Eldon grew up on a small farm in a small Scandinavian community in Iowa. After medical school and anesthesia training, Eldon had a nine-year academic career. He eventually landed in Milwaukee in 1980 to start 30 years of private practice as an anesthesiologist.

After retirement, Eldon reluctantly agreed to take a four-hour Reiki training program. Though he initially thought it sounded crazy, he went on to practice Reiki with hundreds of family, friends, and cancer patients. This simple practice of quiet touching yielded profound relief from the suffering related to a cancer diagnosis for nearly everyone.

Eldon and his wife, Pat Jensen, joined RIM in 2019. RIM provided something Eldon had sought for over 70 years: a balanced approach between the pursuit of an ethical life (with kindness and compassion for all beings) and the reasonable pursuit of happiness. His meditation practice helped Eldon clarify his understanding of “God” as a part of our original equipment, instead of as a separate entity. And the brilliant mechanism underlying this path is mindfulness meditation ... present moment awareness.