Friday, May 29, 2009

Finger points, gamut spot and karate chop point

From the book Adventures in EFT by Silvia Hartmann

Thumb
Worth; TH = Thumb = Lung Meridian
Energy imbalance through negative thinking.
When blocked causes lethargy, low energy and grief.
When tapped releases negativity and increases vitality and positivity.

Index Finger
Letting Go; IF = Index Finger = Large Intestine Meridian
Energy imbalance through hanging on to grief and guilt.
When blocked causes nostalgia.
When tapped releases emotions that hold us to living in the past. Allows us to live in the present, be optimistic and work towards future goals.

Middle Finger
Bonding; MF = Middle Finger = Pericardium Meridian
Energy imbalance through being unhappy with self and others.
When blocked produces feelings of low self esteem.
When tapped releases feelings of inferiority and increases personal power.

Little Finger
Unconditional Love; LF = Little Finger = Heart Meridian
Energy imbalance through lack of love for self and others.
When blocked results in selfishness and loneliness.
When tapped removes limited thinking, opens up consciousness and
improves long-term memory. Aids the development of empathy, compassion, and unconditional love.

Karate Chop Point (Side of hand)
Trust; KC = Karate Chop = Small Intestine Meridian
When blocked it results in lack of confidence and feelings of self hate.
When tapped removes self doubt, feelings of low self esteem and improves
self confidence.
[*The KC point also corrects psychological reversal. The small intestine is
where we digest and assimilate everything, if we have trauma or undigested
emotions/experiences etc tapping this point corrects energy imbalances that
lead to self-sabotage or secondary gain. Noreen]

Gamut Spot
Connection; GS = Gamut Spot = Triple Warmer (Thyroid Meridian)
When blocked there is an inability to express emotions and love.
When tapped removes low self-esteem and opens us up to emotional
interaction with others.

Here are the diagrams for the EFT shortcut and basic recipe.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Creating your sanctuary

Creating a safe space where you can use EFT, either for yourself or with someone else is so important. This lovely visualisation from Shakti Gawain creates a lovely place we can go to to feel safe. From the book Creative Visualisation:

Creating Your Sanctuary

Your sanctuary is your ideal place of relaxation, tranquillity, and safety and you can create it exactly as you want it.

Close your eyes and relax in a comfortable position. Imagine yourself in some beautiful natural environment. It can be any place that appeals to you … in a meadow, on a mountain-top, in the forest, beside the sea. It could even be under the ocean, or on another planet. Wherever it is, it should feel comfortable, pleasant, and peaceful to you. Explore your environment, noticing the visual details, the sounds and smells, any particular feelings or impressions you get about it.

Now do anything you would like to do to make the place more homelike and comfortable. You might want to build some type of house or shelter there, perhaps just surround the whole area with a golden light of protection and safety, create and arrange things there for your convenience and enjoyment, or do a ritual to establish it as your special place.

From now on this is your own personal inner sanctuary, to which you can return anytime just by closing your eyes and desiring to be there. You will always find it healing and relaxing to be there. It is also a place of special power for you, and you may wish to go there every time you do creative visualisation.

You may find that your sanctuary spontaneously changes from time to time, or that you want to make changes and additions to it. You can be very creative in your sanctuary and have a lot of fun there … just remember to retain the primary qualities of peacefulness, tranquillity, and a feeling of absolute safety.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Under arm point


Under Arm
Choice Making; UA = Under Arm = Spleen Meridian
Energy imbalance through resentment.
When blocked slows down thinking processes.
When tapped removes fogged thinking patterns and increases concentration.

Taken from Adventures in EFT by Silvia Hartmann

* This point is located approximately 4 inches down from the armpit (right and left), it is midway of a woman's bra strap.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Collar bone point


Collarbone
Gentle Spirit; CB = Collarbone = Kidney Meridian

Energy imbalance through fears, especially fears of what is unknown.
When blocked unable to make decisions, low energy.
When tapped gives impetus and willpower to carry out tasks.

Taken from Adventures in EFT by Silvia Hartmann

Friday, May 22, 2009

Thursday, May 21, 2009

How do I choose the phrases to use while doing EFT?

Article by John Freedom.
The Setup Phrase is often an under-valued part of EFT. Many of us have used (and taken for granted) the generic setup phrase that says "Even though I have this ________, I deeply and completely love and accept myself." This does work --- much of the time --- but not always.

The Setup is intended to be the built-in antidote for psychological reversal (PR). A PR is an objection to healing. It is a form of subtle self-sabotage, and includes any limiting belief or consideration a person is holding, that prevents them from healing and changing now. Often this takes the form of implicit self-hatred.

The person may believe, consciously or unconsciously, "Because I have this issue, I am a bad person, and therefore unloveable." The generic Setup phrase confronts this possibility, acknowledges that "even though I have this issue," and antidotes the PR with "I deeply and completely love and accept myself."

But there are problems with the generic Setup. Some people balk at the idea (or even possibility!) of accepting or loving themselves. I worked with one woman with Multiple Personality Disorder; she objected, saying, "But I don't see myself as a 'self'." And then for others, self-acceptance is NOT the issue; and thus not the antidote. There may be other forms of PR (lurking beneath the surface!) that need antidoting.

PR can take many forms, and these have been catalogued by (among others) Fred Gallo, David Grudermeyer, and Asha Clinton. These include:

Possibility: "I can't get over this issue."

Worthiness: "I don't deserve to get over this issue."

Safety: "It's not safe for me to get over this issue."

Secondary gain or loss: "I will lose _______, if I get over this issue."

Authority: "My doctor says I will always have this issue."

Identity: "I can't release this issue, but the issue is part of who I am." Etc. Read on

Monday, May 18, 2009

Tapping into your body's messages

When you feel overwhelmed, stuck or like you are never going to get through all your stuff, you can use your body's messages to help you. These messages are a gift when you learn to see that they are your body's way of communicating with you. Your body is your subconscious mind, it has downloaded all the feelings, emotions, memories and experiences that you were unable to feel, digest and process. But it cannot hold them forever, something will start to give at the seams eventually. We need to listen to our bodies and start releasing these unfelt emotions as a gift to ourselves and our health.

Do you have an ache somewhere? Is it heavy, dull, or throbbing? What colour is it? Where exactly is it? What metaphor can you use? What is the function of this body part? How does it relate to what is going on in your life? How would you describe it so someone else knows exactly how you are feeling? The more descriptive you can be with your body's messages the more shifts you will make when you tap. You can choose to start tapping on the most painful issue or you can start with a small ache, it is up to you.

Example set up statements:
Even though I have this black, heavy, dull headache on the right side of my head and it feels like it's pressing in on me, I deeply and completely accept myself and how I feel

Even though I have this tight burning sensation in my gut and it's scarlet red and it makes me feel frustrated and helpless, I deeply and completely accept myself and how I feel

Even though my hip feels loose and unsteady and I feel panicky about that as if I'm going to fall and lose my balance, I deeply and completely accept myself and how I feel


Adding how you feel about the pain really helps you to tune in to yourself and your body (your subconscious mind). You can adapt the set up as you tap, maybe the pain will move location, change in quality or you feel differently about it. This is a good sign that things are shifting and moving. Emotions are energy in motion and that is exactly what you want; movement. Tapping diagram.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Your body is a gift

If your body is your subconscious mind, imagine reframing every ache and pain your body experiences into a gift for you. Sometimes we store memories that the conscious mind cannot articulate or remember, but the subconscious mind and body know what these memories are, they have been holding them for you, waiting for the time when you are ready to release and feel your unfelt emotions. When you are ready, you will get signs, in the form of aches and pains and so on. At first the signs will be whispers, if you don't listen they will start getting louder. They will become as loud as they need to until you do hear them and give the gift to yourself of feeling, processing and releasing your unexperienced experiences. The body yearns to be in its natural state - love - so it will do what is necessary for you to release and dissolve every energetic block to the lightest energy there is. If we see pain in this way, we can take our power back and our ability to respond (responsibility). Our body is always trying to help, despite what it may look like on the surface, so listening to our body is one of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves.

Try it and see. Instead of cursing and berating your pain, welcome it instead. Tap on the physical sensations and keep tapping until you feel a shift. The body's gift to us is to articulate physically what we don't know how to articulate intellectually. This shift in perception can work wonders.

Friday, May 15, 2009

EFT and Inner Child Healing

 Using EFT from Pre-birth to Present by Silvia Hartmann
Regardless of what your involvement may be in personal development, healing, learning etc., I would strongly encourage you to read this article and read it to the end, and most importantly, not to pre-judge the contents for it's terminology or in terms of modality.

This is actually a Sidereus Energy Healing pattern which I have translated across into the EFT modality to make it easy to use, easy to understand, and easy to do with self or with clients.

It is globally useful, stable and ecological and I would offer it to you with the hope that you will not only read it, but use it.

EFT & INNER CHILD WORK

About a week ago, a young man by the name of Paul killed himself with a heroin overdose. He was 24 years old, very intelligent, very talented.

Following his death, someone said, "I feel so guilty about this. I knew him for five years and I feel responsible. I could have done more to help him."

I said, "Get in line. Have you seen Murder On The Orient Express? I was there too, and so were at least a dozen other people. But before he ever got there, what about all the other people involved during the time of his life? His mother who left him, the various foster homes, the children's homes, all the teachers and social workers involved who "processed" him in that time, the drug dealers, his friends, his relatives - well, as I said, get in line. It's a very, very long line, and at the end of the day, by the time we knew him the damage had been done. By the time he was six years old, it was near enough all over."

This set me to thinking about the fact that a single sentence placed to a young child can do and undo more than 30 years spend in therapy for an adult. And about the fact that the parts of us that remember what it was like to "be that child" live still in quantum space, and, it being a *quantum space* that we can make changes now that will re-write history then. Read on

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Energy in Motion

Emotions are - energy in motion - E-motion. The key here is: motion. When emotions stop moving they stagnate in certain areas of the body and mind and eventually these stagnations and blockages may cause dis-ease and dis-order. What this means in emotional terms, is not feeling our feelings or emotions. When we don't feel or allow ourselves to feel, our energy stops moving and flowing in the natural way it is supposed to. Psychiatrist Ivor Browne calls trauma unexperienced experience. We can rephrase this to mean experience or energy that has been stopped, shielded or blocked. An experience that is no longer in motion. What usually blocks or stops this motion of energy is believing it is wrong or bad to feel what we feel, hence all the guilt and shame that can ensue. Or sometimes, we just didn't and don't have the wherewithal and resources to process our feelings because we were too young or the experience is and was too overwhelming. This is where our body comes in. What the body does, in this instance, is hold the experience for us until we are ready to process and feel it. We need to remember to do this or the body will become overloaded with unprocessed or unexperienced experience and dis-ease or dis-order may occur.

Here's an excerpt from One Day My Soul Just Opened Up by Iyanla Vanzant
"An emotion is like a burst of energy that quickly circulates through the mind and body, indicating that there is an imbalance of energy that needs to be brought back into balance. Balance as used here means neutrality or being void of meaning. When a thought or experience impacts the conscious mind, the energy begins to move throughout the mind and body, attaching itself to every like energy that already exists. This means that if a thought or experience evokes anger in you today, it will find and attach itself to every thought or experience that ever caused you to feel this way. Whether your first experience was at age three, five or sixteen does not matter. The energy of the experience remains in your subconscious mind."
This is why we are usually never angry for the reason we think we are. It is because the experience reminds us of the first time we felt this way. It triggers us, pushes our buttons and brings up the memory or memories that are attached to that emotion or feeling. To bring back our natural balance, this energy or emotion needs to be felt, processed and let go or dissolved. The natural ebb and flow of life, and this is where EFT comes in. It dissolves blocked energy (unfelt or unprocessed emotions) and restores the natural flow and movement of  energy in our energy systems. EFT Short cut.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Honour what you feel

Excerpt from One Day My Soul Just Opened Up by Iyanla Vanzant

There is nothing more frustrating than someone telling you that you should not feel something when you are feeling it. Don't they realise it's too late now! You are already in the midst of feeling it! Whatever the emotion you are experiencing at the time, someone shoulding on you usually does not help you get out of it. As a matter of fact, just hearing what you should not do will either push you deeper into the feeling or make you feel guilty or ashamed. Guilt implies that there is something wrong with what you are doing. Shame implies that there is something wrong with you because of what you are doing. Since we now understand that there is no right or wrong, we must also understand that we have a right to feel whatever we feel.


Tapping on the karate chop point or the sore spot, say:

Even though I don't allow myself to feel my feelings, I deeply and completely accept myself anyway
Even though when I feel ... I feel ashamed and guilty and that just makes me feel worse, I deeply and completely accept myself
Even though I believe there is something wrong with how I'm feeling and maybe something wrong with me, I accept that that is how I feel right now and that it is okay


TH - allowing my feelings
EB - I can't do that
SE - My feelings are "bad"
UE - But I still feel them
UN - Even more strongly
UC - It's wrong to feel this way
CB - I'm wrong to feel this way
UA - What do I do?

TH - I'm stuck again
EB - maybe I can just feel
SE - Just breathe
UE - and feel whatever it is
UN - there's the guilt
UC - It's okay
CB - now the shame
UA - That's okay too

TH - I can feel it
EB - It won't kill me
SE - Just breathe into it
UE - I'm okay
UN - I can feel this
UC - I can feel
CB - I can give myself permission to feel
UA - It is safe to feel this

You can adapt the above script to fit how you feel and do as many rounds as you need to. You may find that permission and safety are issues here so you can put these into the set up statements and reminder phrases and tap.

Saturday, May 09, 2009

EFT for a broken wrist

Article by Dawson Church
Though there are many variants of EFT, I usually use just Gary's basic recipe, because it's so phenomenally effective.

I speak at a lot of psychology and medical conferences, and often my audience of nurses, physicians, psychotherapists and the like know nothing about EFT. I often do a group EFT presentation onstage, after an hour's theoretical presentation based on my book The Genie in Your Genes, which describes the excellent scientific basis behind EFT, and lets the audience know that EFT has a good base of evidence. Then I get them all tapping! At a recent conference, presenting to about 100 medical professionals at Massey University in New Zealand, I worked with a group of five people with pain.

One of them was a 52 year old German female physician with a fractured wrist. The broken wrist had occurred while on a camping trip two weeks prior. I asked her how severe her pain was on the 0 to 10 scale, and she said 7.

When I asked her to identify an emotionally triggering incident associated with the fracture, she was puzzled, and couldn't find one. She said she'd slipped while walking across a log that served as a bridge over a brook. She grabbed a branch, but fell anyway, twisted her arm, and broke her wrist.

I asked to mine the circumstances around the fracture for any possible emotional factors. After thinking long and hard, she said, “I was camping with my daughter. I didn’t want to go hiking that day, but she made me go with her. I was resentful about that,” though on the actual hike she reported that she had been “having a good time.”

I asked her to recall her resentment of her daughter, and identify where that feeling was located in her body. She pointed to her solar plexus, and rated it a 7 out of 10 in emotional intensity. I find that people with fractures or pain almost always have a different site in their body where their feelings come to focus, so it's important to get a measure of their level of intensity for both the injury, and a second one for the emotions. Read on

Thursday, May 07, 2009

The Energy of Intention

Intention, as Dr Wayne Dyer describes in his book, The Power of Intention, is an energy that we are a part of and not something we 'do'. According to Wayne Dyer, the seven faces of intention are; Creativity, Kindness, Love, Beauty, Expansion, Abundance and Receptivity.


Dissolving disruptions in our energy system with EFT helps us to realise that we are these seven faces of intention at our core, underneath all the 'stuff' that has been covering the truth. This baggage usually comes in the form of negative and critical thoughts about ourselves and others, our beliefs and patterns, which we take on as a result of our life experience. Discovering who we truly are brings us into alignment with the energy of intention and subsequently our lives flow more easily and happily. Being stressed is impossible when we embody the energy of intention. Love is our natural state which is why we experience so much emotional and physical pain when our energy system is disrupted. The evidence we have of this, is that anything that is unlike love, or the energy of intention, blocks the natural flow of our energy; our life force.

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

How do I know the right words to say when I'm tapping?

Article by David Lake MD.
This question is perennial. To me it indicates that the mind is concerned about getting the instructions correct (and worried about getting them 'wrong'...). You might not need too many words at all! While EFT is robust and forgiving as a technique, it's easy to forget that it's a body-energy technique and not strictly a psychological one.

Thus, the emotion of the issue fills your system regardless of how the mind processes the problem, and this might be why focus and persistent tapping bring so many positive and varied results. I find it better to tap on body sensations and reactions than to get over-concerned about labelling every feeling. I am also interested in bringing the maximum leverage to the use of EFT by concentrating its effect on the most intense aspects of the dysfunction.

One of the best ways to do this is to emphasise and exaggerate the negative. This is important if you believe that EFT works its wonders by harmonizing the disruptions in our 'reactive' emotional system. I have also found that a light-hearted therapeutic focus on the dark side of personality and life can bring disproportionate relief, ironic acceptance, laughter, and compassion--and EFT will facilitate the unique alchemy of transformation. Steve Wells and I have been investigating this approach toward the negative over recent years in our Energy work (it is not fair to assume that his therapeutic imagination is more bizarre or surreal than mine).

This is a composite example of how I would do this in treating a relationship issue. The presenting problem is the frustration of a wife who 'can't trust' her husband, as a result of repeated broken promises. The couple sits together in a counselling session, both have learned EFT, and it is her turn to talk about her grievance. I ask her to tap on facial points whenever she feels intense about the situation, as it is important to take up every opportunity to 'treat as you go', and to end such a session with as many sequences of tapping completed as comfortably possible. I also ask the husband, this time, to tap for relief, if he needs to, while she talks--but to be silent. Read on

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

EFT script for Irritable bowel syndrome

Try this tapping script for irritable bowel syndrome, keep going until you find relief, write down all the incidents in your life that you have found hard to stomach, difficult to swallow, hard to digest etc. All the hurt that you know you haven't processed and felt that is sitting in your gut just waiting to be felt so it can be released. EFT short cut diagram and procedure

Even though I feel irritated … I accept this irritation

Even though I don't want to feel irritated but I do, I accept my irritation and all that it means

Even though this … is irritating my gut, I accept the messages in all my symptoms

Top of the head: This irritation
Eyebrow: It feels hot
Side of eye: It feels constricting
Under the eye: Making my gut wrench
Under the nose: And tighten up
Under the chin: My gut feels tight
Collar bone: With all this constriction
Under the arm: And stress

Top of the head: There's so much I haven't digested
Eyebrow: And it's just sitting there in my gut
Side of eye: I find it really hard to stomach some things
Under the eye: And they're just sitting there
Under the nose: Creating a feeling of indigestion
Under the chin: And nervousness
Collar bone: It's so hard to relax
Under the arm: And trust

Top of the head: That I'm ok
Eyebrow: And safe
Side of eye: I still need to brace myself
Under the eye: Against …
Under the nose: From …
Under the chin: And I accept how I feel about that
Collar bone: I'm doing the best I can
Under the arm: I allow myself to relax just a little

Top of the head: So my gut can relax too
Eyebrow: And release some of this irritation and stress
Side of eye: That feels better
Under the eye: I can allow myself to digest some of this …
Under the nose: I can take it
Under the chin: And release it
Collar bone: I can swallow it
Under the arm: And let it go

Sunday, May 03, 2009

Asking good questions to elicit tappable issues

By Rue Hass, this article includes the following:

Part 1: Where to Start
Part 2: Getting More Specific Means Getting Better Results
Part 3: Learning to Find the Core Question that is Running the Show
Part 4: How to Ask Your Body for What to Tap On
Part 5: Good Questions to Generate Specific Tapping Phrases