Having helped Donna write about the Basic Grid, first in Energy Medicine, and then in each successive generation of the Grid class, I have been humbled every time. First, I am humbled that she discovered this energy system at all. While the Grid system is basic and its state has profound consequences on our health and well-being, it is also so elusive that, to our knowledge, it is not described in any other culture or healing tradition. Of the nine primary energy systems that Donna works with, the Grid is the only one that was not discovered long ago. This statement may result in an e-mail with a reference to a celebrated healer from an ancient culture who worked with the Grid all the time, calling it the “Angel’s Anchor” or some such term, and I welcome that, but so far we’ve not heard of earlier uses.

Next, I am humbled that not only did Donna discover the Grid and discern it from the known Cloacal energies that use the same pathways as Grid energies, she figured out the Grid energies function, the consequences of their dysfunction, and how to fix them by using her own body as a temporary conduit while restoring a broken Grid pathway. This achievement has turned many people’s lives around. There is no treatment for a broken Grid, at least not in Western medicine or psychiatry, so those afflicted with a broken Grid have had to make do by building their lives upon a damaged energetic foundation.

But she didn’t stop there. She then took it upon herself to teach Grid work to others. This is a more courageous undertaking than it might seem. It is not just teaching a technique. It is teaching people how to directly engage their own energies with fundamentally damaged energies in another human being. As she learned early in her career, this was not for the faint of spirit (see the account of her temporarily taking on French polio in Chapter 6 of Energy Medicine). So as repugnant as rules and limits are to her, she developed procedures and strict guidelines for working with Grid and has managed to enforce them with her Grid students through nearly three decades. Only within that framework can her students engage in Grid work safely for themselves and their clients.

Finally, the little organic cherry on top of the pudding is our effort to translate this highly complex, highly intuitive, soul-deep level of her work into the linear form of this booklet.