Energy Medicine for Women Book Review
Ancient Meridian, Chakra Techniques Adapted for Modern Women's Needs
Dec 10, 2008
Donna Eden, author of the modern classic Energy Medicine (1998) and pioneer in the field of energy healing work, has done it again with her new book Energy Medicine for Women. Published in tandem with a tenth anniversary edition of the original ground-breaking book, Energy Medicine for Women uses energy tools involving the chakras, meridians, and physical movement exercises to target health issues that specifically affect women: hormones, weight loss, fertility, menopause, and menstrual issues like cramps and PMS.
Women's Energy and the Role of Energy Medicine
Women's bodies are different from men's in both physiological and energetic terms. With both chemical and physical changes occurring over the course of every month, women's health care needs are complex and dynamic.
Taking the energetic and physical cycles of women's bodies into account, Donna Eden approaches the subject with sensitivity, candor, insightfulness, fresh science and the experience born of her many years spent teaching and assisting women to balance their energies and heal themselves.
Energy Medicine for Women is different from her first book, Energy Medicine, in that it does not describe the energy systems (meridians, chakras) at any length. Apart from an introductory chapter on the theory and current science behind energy medicine, the book is devoted to discussing challenges such as infertility, menopause, weight management, menstrual problems and practical approaches to these and other common complaints.
Energy Medicine for Women doesn't shy away from the kind of new age, women's lib generalizations that science-minded holistic health practitioners may be wary of ("…our feminine instincts are toward love, cooperation, justice, compassion, family, nature and peace"). But Eden manages to integrate these remarks into a whole that addresses science, psychology, biology, chemistry and real life in a clear and effective way.
Hormones: Chemistry Follows Energy
Energy Medicine for Women focuses on hormones in some detail, grounding each of the chapters on menstrual issues, fertility and menopause with an introduction to the biochemistry of women's cycles and life transitions. These chapters discuss some of the natural supplements that can help to boost progesterone and estrogen as well as energy approaches that support hormone balance within the body.
"For almost every health condition a woman faces, hormonal imbalances are in the foreground or in the background," Eden writes in chapter 3, Dancing with Your Hormones. "If you think of each cell in your body as a theater with a thousand stages, hormones raise and lower the curtains."
Hormone signals regulate every system of the human body in a dynamic feedback with the body's energies. Hormones act as catalysts and exciters, affecting energy; by the same token, energy affects body chemistry and hormone levels. Eden cites instances in her practice where energy work changed blood test results of hormone levels within hours:
"Often simple energy interventions have changed a woman's measurable hormone counts, restoring balance…. Changes brought about during a session appeared in their white blood counts, blood sugar levels, thyroid levels, and estrogen levels."
Rich with Personal Experience
Energy Medicine for Women comes across much like Donna Eden herself: full of joy and wisdom, and saturated with love and experience of healing her own family and others.
The book is rich with stories of tools from energy medicine that have enriched and saved lives, including Donna's struggles to balance her own hormones and to assist one of her daughters with her own serious health challenges.
Energy Medicine for Women is a thorough, fascinating, and instructive read by one of the greats of cutting-edge healing work, and could be helpful to any woman willing to try an energy approach to healing.
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