Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Donna Eden and Energy Medicine

One of the most comprehensive books on the subject of energy medicine is, in my opinion, the book entitled "Energy Medicine", by Donna Eden.

Donna Eden has been able to see colors around people since she was a child, and didn't realize that this was a rather unique ability until she was in her early twenties - she had believed until then that everyone could see the colors that she could see. Her ability to see colors helped her to develop the many techniques that are described in her book. She had a private energy medicine healing practice for many years and worked with thousands of people during that time. She also used her own techniques to overcome a number of her own health problems. More recently, she founded a school with a two-year programme for becoming certified as a practitioner of her methods (which, if I win the lottery, I will immediately sign up for).

Because I find it easier to learn by seeing someone do something vs. reading about it in a book, I recently ordered the 3-DVD "Energy Medicine - The Essential Techniques", described as "A Companion to the Book Energy Medicine or an Independent Program to Optimize Your Health", from her website. The quality of the videos is very good (although the user interface to them could be better), and Donna Eden is a delightful presenter. The videos contain six hours of Donna Eden demonstrating the exercises and techniques described in her book, including how to work with the meridians of Chinese medicine and the chakras, and her own unique exercises for improving the flow of energy within the body for better health, such as her Five-Minute Daily Energy Routine.

Whereas the videos are demonstrations of all of the many techniques described in the book, the book provides more background information and includes selected accounts of experiences with people Donna Eden worked with in her many years of private practice. She also touches on subjects such as the colors and meaning of the chakras. Since she is able to sense energetically and to see so much when she works with a person, everything she describes about the chakras is coming from her own personal experience and is sometimes very different from the explanations or interpretations of them that one finds in most other sources. For example, she is very definite that the first chakra, the root chakra, governs sex (in most other texts, this is assigned to the second chakra). She also says very firmly that, while the standard colors do serve as a guide, she sees many other colors in every chakra - that the various chakras in a person are frequently other than the colors assigned to them in the standard literature and that they often contain multiple colors.

I highly recommend her book!


Saturday, April 11, 2009

Wiener Schnitzel!

Tonight I made Wiener Schnitzel for dinner. It is so good when it's homemade, and so easy! Basically, you need rather thin slices of pork which you should then hammer with a mallet on each side until about 1/8 inch thick or even a little thinner. Salt and pepper the first side before turning over to hammer the second side, then salt and pepper the second side after hammering it. Dip the hammered meat first into flour so that it’s dusted all over, then into beaten egg until completely coated, then into fine (like coarse sand) bread crumbs. The breaded meat should be fried in a flat skillet with about ¾ of an inch of heated peanut oil. Fry on each side until the breading is a nice deep golden brown. Remove to a plate with paper towels to absorb the excess oil. It must be served with lemon wedges - squeeze the lemon over it before eating.

You can use chicken breast instead of pork, but you need to then hammer it a little more gently, because chicken breast is a much more delicate meat. When chicken is prepared this way, it is called “Huehnerschnitzel” in German.

As an accompaniment, I cut some broccoli into florets, peeled some brussel sprouts, added a fair amount of virgin olive oil and some salt, mixed it all up well with a slotted spoon, then put the mixture on an oven tray and roasted it at about 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) until a bit brown (about 10 minutes).