For more than four decades, Donna Eden has been teaching people to direct their energies for health and happiness, developing a system that has come to be known as Eden Energy Medicine (EEM). Since childhood, Eden has been able to clairvoyantly “see” the flow of energy in the body. EEM addresses physical illness, emotional and mental disorders, and promotes high-level wellness, peak performance, and joyful living. Eden’s 2008 book, Energy Medicine, is available in 19 languages.

Why did you start using healing energies?

I had a series of health challenges as a child, including contracting tuberculous when I was 3 and multiple sclerosis in my teens. I was told by several doctors that there was nothing they could do to keep the illness from progressing. I learned a great tell about how to work with the body as an energy system. I became impassioned to bring what I had learned to others suffering with difficult health challenges. That is how my work began.

What is the difference between EEM and other energy healing modalities like reiki?

While it had never occurred to me to use it in a healing context until my own do-or-die health crisis, I have always had the ability to see the energies that surround and move through the body. It was only after I was working with other people in a healing context that I began to study other healing systems and I learned that the energies that move up and down the body were called meridians by ancient Chinese physicians. The circles of energies that spiral over various parts of the body were called chakras in Vedic texts. The energies that surround the body are referred to in various systems, including in Christian writings, as the aura.

How do You make this knowledge more accessible?

Another feature of my approach is that I had to figure out a way that people who can’t “see” energy can still work with it effectively. For this, I borrowed muscle-based energy testing from Applied Kinesiology and Touch for Health, and this has become central in how our practitioners assess the body’s energy systems and determine where to work. I think these are the primary distinctions of my approach.

Where do you think energy medicine falls when choosing natural care?

I had the great honor of having Christiane Northrup, M.D., write the foreword to my second book, Energy Medicine for Women. She said, “In the medicine of the future, as I envision it, working with the patient’s energy field will be the first intervention. Surgery will be a last resort. Drugs will be a last resort. They will still have their place, but shifting the energy patterns that caused the disease will be the first line of treatment. And before that, teaching people how to keep their energies in healthy patterns will be as much a part of physical hygiene as flossing or exercise.”

How is energy medicine different for women?

Because women are designed to birth babies, we have monthly cycles that activate bewildering biochemical processes. We are engineered to grow a new being inside of us and bring it into the world. We are wired to nurture. All of this needs to be orchestrated, and it is first orchestrated in our energies. Monthly cycles follow energy. Change-of-life stages follow energy. Hormones production follows energy. Emotions follow energy. By working at the level of the body’s energies, we have a fast track into all of the biological processes behind, “I am women, hear me roar.”

What would you say to someone that doesn’t believe in energy because they can’t see it?

More power to you! But observe your world with an open mind. I don’t argue. I demonstrate.

Where is the best place to start for someone that has never worked with their energy?

The best way to really get into it is to take a class. On our website is a tab, Classes and More.

What do you see as the future of energy medicine and natural healing?

I see energy medicine and conventional medicine working hand-in-hand one day, as equal partners.

For more information, visit LearnEnergyMedicine.com.