CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. — Energy medicine pioneer Donna Eden was a part of a special therapy session inside the Chesterfield County jail last week to help give inmates the tools to channel their own energy productively.
"I'll show you what happens," she said as she manipulated an inmate's arm. "It takes energy away."
Eden's husband, Dr. David Feinstein, a clinical psychologist, ran the session with her.
"How a person winds up in prison, often there's a lot going on inside that they don't have control over," he said. "We're trying to help people really understand how the amygdala, how the stress response, how the threat response can keep getting triggered again and again, so people act out things that they never intended to do."
Feinstein and Eden joined the inmates in the jail's HARP addiction program to add their expertise in energy medicine to the groundbreaking therapies offered by HARP or Helping Addicts Recover Progressively.
Over the course of several hours HARP members took part in hands-on exercises to train themselves to free up their bodies' energy.
One involved activating their central meridian, which she said would allow them to focus on what another inmate was reading to them. One by one, arms that had stood out stiffly suddenly dropped under modest pressure.
"You wiped them out," Eden told the reader.
HARP inmates are used to once-novel therapies such as tapping or making music.
Chesterfield Sheriff Karl Leonard says his decade-long experiment came about because circumstances demanded jails find a way to stop the revolving door where addicted inmates are incarcerated again and again.
"Because of what jails have been asked to do over the last 10 years, I feel I am now the local expert on mental health and drug addiction," Leonard said. "Not by choice, but because that's what jails have become: the depository for those suffering from mental illness and those suffering addiction."
Leonard says that reality demands exercises that work to heal the pain that underlies addiction.
"What I've learned is that trauma is the center point for all of these issues," said Leonard. "All of the addiction, and all of the mental health issues we're seeing, it's trauma. It's all trauma-based."
Eden led inmates through stretches that had them reach skywards and then bring their hands together at the sternum.
"One more and begin again," Eden said. "Then come back down to your heart."
For inmates, unlocking another piece of their addiction puzzle is another step toward healing.
The inmates made a gift for their visitors: white HARP bracelets. "This is just to show our gratitude, and for you to keep spreading the love and keep it going," said an inmate who placed the bracelets on Eden's and Feinstein's wrists.
The two therapists praised the program that brought them to Chesterfield from the Oregon coast, saying other jails should emulate what HARP is doing.
"HARP culture is bringing out people's humanity," said Feinstein. "It's just bringing it out, so that when we walk in the room, it's incredible. I've been in several different prisons before. Nothing that resembled this. This is a culture that brings out and that makes it possible for rehabilitation to happen."
Eden said the warm reception the inmates provided was something she would remember and that she hoped they would find the techniques she taught useful.
"I think everybody in this entire world ought to know energy medicine," said Eden. "And be empowered to be able to move their own energy and be able to figure out when something is off in them, what they can do to get their energy back. Because it's not just up in our heads, it's all over. And the energy flows everywhere inside of us."
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