Pat Jensen and Eldon Swenson in Conversation with Voices
Pat Jensen and Eldon Swenson sat down with Voices to talk about their meditation practice and shared interest in energy healing. Pat and Eldon exuded the comfort and ease of long-time partners, but that was not the real story. Their lives merged in 2015 when they volunteered to share energy healing practices with cancer patients. Their individual stories suggest that long before they joined RIM in 2019, they were already traveling the Dharma path.
Before we hear their story, it might be productive to describe energy healing. Energy Healing is an ancient practice that facilitates a positive change in the way energy moves through the body to reduce the symptoms of pain, depression, and anxiety -- suffering. From a research perspective, there are both critics and defenders. Improving energy flow is fairly mysterious, but the results are quite real and often profound. Many patients report positive outcomes, so that proof may be a moot point.
Eldon described one of his energy healing practices, Reiki, in this way:
In some oriental philosophies, we're all bathed in universal energy or life force. Our chakras are the way that the life force connects to our body. Disease is basically a result of one of the chakras being blocked, our body getting out of balance.
I believe in the impressive impact of touch. I tell patients that our minds and bodies can unconsciously communicate, activating our internal healing abilities to self-heal. This explanation was comfortable for me and made sense to my patients. I didn't need a more complex explanation other than the value of touch.
Pat’s Path
Pat’s interest in caring for seriously ill and dying patients began with the death of her father when she was 15 years old. Her father had been a medic in World War II.
He had been with many men who died during the war. And it changed his life. He had a calm and dignified manner during his own dying process that showed me how to be around people who were in the process of dying. I've always felt that Dad was my first hospice patient. In my nursing program, I decided to do hospice work.
After marrying and having five children, Pat entered a nursing program at Northern Michigan University. When her husband was transferred to Wisconsin, Pat enrolled at Cardinal Stritch College and earned a degree in theology. This is where her interest in Buddhism began. When Pat finished her degree in 1994, her interest in meditative practices emerged. She then took a job with the Sisters of St. Francis at Cardinal Stritch College. One of the young sisters invited Pat to attend a lecture in Madison on the healing process.
And that was it! The lecture triggered something in me. I have a nursing and theology background. That lecture sparked my interest in a program called Healing Touch. It put all the pieces together, and it still amazes me to this day.
With all that enthusiasm, Pat enrolled in a Healing Touch program at UWM supported by the American Nursing Association and eventually finished her 3-year training in Florida. Though a medical background was not required, Pat, as an LPN, used her medical training to enhance her Healing Touch program experience.
Healing Touch, like Reiki, works through the chakras. Anatomically, the entire nervous system moves down the center of the body through a series of chakras. There are seven chakras, each with a specific function. With practice, the practitioners learn to see and feel blocked chakras. They move their hands over a person’s body to determine which chakra is blocked. Reiki and Healing Touch open the blocked chakra, giving the patient more energy and making them feel better.
Before finishing the Healing Touch program, Pat’s husband, Bill, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. While caring for Bill during his 10-year illness, Pat rekindled a long-standing interest in the common threads of many religious philosophies. Her interest settled on exploring Buddhism.
After Pat’s husband passed away in 2014, she felt a need to “find herself again because you lose yourself as a caregiver.” During Pat’s search, friends encouraged her to volunteer at a nearby cancer center. Pat took their advice and made an appointment with the mentor to discuss a Reiki program. That mentor was Eldon Swenson.
Eldon’s Pat
Eldon grew up in a small farming community with a stoic acceptance of life’s hardships and death. When Eldon became interested in Buddhist authors, he was surprised by the assumption that humans struggle to accept and embrace impermanence.
As a doctor, I'm not upset by a patient being near death. That just doesn't bother me. And I think that lack of fear transfers. Reiki allowed me to focus on that one person. Patients know that for one hour, they have the undivided attention of someone comfortable with their difficult medical circumstances. In that 45-60 minutes, I could see them expanding beyond the confines of their illness.
Eldon had always been interested in cultivating a supportive environment for patients. About a year after becoming a practicing anesthesiologist, he realized people were terrified of surgery. To address this fear, he started putting his hand on their shoulders. He asked them to imagine themselves relaxing in a warm bathtub, and he'd play classical music. After changing how he interacted with patients, a recovery nurse explained that his patients were waking up differently. They were more comfortable and experienced less pain and nausea. She wanted to know what he was doing differently. Knowing it made a positive difference, Eldon administered anesthesia with a gentle touch and reassurance for 39 years.
During his career, Eldon spent a year teaching pediatric anesthesia on a university faculty. When dealing with frightened children, the traditional response was to put them to sleep quickly. Very often, these children woke up with nightmares and general distress. Eldon initiated the practice of holding and calming the child while administering anesthesia. The outcomes were noticeably positive. After a while, all of the faculty started using those strategies.
Much later, Eldon realized these gentle additions to the anesthesia process were versions of energy healing. When Eldon was 70 years old and disenchanted with retirement, he sought a meaningful way to spend his time. At first glance, Reiki sounded crazy. He reluctantly agreed to a 4-hour training program. Still not a believer, he tried it on his wife for her fear of flying and his neighbor for her terror of redo surgery. Amazing results! He has since used reiki with about 350 cancer patients. This simple practice of quiet touching yielded profound relief from anxiety and other suffering related to living with a cancer diagnosis.
Eldon described his first Reiki patient:
She was just a little thing under a pile of blankets. And she was dying of pancreatic cancer and had a lot of pain. I went over and saw her lying all curled up under these blankets. So I did Reiki over the blankets and touched her feet. After 45 minutes, she looked up at me with these little eyes and said, “All my worries went away.” Isn't that wonderful? I almost cried at that point.
Eldon described an impactful moment early in his career as a Reiki practitioner, doing a Reiki session with a woman:
I can visualize it. I had both my hands on her leg. And it was almost like I heard the voice, “This precious person.” At that moment, I realized that if I were offered a million dollars to stop doing Reiki on this woman, I would turn it down. I wanted to be right there more than any place in the world. I began seeing similarities between my Reiki and anesthesia practices over the years. I realized I'd been doing ‘touch healing’ for my entire career.
Eldon and Pat’s Shared Path
Pat and Eldon met in 2015. Eldon was the mentor responsible for training new volunteers to provide Reiki to surgical patients at a cancer center. Having both lost spouses in the same year, they were interested in sharing their interests and talents, and energy healing was the common thread. Ah! The stars were aligned. Everything that had happened to them brought them to this shared moment. Their common interests and personal experiences resonated with each other.
Pat and Eldon married in 2019. A dear friend with end-stage cancer was upset that she probably would not live to see them get married. With a shrug of their shoulders, Pat and Eldon arranged to be married in this friend’s home. It was an awesome celebration of a life well lived!
After about a year in their new home, Pat and Eldon created a meditation room and committed to developing a meditation practice. They practiced silent meditation, read spiritual literature, and explored Buddhist websites. Eldon and Pat were essentially merging their Christian practice with Buddhism. However, their daily meditation sessions gradually began to fizzle out a bit.
They crossed RIM’s threshold in early 2020, a bit before COVID forced RIM to shift to a Zoom-only format. Today (2024), they are still active members of the RIM community as regular participants in multiple sessions each week and as volunteers. Eldon reflects:
When Pat and I started a meditation practice, it felt a lot like doing Reiki. Meditation, Healing Touch, and Reiki have changed my unconscious mind in ways that I don't fully understand. It made my life more balanced. And I was more open to RIM as a result of my experience with Reiki.
When Voices asked if Reiki practitioners were ‘special,' Eldon emphatically said that all humans have this capacity to facilitate energy healing.
I view Reiki as a different version of the calm we practice at RIM. Much of what we discuss at RIM starts with calm, so I believe that 100 percent of people have the capacity to calm themselves and access their own self-healing. We learn how to water those seeds of calmness and develop equanimity.
Pat echoed Eldon’s conviction. When Voices asked, ‘Who is doing the healing?’ Both Pat and Eldon emphatically said that the patient does the healing, and the Reiki practitioner is the conduit of that energy.
Pat and Eldon still practice Reiki on each other, on sick neighbors, a couple of people from an alcoholics anonymous group, and friends.
Pat ended our conversation with her daily ritual of reciting the Five Lines, which connected her way of living, her practice at RIM, and her practice using Reiki and Healing Touch.
I am grateful for this new day. I embrace impermanence. I cultivate compassion for myself and others. I walk the path of wisdom. I’m at peace with myself. Blessings to everyone! Share your calmness. It is contagious.
LINK to Energy Healing Resources recommended by Pat and Eldon