EFT and aspects

The definition of an aspect is 'a particular part or feature of a matter'. The relevance and significance of this to EFT is when we are tapping on an issue (particularly when we are beginning with EFT) we forget to look for or don't even see the various different parts or features of an issue and get frustrated that EFT is not working for us.

For example, if you have a charge on an issue and you rate your anger at 7 out of 10 and after 2 rounds the anger is 0 but you feel sad instead you may think EFT has not worked for you. What you have in fact done is shifted aspects, the emotion of sadness is a new part of the issue. Shifting emotions is a very important, and sometimes subtle part of learning and applying EFT.

Another example of aspects is a specific event where someone said something hurtful to you. You tap on your anger and hurt and after a few rounds it is 0. Then you remember the look on their face, and up the charge goes again and you're steaming mad, and you think "I thought EFT worked?!". You have shifted to another part or feature of the issue so you tap on how you feel about 'the look' and keep going until you have found all the aspects and there is no charge left on anything related to that specific event. This detective work will come naturally the more you tap and gain experience. So the next time you think EFT has not worked, take another look to see if it is in fact another part to the issue and tap on it. You can find out more about aspects here.

EFT script for working with intense memories

Even though my brain has the perception that this memory is dangerous and is a threat to my safety and survival, I choose to really appreciate and love my brain for trying to protect me and keep me safe

Even though my focus and energy is on avoiding feeling this memory at all costs and I don’t want to feel it in any shape or form, I just want it to go away and disappear, I accept exactly how I feel, at the moment it’s the only way I feel I can cope and live with this overwhelm and that’s okay

Even though my nerves go into overdrive whenever I even think of this memory, it scares the living daylights out of me, I choose to engage my ability to calm and comfort myself by tapping on all these feelings and breathing through them

Even though my brain did a great job of burying this memory for me so I wouldn’t have to experience or feel the hurt/pain, the truth is, the hurt is still there and I choose now to feel some of it, bit by bit, until all the hurt is gone and I know that during this I am safe and protected always

Even though it feels like this memory is in control of my peace of mind and body, I choose to know and believe that it won’t kill me or swallow me up, I can feel it little by little until all parts of me feel peaceful, safe and comforted

Even though I am afraid, I choose to know that I can handle it, I am getting stronger and stronger every day and tapping really helps!

Even though that little girl is still really frightened and these feelings/memory represent that frightened little girl, I now choose to hug her, comfort and soothe her and tell her she will always be loved and safe no matter what

Acknowledging and honouring

Internalise - make (attitudes or behaviour) part of one’s nature by learning, or unconscious assimilation
Deny - refuse to admit the truth or existence of
Repress (unconscious) or suppress (conscious) - (a thought or feeling) in oneself so that it becomes or remains unconscious
Disown - refuse to acknowledge any connection with
Disconnect - break the connection of or between
Dissociate - disconnect or separate
Minimise - reduce to the smallest possible amount or degree, represent or estimate at less than the true value

When we internalise, deny, repress, disown, minimise or disconnect from our feelings (by necessity sometimes), the flow of our energy, or life force, is diverted from its natural path and flow and can become stuck. If this happens continuously, a pattern of behaviour sets in and certain beliefs are formed, energy stagnates and eventually results in dis-ease if the natural process of ingestion, assimilation and elimination is not followed.

The kindest thing you can do for yourself is to acknowledge how you feel. Find the courage to feel what you feel (seek help with this if need be). The simple act of acknowledging (usually the first step in the therapeutic process) has the power to dissolve some of the charge around a stuck emotion or feeling. By acknowledging it, you are shining a light on the issue and bringing it into your conscious awareness. I cannot emphasise how powerful this is. You cannot remedy something you are not aware of nor can you use EFT for it. See the gift in issues arising and revealing themselves to you – it means that you can then do something about them with EFT. The best way to identify these beliefs is to look at the evidence; our lives. Having the courage to do this will lead you to personal peace and emotional freedom.

Your awareness does not have to take a particular form - it can be thoughts, feelings, images, smells, symptoms and so on. Trust that what reveals itself is a representation of what you need to acknowledge, feel, let go of and release.

Learning the Body's Language

Excerpt taken from The Power of Infinite Love and Gratitude by Dr Darren Weissman

Paying attention to symptoms is the key to understanding what's going on in your body. They are how the body “speaks”. Some of them may be quite obvious, while others are so subtle that you regard them as normal functions. Either way, symptoms are symphonies that the body composes to get your attention. 

Your body speaks only when necessary, and symptoms are the way it says: “I don't want this in me any longer”, or “I'm not happy with the way you're treating me”. Your body loves you; it communicates to help you appreciate that you're in danger. I tell all my patients that symptoms are gifts from their physical selves. These gifts, however, arrive in very strange wrapping paper. Whether they include headaches, stomach pain, diarrhoea, nausea, fatigue, low-back pain, depression, panic, anxiety, inflammatory bowel disease, or cancer, symptoms are the body's way of saying, “I am out of balance”. 

These imbalances occur emotionally, structurally, biochemically or spiritually. When you indiscriminately take a pharmaceutical drug to address a symptom, you're basically telling your body to “shut up”, impairing its ability to heal. Emergency medicine is superb for saving lives in times of crisis. However, popping a pill for every ailment without addressing the underlying cause inhibits the body's natural capacity to heal itself. It's the same as taking the battery out of a fire detector in your home: Without the battery, the alarm can't alert you to danger. Even worse, the problem escalates – by suppressing symptoms, you mask the body's ability to warn you of danger lurking within. 

Emotions can be defined as the energy that moves us. Considering that energy is always in motion, when we disconnect from, internalise, or deny an emotion, that energy takes a wrong turn that often keeps us stuck in a maze. Every time these buried emotions are triggered, the body becomes compromised and has to compensate, leaving it at risk for injury or opportunistic pathogens. Recurrent symptoms and chronic stress are the warning signs that emotions are trapped within the subconscious mind. 

Symptoms start long before we become conscious of them. They usually begin as an uncomfortable feeling. When ignored, that uncomfortable feeling – that is, the emotion that we internalised, denied, or disconnected from – manifests in the body as an imbalance. This leads to stagnation or leakage of life force, which results in symptoms, depending on where the problem is located. If left unchecked, the imbalance becomes a pattern of “dis-ease”, and eventually pathology, that will devastate the body on every level. 

The current medical-industry paradigm is to treat and suppress symptoms. For every symptom, your allopathic (medical) doctor is likely to write a prescription for you. Yet chronic diseases are at an all-time high – very few people are getting well. In our nation alone, hypertension, diabetes, and obesity are rampant in every age-group. Not one medication on the market cures these illnesses. Insulin, for example, doesn't eliminate diabetes. And doctors never say that chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery cures cancer; instead, they state that cancer is in remission 

Of course, the doctor's intention is to alleviate the symptoms and help people get well. Many of the medications they prescribe, however, have what physicians refer to as side effects. I think that's a funny term: They're not “side” effects – they're the direct effects caused by the pharmaceutical drugs, and they create additional symptoms for which you're usually encouraged to take more medication. At that point, you're taking additional drugs for symptoms caused by the original medication. The cycle has spiralled out of control. What happens in the interim? By not listening to what your body was telling you in the first place, you've made it weaker and more vulnerable. 

Just remember that nobody knows more about you than you. No one sees life through your eyes, hears with your ears, smells through your nose, tastes with your mouth, feels through your skin, or is aware of your intuition as acutely as you are. Once you embrace the fact that the natural state of the body is health and wholeness, you'll never look at a symptom in the same way again. As the late Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes remarked, “Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions”. Once you know, you know forever, and that means you must be authentic in how you live your life.

Trust

I wrote this article for the Self Healing Portal's newsletter. You can download the free ebook, You CAN heal with EFT by Jo Hainsworth from http://www.selfheal4me.com/Free-Book.php

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trusting your self is synonymous with an acceptance, respect and love for your self. When we are babies we are entirely dependent on our caregivers to look after us, to meet all of our needs for love, food, shelter and warmth. We learn whether we can trust (have the faith and belief) that our needs will be met. This gives us our sense of security and safety in the world, it makes us feel we belong, that we are cherished and loved. If our needs are nurtured we develop a healthy sense of self worth that continues to flourish throughout our life. If, however, our needs are not met or are shamed, the seeds of self doubt, shame and guilt set in and start to grow into branches of feeling bad, worthless, unlovable, unsafe and so on. If children receive the message that their needs are not important, they deduce that neither are they as a result. If you have been shamed for having needs, you begin to feel who you are at your core is wrong. Children learn to deny, repress, minimise and disown their needs. They canʼt trust their needs or who they are. There is no safe haven to retreat to, which ultimately becomes exhausting and takes a heavy toll.

In many situations, needs will be met depending on certain conditions, and so we adapt ourselves to meet these conditions. Very often this develops into someone becoming a “doer” or a “people pleaser” in life. If who you are is not enough, maybe what you do will get your needs met.

Acknowledging and honouring the existence of our needs without feeling shame or guilt is critical to our emotional health. Being able to reach out and ask for our needs to be met is another step forward. Being able to receive, without having to feel we have to do or give anything in return, is a proportional reflection of how much love and acceptance we have for our self.

Listening to and following our inner voice or intuition leads to self trust. The more we do this, the more we trust that voice. We see that trusting it leads us to our greatest good, which was always inside of us, it is who we are at our core. EFT helps us to reveal that goodness.

• Even though I have always felt ashamed for having needs, I now choose to release my shame and acknowledge and listen to what my needs are
• Even though I'm afraid to ask for my needs to be met, maybe I'll (they'll) be rejected again, I choose to acknowledge and meet some of my own needs myself. My heart is opening to the truth that the more I receive from myself and others, the more I have to give to myself and others
• Even though I hold the belief that it is not safe to trust because I've always felt unsafe, I really donʼt want to be hurt and let down again, I honour that belief, it protected me until now, maybe that belief no longer serves my highest good
• Even though I have never been able to trust others and that makes me feel …., I acknowledge and accept how all parts of me feel about that
• Even though it is exhausting not being able to trust others, even the people who are close to me (or supposedly close) and I feel completely alone and lonely, I am now willing and choose to be there for myself. The first step is acknowledging and honouring my feelings
• Even though I am ashamed of having no one in my life that I can depend on, maybe it's because I'm bad and I'm terrified of people finding that out, because they will do/feel….., I choose to be there for all of me anyway
• Even though I am so ashamed to admit that I don't have anyone in my life that I can really trust and be myself with and maybe I feel others will take advantage of that and I'll feel even more worthless and alone, I truly appreciate how strong and resilient I really am to have survived
• Even though I could do with a break, I'm exhausted being on guard all the time, and I'm sick of being strong, I choose to be kind and gentle with myself and let myself off the hook
• Even though I wish OTHERS would give me a break, I accept how I feel and I am choosing not to judge my feelings and needs for once, I am giving myself a break!!!
• Even though I am sick and tired of second guessing myself all the time, I'm constantly on the look out (usually for something bad), I am willing to look for the good, especially in me, no matter how small, it will grow by me seeing it
• Even though I have learned to feel shame every time I have a need, maybe I can allow myself one need a day from now on
• Even though I don't trust myself or my needs, I choose to know that learning to trust myself is an act of self love, self respect and self loyalty
• Even though I don't feel worthy of having needs in the first place, never mind having them met, I am willing to feel worthy, I want to feel worthy! I choose to thrive not just survive
• Even though I've been burned in the past, I trusted the wrong people and I'm really angry with them and myself, I am willing to learn to listen to what is my true voice and trust it. I know on some level this voice has my highest good at heart and I can trust this voice. I choose to open my heart little by little and to feel safe again in asking and trusting my needs will be met
• Even though my voice is only a whisper at the moment, I choose for it to grow stronger each and every day, that way I will be able to hear and follow it better
• Even though it is really me who I don't trust and that makes me feel....., I choose to respect and trust my inner guidance/voice, it will always be there for me no matter what and it feels good to know I have that to depend and lean on. I know deep down on some level that acceptance and love is my way through and out

How to make affirmations work for you with EFT

Robert Smith's videos are a fantastic resource on youtube, you will find great videos on nearly every subject. Really worth checking out: 

http://www.youtube.com/user/HealingMagic

A fascinating case using EFT and Chakra colors

Article by Alan Morison.

I have to write this case study as I have never come across such a 'natural' as Sheena, a wonderful lady who revealed the different stages of progress through her issue in colours. All it needed was an interpretation of them as we proceeded. She knew nothing of their significance but each colour had a relevance to her own situation. I have included a list of the colours and their associated meanings at the end of this article.

Sheena came for treatment for a very stiff neck which would relax with massage but revert the next day to stiffness. I decided not to ask for her level of intensity in numbers, preferring instead to follow her physical reactions. So, after explaining the process and saying that a physical condition very often had emotional causes, we began with a simple opener, tapping for the 'pain and stiffness' in her neck. That seemed to ease things a little so I asked if she felt there was a colour associated with her condition. She immediately said 'Red' so we tapped for the 'red stiffness and pain'.

Strangely, that didn't produce any shift, so I asked if this 'redness' reminded her of anything. It was the family situation, she said. She always felt left out, ignored as a child. Her older sister was the favourite, always doing more, getting more praise. Yes, she could remember one particular time when she had done what she felt was a good piece of work for school but it was quickly brushed aside with some placatory words from her parents which she felt did not do justice to her effort.

We tapped using her words and phrases and feelings, 'Not fair', 'Should have listened to me', 'They are just ignoring me' This produced the colour orange, so we tapped for 'this orange feeling in my shoulders and neck.' It quickly became a yellow sensation, then after another round, returned to orange again, the pain and stiffness remaining the same. Read on

EFT for panic attacks

Rebecca Marina on using EFT for panic attacks, read article here.

Not finding the right words for EFT is a block that can be overcome

By Cacina Spaeth.

I just began watching your new Mastering EFT DVDs. At one point you discuss the fact that EFT beginners often have problems finding the right words. Since my own EFT clients and students kept coming up with this issue I looked closer into what's going on here. The following procedure has already helped some of my clients to turn what at first seemed to be a hurdle into solving their first core issue with EFT. I hope the following will also help your readers. This is how:

 Step 1:

If you have problems finding the right words I recommend that you start tapping on what is actually present and not what you THINK you want to tap on. And what is present is that you can’t find the right words right now. So start there, and the wording for this can be as simple as:
Even though I don't find the right words for tapping…
Even though I don't know what to say…
Even though I feel it's ridiculous that I don't even know what to say…
Followed with reminder phrases like:
I don't know what to say
How come I don't know what to say?
I have no words
I'm speechless
What if it could be easy?
What if I allowed myself to ramble?
After having tapped on this for 1 or 2 rounds, you may feel less blocked and be able to start working on your original issue. Or, not finding the "right words" may be the issue you should consider working on today. 

 Step 2:

What if one of your core issues is already present in your inability to find the right words? Could it be that this is why your subconscious is keeping you stuck right here, not allowing you to move forward? Maybe it's a favour in disguise and you're just about to find out. Check with yourself: What is the deeper feeling, the specific feeling, the self talk in not finding the right words?
1. I don't know the right words = I simply don't know how to do that, I feel uncertain.
The underlying issue can be insecurity, or a lack of self-confidence. Why would you feel that way? Why would you lack self-confidence? Which specific event(s) robbed you of your self confidence, made you insecure? Read on

The Role of the Thymus

Excerpt taken from Notes on the Spiritual Basis of Therapy by Dr John Diamond.

The thymus gland lies just beneath the upper part of the breastbone in the middle of the chest. Until the 1950s little was understood about the thymus, but now we have a good deal of information.

The thymus is the "school and factory" for lymphocytes - the white blood cells responsible for the body's immunological reactions. Immature lymphocytes come to the thymus from the bone marrow. Under the influence of thymus hormones, the cells mature, and then settle in the lymph nodes and the spleen, where they give rise to T cells (T for the thymus-derived). Thymus hormones travel through the bloodstream, exerting their influence over the T cells.

T cells are vital to our health. They seek out, recognise and destroy foreign cells. Without T cells the body would have no resistance to disease. Indeed, that is why AIDS is almost invariably fatal - the AIDS virus attacks the T cells, making them unable to combat any infection.

Activating the thymus makes the body less susceptible to disease in the first place, and also better able to combat illness.

In addition, the thymus gland monitors and regulates energy flow throughout the body. Whenever an imbalance occurs, it rebalances the energy.

Thus the thymus is the first organ of the body to be affected by stress, whether it is physical stress - infection, disease - or mental stress. It is the link between mind and body.

The thymus is influenced by an individual's physical environment, social environment, food, posture, and emotional attitudes. Thus, thinking about something unpleasant will weaken the thymus, while thinking about someone you love will strengthen it. The negative emotional - weakening - states are hate, envy, suspicion, and fear. The positive emotional states are love, faith, trust, courage and gratitude. We call these latter states thymus qualities.