Maternity leave

I am currently on maternity leave after having a baby boy on the 15th November so I won't be posting as regularly as I have been for the next while :-) Please feel free to email me at info[at]energyandintention[dot]com if you have any questions about EFT.

Emotional regulation

Emotional regulation essentially means being able to 'be with' our emotions. It's our ability to self soothe when we're upset, overwhelmed or frightened, or to say no when we're angry, to say yes when it genuinely feels good and we trust our response. But most important of all I think is the willingness and ability to feel what comes up, regardless of what it is, without distracting, avoiding and suppressing what essentially we might not want to feel. It can be difficult to do this if we haven't been taught or had it modelled for us, difficult but not impossible. I think being able to be with and feel our emotions is absolutely essential for our physical, mental and spiritual health in every way.

The importance of vitamin D during pregnancy

This post isn't about EFT but I wanted to share it because it contains such important information. The study by Dr Wagner who talks in the video below showed that a daily dose of 4,000IU of vitamin D reduced pre-eclampsia rates in pregnancy by 50%. It also helped with issues such as preterm labour and birth, high blood pressure and diabetes.



Read this excellent article on mercola.com about vitamin D and diabetes, pre-eclampsia and high blood pressure in pregnancy. Another invaluable and fantastic resource is the research and work of an obstetrician on pre-eclampsia (he calls it metabolic toxemia of late pregnancy, MTLP) called Tom Brewer in which he defines the cause and provides simple nutritional advice whereby this condition can be avoided and reversed http://www.drbrewerpregnancydiet.com/ Please share this information with any pregnant women you may know, it could save them a lot of heartache and unnecessary trauma and stress.

The three things we fear the most

I wanted to share this excellent article from http://www.tricycle.com:

When things upset us, we often think that something is wrong. Perhaps the one time this is truest is when we experience fear. In fact, as human beings, we expend a huge portion of our energy dealing with anxiety and fear. This has certainly been apparent in the present economic upheavals and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We live with an everyday reality that is tinged with personal and cultural anxiety. Our fears are not just the product of global events, however—they go to our very core. On a day-to-day level, fear often motivates how we act and react, and sometimes even how we dress or stand or talk. But fear makes our life narrow and dark. It is at the root of all conflict, underlying much of our sorrow. Fear also blocks intimacy and love and, more than anything, disconnects us from the lovingkindness that is our true nature.



Even considering how prevalent fear is in our lives, it nonetheless remains one of the murkiest areas to deal with, in daily life as well as in practice. This may sound bleak, but what is really the worst thing about fear? Though it is hard to admit, especially if we see ourselves as deeply spiritual, the main reason we have an aversion to fear is that it is physically and emotionally uncomfortable. Woody Allen put this quite well when he said, “I don’t like to be afraid—it scares me.” We simply don’t want to feel this discomfort and will do almost anything to avoid it. But whenever we give in to fear, we make it more solid, and our life becomes smaller, more limited, more contracted. In a way, every time we give in to fear, we cease to truly live.



We’re often not aware of the extent to which fear plays a part in our lives, which means that the first stage of practicing with fear requires acknowledging its presence. This can prove to be difficult, because many fears may not be readily apparent, such as the fear driving our ambition, the fear underlying our depression, or, perhaps most of all, the fear beneath our anger. But the fact is, once we look beyond our surface emotional reaction, we will see that almost every negative emotion, every drama, comes down to one or more of the three most basic fears: the fear of losing safety and control, the fear of aloneness and disconnection, and the fear of unworthiness. Read on

Don't dwell on it ...

This sentence for me has to be one of the most useless things I've ever heard, it's a bit like saying to someone who is very depressed 'cheer up'! It's usually what people say to you to when they are sick of hearing about your story, yet again.

If there are unresolved issues from your past and they are causing you stress (which they usually do without fail), and in trying to resolve them you are in the habit of 'repeating yourself' in your actions, your words, your habits and feeling and thinking patterns, it's time to resolve them, for you.

There is one saying that I've seen a lot lately, which is:

If you are depressed you are living in the past.

If you are anxious you are living in the future.

If you are at peace you are living in the present ~ Lao Tzu

I like it when things are kept simple, but the sentiments expressed here are too simplistic for me and even a little smug if I'm being totally honest. I agree with Louise Hay (You Can Heal Your Life) when she says that “the point of power is in the present moment”, because that's the only place we can start from. I find it a lot more empowering than some of the sayings and philosophy going around about 'being in the moment' and so on. Many statements and philosophies lack an empathy and understanding for what many people are going through, in the present. The truth is, most of us want to move on, we just don't know how. It has also been shown that with trauma, memories are not processed for long term storage, so they are always there so to speak, in our short term memory, ever present, awaiting the time for us to fully experience them so we can resolve them. Try some of the following phrases to tap on (EFT short cut diagram and procedure):

Even though others want me to stop dwelling on ... and that makes me feel ... I completely accept how I feel

Even though I can't stop thinking about ... I am open to this being resolved

Even though I feel like a broken record ... the truth is I haven't dealt with ...

Even though I can't seem to move forward and that makes me feel ... I accept myself anyway

The curious paradox is, when I accept myself exactly as I am, then I can change ~ Carl Rogers

The Mind Body Connection

This is an excerpt taken from myshrink.com by Dr Suzanne La Combe:

In the world of brain research it has not been clinically helpful to distinguish mind from body for a long time. It's perhaps the most important implication of recent neuroscience research - you cannot understand or treat either one in isolation. This intimate relationship between the biological and the mental/emotional aspects of our being has been coined "the mind-body connection". 

When you have a thought, feel an emotion or take action on an impulse, your body responds. The emotional, neurological, glandular and immune systems are all wired together, speaking the same chemical language. Whatever happens in one system affects all others.

For the most part we are unaware of the influence that the mind has over the body, since its impact is overwhelmingly non-conscious. 

When we have a stimulating thought or feeling ("Oh my gosh, I forgot to turn off the stove!") neurochemicals are released into the bloodstream, changing the neurochemistry of the body. 

When habits in thinking and feeling are rigid and unchanging, the same hormonal responses are induced repeatedly in the body. These are ultimately driven into inflexible, uncomfortable states of "dis-ease". 

When you feel stressed, anxious or upset, the body tells you something isn't right. You don't have to be a doctor to know that high blood pressure or stomach ulcers frequently develop following a particularly stressful event, such as the loss of a loved one. 

In fact, when your emotional health is poor you may experience all sorts of physical complaints, such as back or chest pain, extreme fatigue, insomnia, palpitations, sweating, weight gain or loss. Read on

Tapping for frozen feelings

Even though this . . . is frozen, I now allow it to move in, through and out

Even though I couldn’t fully take in . . . I’m tapping for the courage to allow it to move in, through and out

Even though this . . . has not moved in a long time, I am now tapping to allow it to move in, through and out

Make sure to customise the phrases to suit you. EFT short cut diagram and procedure.

TH This frozen energy

EB In my gut (or anywhere else you feel it)

SE It feels hard

UE And dense

UN Because it hasn’t moved in a long time

UC It couldn’t move

CB I didn’t want it in the first place

UA I couldn’t digest it

TH So it got stuck

EB Halfway in, halfway out

SE I just couldn’t take it all in

UE So I froze

UN And that’s okay

UC I did my best

CB I just didn’t know what to do

UA Or feel

TH But now I do

EB Well at least I think I do

SE I can help this frozen energy move

UE With my intention

UN Energy moves naturally

UC When we let it

CB I now choose to let this energy do what it wants to do

UA And go where it wants to go

TH I feel a little afraid

EB Of what could happen

SE What if I feel overwhelmed?

UE Like I have in the past?

UN I can tap for the courage

UC To allow this energy to move

CB And to feel all the sensations

UA As it starts to move

TH And to know that I’ll be okay

EB More than okay

SE I choose to feel peace

UE I choose to feel gratitude

UN For all this

UC For the person I am

CB I choose to feel kindness

UA For me

The Nuts and Bolts of Sobriety

This is a post by Arthur Janov who writes a really great blog on what the true core issues behind various different symptoms are.

I kid you not when I say that the august journal Scientific American Mind, publishes some strange articles. This one, the “Nuts and Bolts of Emotional Sobriety” by Herbert Wray (March 2012), is about being sober. Persons must attain “emotional sobriety” before they get too far along; and that means—hold on!—you must learn to regulate negative feelings that can lead to discomfort, craving and ultimate relapse. The maxim is “Don’t think and don’t drink.” 

What the article goes on to say is that this is a lifelong effort and requires new ways of thinking. There are so many loose intervening variables involved, so many ill-defined notions that I hardly know where to start, except that this appears in an important scientific journal. But if we suss out the hidden text it is “thinking will make you well”. Oh yes, that is not exactly what they are saying but it really is. You need a new way of thinking and where does that come from? And by the way, where does thinking come from, in any case? Thinking is not so deep, not deep enough to change deeply embedded feelings that drive cravings. You can only agree with that notion if you do not understand where addiction comes from, and it is not, not, not from faulty logic, where you just need to change your attitudes, and voila. Ideas and attitudes are late arrivals in the brain and are never strong enough to combat feelings, instincts and sensations, which preceded them by millions of years in evolution. There was this life going on a long time before ideas came along. This is true in antiquity and in our personal development. And we hurt and imprint that hurt long before we have ideas to describe it. Read on