Energy Awareness

As the Making Eden Energy Medicine Our Own summer online project has gotten underway, I've been reflecting on my experiences with Donna's work, thinking how my understanding of energy medicine has evolved and deepened... and so has Donna's. Even a quick glance at the covers of 3 different versions of Donna Eden's classic book Energy Medicine shows an evolution from a focus on the energy practitioner to an awareness of the energies themselves and finally to a community of vibrant beings in harmony with all of creation.

I acquired the hard cover original shortly after it was published. Later when the paperback edition came out, I bought it partially to save the hardbound version from further abuse as I referred to it often as I worked with my own energies and the energies of others. My copy of the 10th anniversary edition, revised in 2008, is autographed by Donna... something I'd never gotten around to doing with the original two, even though I started studying with Donna 12 years ago this month at Esalen in Big Sur, CA... and even though I've been teaching with her on and off for the past 10 years. I keep them stashed around in various places so I always have one handy.

I take my time with things... especially things that have depth and richness. That's how I experience Donna's approach to energy. It keeps me coming back to deepen my experience of what she's offering. And more importantly it inspires me to explore the underlying nature of things at the energy level, to invite my own energies and the energies of all that I encounter to resonate with their most luminous potential, and to live life from the depth of my authentic being.

I first read Donna Eden's Energy Medicine book all in one day. It was just what I'd been wanting. Its joyous, loving, can-do approach to energy engagement inspired me to attend Donna's 5 day workshop at Esalen, June 1999. My motivation: to develop a more dynamic relationship with my authentic self, to ease the built up tensions in my life, and to mobilize my authentic creative expression more fully in the world.

That workshop experience at Esalen's Dance Platform, perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, activated in me a new level of ease communicating with myself. I began immediately to put these new awarenesses into practice in my own life and looked for ways to share them with others.

Over the years as Donna has offered more opportunities to deepen into the work, I have often traveled to study and teach with her. Sometimes it amazes me to realize it's been 10 years this summer since I first stepped up to teach Eden Energy Medicine along with Donna at her 5 day training in Kiawah, SC. My energy awareness has continued to expand as my explorations deepen.

Something I'm keenly aware of is that each of us is unique. We absorb from the environment what resonates with us. We integrate it and make it our own. Reflecting on my own experience with Eden Energy Medicine, I feel moved to share some key awarenesses that have arisen for me as I've explored Donna's approach to energy medicine, ways that support me personally, creatively, lovingly as I live my own life, as I work,and as I relate to others:

I am an energy being. Everyone and everything else is too. "Energy is all there is!" Donna says.

I can communicate with my own and others' energies to find out how they are doing, so I can encourage them to flourish.

I can benefit from practices and awarenesses cultivated by energy savvy people all over the planet and across time. Donna gathered many of these practices to share. If I find them compelling, I can work with them to enhance my well being. I can share them in a loving, joyous, easy way with others, who might feel inspired to enjoy greater ease and grace in their lives.

The more free flowing, balanced, organized, and vibrant my own energy field becomes, the more connected I am with my authentic self, and the more loving, joyous, vivacious, and creative my life can be.

Donna loves to explain how observation of something happening in a person's field led to her finding, modifying, or creating a new energy practice that mobilizes vitality. Sparked by this experimental model, I look deeply to discover my own awarenesses and explore my own ways to support vibrant flourishing. I invite the energies to teach me their ways.

Donna sees energies, has come to understand what those patterns represent, and has chosen not only to work with them herself but to share her awarenesses to support others in becoming energy conversant through their own unique sensory patterns and through their inner knowingness. I have my own authentic ways of opening to energy awareness. I cultivate these ways for my own benefit and the benefit of All That Is.

I honor my authentic nature. My energy patterns are uniquely my own. I call myself forth. Clarifying, organizing, strengthening, balancing, and mobilizing my energies invites me to live in deep alignment with my authentic self. When I step up in alliance with another person's energies, I honor their uniqueness. I call their authentic selves forth. I say YES to their luminous natures.

As I've communicated with my energies and come into deeper and deeper connection with my authentic self, my energy work has become easier, simpler, less mechanical, and more inviting.

I've come to realize that 'nothing needs fixed.' Everyone is on their own amazing evolutionary journey. What's unfolding in each moment is simply what's unfolding in that moment. What happens next can be patterned on what came before or it can reference a new, boldly luminous pattern to catalyze a leap into a whole new way of being. Honoring and accepting what IS opens up myriad possibilities for what can happen next. The attachment to how and why the existing pattern arose begins to dissolve. In my life and work I put my attention on expanding possibilities and inviting energies to relax and explore new ways of being, of expressing. I invite the possibility that authentic transformation can take place in easy, graceful, glorious ways… effortlessly.

There are so many more awarenesses that have arisen as I've engaged Eden Energy Medicine and as I've blended EEM with other explorations of the underlying nature of reality. It's an ongoing process of discovery. Thanks for stepping up here to share this part of the adventure with me. I extend thanks to you, Donna, for welcoming me on this journey. And thanks to everyone whose energies I've engaged over the years. I relish our time together.

munay,

Barbara

Photos: Barbara Ann O'Leary