that came to me because I actually was...A young man was sitting there in front of his computer screen showing me something, and what I could see was the energy from his eyes, to the computer and coming back, was doing something really bad to his whole head.
Kelly: Hmmm...
Donna: I said, "You've got to make a vibration happen that can counter that." So I tried to two or three things and they didn't do it, so I laid my finger over him and just started tapping.
Kelly: On one eye only?
Donna: No, on both eyes. I did it on both eyes.
Kelly: Oh, Ok.
Donna: And that did it. Suddenly he saidI've heard from him many timeshe's told me: "I used to have such tired eyes at the computer and I don't have them anymore." He said, "When it starts, if I'm there for 16 hours, I'll do it again." It's a tool. We all need tools to be able to literally evolve our bodies so that we can now deal with things that we didn't evolve to deal with.
Kelly: Like refreshing our circuits.
Donna: Refreshing our circuits...yeah. One of the thingsI would say that our immune system developed to be able to figure out that anything it doesn't recognize is probably an enemy. Now that's pretty scary in the world we live in today, when there are so many things that the immune system doesn't recognize. Then it has to scrambleIs this safe? So sometimes it'll decide it's not safe when it really is safe. That's how people get allergies to something that there's no reason to have it.
Kelly: Are you successful with helping people heal allergies?
Donna: Oh, I was so allergic. When I was at my worst there was only one food that I could eat that I wasn't allergic to. Everything elseI mean I ended up in a coma three times. I ended up withI wrecked my car from taking a bite of something because of the palpitations from my heart. I mean, everything. I was allergic, I would break out in my mouth, and huge hives everywhere. I would pass out. So I was allergicI would also gain weight from lettuce, or anything that grew out of the ground. That was an allergic reaction that didn't make sense.


I was even studied bywhat was his nameanyway, a doctor who did research on the biology of humans and the foods. I did not make sense, but it was true. I knew I made sense, because I've run into other people now who've said, "This doesn't make sense, I live on lettuce and gain weight." It's like your body's allergic, it'll do something strange to you. But I got over every allergy I had. So, yes, I've worked with a lot of allergy people, and absolutely that is oneyou've just got to get your immune system knowing that you're safe.


It's incredibly empowering to learn about energy and understand it as a language that you can, literally, have conversations with, in a way. Understanding what your body is trying to say. And many of the things that you would learn, you would find yourself saying something like, "I've always done that." Then you would recognize that as your body attempting to heal you in some way. Or overcome something. It's incredibly empowering. I recommend this, not only for the world, but every single child bornto know how, very early on, how to take care of their own health.
Kelly: How can people get in touch with you? I know you have an extensive website with lots of courses coming up.
Donna: Yes. You can go to our website innersource.net. If you forget that, you can remember my name. You can jump around; my name will take you there tooDonna Eden.
Kelly: And you sell CDs, DVDs?
Donna: We sell DVDs, CDs, books...
Kelly: So people can learn how to do energy medicine at home?
Donna: Yes. Oh, yes. If you can't get to a class, you can learn so many things on your own. That has been verified over and over to me.
Kelly: Well, thanks Donna. I really appreciate you coming here today.
Donna: You're so welcome. I really loved it.
Kelly: Ok.


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