Emotional Health
The Collected EFT Articles of EFT Master Gw G w yneth Moss
First published by Gary Craig on www.emofree.com www.Emotional-Health.co.uk
Contents: These articles on the application of Emotional Freedom Techniques were written by Gwyneth Moss MA, EFT Master in 2006 and 2007 and were first published by Gary Craig, Originator of EFT on the www.emofree.com website. 1. The ABC Approach to EFT ............................. ..................................................... ........................ 4 2. Tapping Tapping on TREEs, TREEs, a Metaphor for for EFT ....... .............. ............... ............... ........... .... 11 3. Weeding Weeding your Emotional Garden with EFT ............................. 19 4. Creative Creative Uses of of the EFT Movie Movie Technique Technique ....... .............. .............. .............. ....... 23 Article Artic le 1 of 4: Movie Movie Technique Technique – Childhoo Childhood d Memory Memory ...... ............ ...... 23 Article Artic le 2: Movie Technique Technique – Presen Presentt Fear ....... .............. .............. ............. ...... 30 Article Artic le 3: Movie Technique Technique – Future Anxiety Anxiety ....... .............. .............. .......... ... 35 Article Artic le 4: Movie Technique Technique – Ficti Fictional onal Movie Movie ....... .............. .............. .......... ... 38 5. Emotion Emotion and Perceptio Perception: n: EFT makes makes it a Two Way Street Street ....... ......... 42 6. How to Handle a "Vague "Vague Feeling" with with EFT ....... .............. .............. .............. ....... 47 7. A Public Speaking Case where Language was the Issue.......... 50 8. Thoug Thoughts hts on on being being Specific Specific or or General General with with EFT EFT ....... .............. ............. ...... 53 9. Introducing Introducing the EFT EFT Imagineering Technique Technique......................... ......................... 57 10. Gwyneth Gwyneth Moss Discusses Discusses Suppor Supportt for Therapists Therapists ....... .............. ........... .... 80 11. A Humorous Humorous Reply to an EFT Skeptic Skeptic ....... ............... ............... .............. ............ ..... 90 12. Two Cats and a Puppy Puppy....... .............. ............... ............... ............... ............... ............... .......... .. 94 13. "How do I Get That Good?" Good?" ....... .............. ............... ............... .............. ............... ........... ... 99
www.Emotional-Health.co.uk
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www.eft-in-action.com In the summer of 2007, nine people came to Ilkley Healing Centre on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales for an extraordinary weekend of EFT therapy with Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master. These live therapy sessions are intended as inspiration and advanced learning for those already familiar with Emotional Freedom Techniques. Techniques. While the DVDs are not intended as introductory material, they provide insight into advanced techniques as Gwyneth uses her unique talent to gently guide each person through their own personal awakening.
0 £ 6 0. 0 o r 0 0 $ 1 2 9.
Full 9 DVD Set All 3 Volumes PLUS Bonus DVD
Sample Single DVD with EFT Master Gwyneth Moss, MA
with EFT Master Gwyneth Moss, MA CONTENTS: DVD 1 - Rosie: Regret for a Lost Love DVD 2 - Roger: Abused and Angry DVD 3 - Manuela: I Lost my Safe Person DVD 4 - John: The Injustice of Neuralgia DVD 5 - Rosanna: Fear for my Daughter DVD 6 - Gillian: Too Much Tragedy DVD 7 - Sabina: It's Not Safe to See Clearly DVD 8 - Roy: I'm Only Ninety Percent DVD 9 - Penny: I Can't Keep Hold of Money DVD 10 - FREE Bonus Interview DVD
0 £ 2 4. 0 o r 5 $ 4 9. 9
£ 9. 0 0 o r 0 $ 2 0. 0
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EFT In Action - Volume ONE
EFT In Action - Volume TWO
EFT In Action - Volume THREE
with EFT Master Gwyneth Moss, MA 3 DVD set
with EFT Master Gwyneth Moss, MA 3 DVD set
with EFT Master Gwyneth Moss, MA 3 DVD set
CONTENTS:
CONTENTS:
CONTENTS:
DVD 1 - Rosie: Regret for a Lost Love
DVD 4 - John: The Injustice of Neuralgia
DVD 7 - Sabina: It’s Not Safe to See Clearly
DVD 2 - Roger: Abused and Angry
DVD 5 - Rosanna: Fear for my Daughter
DVD 8 - Roy: I’m Only Ninety Percent
DVD 3 - Manuela: I Lost my Safe Person
DVD 6 - Gillian: Too Much Tragedy
DVD 9 - Penny: I Can’t Keep Hold of Money
1.
The ABC Approach to EFT
Hi Everyone, EFT Master Gwyneth Moss provides a simple structure to the EFT process that helps people find the "words that work." Hugs, Gary
By Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master Many times people ask “how ask “how do I use EFT to help with… with….” .” This question is often asked with the expectation that there is a library of set-up phrases and if only they can be given the right words then EFT will work wonders for them. Well using EFT EFT effectively isn’t quite like that. There is no library library of the right right words that that fit each behaviour, emotion emotion symptom or medical diagnosis. There are no right or wrong wrong words; there are only the words that work. And the words that work for one person are not necessarily the words that work for another. another. We are all unique unique human beings beings with unique unique life experiences and unique unique emotional responses. So ‘the words words that work’ are individual and subjective: the words that work are the words that describe and tune a person into their own unique emotional experience. I’d like to introduce to you the teaching tool that I use to communicate EFT to my clients and trainees to help them find the words that work. I call call it the ABC of EFT and it helps to guide a person through the EFT process by making it easier to remember the stages of the process and to gain some understanding about why we do what we do in EFT.
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A is for Awareness . This is the ever so important important pre-tapping pre-tapping stage in which we use our awareness to tune into the unique and individual subjective experience of this particular person with this particular problem. problem. This awareness is where the words words come from. B is for Balancing Balancing..
When we rub rub the sore sore spot spot or tap the karate karate
chop and say say the set up phrase “even though… though… I accept myself” myself” what we are effectively doing is balancing the energy and balancing the meaning of the problem. C is for Clearing Clearing.. As we tap the EFT tapping points using using a few reminder words to keep tuned in we are clearing the disturbance – the “zzzt” that those words give rise to. And what about the D that follows A , B and C? Well D is for test for change and then Do it Again! Again ! ABC is nice nice and easy to remember and Awareness, Balancing, Balancing, Clearing and Do it Again is descriptive of the steps of the EFT process. Lets now get into a little more depth with A and B and C. A is for Awareness Usually when we have a problem emotion colouring our thoughts and feelings we are are trying to ignore ignore it or push it away. away. This is because what we are used to is having no control or influence over our emotions and the way that they drive our behaviour and thoughts. We can thus become scared of our own emotions. However EFT allows us to effectively, quickly and painlessly balance the energy of our emotions so that we can think clearly and act resourcefully. Knowing this it becomes safe to approach approach and observe an emotion. In the Awareness stage we begin by observing
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with a kind of detached curiosity. curiosity. Like being on safari and watching watching the wild animals from a hide. Awareness is about asking the questions a detective would ask and being observant observant for the details of the answers. Awareness questions are commonsense questions that seek specific information about what’s out there that sets of the problem and how the problem is experienced internally. internally. Questions like: “What sets that off?” “When is it worst?” “When you get like that what’s it like?” “What do you have to think about to feel like that?” “When (or where, or with whom) does it happen worst?” “How do you know you are afraid?” “Where do you feel that in your body?” The words of the answers reveal how this particular person experiences this particular emotion in response to this particular trigger. B is for Balancing The words we gather from Awareness feed into the Balancing stage in which we contain the problem in a sentence that makes it safe to hold. Someone called called the EFT set up ‘wrapping your problem in a blessing’ and indeed indeed that is what we do. We can all hold a pebble so close to our eye that we block out the sky and we can all give a problem so much of our attention that we lose sight of what is good and true and joyful in our lives.
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Simply saying “Even saying “Even though I
} I truly and deeply accept myself” is myself” is like moving the pebble to arms length. It doesn’t go go away but now both sky and pebble can can be seen at the same same time. The balancing words words simply put something about the problem and something about self acceptance into the same sentence. ‘Even though...’ is an elegant way to do this and AND will work just fine as in “I have and I’m loved.” C is for Clearing Most of us started out with the full sequence of the EFT basic recipe tapping all the face and body points and the fingers and the nine gamut but any of you who have seen Gary’s recent (and excellent) work will have realised that much of the time EFT gets results just with a short cut. I only put the face and and body points on the ABC sheet for my clients because that is usually all we use in the session and usually all that is needed. As we tap the points we keep attention focussed on the problem by repeating a few of the words we used in the balancing statement. These don’t have to be the same on each point and if you find your intuition is varying varying the words then go with it. Beware though of jumping about all over the place and onto different aspects without fully clearing any. A few variations I add from the basic eyebrow to underarm sequence is to either finish the clearing round by returning to the collarbone or finishing on the top of the head with the finger tips or by slapping the inside of the the wrist. EFT is very flexible flexible when it comes to which which points to include or or miss out. I like to give the collarbone point extra attention because for many people it is their “one point” which which seems to have extra effect. Often on the first few
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iterations of EFT I tap round the clearing points for two or three rounds, as we go I’m watching my client closely and letting my intuition guide me as to how much or how fast to tap. ABC in Action Sally came to me saying that she had become highly nervous and simple things like like going out to the shops shops had become become a struggle. In the calm of my consulting room I asked her “What would you have to think about about now to feel that nervous feeling here?” She replied “My husband and I are divorcing and I only have to think about the letters from his lawyer to feel all jittery” as she spoke she put her hand to her chest. This awareness gave us two pieces of valuable information to form some balancing words for EFT: the outside trigger of seeing the lawyer’s letters and and the inside response of jittery jittery in her chest. chest. Just one of these would have been enough but we used both and our balancing words were: “Even though I feel all jittery jittery in my chest chest seeing those lawyers letters I really am OK and I really do accept myself.” We then tapped tapped around the EFT clearing points points saying “lawyers letters” and “jittery in my chest” for a couple of rounds ending on the collarbone (I noticed that she visibly softened as she tapped the collarbone). I asked her then to imagine seeing one of those letters and she laughed and said “They are just like children playing games and using long scary words to frighten each other” Now this was progress for Sally and she looked visibly brighter but my intuition suspected there was more work to be done so back to the awareness stage stage only with more detail. I asked her to focus on on the letter from the lawyer as if her husband’s voice were reading it and asked “is there anything about that that could still get to you?” “It’s not his voice she replied “its that put down sneering look that
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makes me, a top top saleswoman, saleswoman, feel 6 inches tall”. tall”. Here is another aspect and Sally has given us the words for the next balancing statement “Even though his put down sneering look makes me feel 6 inches tall I really do accept myself, I’m a grown woman and the top in sales.” We followed this with a round of “sneering “sneering look” and and we both sneered as we tapped tapped and ended up laughing.
I asked asked her
to test by imagining meeting with her husband, she could stay calm thinking about that but then became angry remembering a business meeting several years before when she had been belittled. belittled. So we put that through ABC and continued for the rest of the hour until she left calm and cheerful clutching her ABC sheet and confident about using it. I hope you find ABC useful and share it with your clients and friends. Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master
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Awareness: What bothers you? Notice what tension, pain, memory or craving is there. Name it. Be really specific and detailed. How does it make you feel? Can you give it an intensity number on a scale of 0 to 10?
Balancing: Say three times out loud as you tap the side of your hand (karate place)….”Even though I …(describe the problem).....I truly and deeply accept myself”
Clearing: Tap with two fingers on the eight acupressure points saying a few reminder words about the problem “this problem” to focus your attention. Tap the crown of your head last with all finger tips.
Now….Take a deep breath and close your eyes for a moment. Tune into the problem. Notice what has changed changed or what emerges. Measure again and repeat ABC on the remainder of the problem or on another aspect of the problem.
8 Crown of Head 1 Star Startt of E eb ebro row w 2 Oute Outerr corn corne er of e e 3 Under centre of eye eye 4 Above top lip 5 Middle of chin 6 Knob at end of collar bone 7 Under arm at bra strap level
The ABC of EFT by Gwyneth Gwyneth Moss EFT Master,
www.Emotional-Health.co.uk 10
2.
Tapping on TR EEs, a Metaph or for EFT
Hi Everyone, EFT Master Gwyneth Moss, from the UK, spells out a useful metaphor that expands upon the tree example that I use in The EFT Course. Interestingly, she uses this model to teach us how to craft useful EFT Set-up phrases. Please know that this article assumes that you have familiarity with The EFT Course.
Hugs, Gary
By Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master Part 1 In his excellent article in the tutorial series, http://www.emofree.com/tutorial/ http://www.emo free.com/tutorial/tutorbtwo.htm, tutorbtwo.htm, Gary compares an emotional problem to a forest of trees. In my teaching I like to extend this metaphor of the trees and the forest to offer my trainees a useful model that can act as a guide to help navigate through an EFT session. Our emotional forests are filled with healthy trees of joy, compassion, love and resourcefulness and yet there are also weedlike trees of fear, shame and anger that, though they may have been helpful once, have now become a problem. We can use EFT to
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clear these unwanted trees so that our emotional forests can flourish. EFT Newcomers often ask "How do I find the right words to use?" Well, the beauty of thisTREE thisTREE model is that it helps you to craft the words of the set up phrases. I'd like to share the TREE model with you and to take you through it with the illustration of Becky and her encounter with the Rat from Gary's excellent EFT Course DVD. T-R-E-E T-R-EE spells Tree . T is for Trunk or Trigger. Trigger . The T runk of the tree is the bit above the ground that you can see. Every emotional arousal has something out there that sets it off, a trigger. It could be something we see, hear, touch, smell or taste or it could equally be something that we imagine or remember seeing, hearing, touching, smelling or tasting. Our emotional systems can't tell the difference between what we imagine, what we remember and what is coming in through our senses. For Becky the t rigger, the T runk of her TREE TREE,, is the word "rat" as Gary says "what would you do if someone put a rat in this room?" Becky does not not need to see see a rat. It is enough enough for her to hear the word and imagine a rat in the room. R is for Roots. The R oots of a tree are underground; from the surface you can't see them. When Becky hears the word "rat" she does not stop and think about why rats are scary or what they remind her of; she just gets scared instantly and automatically. In that moment Becky is not conscious of memories of previous experiences with rats but below the level of her awareness a little bit of her brain called the
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amygdala will be matching that trigger to the roots of past emotional experiences. Somehow, long ago, Becky learned to be afraid of rats. It could be that she was surprised by one as a child or saw a rat-infested horror film when she was too young, or even that her mother was afraid of rats and she learned by imitation. We don't know and we don't need to. Whatever happened back then, Becky doesn't consciously remember that now but her mind-body system does. The memory is what we call an implicit memory and like the R oots of the TREE it is buried and not apparent from the surface. E is for Energy. Energy . E nergy is the life force of the TREE TREE.. Our energy system gets disturbed, goes "zzzt" by responding to the R oot memory as if it was happening over again for real, rather than to what is actually happening out there now. As Gary holds out his hands and says "Imagine there's a rat right there now!" Becky's energy system is going "zzzt". That "zzzt" is not in response to a friendly guy like Gary standing there with his hands held out. That "zzzt" is in response to something that happened long ago and that scared her in a big way. E is for Experience. When E nergy goes "zzzt" we get one or more of the following E xperiences: an emotion, like feeling afraid, angry, ashamed or whatever; a change in physiology such as tension, nausea or sweating; a firmly held emotionally laden belief; or a behavior such as running away, hitting out, reaching for chocolate or biting nails. For Becky as her E nergy system goes "zzzt" in the presence of the imaginary rat she experiences:
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7 an emotion she calls fear; 7 her physiology expresses the "zzzt" as sweaty palms, heart pounding; 7 the strongly-held belief belief "I "I am afraid of rats"; 7 the behavior of running away. The TREE chain for Becky is a Trunk Trunk,, the word rat, which matches to a Root (unknown past experience) that sets off the Energy "zzzt" that she Experiences as fear, sweaty palms and running away. Now how do we use this TREE model to help craft the words to use in EFT? Well because the T , the R , the E and the E are all connected we can craft our words around any of them and get to the "zzzt". When Becky came up on the stage Gary started with the most obvious and crafted the words around the trigger "rat" as in "Even though I have this challenge with rats..." Becky'sEE Becky'sEE 's, her 0-10 intensity level changed, her E xperience was different and so Gary brought in a real live rat as a test: was the TREE chain still linked? Did the T trigger still set off the chain and result in a problem E xperience? Well we all saw Becky happily stroking the rat and having it lick her finger. The test showed that the TREE was gone. Gary could equally well have started by crafting words around her E xperience as in "Even though my palms are sweaty and my heart pounding..." (This is what we do in Chasing the Pain) or her behavior as in "Even though I want to run away..." Very often starting with the T runk (trigger) or the E xperience will be sufficient to clear the unwanted TREE and (as with Becky's case) after tapping a few rounds for the Trigger we can test and the chain
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is no longer set off. Sometimes the process seems to get stuck and then we need to go searching for the R oot (what we may call the core issue). So here are some simple guiding points for clearing unwanted TREEs.. Start with crafting some words around the T runk (trigger) TREEs or the E xperience as it happens in the present and do several rounds of EFT, checking for further aspects and getting more specific after each round, until the problem is no longer a problem. If the problem "sticks" then look for the R oots or past experiences and tap for those until they are no longer a problem. Then come back to the present and test: does the T rigger still give rise to the problem E xperience? TREEs TREE s can also generate further trees. The E xperience can feedback and act as a T rigger for a secondary TREE and so create an unwanted forest. Thus an emotional energy disturbance that is experienced as resentment can trigger further roots of resentment and set off further waves of "zzzt"s. This will be the subject of a future article. Gwyneth Moss
Part 2 In my first article in this series I introduced you to the TREE metaphor as means of navigating through an EFT session. The Trunk of the TREE is the trigger, whatever is out there or imagined or remembered to be out there. The Trunk connects to the Root, the emotional event of the past, which may be consciously remembered or may be a hidden or implicit memory. The Root sets off the energy disturbance or "zzzt", the first E of TREE. The "zzzt"
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is then manifested as an Experience (emotion, belief, behavior or physiology) the second E of TREE. Forests of unwanted TREEs are created when the E of experience itself becomes a trigger and creates more trees. For example, if in response to some trigger (somebody shouting say) the experience is a particular behavior, like nail biting, the nail biting itself then becomes the trigger for emotions and beliefs about nail biting. We've all heard people say "I hate myself when I bite my nails" and of course "I hate myself" then sets off more emotions, beliefs and behaviors. This happens because our memories are stored in our memory banks with emotional tags. When we feel a particular emotion, memories with a similar tag are accessed. This is why when we feel happy we can remember all the good times and when we feel sad then its like life has always been nothing but sadness. So it goes like this: something triggers frustration; frustration triggers nail biting; nail biting triggers "I hate myself because I can't stop this"; "I hate myself" triggers memories of failure; memories of failure triggers tears and so on. If these chains continue uninterrupted then this is how unwanted forests spread. These secondary trees can generate lots of emotional arousal that obscures what it's all about. Thankfully with EFT we can clear many of those secondary trees to get to the heart of the matter. Here is an example. Example: Clearing Trees to ge t to the Root Kay (not her real name) is a top level manager in a large organization and was off work with stress. She came to me with a whole forest of emotions: e motions: confused, tearful, feeling out-of-control and not able to find a reason for her behavior other than her own miserable shortcomings. Kay was ready to tell me about everything
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that was wrong with her and all the woes of her life. Rather than catalogue her many ills I asked her when this episode had started or got worse and she said that she had been off work since a recent board meeting in which her department had been heavily criticized despite good performance in difficult circumstances. Since then she had fallen apart. We started by tapping on her general manifestations of emotion "Even though I'm tearful since the board meeting...." and "Even though I wake up shaking since the board meeting..." after each round she was calmer, we were reducing the secondary trees but had not yet got to the central tree. When she had calmed down enough to do so, I asked her to imagine being in the board meeting and to ask herself: "What was the worst thing about that?" She sat quietly and then said strongly "It's not fair!" so I asked her "What does its-not-fair remind you of? What was happening the first time you ever felt that its-not-fair feeling?" We were rewarded with a memory, a Root. When she was 12 her mother threw her alcoholic father out of the house. On a rare visit to Dad, just before her birthday, he promised her a watch next time if she was a good girl. Well she was a very good girl but Dad never gave her the watch and a few weeks after her birthday she saw her mother wearing a watch and concluded "That's mine, it's not fair". We tapped around the specifics of what she saw and heard. Then I brought in a reframe, referring to her mother: "what does a single mother bringing up 4 children on her own and holding down two jobs need a watch for? No, a twelve year old needs a watch much, much more." This had Kay laughing out loud as she tapped. I then brought her back to the boardroom meeting and found that her emotion had gone right down, and out came a change of perception that 30 minutes ago would have seemed a miracle: "So what if they
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criticize, I'm retiring in two years and it's going to be good to take a backseat and wind down and plan to do what I enjoy." This is an example of how tapping on the experience of the emotions can reduce the secondary trees and so allow the main root to emerge for specific tapping and permanent clearing. Had we worked on her many tearful feelings Kay would no doubt have slept better but the "It's not fair" would have been re-triggered by the next obstacle she encountered. Kay made a contribution to the Quotes page of my website she said: "A lifelong life long trauma has been unlocked and unblocked. I can see myself on top of a mountain and there are lots of roads ahead." Gwyneth Moss EFT Master
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3.
W eeding your Emotional Garden Garden w ith EFT
Hi Everyone, EFT Master Gwyneth Moss expands on a useful EFT metaphor and details her pursuit of a core issue. Note how she tailors some offcolor language to inject humor into the session (she knew the client well). Hugs, Gary
By Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master Just as our physical health requires cultivation through good nutrition, rest and exercise, our emotional health requires us to use our imagination and thinking skills and to de-clutter ourselves of emotional baggage. The past is to be learnt from, not lived in. Maintenance of our emotional gardens is a process of weeding and planting and EFT is an ideal gardening tool. We all have our emotional garden and like any gardener we choose the look and feel of the place and what we wish to have growing there. Is it formal and and structured, structured, or wild and rambling? Is it a practical garden of fruits and vegetables or a decorative place of delicate flowers? Is it wide spacious spacious lawns lawns or a crowded crowded riot of of colour and variety. Or is it all of these? An old friend of mine who’s who’s garden is scarcely distinguishable from nature once said “One person’s weed is another person’s wildflower”
Only the gardener
can decide what plant belongs in their garden and what plant does not.
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Gardens need tending, they need care and maintenance. maintenance. The earth must be watered and fed with good nutrients. nutrients. There must be light and air. Plants need space space to grow or may need pruning when they grow too fast. fast. And of course course we need to pull up the weeds. Those who garden will know that sometimes you grasp a weed, pull gently and the whole thing comes up roots and all and doesn’t grow back. Other times we pull on the weed weed and the stem stem breaks off leaving the root in the ground and the weed will grow back again. Some weeds we can’t shift at all by pulling and need to dig down to get them out. Some weeds protect protect themselves with with thorns or have other unpleasant ways of making us keep our distance. So it is with EFT.
Many of us have experienced experienced applying applying a few
simple rounds of EFT to a problem, without any questions as to its cause or origin origin and it disappears disappears never to return. Becky and the fear of rats featured in The EFT Course on DVD is a classic example. Or we may apply EFT and the symptoms symptoms clear clear temporarily only to return a few hours or or days later. And of course course there are those surprising times when EFT has no effect effe ct on the symptom at all and we need to dig deeper with detective’s questions to find the core issue (the root) that supports the symptom. Soraya came on one of my EFT workshops and used EFT to give temporary relief to her back pain and was pleased with the results. Recently,
she called me hours hours before a planned meeting to say
that her back had let her down, she was lying on the floor, mad with frustration and pain, and predicted that she would be for the next 48 hours. I started suggesting suggesting how she she might tap to help herself and then found that it was easier to start tapping with her than to describe to her what to do.
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We started with “Even though I’m so frustrated that my back has let me down, deep, deep down I’m all right” and as we tapped for frustration the emotion emotion shifted to aloneness. She said “It’s “It’s about being alone, so profoundly and deeply and awfully alone” so we tapped with that referring to “oceans of aloneness in my back”. This led to a body feeling of blackness around her navel and she said “I think this is something something about my my birth”. I asked her to guess what is was about her birth that gave her that blackness and she told me that her mother is from a culture that gives a high value to sons and to the mothers’ of sons and that her mother must have shown extreme disappointment when her eyes first met her daughter’s eyes. At this stage, not wanting to get too serious and knowing my client well I went for humor and offered “Even though when my mother first saw her baby she didn’t didn’t see a willy, she was looking for a willy and she didn’t see a willy, willy, there had to be a willy for Mother, tough shit Mother, we don’t always get what we want, its me mother, you’ve got me” and “Even though mother wanted a willy and mother’s family wanted a willy and mother’s country wanted a willy and mother’s culture wanted a willy, tough shit Mother, tough shit family, tough tough shit culture, culture, you’ve got me, yes me” and “Even though Mother gave me life and wanted me to live it on her terms and her family’s terms and her culture’s terms, tough shit mother, its my life now and I’m living living it my way”. way”. By this stage stage we are both both laughing and Soraya has found a completely new perspective on her birth, her mother and her relationship relationship to her mother’s culture. culture. Her voice has lost the blaming frustration and the wining sadness and is full and clear. I ask her what what her back is like now and she says “lighter and happier” and then she says: “that would have taken years of painful psychotherapy, how on earth did we get there in 10 minutes?”
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Did we get to the root? I don’t know, know, time will tell and I do know that we got much further than simply tapping with “this sharp pain”. Soraya reported reported the next day that her back was much less stiff and more fluid and that her roommate reported that she looked much better. Gwyneth Moss EFT Master
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4.
Creative Creativ e Uses of the EFT Movie Techniq ue
Hi Everyone, As EFT Master Gwyneth Moss of the UK says, "The EFT Movie Technique is a valuable and trustworthy workhorse with many applications." In this 4 part article she explores its many features. This is a solid series worthy of study by everyone. Hugs, Gary
Article 1 of 4: Movie Technique – Childhood M emory The Movie Technique is a core technique of EFT, a valuable and trustworthy workhorse with many applications.
It is the most
important EFT Technique to take away from your Level One training. This series of articles illustrates the use of the Movie Technique for a person is troubled by a difficult memory; for an everyday challenge; for an anxiety about a specific future situation and for a very intense fear with no apparent cause.
In this first article, Andy Gross one of my Level 3 students, shows us here how to use the movie technique effectively and respectfully for Mary who is troubled by a difficult memory and I have interspersed my observations as a commentary.
When Mary (not her real name) first presented her ‘problem’ she stated that she had never been able to tell anyone in full what had happened and she had only ever told two people and then not in full. The event occurred when she was six years old (Mary is now 40 years) and she could only refer to it as ‘My step father did something unpleasant’. Her SUD (level of emotional upset) was a 10 out of 10. She was visibly distressed. distressed.
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Now at this stage many of us will be making assumptions about Mary and what happened when she was six and what her step father did.
You will will notice notice that even if Andy did make make those
assumptions he did not at this stage ask any questions about what happened. She was visibly distressed distressed and his first priority was to help her to be calmer and not to upset her further.
EFT shatters
that old assumption that therapy has to be long drawn-out painful – as EFT helpers we aim to help quickly and as painlessly as possible.
This was her first introduction to EFT so I explained to her it was like acupuncture for psychology only we don’t use needles but we tap with our own fingers on certain meridian points and that allows the release of blocked blocked and stuck emotions. emotions.
I showed showed her what I
meant by demonstrating tapping on myself and showing her how I had used EFT myself to feel calmer about something that had worried me.
This is a really nice nice way to introduce introduce EFT.
It can be difficult to to
explain EFT just with words but people get it when they have an experience.
Andy realizes that Mary is in a highly aroused
emotional state and is probably not going to listen to his explanation.
But people do need some understanding of the
process before we start asking them to tap themselves so Andy neatly solves this problem by tapping on himself to show her what he is going to ask her to do and telling her a story about how it helped him personally.
I let her know that if she was uncomfortable with saying what had happened we could deal with it in different ways. I told her she didn’t have to tell me anything she did not want to tell me and could make what happened as like a video clip and give it a title and
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we could work with that, or we could ‘tell the story’ emphasizing that at any time she got upset we would stop and tap until the emotion settled. I told her this was not about enduring the incident again as once was was enough!
She decided that she just wanted wanted to
give it a name and didn’t want to tell her story.
EFT is to me the most respectful and person-centered of therapies. We can allow the person privacy privacy and still still help them. Andy gives an an excellent pre-frame by telling her that she does not have to endure the incident again and that she does not have to tell him anything that she does not feel comfortable telling him.
We began by giving the movie clip the title – ‘My Step Father Did Something Unpleasant’ and tapped with the title: “Even though my step father did something unpleasant I truly and deeply accept myself” And “Even though my step father did something unpleasant when I was six years old I truly and deeply accept myself” We did a round three times and the 10 came down to 8. We continued tapping and I changed the words words to: “When I was six my step father was unpleasant to me” Mary said “He didn’t do something to me he did something in front of me to someone someone else”. I established that that she didn’t know who the other person was and that what her step father did was wrong and she knew it was wrong. SUD still about 8.
The safest (and easiest) way to use EFT is to simply reflect back a person’s exact words through through the EFT EFT process. We use their exact words because these are the words their deeper mind chose and therefore the words that best tune in the emotion so that the tapping can clear it.
Counselors are trained to paraphrase paraphrase and
change the words or offer their own words. words. In EFT it is important important to use the person’s person’s exact words. words. Here Andy is working in the dark as
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he does not at this stage know what the incident is – his assumption that something was done to Mary is an assumption that we would all make, however it is off the mark and Mary tells him so. It is important to let the person you are tapping with know that if the words you are asking them to repeat do not fit for them then they can change them.
We continued tapping: “Even though my step father did something unpleasant in front of me when I was six…” and “Even though my step father did something to someone else that was unpleasant I was only six and I knew that what my step father did was wrong…” SUD was was now now down down to 5. I asked asked what makes it a five. She then then began to tell her story. I let her tell it and kept checking for verbal and non verbal clues as to any change in emotions.
Much of the skill of EFT is in asking simple questions. questions. Andy asks a great question “What “What is it about about that that makes it a 5?” 5?” This is a really good question to get more specific which still gives the person a let out if they don’t want to tell the story - Mary responds by telling him what happened. Very often as as the intensity of emotion subsides with tapping a person who previously declared that they did not want to tell the story starts to do so, spontaneously, without being asked. Andy watches her closely as she tells it and stops stops to tap when the emotion rises.
She told me her step father had a shop and they were going to the shop in his car. He had been drinking and was drunk. This was not uncommon. She got to ‘approaching the shop’ and then her SUD’s changed. She went between 8 and 10. We stopped and tapped: “Even though I’m six and my step father is driving whilst drunk…” and “Even though as a six year old I know this is wrong…” and “I’m just a six year old passenger with my drunk step father…”
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After a couple of rounds her SUD came down to a 4. She was happy to continue with the story. We backed up to a point with no emotional attachment and she carried on. We got to where an old man walked in front of her step father’s car as he was going to park when the crescendo rose………“Even though the old man stepped out in front of the car….he should have looked where he was going”
After a couple of rounds the SUD came down to 3. We backed up and continued the story. She got to where her step father got out of the car and punched punched the old man who fell to the floor.
Another
crescendo, stopped the story and continued tapping: “Even though the old man didn’t look where he was going….” “He had the audacity audacity to step into my step fathers parking space…” space…” “I’m just a six year old watching my drunken stepfather loose control” “My stepfather lost his temper and the old man found it” “My stepfather punched the old man” “He stepped in my stepfathers space” “I had to watch this unpleasant event” “I was just a six year old girl there was nothing I could do.”
The SUD came down to 3 and a little laughter. She continued with the story. We stopped a few more times for different crescendo’s (when she saw blood where the old man hit his head on the pavement, The feeling of being helpless, Running into the shop where her stepfather’s girlfriend was (not her mother!) where she screamed for help and called for an ambulance). ambulance). During the later part I included some positive linguistics during the tapping
“I wonder how many other six year olds would have known what to do”
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“‘How many six year olds when really scared would have got an ambulance” “‘I know adults that would have fainted at the sight of blood” “‘How brave of a six year old to do what was right”
Eventually she was able to ‘tell her story’ all the way through without any crescendo’s and her final SUD was a 2. I asked what was it that made it a 2? she said “because I can’t believe that the feelings have gone”!
There are a number of other issues that Mary is having continuing sessions for. She had a rough time in her childhood and this session is only the tip of the iceberg. As a first introduction to EFT she was amazed that something she had held for so many years could have gone so quickly (The session was about 1 hour). I saw her recently for more treatment and asked if there had been any further issues with the old man who didn’t look where he was going. She laughed and said the emotion of that memory had completely gone!! gone!! Happy Tapper!!
Andy did a really good job with the Movie Technique so let me summarize the steps involved.
First,, isolate a specific event. You can do this by asking “If what First happened was a video clip how long would would it play for?”
If the
answer is longer than minutes then ask if there was a worst bit and how long that that would be. be. Then treat each bad bit as a single video clip.
Second , give a name name to the video clip and tap on the name. I ask “If that was on a DVD disc what name would you write on the disc to identify that specifically? specifically? Here you don’t want want to use a general
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word like “Betrayal” which could expand to include any and every betrayal.
“Betrayal by by John” or “Betrayal “Betrayal at the Gym” is specific. specific.
Ask them to say the name and get a number or some other measure for how how much that gets to them. Use EFT for for a couple of rounds with the name of the event until the SUDs (Subjective Units of Distress) number is decreased.
Third,, ask them to narrate the movie, tapping whenever intensity Third rises.
Start the narration narration before the bad bad stuff stuff at an an ordinary ordinary
moment and tell them that they are to stop and freeze frame if they feel their emotion emotion rising. Watch them them closely because they will try to tough tough it out. out.
At any stopping point tap with whatever is
happening at that point of the story and use their exact words. Back up to before the stopping point and start the narration again checking that that they are now now ok at that point.
Continue in this
manner through the movie.
Fourth , ask them to tell it again to test that there are no further aspects. Telling the story again without intense emotion gives the person confidence that something has indeed changed (the story may still be unpleasant but it no longer has the effect that it did previously).
And the helper gains the confidence that all the
aspects have been cleared and that the emotions of that specific event will no longer be triggered in the present.
You may use this technique for a specific memory that is at the root of a problem, often a memory from childhood, or for a memory of an incidence of pain or panic or for a fictional, made-up event that would be fitting context for a problem or for a future event that gives rise rise to anxiety such as an interview.
In the next article is an
example of using the movie technicque for an agoraphobic.
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Article 2: Movie Techniqu e – P resent Fear
Here is a second example of the Movie Technique from my student Penny Crawford. Crawford. The example in the first article article dealt effectively with a difficult childhood memory, in this example Penny starts by making a movie out of a current problem.
My client G asked me if I could help him as he has been suffering from agoraphobia for about 8 years and cannot go down the road alone. He would suffer a panic attack and always needs someone to come with him, in which case he is absolutely ok to go anywhere.
G knew about meridians so I began the session by explaining how EFT had developed from understandings from Chinese Acupuncture. Then I explained about how we experience an emotion and that it is seen as “disturbance” “disturbance” of the mind-body mind-body energy system. I told him about how EFT tunes in and clears the excess ZZZZ of strong emotions and severs the emotional link between an event in the past and the present time. I explained how how we have neuron neuron pathways which the brain will frequent more and more often as a habitual pattern so that it becomes easier and easier to get certain actions, sounds, sounds, etc associated associated with certain certain feelings. G was quite quite happy with my explanation and eager to find out what we could do to help him.
Penny builds a bridge to EFT EFT with her explanation explanation here. G knows about meridians so she tells him that EFT has its roots in acupuncture. He is a thinking thinking man so she gives a rational and reasoned explanation. explanation. In the previous example example the person person was distressed so a visual example was more accessible for them.
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I showed him the tapping sequence and then asked him how he felt when he thought thought about going going down the the road. I asked him to make a video clip of the last time he had attempted to go down the road alone and we tapped for a round on “Even though I can’t go down the road alone…” alone…” Then starting from the safety of home I asked him to narrate the move and to stop and freeze frame as soon as he he got an emotional emotional response. He got to the bottom of of his road and and stopped and told told me he felt “a fear of panic”. panic”. He said he felt like he was going to “fall off the earth and I can’t feel my body properly” He scaled it at 8. We tapped on “Even though I feel frightened that I am going to panic and fall off the earth I truly and deeply love and accept myself” we went through the sequence and he went down to a 5.
During the second round he interrupted me and told me he remembered the first time it happened, which was 8 years ago in Brighton. He had a hangover hangover and was was walking down down the road feeling full of remorse and guilt and suddenly “out of nowhere” this feeling of panic and fear of leaving his body body overcame him. him. We tapped on “Even though I panicked and felt like I was going to leave my body” which which he scaled at 8. Three rounds of of tapping on that brought it down to a 1….
Often when we use the Movie technique to make a movie of a current symptom or problem it brings to consciousness a relevant memory. Penny handles this earlier memory effectively by simply reflecting back G’s words, and then brings G back to the movie they are working with. with. It is fine to go with earlier earlier memories as they arise however it is part of the role of the helper in managing the process to remember to come back to where you started and not to keep jumping from one thing to another.
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We went back to his movie of going to the shops and he stopped by the wall at the bottom of the road and felt 7 for “Even though the wall seems ominous and threatening …what if it falls on me? ….it feels like it won’t protect me…which went to a 2 after 2 rounds, which he felt quite ok with. He carried on down to the the main road and felt that if there were cars parked there he would feel protected by them. He then begun to feel light-headed, which he said said would precede a panic attack. This he scaled at 5 and we tapped on “Even though being on the main road makes me feel fe el lightheaded and I am worried I will get a panic attack” which went to a 3 after 2 rounds. He then said he felt worried about what people would think about him if he was behaving strangely and that he felt a dread in his stomach about about getting a panic panic attack. Scaled at 8 we tapped on “Even though I am worried about what people might think and I dread getting a panic panic attack. … Worried what what people think….will think….will I look really stupid…..what will I do?.... how will I behave?...what if I cant get home again?...which went down to 0 really quickly after 2nd round.
Working with the movie brings up the aspects of his experience expe rience of panic attacks and his beliefs about them. Penny again reflects back his words and deals with each aspect as it arises. She keeps going till they get to a 0.
He then said he felt odd because he couldn’t really feel anything and that confused confused him quite quite a lot. He tried really hard to get the feeling of dread back and was rather put out that he couldn’t, he thought he was doing something wrong so I reassured him that EFT would have that effect and that actually it was simply unfamiliar for him to be without the dread which had been his companion for so long.
He was was ok to carry on. I asked him what actually came up
for him if he thought about the panic and he told me that the first
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time it happened preceded a nervous breakdown/psychotic episode which meant he felt suicidal and that he was terrified of getting that way again. So his biggest biggest fear was actually fear of panicking because he associated associated it with the nervous breakdown. breakdown. He had taken quite a long time to recover and had to have medication.
Next thing we tapped on was (His words) “Even though I am scared of breaking down and going mad and feeling suicidal I truly and deeply love and accept myself just as I am right now” now” He scaled at 10 on that and after 3 rounds went to 3….I am really scared….I might go mad….I might break down….my head might go into confusion….what if I went mad?....what mad?....what would I do then?..... He then said “well then I would have rely on my parents and be a perpetual invalid and scaled right up to a 10. So we tapped tapped on (His words) “Even though the thought of of “that” happening happening means my life would not be worth living I truly and deeply love and accept myself” after which we got to a point where he got confused again, broke off the tapping to say he couldn’t actually feel anything again ( I took that to be a 0) and that it was weird and that his brain felt “Bluuuuggg” (his word). word).
He scaled scaled that at a 10 (didn’t (didn’t like it at all)
so we tapped on “Even though my brain feels fe els bluuuugg I truly and deeply love and accept myself anyway just as I am.. Went to 0 in one round and again he said he felt confused without the bad feelings.
I decided that as he had reached 0 on several aspects we had probably done enough for the first session and just wanted to check out the statements he had tapped on earlier to make sure they still scaled low so went back to “I feel light headed and dread panicking when I am on the main road,” which he didn’t feel anything about. Then he said “I am scared I will get a nervous breakdown like I did before and feel suicidal” which also didn’t bring up any feelings. fe elings.
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And lastly he said “relying on my parents and being a perpetual invalid “and that didn’t bring up any feelings either.
Using the earlier set up statements is a good way to test. These are the words that earlier in the session expressed this man’s greatest fears and now he can say them without significant emotion. This gives him confidence confidence that something has has changed and gives Penny confidence that those aspects that were worked on with EFT have held. People who have have had fear and dread as a constant companion can find it difficult to remember what it is like to be without them and change needs to happen in bite sized chunks so Penny sensibly concludes the session at this point and sets him some tapping homework.
I told him that maybe not having feelings around these things felt really confusing because he was so used to them being there and that he would get used to the “peace” inside. I gave him some homework to do, which was to continue to tap every day on anything and everything that makes him feel anxious, regardless of how silly he might think it is and to make a note of the scale and how much he could bring it down – I asked him to do a minimum of three rounds per set up statement regardless of confusion or anything else he might be feeling.
Feedback from G: He enjoyed the the tapping and said he felt real happiness when the set up statements went from high down to low or nothing even though it confused him because he normally avoided thinking about it because because it would make him feel worse. worse. He also said that I had made him feel real optimism that this can help him to improve, and to put the past behind him. He had always labeled his fear as a mental illness and now could see that maybe it was a habit that could be changed. He was very excited at the
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possibilities he could see opening up for himself and couldn’t wait to pay me!!
Notice the cognitive shift from G as he turns the identity statement of mental illness into the behavior of a habit which can be changed. EFT can be part of that change and this session will be a beginning as there will be many more movies for G to put through the EFT process. Very often people people who have had a breakdown breakdown are carrying the trauma of the breakdown and despite their recovery everyday e veryday things trigger those breakdown memories, they become afraid of it happening again and and their world becomes restricted. It’s a good good starting point to use EFT like this to work on clearing the memories of the breakdown before looking for the earlier events that lead to the breakdown.
The use of the Movie Technique here was very similar to using it for a childhood memory. First make the movie movie and give it a name, then use EFT on the title of the movie, then step through the movie using EFT with whatever aspects arise.
Article 3: Movie Technique – Future A nxiety In this third Movie Technique example I’ll show you how we can use the Movie Technique when we are getting anxious about a specific event in the future.
Peter is a confident and capable man who knows that he is good at his job and also knows that his manager and co-workers know that and that it is generally recognized throughout the organization that he deserves promotion.
Peter had had been working night shift for
several years and he desperately wanted that promotion as it would
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allow him to work day shifts. interviews.
However Peter was was terrified of
As he told me about his situation I could could sense how
desperate and scared an otherwise well balanced and confident man was becoming. becoming.
His interview was the following week and he had
already convinced convinced himself that there was no hope. “I just can’t can’t say anything and I look so stupid and last time I nearly cried”.
I asked Peter to make a movie in his mind about the upcoming interview and to give it a name – he called it “Interview Failure” and said it gave him 10 out of 10 for anxiety and that was like a churning in his stomach.
He had come to me because a friend had told him about EFT but to him it sounded weird and could not possibly help – and he was desperate. So I told him that yes EFT is weird and it does look daft and it does feel silly but there was only the two of us to know and I wouldn’t tell anyone. I suggested “how “how about we just do it because afterwards you will be able to ask better questions and I will give better answers”. With that we started tapping: “Even though this interview is giving me stomach churning anxiety I know that I really am good at my job”. We did a couple of rounds of shortcut EFT and he looked at me surprised.
“It feels different, my stomach isn’t
churning and I almost wonder what I’m making a fuss about.”
Well something had changed but I wanted to be really sure and check for all aspects. I asked him to start to to narrate his movie of the future that he had called called
“Interview Failure” and immediately immediately
he changed the the title to “Interview “Interview Hope”. He chose to narrate it in the first person and we decided to start as he was walking to the management suite in the office office building. I asked him him to be in the movie and tell me what his his body was doing. He said “My “My heart is beating too fast fast and my breathing is shallow”. So I simply repeated
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his words back to him through the EFT shortcut process “Even though my heart is beating too fast and my breathing is shallow I know that I am really good at my job and I know my boss knows that too.” We then backed up in the movie and this time he felt calm and curious as he walked.
The next difficult bit was sitting waiting for his name to be called and his thoughts racing so: “Even though my thoughts are racing as I’m sitting waiting to hear my name I know that I am absolutely superb at my job and that my boss’s boss’s boss knows it too”. too”. Again we backed up and again he found himself calm and curious.
We stepped through the movie and each time he found a difficult or anxious bit I simply reflected his words back to him as we tapped and he added the positives, I would would simply pause after saying “I know that….”
“Even though he is looking at me I know that I am capable, efficient and effective” “Even though I’m scared I’ll forget everything I know that I know everything without thinking about it” “Even though I’m scared my words won’t come I know that I know my job inside out” “Even though I’m scared I’ll blush I know that they know I know my job inside out” “Even though he will try and catch me out I know that I can answer any question about this job”
Each time we backed up the movie and ran through the previous sticking point I saw Peter becoming his normal, confident self, articulate, curious curious and with a gentle humor. humor.
Soon we could run
through the whole interview movie with calm curiosity and Peter
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smiled and said “I know what this is about”. about”. He then told me me about an audition for a school play in which he had madly fancied the female lead and was desperate to get the part of the male lead so that he could kiss her.
He forgot his lines after she muffed hers
but she had blamed him and laughed at him and he had been mortified and never tried acting again.
Peter left me with my ABC of EFT sheet (email me if you want a copy [email protected] ) but said that the problem was completely gone and done with and he would not be seeing me again or doing anything so weird!
Article 4: Movie Techniqu e – Fictional M ovie In this forth article I describe how I used a fictional movie as an indirect way of addressing addressing a very severe phobia. phobia. Many of you will have experienced either personally, or for others, the one-minutewonder effect of EFT for phobias. phobias. Years ago, the very first first time I introduced EFT EFT to another another person; it was for a spider phobia. phobia. The phobia disappeared completely in 2 minutes to the amazement of both of us! us! However some some phobias are not that simple. simple.
Elaine came on my EFT Foundations workshop and volunteered as a demonstration subject.
She said she had a fear of spiders spiders and
specifically the “T” word. Well fear was an understatement.
Even
thinking about the T word put her right into a state of blind terror and though tapping calmed her somewhat EFT was having little effect on her response and she startled with sheer panic when I held my hand with with the fingers pointing pointing down. down.
After quite quite a few
rounds of tapping she made some progress and was able to say the
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T word: Tarantula and amused the class by shouting it several times and could even picture one in her imagination. However her fear was still intact because when I showed her a photograph of a tarantula the old terror was was triggered once once again. This was not not the 10 minute demonstration I had been expecting but served to show the class that EFT is not magic.
Later that day I found some privacy for myself and Elaine and realized that we would have to be more indirect than going through the obvious aspects about spiders as even working on the phobia seemed to be be increasing her general arousal arousal level. Elaine was keen to keep working despite the lack of one-minute-wonder success and she is to be commended for not giving up when the result was not immediate.
I asked her if she could remember any experience in her life which could be the root of this fear or could explain it and she responded that she could could not.
So I took a different tack and asked her to
imagine herself to be the director of a fictional movie in which a fear of tarantulas tarantulas would make sense.
That movie movie could could be set in
another country, in another time and the actors could be a different age and sex. Elaine invented a movie about a teenage boy in tudor times, hundreds of years ago and gave it the title ‘Death in the Night’.
As she began to construct the movie in her mind I could
see she was getting distressed so we started with several rounds of silent tapping.
In EFT we use words to tune in emotion and tapping to clear or calm emotion. emotion.
When the emotion is strongly strongly present we do not
need words to tune it in and silent tapping can help a person to calm down enough enough to continue. continue. We then started started to sneak up up on the problem “Even though I’ve made this movie and there’s some very
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scary bits in it….” And after a few rounds we got to tapping for the title of the movie ‘Death in the Night’ until Elaine felt comfortable to narrate her movie.
She started with the opening scene where the young man who has had to leave his home and family is alone in a straw hut in the night. Then the tarantulas tarantulas sneak into the hut. hut. At this moment her fear rose visibly so we started tapping with “Even though they started to come under the door…” and “Even though there were hundreds of them….” Then to “Even “Even though they crawl up on the the bed…” It took several rounds of tapping to clear each each step through through the movie as she would hit the top of the scale scale on each each one. But clear they did and after each we rewound to the beginning and started the narration again.
I have to say that this took a great
deal of bravery from Elaine and sometimes she could only have me tap on her fingers.
Then we got to the very worst part: “Even though they crawl onto his face, I am here now and I accept myself” this took several rounds of tapping and at one point Elaine said she could sense Tarantulas all around her and that they were leaving and leaving her with a sense of release.
We continued continued bit by bit through the
movie and right through the death scene of the poor boy. Eventually Elaine was able to narrate the whole movie without panic and felt a huge feeling fe eling of release, lightness and freedom.
Calling Elaine today she said: “It is really laughable to think that I had this huge phobia then because now I have a completely normal reaction just like anyone else. I would not like to have a tarantula on my hand but who would? would? I feel a real sense sense of freedom and am so glad that that I persisted with EFT. The fictional movie was an ideal
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way to gain my freedom because I neither want nor need to know the source of that old fear.”
If you use the technique of the fictional movie then you simply use it just as you do for a real memory. memory.
However we do need to be
very clear that it is fiction and that the imagined events are simply a means of tuning in the emotional disturbance so that it can be cleared.
If we get too close to reality we could be in danger of
creating a memory where there was none. To create a fiction you you can change place and time all that needs to fit is the emotion. Your test is first to be able to narrate the fiction and then to be able to face what was previously triggering.
To conclude then, The Movie Technique is our all purpose EFT workhorse.
We can use it for difficult memories, for daily
challenges, for future situations and in a fictional manner when we just don’t know or its all too scary.
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5.
Emotion and P erception: EFT makes it a
Tw o W ay Stre Street et Hi Everyone, Read this interesting concept by EFT Master Gwyneth Moss from the UK. She says, "In this article we will be considering how, with EFT, the "emotion follows perception" idea is really a two-way street and thus we often see the reverse, namely, that "perception follows emotion." Hugs, Gary
By Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master Aaron Beck, one of the founding fathers of cognitive behavioral therapy, said "emotion follows perception" meaning that the way we feel about a situation is a result of the way we perceive it. In this article we will be considering how, with EFT, the "emotion follows perception" idea is really a two-way street and thus we often see the reverse, namely, that "perception follows emotion". We can all perceive a situation one way and find ourselves in the grip of strong emotions that then change as soon as we get more information and a fresh perception. Yesterday I saw a couple of teenagers nosing around and under my car and felt a surge of anger tinged with fear. My car had once been vandalized and now here were the culprits right in front of my house. I ran over and as I was about to shout, one of the boys looked up at me and pointing said: "our kitten, she ran away". Cowering under the car was a smoky grey ball of fluff. My perception of the situation changed in an 42
instant and my emotions shifted from anger and fear to a cocktail of compassion and kindness. I quickly fetched a blanket to help the boys rescue their frightened pet. Our brains are meaning-making organs. Whatever information comes in through the channels of our many senses, our brains are seeking for patterns that match to previous experience and then using that "meaning" to create perceptions or expectations of the future. Emotion follows these expectations. This is the process that allows us to know our world. However, like the small print on investment sales, "past performance is no guide to future returns". When we get emotionally aroused it is like our attention becomes locked on a narrow view and we fix on the emotional expectation (what happened in the past) and block out the bigger picture (what is actually happening now). When teaching EFT workshops I often use the metaphor that, as therapists we are like guide dogs (seeing-eye dog) with a blind person. It's not the guide dog's job to decide where to go: it's the guide dog's job to get across the roads safely. To give an example I recently saw a woman, Sue, who reacted with massive resentment whenever she heard her sister's voice on the phone. Sue had avoided her sister for most of her adult life. However, the two of them were now trying to sort out care for their elderly father and so these calls were becoming more frequent. Each evening Sue would find herself becoming increasingly anxious, anxiety that she tranquilized with red wine, as she anticipated her sister calling. In an agitated manner that was loaded with frustration Sue told me: "She is such a bitch, a prime bitch, she uses that tone with me, like she's putting me down, treating me like a baby, and I start to boil with resentment and I don't hear a word she says and we just can't get anywhere".
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I introduced EFT to Sue and we did a round with "Even though my sister's voice makes me boil..." As we finished tapping I paused and said to Sue "take a nice breath and notice what comes to you." Sue relaxed slightly and said, "She's been a tax officer too long my sister, she's too used to telling people what to do, she probably doesn't know how to be gentle. If I wasn't so hurt I'd feel sorry for her." Sue's perception had changed and her 0-10 intensity had come down to a 7 of hurt from off-the-scale anger. So we did another round with "Even though it hurts when my sister uses her put-down tax-office voice..." and again I asked her to take a breath and notice what comes. Sue now looked much calmer and sat back in her chair. She told me that when she was 11 and her sister 16, their mother had died and their father slid into deep depression. Sue's sister had taken on the running of the household even though her four younger siblings had not made that an easy job. We tapped on several specific events of the time, of feeling scared, feeling humiliated and feeling guilty and after each round I paused and gave Sue an opening to voice her thoughts and feelings. Watching and listening to her it was clear that her perception of her sister was changing. From a narrow focus of "she's a prime bitch" Sue was opening up to a bigger picture, understanding how it was for her sister when their mother died, quite spontaneously she said: "Poor lost thing, I feel like I want to give her a hug". As Sue's emotions shifted from anger to hurt to nervousness to guilt and finally to warmth so did the way she talked about her sister. The words she used changed; the things she noticed and remembered came with more detail, her whole perception of this woman she had known all her life was no longer narrowly focused.
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Sue returned the following week: she and her sister had been on the phone for an hour long call during which they had both laughed and cried. Sue had found it surprisingly easy to respond to her sister's natural bossiness with humor and they were now working together to find a place for their father. An old blues man from Mississippi once told me "it's not the notes, lady, anyone can play the notes, it's the spaces between them: that's the blues". Throughout the session with Sue I simply chose the most emotionally loaded phrases as she spoke and applied EFT. Then I gave Sue the space to become aware of her shifting feelings and to express them. Sue needed little encouragement from me: she was aware of her thoughts and feelings, open and articulate and able to give voice to them. Not all clients are like this. For some feelings are too scary and thoughts are something they keep to themselves. It can be tempting then to tell the person what we think, or to steer them towards what they should think. But that would be like the guide dog steering the blind man towards the butcher's shop. As an EFT therapist we can be confident that EFT will do its job and that the results will happen within the person. If we choose well their specific words that tune the emotion then as we tap we can have confidence that the emotion will shift. So it's part of our guidedogging job to help the client find the words and then to help them become aware of their changes in perception. (These changes in perception are the person's own and it is not up to us to supply them.) To do this we need to be keeping their attention with their present inner experience by asking open and vague questions followed by a good long pause. Questions like:
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"And you can simply notice what comes to you now." "And what do you know about that now?" "And what are you experiencing about that now?" "And how can you feel differently about X now?" "If that were to happen again what can you do now that you couldn't do before?" Like the blues man said the magic lies between the notes. So after asking something open and vague give a good long pause, longer than may seem polite, chances are your client will fill it as they, like me, see the kitten under the car. Gwyneth Moss
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6.
How to Handle Hand le a "Vague Feeling" Fee ling" w ith EFT EFT
Hi Everyone, EFT Master Gwyneth Moss from the UK gives a step-by-step case wherein a vague feeling of dread was successfully collapsed. Note how the core issue just showed up during the process. This often happens with EFT and is one of the delightful benefits of persistence. Hugs, Gary
By Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master Sometimes we know what the the problem is. We know that that a certain person or a certain situation gives us a certain feeling fe eling – like nervous, frustrated or just plain plain uncomfortable. uncomfortable. But sometimes we don’t know what the problem is or what sets it off, its all very vague and yet we know know when we’ve got it. In these cases EFT can be helpful in uncovering the real issue as well as in clearing the emotional disturbance so that we can feel calm, think clearly and act resourcefully. In my EFT Workshops I do live demonstrations and work with whoever wants to come forward forward with whatever whatever they present. Rose said “I’m not sure if this is suitable for EFT but I just get this vague feeling of dread – I’ve got it now.” I asked Rose Rose to come forward and she said she felt a heavy dread feeling in her stomach and had this feeling for as long as she could remember. remember. I asked her “when “when does it happen” and “what sets that off” and other questions looking for some external trigger and to all these detective’s questions she answered “I don’t know” or “there’s no pattern” but its when 47
“something is about to happen”.
She couldn’t be more specific
about when or where she would feel the dread and there didn’t seem to be any specific memories attached to it. So we just began tapping generally “Even though my stomach feels heavy dread and it's so familiar, been with me so long, and even though dread is like an old companion, I hardly know dread at all.” After a couple of rounds Rose smiled, looked more relaxed and said that dread was softer and lighter. lighter. She had no memory of how how dread could have come to her and that her childhood was generally happy and her parents were still together after 40 years of marriage. We continued tapping with, “Even though I don’t know know how dread came to my stomach and maybe my deeper mind does not want me to know and I respect my deeper mind for that.” Then Rose looked surprised and said “I can see it so clearly, I’m standing at the top of the stairs and looking through the railings and in my pink nightdress, I must be about 3, and I can hear Mum and Dad downstairs shouting, screaming at each other, I’m scared because Mum and Dad never shout.” So we tapped with “Even though I’m just a little, little girl and I’m scared because Mum and Dad are shouting and I don’t understand, and my little girls emotions are feeling all scared and my little girls mind is all confused and I don’t understand and that was then and this is now.” now.” Then we tapped with “Now I’m I’m older than Mum and Dad were then. True? Mum and Dad were young, younger younger than I am now and they were just learning about how to be married, being married is quite a challenge, I know that now, and they must have learned a lot because they got really good at it, and maybe they weren’t so good at it then when I was three and maybe that is how
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they learned to get good at it, by shouting at each other when they thought I was asleep” Rose smiled and said “Both Mum and Dad were born during the war, Dad was a refugee and Mum’s parents were alcoholics. No one showed them how how to be married.” She then chose chose to visualize visualize giving the little girl in the pink nightdress a cuddle and taking her back to bed with some words of reassurance and guidance and showing her how how to do tapping. The dread was completely gone. Throughout the remainder of the day and the next day I tried to provoke her old dread by putting her on the spot or building up that “something is about to happen”. happen”. The dread could not be found. found. So when you can’t find a pattern or a trigger or a memory and you don’t know where to start with EFT – just start. Start with what’s what’s there, the body feeling or the thought or the emotion and just keep tapping and you can both allow yourselves to be surprised. With love, Gwyneth
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7.
A P ublic Speaking Speaking Case Case w here Language
w as the the Issue Hi Everyone, Here's a sophisticated case by EFT Master Gwyneth Moss from the UK. It took her some listening and common sense to find the true issue. As you will see, she just went with the flow and it showed up beautifully. Gwyneth says, "The beauty of EFT is that as the therapist we don’t need to know the whole story and if something changes then it changes." Hugs, Gary
By Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master I recently attended the Milton H Erickson Foundation Brief Therapy conference in Anaheim, California. California. One evening I found myself in the bar and in conversation with an engaging and intelligent psychotherapist. We spoke about about our experiences experiences of the conference conference and she asked me about my practice in the UK and was very interested when I started to explain EFT and asked lots of questions with keen curiosity. curiosity. Now, as you know it’s not not explanation that that communicates what EFT is and can do, it's experience. So rather than talk about it I asked her if she would like to experience EFT and was it OK to do something there and then, in the bar, that looks daft and feels silly? Yes she was up for it, so I asked her was there a situation in which her emotional response is out of proportion to what is happening. Yes she said and told me "I usually love public speaking and am
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very comfortable in front of a group of any size but recently I was in an audience and the presenter who knew me, asked me to come up on stage and introduce myself. As I walked walked to the microphone microphone I felt my heart pounding and my throat went dry and I was shaking and could hardly speak and now I'm scared that it will happen again and I've lost my confidence" OK, I thought to myself, this is a classic case for EFT and so I led her through a couple of short cut rounds of EFT focusing on the body sensations sensations of the memory memory of being asked to speak. speak. To my surprise, when I then asked her to think about what had happened again there was very little change in intensity. So with curiosity I asked her to describe in more detail exactly what the presenter had said when he asked her to come to the stage. She said "Oh, "Oh, I can't tell you that because it was a group from my community and he spoke in Farsi which is my first language, I grew up in Iran and came to California as a teenager." That gave me a clue as to how come this caring, outgoing and confident woman had experienced such a sudden attack of unexplained nerves. So I told her that we would would go through through the EFT again and this time as I spoke in English she was to translate my words to Farsi and speak speak aloud in Farsi. We did that and even before I asked her for an intensity number I could see the change in her. Her face and shoulders shoulders softened she smiled and her eyes moistened. Her intensity was was right down down and we did did a little more more tapping on a couple of remaining aspects with me speaking English and she in Farsi. Then I had her imagine presenting to a group in Farsi and she could find no trace of the nervousness, indeed she was looking forward to it. Now here is my my explanation: English is her her grown-up language in which she is a capable, confident confident and successful successful therapist. Farsi is
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her childhood language in which she was herself as a child, a small person. So that when as a mature and capable adult she had to speak to a group in her native tongue she felt fear because what would a child child have to say say to such an audience. This is all a guess because I didn’t didn’t ask her and I didn’t didn’t need to ask ask her. The beauty of EFT is that as the therapist we don’t need to know the whole story and if something something changes then it changes. Had there been no change in her affect after that Farsi round of tapping then I would have gone on to ask her about earlier experiences but her experience did change and when the job is done and you’ve tested the result, then the job is done. The learning from this is that if you are working with someone whose native tongue is not yours have them translate and speak in their native tongue. tongue. It does not not matter if you the therapist don’t don’t understand. The purpose of of the words we use when tapping tapping is to tune into the emotion. Sometimes that emotional tuning tuning is dependent on the language in which those words are articulated. With best wishes, Gwyneth
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8.
Though ts on being Specific or General
w ith EFT EFT Hi Everyone, As a rule, the more Specific you become with EFT, the more likely you will get your results quickly. However, there are certainly uses for being General in your approach, especially when the General approach points to Specific items. EFT Master Gwyneth Moss from the UK expands on this concept in this article. Hugs, Gary
By Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master Being specific is terrific! Many of you you will have heard heard that endorsement and know that we are always being encouraged to get to specific events with EFT. Well, yes, being specific is terrific and Gary’s article in the Tutorial series is a must read for all keen tappers but I’d like to speak up for some subtle ways of being general. Because in being being specific or or general it is not the words words that are spoken but what those words generate within the person that the tapping is working on. on. So even when general words are used if these access specific memories, thoughts or beliefs, the effect will be specific. Here are a couple of examples. Example – Being Specific Specific w ith Metaphor A young woman, Liz, was sent to me by her chiropractor as she had pain across her shoulders that did not respond to treatment. I asked her to describe the pain in as much detail as she could and
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she said it was was like being torn torn apart. She used the metaphor of the Levis jeans logo with two horses pulling a pair of jeans apart. We tapped with “torn apart by two horses” horses” and after a couple of rounds she laughed laughed and said said I know who the horses horses are. She and her husband were between houses and had moved in with her sister for a few weeks that had become become months. She loves her husband and sister and they hate each other. other. She had felt torn torn between them and had tried in vain to keep the peace. So now we got specific and tapped on the fights between her husband and sister till she said “they are grown ups, its up to them, its only temporary, they can sort it out, I’m keeping clear, I don’t have to get in the way” and with that the pain was completely gone how ever she moved to try and find it. This is an example of where getting the specific words that are the metaphor of what the body is holding allows the message of the body to be received and the emotion to be be released. Once the message has been received the symptom is no longer l onger necessary. Had we tapped on “this pain in my shoulder” then it is likely that the pain would have diminished and returned as soon as she got back home to the fights between her sister and husband. Example – Being General General w ith Reframing Mick is a great thinker.
His recent recent work work is likely to get media
attention and he came to me terrified of speaking in groups or in public. I knew that he had seen many many therapists and and medical specialists and they had worked on his fears and experiences of speaking. So I realized that this called for something more indirect from me.
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I asked him when in his life had he most felt fear and he told me that his brother, who he described as a psychopath, had bullied him as a child with extreme violence and that after his father left, his depressed mother was not able able to protect him from his brother. He was then, as a child, on a daily basis in real fear for his life but he felt no emotion about that now and was on good terms with his brother (a very successful trial lawyer). We started tapping and I introduced general truisms about families (something along these lines) “fathers lines) “fathers should stay with mothers, that’s how it should be and it’s wrong when fathers leave and children who only see through the eyes of children can’t understand the emotions and decisions of adults and have to make sense of it somehow… and mothers should always protect their children, that’s how it should be and mothers should not be depressed and they should always be cheerful whatever happens because children don’t understand that adults are normal fallible, screwed-up human beings who make mistakes and get hi-jacked by their own emotions…and little boys who lose their fathers should be able to cry and should have an emotion other than anger available to them” we went on and on like this with general truths tapping round and round. As we were speaking generalities about families he would have been accessing specifics about his childhood and I could see from his general demeanor that we were clearing a path through the woods. I have since heard that he is much more more comfortable comfortable speaking and when he wakes up in the morning an old familiar dread is gone. Isn’t it wonderful wonderful the power and subtlety of of words? In my Level 3 workshop “The Art of Delivery” we focus on getting creative with the words in EFT. EFT. And though I’d be delighted delighted to see you on a
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workshop you don’t need me to give you permission to unleash your creativity. You can can do that yourself! Simply trust the words words that that come to you, or through you. With love, Gwyneth
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9.
I ntroducing the EFT EFT Im agineering Technique Hi Everyone, In this 4 part series, EFT Master Gwyneth Moss from the UK brings a highly creative technique to our attention. It has very widespread uses ... particularly on physical issues. Hugs, Gary Part 1: What is EFT Imagineering? Part 2: How to use EFT Imagineering Part 3: An Experience of EFT Imagineering Part 4: A Pain in the Jaw Part 5: The Bones in The Cave
By Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master P art 1: Wh at is EFTIm EFTIm agineering? When using EFT with a physical symptom the obvious place to start is with the pain. But what what if there is no pain? pain? Sometimes when people come to us for help with a physical symptom they tell us how painful it has been and how they anticipate further pain but when you ask “on a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is no pain at all and 10 is as bad as it can be, what number would you give it now?” Their response comes comes back “well it doesn’t hurt hurt just now”. now”. Oh where do we get started with EFT when someone has a painless condition with no visible symptoms? It was for these painless, invisible conditions that I developed the Imagineering technique and then found it had many other
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applications. In this article article I’ll give you an overview and in the next I’ll show you how to use Imagineering. Your imagination uses your full conscious consciousness ness to create metaphors me taphors of reality. Our conscious conscious consciousness consciousness resides in the left hemisphere of the cortex - the thinking part of the brain which seeks meaning and causality causality and processes processes sequentially. sequentially. Our imagination is the process of awareness by the left side of the brain of images, sounds and felt senses arising in the right side of the brain which processes spatially or simultaneously in response to emotion generated in our emotional emotional brain. Sound too complicated? Let’s try again, Our words are: •
connected to images, that are
•
connected to emotions, that are
•
connected to our body.
In Imagineering we make use of this chain of connections to gain access to the roots of dis-ease in a gentle and indirect manner. This is a technique we can add to our collection of EFT ‘gentle techniques’. We know that our physical physical symptoms symptoms have emotional emotional roots. At times a person is not able to handle handle those emotions emotions and therefore avoids recall of those emotional emotional experiences. That may be precisely how the physical symptom comes into place. Imagineering allows an indirect and metaphorical access to the emotion locked in the symptom and gives an opportunity for the calming and clearing effects of of EFT to get get to work. The core issues issues can then come come safely into awareness. Using imagination imagination we can access deeper consciousness to generate metaphorical reality. Using EFT on various aspects of the metaphorical reality generally results in change to the metaphor which, in turn, translates into change in 58
physical reality. But, that’s just explanation and what counts counts is experience so here is an Imagineering example. The Case of Wendy's Finger Wendy is an artist. She tells me that she has arthritis in her her finger joint which has been getting painful and preventing her from holding a paintbrush. paintbrush. When she comes comes to me me to learn EFT she says “it doesn’t hurt hurt right now but it can get really bad”. Knowing that she is an artist I confidently expect that she will enjoy the Imagineering technique with EFT, so I ask her first to imagine that she holds a small light in her hand, it may be a bulb or a flame or just a bright little light. Wendy imagines a small and powerful flashlight. Next we try it out. out. I ask her to imagine that she she shrinks the light down so that it is very, very ve ry small and very, very bright and that she sticks it into her ear and imagines that she goes with it right inside her head. I ask her to tell me what it’s it’s like in there. She tells me that she is in a beautiful cavern and that there is a soft humming sound and the cavern is vast and spacious and the walls are sparkling and soft colours. I ask what it’s like to be in there. She says it is warm and there are all sorts of things floating about like old friends and her father’s dog and her school school desk and she is weightless weightless and feels like giggling. I ask her to come back out and we talk about her pleasant experience. Then I ask her to put the little bright light into her finger joint and to go inside with with it.
When she she brings the light out again again she tells
me that inside it is cold and dim and there are jagged spikes of broken glass and screeching glass sounds. sounds. It feels lonely in there.
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Then we tap on “even though there are jagged spikes and broken glass in my finger joint ….” ….” And, “even though though it’s lonely in my finger”. I ask her what what the ‘lonely’ is like and she she tells me that that sometimes her husband travels for his business and that even if it is only for one night it feels desperately lonely and that’s like when she was little and her father who was a ship’s captain would go to sea for months. months. So we tap with “even though though I know he’s coming back but I get sad like when when daddy went away to sea….” We then tap using The Movie Technique with a specific memory from her childhood. I ask her to take the light back back inside the finger joint. She tells me that it is warmer in there and the glass is now ice and is dripping and melting, the screeching sound sound is fading and more distant. distant. We do more tapping: tapping: “even though there is dripping ice ice in there…. “When she next goes inside the finger with her little light the ice has melted and there is a clear blue pool, a soft humming sound and she feels calm. She looks different too, her face has softened and there is a sparkle in her eyes. Later that year she told me that she had far less bother from her arthritis through the winter, physically the pain is much less frequent and her finger seems to move more easily and does not interfere with her her painting. Whenever her finger did bother her she shut her eyes for a while, sat quietly and meditated on the clear blue pool and felt the pain ease. In the second of these articles I’ll talk you through how to use Imagineering. Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master
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Part 2: How to use Imagineering Imagineering is a gentle approach to working with painless and/or invisible symptoms. symptoms. In this article article I’ll take you through the steps steps of using it and will illustrate with an example. e xample. First, identify where in the body the symptom is located and what parts of of the body are not affected by the condition. condition.
Some
conditions may be located in a specific area or organ, others may be pervasive and you will have to ask questions to identify where it is most concentrated or where is most affected and where is not. Ally comes to me in considerable considerable distress. She has just just discovered a lump in her breast and is waiting for a medical appointment to have tests. She can just just about feel the lump if she she presses but it has no pain or sensation. sensation. We establish that that the lump is in her left breast and other areas of her body are OK. I then explain to her that our verbal awareness lives in the left side of our thinking brain and that the right side of our brain is the realm of pictures, metaphor and dreams (our imagination) and that the right side has more connection to her emotional brain which has connection to her body. We will be using her imagination imagination to work with that chain of connections: words-imagination-emotion words-imagination-emotions-body. s-body. Sometimes at this point a person will say “I don’t have an imagination” Now, this may be a “Writing on the Walls” (see EFT and the Palace of Possibilities). Possibilities). To clear that block you can ask some gentle questions questions and do some tapping. Or, you can point out that all their worries and anxieties are generated by the misuse of imagination and that you just can’t get anxious without an imagination. I also explain explain that everyone is unique in how they use use their imagination and each person will have their own experience and that there is no right or wrong way to do this – it’s a judgement 61
free space in which to play. Some experience experience imagination with colours, pictures and shapes, other people get sounds, music or voices and some some get a feeling sense sense of being there. Whatever you get is what you get. Our imaginations work best and we have better access to their output when we are calm and and relaxed. So I ask the person to take three good breaths each one a little slower and deeper than the previous one and to let their out breath drift slowly out and away and taking any tension or worry with it. Then I ask them to imagine that they hold a bright light in their hand, it may be a flame or a flashlight or simply a ball of light and once they have that light to shrink it down so that it gets smaller and brighter and fits on the tip of a finger. We are now ready to do an imagination imagination test run. I like to use the inside of the head to do this but you could choose another part of the body as long as it is n o t the part most affected by the condition. I hold my finger up with my bright light and Ally mirrors me as I put my finger in my ear and close close my eyes. I ask her to take the light inside her head and for her imagination to go with it and shine it around. I am quiet for a minute minute or so while while she does this, this, then I suggest that she she can come back out when she is ready to. She says there is nothing there, so I ask her to go back in, wait quietly, with curiosity and to let her imagination surprise her, to pretend. If there was something there what would would it be? She says it’s it’s like she is in a woodland, its quiet and still and there are little little birds around. around. She likes doing this now. Some people will report a very realistic visualisation like an anatomy book, others will have a metaphorical or dream like experience and a significant number will initially say “nothing” and may need some encouragement to “pretend” or “guess” or “make it
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up”. The important thing thing with the test test run is that that they have some some sort of experience. Now that we we have done a test run we approach the symptom. I generally ask the person how how the light is going to get inside. Some chose to stick it in through the the flesh and others others will want to swallow it or insert their finger into their navel or back into the ear again. Ally puts her finger to her breast and shuts her eyes, I wait patiently. A minute later she withdraws her finger and says “there’s a round round hard boulder of rock”. rock”.
So we we tap with “Even “Even though though
there’s this round hard boulder of rock in my breast….” Once you have the imagined metaphor whether it is visual or a sound or a felt sense simply put their description, their exact words into EFT and tap for a round or two. two. Then send them back in there with their imagination. Chances are are that something something will be different, take their new description and put their words into the EFT setup and tapping. Ally goes back inside and finds that the boulder now has an opening like a cave, so we tap with that “even though there is an opening and a cave in the boulder….” Then as she goes back inside the cave becomes a womb and as she says the word “womb” she gets overwhelmed with tears so we simply tap a few rounds with the one word “womb” until she calms calms down. Now the womb womb opens and she sees her adult son (who has mental health difficulties) curled up in there and sulking. sulking. Ally tells me that her son is now living independently and things are going well for him but that’s not how it used to be and there were years of intense and overwhelming difficulty. We use The Movie Movie Technique to clear the emotion of several intense events events from when he was a teenager. We address her guilt, her powerlessness at being unable to help him and her anger at his constant demands. demands. When she returns returns inside she she sees
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him smiling and then he picks up his bag and leaves the cave/womb and waves to her. We do some some more tapping and when she she eventually returns inside the boulder now appears to her as soft rubber like like a child’s ball. Ally is smiling smiling and looks relaxed. A week week later I hear the result of her tests, the lump is a benign cyst. Imagineering can often take us to the core issue that underlies the physical manifestation manifestation of dis-ease. dis-ease. It’s a gentle approach that that allows the specific core issue to come to consciousness once the person is ready to receive it and and make the connections. connections. Start with tapping for whatever they imagine then tap to clear the emotional intensity of whatever connected memories come into awareness. You could use use The Movie Technique Technique or Tell the the Story. There is no set pattern to these cases – you simply start with the imagination, the images, sounds and feelings and let the body wisdom of the person take it where it needs to go. As the therapist you do not not need to know the diagnosis or anything about the condition, you can trust that whatever is relevant will emerge. One way to use imagination as a part of Imagineering is to guide the person’s imagination into a healthy part of their body for comparison. Susan has eczema so after a test run in her head we we take her light into into the broken and itchy skin. skin. She is a musician and says that everything is an angry red in there and she can hear discordant and jarring Stockhausen. Stockhausen. Then we take the the light into a clear patch of skin on the other arm, the colour here is clear blue and she can hear Bach. So we use use EFT choices: choices: “Even though though its angry red and jarring Stockhausen in this eczema skin I choose clear Blue Bach all over me!” For both client and therapist, Imagineering is gentle and fun as the client’s images and metaphors bring their own humour and can fill therapy sessions with lightness that counters the serious nature of
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the condition and memories that may emerge. I hope you enjoy playing with it. Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master
P art 3: An Experience of EFT I magineering Mary Nugent attended attended my EFT Level Three training. As part of of the training I teach and demonstrate the EFT Imagineering technique. This is a technique I have developed de veloped which uses a person’s imagination to ‘get inside’ a physical symptom so that we can extract information to tap with. In the previous previous two EFT Imagineering articles I have described the technique and how to use it. Essentially you imagine a tiny bright light at the end of an index finger, then you take a few slow deep breaths to relax (imagination blossoms when consciousness softens) softens) and test run your imagination by placing the light in your ear and going right inside your head with your imagination. Mary says: says:
“I saw an old fashioned university library with stained
glass windows and shaded lights reflecting off polished wooden tables, but part of my skull, about one quarter in a mezzanine area, was full of small cartoon characters the “numbskulls” from a childhood comic book. The numbskulls were keeping everything e verything working away efficiently. I liked this sense of the ridiculous juxtaposed against against the sombre sombre university library. library. I must put in here that I have never felt myself to be a very visual person and in fact never felt comfortable with visualisation exercises as I felt I always had to work too hard to try to get any mind pictures. This was not the case with the imagineering however.”
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Mary had a painful shoulder which had bothered her for about six months, she had the tired and drained look of someone bearing the burden of pain. The pain was constant and seemed worse at night, to the extent that she found it difficult to get to sleep and was often awoken from sleep with pain if she moved in the night. Mary is a generally optimistic and cheerful person but the pain was dragging her down and painkillers had little effect. Having done a test run we now took the little light inside her shoulder which had an initial pain level of 9. Mary says: “My says: “My initial vision of my shoulder was that one half of it was made up of hard frosted white ice and the other half was made up of the burning fires of hell.” We tapped with “Even though there is hard frosted ice and the burning fires of hell in my shoulder, I truly and deeply accept myself and I really do accept myself whatever these images mean!” “I shone the light again again and the ice was not so sharp sharp or so frosted but clear and blunter as thought it had started to melt. The burning fires of hell were more like embers – I think I described the heat now as “granny” heat. Which represented to me a more gentle, caring heat. This brought some tears to my eyes as I still miss my grandmother”. We talked a little about her grandmother and then tapped again for the ice and heat and she shone the light again: “this time I just got an impression of Aladdin’s genie. This genie was like a cartoon figure with an enormous upper body, and tiny legs coming into pointy feet. His feet danced from the cold ice to the hot embers e mbers and he danced as though he was jiggling from the cold ice to the hot embers and back again. His hot feet melted the ice and his cold feet then cooled the embers.” It was obvious to all that Mary was now
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enjoying herself, she looked lighter and we all laughed with the humour of the dancing genie jumping from the ice to the embers. So we tapped for the dancing dancing genie. Each time Mary Mary took her imagination inside with the light and then reported what she saw I simply reflected her exact words back to her with EFT. “Even though Aladdin’s genie is dancing on the cold ice and the hot embers and I really don’t know where that comes from I absolutely accept myself.” Then we repeated the shining of the light once more. The image changed to an image of Cleopatra’s needle stabbing into the centre of the front of her shoulder where it is most painful. We tapped for the needle and the feelings it provoked and shone the light again. again. “This time as I shone the light I got the image of a lizard wrapping itself around the needle and this lizard led to the blunting of the edges of the obelisk. obelisk. We tapped and shone again and the needle disappeared and the lizard has draped itself over my shoulder to nurture it and protect it “ To some people a lizard would be threatening or unwelcome but to Mary this lizard was a healer and protector. protector. She visibly smiled, smiled, relaxed and softened at this point so I asked about her pain levels which had reduced to about a 2. Mary says “Not says “Not only did my pain reduce significantly but the exercise left me with a tool to use when I felt the pain or when it was stopping me from sleeping. That tool was the lizard, I just got the feeling that if I imagined the lizard draped over my shoulder it would ease the pain.” “When I returned home from the workshop, I still had some remaining pain, but it would peak at a 5 or 6 rather than a 9 or 10. The big difference was that almost immediately I could sleep 67
through the night night without being being awakened with with the pain. Then after about 2 weeks or so the pain left completely for a period of about six months, I have some renewed pain now but when it comes back I imagine the lizard and it seems to ease it considerably.” “Gwyneth no one was more surprised than I was at the totally unexpected images that came to mind during this exercise. As I said before, I had never considered myself at all good at image work or visualisation and had no clue that my imagination could be so vivid and so diverse. The images also brought up lots of humour and I think that for me humour is a great help to shift my energy and to get a new perspective on things. “ I love the EFT Imagineering Technique because it offers a way of working with both acute and chronic physical symptoms that is: •
gentle and indirect
•
respectful of a person’s privacy
•
fun and humorous
•
fast and effective
In fact all the best things about EFT! Gwyneth Moss
P art 4: A P ain in the Jaw Liz Kirsop came on my “Art of Delivery” EFT workshop and she would like to share her experience of the EFT Imagineering technique. Liz says:
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“Ten years ago I started to get pain in my jaw and face plus headaches that my doctor said was migraine. It all got a lot worse when I started to work in a call centre and sometimes I could hardly open my mouth wide enough to speak. I had to take days off with dreadful ‘migraines”. Happily, my dentist fixed me up with a plastic splint that looks like a boxer’s gum-shield. I had to wear it every night as the dentist explained that the problem was caused by my grinding or clamping my teeth when asleep. It did help but found I had to also use a special pillow else my neck and shoulders would become painful. Whenever I went on business trips or holidays I took this gum-shield thing and my pillow everywhere. Still I would get the pain sometimes – after a long drive, a poor night’s sleep or at times of stress and worry.” All of us experience stress in our lives and when it gets to a chronic level our bodies have to find somewhere to put it. With some of us it is the lower back or shoulders with others it is in our breathing or gut and the jaw is another common stress dumping ground. “I’d had a bad night and had driven a fair distance to get to Gwyneth’s training group and my face was really sore so I gladly volunteered to be the guinea pig for Imagineering. First Gwyneth told me to imagine there was a very bright light on the end of my forefinger. I couldn’t help thinking of E.T.! We took time to get it really bright and then went exploring my knee, imagining the light on the end of my finger entering the joint and shining around. It was a smooth walled pinkish white cave and quite pleasant.” I always like to do a test drive of the imagination before taking the little light to the the problem area. Usually I test by having the person put the little light inside their ear and use it to take their imagination into the centre of their head. This is what what Mary Nugent did in the previous article.
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However Liz felt that the problem of her face and jaw and associated migraines was too much in her head and so we sought somewhere else to explore for a test run – Liz suggested her knee. The test run gives a person an experience of their imagination and lets the therapist know whether we are working with visual imagination or if the person experiences imagination in a more auditory or feeling manner.
Quite a proportion of people people do not
have a visual imagination but we can still still use Imagineering. Imagineering. For those who are highly auditory I might ask them to go inside with a tiny and sensitive microphone rather than a light. “Then we went to my ear in order to get into the jaw area where the problem was. From my ear there was a dark chute down to the jaw and I didn’t want to go down it so we came out of there and tapped on that fear.” As the therapist at this stage I simply take Liz’s description and reflect it back to her through EFT as in “Even though it’s a dark chute and I’m scared to go down there I really do accept myself whatever that means”. means”. Then I have Liz go back into her jaw with the light and her imagination and… “When I went back in there was more light and a handrail and I went down the slope into the jaw area. It was dark and cold, rather claustrophobic.. There was a shallow pool I had to cross and I didn’t claustrophobic want to. The water was very cold and I didn’t know how deep or what might be lurking in there. I felt lonely and scared.” Again we simply reflect back the imagined experience using as many of the senses senses as possible possible “Even though its dark and cold and scary and lonely and I don’t want to cross that pool, I truly and deeply accept myself and all of this”
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Liz comments: comments: “a member of the group asked why Gwyneth had not come into the cave or the pool with me as I seemed to be needing that, as a child would. My perception was that it was important that Gwyneth did not come in because it was totally my place and I had to get comfortable in it by myself in my way” This is very important. important. The imagery and feelings change through through the tapping. We do not need to interpret the the meaning or to get involved or to try to change change things consciously. consciously. As the therapist therapist you simply reflect back through the EFT process whatever imagery or emotion arises. At this stage a memory emerged for Liz from when she was about 11 years old. She had swum swum to the deep end of a public swimming swimming pool, found herself out of her depth, got into a panic and felt that she was drowning. drowning. Liz had obviously obviously been a stronger stronger swimmer than she thought she was as she had been able to struggle to the side on her own own and had got her breath back. She survived but but in that moment of panic she thought she was going to die. There were lifeguards and family members around the pool but none had seen Liz panic and struggle. When a memory memory emerges during the use of the Imagineering technique, we simply switch to the Movie Technique and use EFT in the usual way by giving the Movie a name and then tapping bit by bit through the crescendos of of the story. We did that with the Deep End movie for Liz and cleared the fear and panic so that Liz could experience it as more distant and tell it without intensity. Liz says: “A says: “A surprise was was that once once the panic subsided I realized realized that I felt ashamed for having nearly drowned and I had never told anyone about it because I was embarrassed and just thought thought I was being stupid.”
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That feeling of shame stopped Liz from getting the comfort, support and encouragement that could have prevented the trauma from getting stuck in her system. When we have to keep something something secret and don’t talk about it our brains cannot integrate the experience and it gets buried with the full emotion ready to be triggered by innocuous triggers that match the pattern. After doing a thorough job with the movie technique we returned to Imagineering and Liz went back to her jaw. “I went back in and into the pool. It was not deep at all – something like a Jacuzzi, the water was blue and just slightly warmer than it had been, and it was a pleasant place to be. There was also a crab in the water but just a tiny one and I was happy for it to be there.” Very often in the imagery a creature appears when the shift has happened: the lizard that wrapped itself around Mary Nugent’s shoulder and this tiny crab crab in Liz’s jaw. jaw. At this point point the whole group could see a change in Liz. Her face looked brighter and she she was sitting up up more in the the chair. She still seemed skeptical though and did not report much change on that day however six months later she says: “Since then I have not used the gum-shield or the special pillow and my jaw and face have been bee n better than they have for years. I can still have a bad night occasionally and get some of the clunking back but it is rare now. I also feel my voice has changed and I have less problem with my sinuses.” When I contacted Liz to ask her if she would like to write up her experience I made the guess that whenever in her life or work she felt out of her depth it was triggering that stuck memory of the deep end with all the panic and grim determination of survival and the shame of being stupid and not being able to tell anyone or ask for comfort. Liz was probably probably going through through life with an equation of “out of my depth = I am going to die”. I did not say anything anything at
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the time because that would have been intruding in her process but six months later I made that suggestion. Liz says: “That says: “That helped me make the connection that the jaw grinding was related to feeling ‘out of my depth’. So now I can understand the meaning of the imagery. And isn’t it amazing how the language and imagery of the subconscious wants to work to heal us? We really do know all we need to need to know in order to heal ourselves somewhere inside us but we need strange techniques like EFT and Imagineering to access those places and translate the messages. In fact, my experience with Imagineering proves that it did not matter whether I understood the imagery anyway. The cure happened before the understanding.” Liz makes a really really important point. point. Her imagination and the tapping did the work together and her thinking mind did not need to understand or create meaning. So when using using EFT Imagineering Imagineering let your thinking mind take a vacation. You don’t need to interpret or try to change or get involved with significance. significance. Simply use what the imagination provides and trust that your imaginative, creative mind and EFT EFT together will do do what needs to be done. And if memories emerge simply take them through the Movie technique and then return to the Imagineering process. Gwyneth
P art 5: The Bones in the Cave Cave
At the Denver Masters’ Showcase in July 2007 I presented EFT Imagineering to an audience of of over 200. I wanted to demonstrate just how deep yet respectful, how profound yet humorous and how
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simple yet complex complex this technique can be. For that I needed to find a demonstration subject who had both a chronic physical condition and was open open to using their imagination. At the close close of the day before I was due to present, Barbara Friedman approached me with a question question about about marketing. marketing. Barbara says:
“For me the Showcase was a wonderful opportunity to learn from watching top-level practitioners use EFT, and my intention was to observe and absorb absorb as much much as possible. possible. I’m not one to volunteer volunteer as a subject – ever – so it was odd to find myself sitting onstage opposite Gwyneth Moss on Friday morning.
I had seen Gwyneth on panels throughout the conference and she fostered a strong level of trust with her respectfulness of the client’s privacy, her depth of knowledge and her confidence in her experience with EFT. The day before, before, Gwyneth noticed I walked with a cane and mentioned she needed someone for her demonstration of of EFT Imagineering. Imagineering. Since imagery is both very private and familiar to me, I was receptive. When she told me not to tell her anything anything about myself myself or my problem, problem, I was hooked. All she asked was, “Are you visual?”
The next morning Barbara struggled up the steps onto the stage, looking tired and and worried and leaning heavily on on her cane. I had purposely not asked her anything about her history as I wanted her imagination and and EFT to do the work. All I knew was that she is a psychotherapist of many years experience who lives on her own and suffers pain and restricted movement in her hip.
Imagination blossoms when consciousness softens so to prepare Barbara to use her imagination I asked her to slow and deepen her
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breathing and bring to mind a time of being in meditation or peaceful relaxation and then we did an imagination test run.
After some breathing to center and relax, the first part of the Imagineering involved seeing a light on the tip of my finger, inserting the finger in my ear and lighting up the inside of my head. I shared with the audience the pleasant sense of what I saw and felt and the test run gave me confidence and also let me know that my highly analytical thinking mind could take a short vacation.
Next Gwyneth directed my attention to my left hip where I was having pain and difficulty, but left everything open for me to “be there” and see what was there. I saw the interior of a fairly undefined, empty cave with a few bones in a pile and a lot of dust. No detail. Gwyneth then brought me out of the cave to describe my experience to the audience and we tapped with my exact words: “Even though there’s a pile of dusty bones in a cave I really do accept myself” Asking me if I’d like to return, she gave me time to go back into the cave with the bright little light.
When Barbara came out again she described the bones as no longer being dusty but like ‘live’ bones that had recently had flesh on them. So we tapped for that that using using her exact words. words. She returned returned to the cave again and this time told us that the bones were no longer visible and that she thought the bones were now inside her.
After several trips in and out, describing the experience and then tapping with what I saw, the cave became more and more defined. There was the sense and color of firelight, a group of people sitting opposite me in a semicircle. semicircle. They were mostly mostly elder, male, Native American - and I could see drawings on the cave wall behind them.
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When Barbara first sensed the presence of others in the cave she really was not sure about them and we tapped with “even though I’m not sure and I don’t like being not sure…I don’t know what this means and I don’t like not not knowing…” This seemed to shift something because in her next trip inside she says:
I felt comfortable with these people, even though no one spoke. There was a sense of formality to it, as though something was going to be decided. I felt I was inside the cave for the first time and I knew I was there because of my hip. (The pain there is bone on bone due to osteoarthritis.) By the last time I visited the cave and stayed there a while, I could see the group in more detail, feel the texture of buckskin in their clothing and sense the look of them as if we were all of the same tribe. But they remained remained at a distance distance and I still didn’t have any specific information about the gathering, other than it was about this group of people being supportive and helpful to me and I felt supported and held in their stillness.
At this moment Barbara smiled and her whole presence shifted from tired and worried to glowing and alive. Something profound profound was happening and I left Barbara in her cave for a while whilst I spoke to the audience. EFT is a very active technique technique and I find that once a person experiences the shifts in energy that unblock whatever is blocked it is good to offer them a little silence and stillness to let the good work continue in privacy. A pearl of wisdom wisdom I learned from Ernest Rossi is that as therapists we need to know when to shut up and leave a person to get on with it themselves.
When Barbara opened her eyes and brought her attention back to the present moment she described a feeling of optimism and clarity. I asked her how could she find out and test whatever had changed in her hip. In response she she pointed to the steps which which she had
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climbed with such such difficulty. As she walked walked across the the stage we all saw how much more easily she moved and descended the steps. Coming back up was still painful but she said not as painful as it had been and now she was using the cane for balance rather than support.
Seated again she marvelled at how she was feeling and moving and then expressed doubt that she could hold onto this feeling when she returned home. So I asked her “Let your mind wander ahead ahead through the coming days and is there anything that could bring the old feeling back?”
Barbara responded that carrying heavy
groceries into her her home could do that. So we tapped for “Even though carrying heavy groceries on my own could bring that old feeling back I choose to find a surprisingly simple solution”
Gwyneth talked to me a bit about what was going on in my present life situation, and then we began tapping on phrases she’d noticed in our conversation. Part of that tapping dealt with my present situation, not just the imagery but the true vulnerability of living on my own in a painful, impaired state, and “having to do everything myself.” So we tapped on “even though I’m on my own and have to do everything everything myself…” myself…”
We tapped tapped on other things that that I can’t
recall exactly, except the phrase “Oops, silly me” which was really helpful in putting things in perspective. perspective. It instantly reminded me I often take my situation too seriously and make everything seem grim.
I’d now like to conclude this article with Barbara’s own view of her EFT Imagineering experience and the insights and understanding that she gained. Speaking to her a week after Denver she told me that she had kept the optimistic feeling and each day was walking a little further without her cane.
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My understanding of what occurred is that I have extensive amounts of information about my physical condition but not enough information about the emotional and existential issues connected with it, (which (which is one reason I haven’t haven’t scheduled surgery surgery yet.) I believe that until I’m clear about the changes I need to make in my life and have the tools to make those changes, my body will not function optimally, optimally, even with a hip replacement. I feel that I don’t want to move forward until I’m congruent in my heart and mind about where I want to go. EFT is the tool I believe will take me there. But as I learned from the imagery, I haven’t haven’t been in touch touch with my internal “council” of support in choosing my next direction.
Prior to the EFT Imagineering, the concept of my internal support system was about being strong enough e nough to push through or overcome difficulties. difficulties. This often left me exhausted exhausted and depressed, depleting my energy. In the imagery, imagery, I was struck struck by the compassion and caring of this group, who, in their silence, projected a healing energy through caring and concern. They were there, but they did not tell me what to do or what was going going to happen. happen. This was the type of inner strength I’d been missing in myself, though it’s exactly the type I co-create co-create with my clients. It was mirrored mirrored in Gwyneth. She maintained maintained a compassionate compassionate detachment that that allowed me to own the experience free of her influence and free of my judgment and and intellectualizing. It put me in touch with with myself in a more spiritual way, and I could feel my energy shift to a different vibration.
I remember the exact moment in the cave when I no longer felt alone and I could feel myself come back into my body in the present. I remember smiling. At the same time I was aware of the pain and fear that had pushed me out of my body over a year ago,
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and how empty and alone I had been feeling since then. My pessimism transformed into optimism and I began to reconnect with my best self. I felt hopeful, even though I had no idea what was going to happen.
Throughout the rest of the conference, people came up to me to describe the changes they saw take place while I was “in the cave,” especially in my energy at the moment of the smile. Often they commented on the positive effect it had on them. Being approached by so many people anchored the good feeling of connection that had started in the imagery. Being supported by a group of people I didn’t know, who shared their positive energy so openly, and who thanked me for the shared benefits, created a powerful, reciprocal feeling. It was the the same experience I’d I’d had in the imagery taken one step further.
Thanks to EFT, to Gwyneth Moss, to all the exceptional practitioners and attendees of the showcase…and to the internal support group I discovered through EFT Imagineering, I truly left Denver in a state of emotional freedom.
Gwyneth Moss Barbara Friedman
(This article was written by Barbara and Gwyneth from memory and without having seen the DVD of the session, viewing of which may make apparent some inaccuracies in detail)
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10.
Gw yneth Moss Discusses Support for f or
Therapists Hi Everyone, In this excellent 2 part series, EFT Master Gwyneth Moss of the UK shares many insights, tips and pointers for supporting therapists. Hugs, Gary Part 1: The benefits of support Part 2: Being a supporter
By Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master P art 1: The benefits of supp ort Last week I called one of my Level 3 Trainees. Trainees. She is a highly highly experienced and skilled psychotherapis psychotherapistt who runs a busy local practice. I asked her “Do you do supervision?” “Yes” “Could you supervise me?” “What me? Supervise you?” There was surprise surprise in her voice. voice. So I explained that I needed to change my supervision arrangements and that I would be delighted if I could discuss my clients with her and so gain the benefit of her experience and objectivity.
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Later I found myself thinking about the presuppositions that underlay her initial surprised response. response. A trainee can’t can’t supervise a trainer. Supervision is hierarchical.
And that led me to thinking
about the word word itself. Just close your your eyes and say say the word supervisor and notice what inner experience you get. I get an image of a hard faced woman who walked up and down the line frowning and shouting shouting when I had a vacation vacation job as a student. The feeling is of being watched, being judged, judged, being found found wanting. Not something at all helpful or an experience I would welcome. When I say ‘supporter’ its entirely different and I remember someone who listened with acceptance, who saw the goodness and the gifts in me and with whom I could be myself, just as I am, and whose clear minded simple questions persisted however much I prevaricated and helped me to get back on track and find what I was looking for. Now I know that many of you reading this will have professional or licensing requirements that set out in great detail the what, how and whom of your professional supervision and this article is not intended to either agree or disagree disagree with any of of that. This article is about the role of the ‘supporter’ in therapy. What I would like to do is provoke some thought about the core qualities/functions of what a supporter can be and to inspire those for whom formal supervision is not mandated to voluntarily seek out some form of support. We all have writings on the walls about being ‘good enough’ or ‘not good enough’ and those writings can get in the way of our development both personally and as a therapist. therapist. We can interpret interpret a well meant observation as criticism or worse can blame our client for ‘not being ready’ or ‘being ‘being resistant’. (Not ready or or resistant are simply problems to work on on before working working on the problem). problem). We
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can all benefit from support or whatever we call it because whilst we are breathing we are learning and growing. EFT may be a small part of what you offer to clients or it may be at the core of what what you do. Whatever, there will will be a proportion proportion of people, a large proportion, with whom tapping sessions progress beautifully with specific events emerging and clearing, cognitive shifts creating new perspectives and body tensions dissolving – with these people you will find it easy to get rapport, to know where they are at and to test results. And then there there will be a proportion, proportion, a small proportion, with whom you just don’t feel at ease, or you feel inadequate to help, or you can’t get a grip on anything specific, or you can’t find the words, or they just make no progress however creative, empathetic and and skilled you are. That happens for all of us us no matter how experienced. The basic intention of supervision or support (or whatever you choose to call it) is to help the therapist to help the client. Even if the client does not come back to us we are still in a position to learn from our experience in order to grow professionally and help others. So I’d like to offer some thoughts from my own experience experience of benefiting from supervision/support. Review ing your Case Case Book A few days before a supervision/sup supervision/support port session I go though my appointment diary and make a list of the clients I have seen that month. I put them into three subjective subjective categories around my feeling about them and our sessions: doing-fine, not-sure, and stuck. The stucks I will definitely discuss discuss with my supervisor (knowing that her intention is for my learning and growth and the benefit of my clients) clients) and the the not-sures if we have time. I will also briefly tell my supervisor about the doing-fine group so that she can give me a pat on the back and draw my attention to my successes. 82
I know that if I did not have that supervision appointment then I would put off off doing this review. Consequently I would not dwell on the satisfaction of the doing-fine category and I would avoid contemplating the stuck and not-sure folks. folks. That’s human nature. Sometimes simply in making the list and reviewing the previous month’s list I get an insight about someone in the not-sure group and an idea for the next time time I see them. Simply in me doing doing this review my clients are already benefiting. Just Talking About It When we see clients we commit to respect their confidentiality. This means that we don’t talk about them and therefore that we don’t talk about our work. Part of the way that friends support each other is that we can come home or pick up the phone and talk through not only the frustrations and disappointments of our day but also our our successes, surprises and achievements. As therapists we cannot do that as it would compromise confidentiality and so all that mental clutter of the day stays in inner experience where it can go round and and round. There is a huge value to speaking speaking aloud and it is quite simple to understand why: we use more of our brains when we speak than when we think. think. To speak aloud we start from inner experience and then use the thinking part, the creating words part the making sounds part and also the hearing and comprehending parts as our words go out through the mouth and come back in through the ears. I have often found in supervision that I can be half way through explaining just why I found a session difficult or just how a person responded and I get an insight and the stuckness starts to move and without the listener saying anything I know what to do next. So the second benefit of supervision is that here is someone who will listen with attention, acceptance and respect of confidentiality,
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giving us the space to convert from inner experience to thought to sound that which we normally normally have to keep quiet. Just being able to talk about what we do helps us and our clients. Objectivity asks good questions We all know just how difficult it can be to tap for ourselves and our own issues and how well it can flow when working with another. We are all masters at hiding from and avoiding that which we find unpleasant and that hiding happens automatically and without conscious thought. The presence of another person not only brings brings the jump-leads effect of a second energy system but also the objectivity to ask the simple little questions that we have not asked ourselves. And it is our responses responses to simple little questions like: “what’s so bad about that?” or “what could you have done differently?” that make make us turn inner inner experience experience into words. It is is the same effect with supervision. When a therapy session does not go as we would expect it can be that our response to that person was preventing us from getting out of our own way and the simple questions of “what was it about them that you found difficult?” or “who did they remind you of?” can shed light on the writing on our own walls or allow specific memories to emerge for tapping. Or sometimes a person’s life experience may closely mirror our own and the triggered emotions e motions colour our objectivity. Again those simple little questions questions from another can help us to bring awareness to specific events and the writings on our own walls so that we can use EFT to clear them up. Or it may be the other way and the question “who do you think you reminded them of?” can bring the insight. So the another benefit of supervision is being asked simple little questions that bring awareness to our own stuff that is keeping us 84
from getting out out of our own own way. Sometimes awareness awareness is enough enough and sometimes we need to tap and having a supervisor you can tap with there and then is a great bonus. Now a qualified supervisor can also spot when a therapist is on ethical thin thin ice and needs steering back to to firm ground.
And in
addition to that supervising role there is the benefit of the supporter which for me means spending time with someone who: •
Gets you to review your practice and has the intention of the success of your practice
•
listens with attention whilst you talk about your client work and is committed to keep confidential whatever you tell them;
•
can ask simple little questions to help you become aware of your own stuff and can help you tap through whatever arises
•
gives you a pat on the back and brings your attention to your learning, growth and achievements and reminds you to take care of yourself
Gwyneth
P art 2: Being a suppo rter In the first article I wrote about the benefit of support for those who are using EFT to help others. others. Now I would would like you to to think about about how to be a helpful and valued supporter. Undivided Attention To offer support support is to offer your undivided attention. Make an appointment with your supportee and clear the decks of your own life for that time. time. Support is not a two way chatter it is a directed and purposeful one way process where one person commits to 85
offering their intention and attention for the benefit of another – just like we do in therapy. Support is an asymmetrical agreement agreement and because of that requires some form of payment or exchange. For the duration of the support session you need to get your own self and your own stuff out out of the way way – this is their time. So no interruptions and no saying “Oh yes, it’s like when I ….” A Good Listening To As a supporter you need to give your supportee a good listening to.
And at the same time time gently prevent them from babbling babbling or
jumping about about all over the place. Listen with an awareness of what you are listening to and for. Gently bring them back to the client they were discussing or the question they were raising if their mind wanders or sidetracks.
Agree a structure for the sessions that
works for both of you so that you use your time together efficiently: you could start with an overview, then focus on the stuck cases and end with a success. P raise their Successes Often people take their successes for granted and pick up on every error or omission. omission. As a supporter supporter you need to have your antennae on alert for success and sometimes as little as a smile and nod is enough in recognition, sometimes it’s a ‘well done’ or ‘Wow!’ that you need to offer so that they can recognise that they have done well. And of course course you can always ask “and what did you learn from that success?” success?” “What could could you do differently now?” If you are aware of the concept of ‘attributional style’ then you can challenge your suportees global or permanent negative attributions to help them think more healthily about their work.
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Ask the Unasked Questions I was recently telling my supervisor about a client with an obsessive fear of death and she asked me the obvious question that I had not considered “have you asked her how and when she learned what death is or did someone special die when she was young?” young?” That was a really useful question which when I asked my client opened many doors. With another another client she asked asked me “who does she remind you of?” and I had to think long long and hard and she had to ask me twice before I replied “my old boss in London” and that opened lots of of tapping doors doors for me. So as a supporter, as you listen, have the back of your mind looking out for the unasked questions. Resist the desire desire to offer your your interpretation of of the client’s situation - remember that you are hearing the story second hand and the most helpful contribution you can offer the therapist is a question rather than an answer. From client to therapist to supporter there is an increase in objectivity and a decrease in subjectivity. A supporter can be highly objective because all they know about the person is what the therapist tells them. The supporter has never met the client and their understanding lacks the subtlety that comes from nonverbal awareness, they have to fill in subjectivity with conjecture and imagination. This is why I agree with a quote attributed attributed to Fritz Perls “Any interpretation is a therapeutic therapeutic mistake”. A supporter supporter cannot tell a therapist what to do and what a supporter can do is ask the questions or tell the stories or offer the teachings that enable the therapist balance their objectivity and subjectivity to help the client. And of course if you feel that your supportee is straying towards the outer bounds of general human ethical behaviour then you must say so and you must then help them to accept and change their
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behaviour.
Whether or not we operate within a formal formal professional
code of ethics we all need to behave with kindness and consideration and in a manner that we can be proud of. Talk and Tap When a therapist is really stuck with a client I get them to tap continually as they describe the client and I keep giving little sounds of encouragement of asking “then what” to keep them going for several minutes. Often this leads to a spontaneous spontaneous insight of where to go or an understanding of what action action the client needs to take. A variant of this is to have the therapist role play the client and I act as therapist and ask the simple questions a therapist would ask and we tap together. together. This generally ‘unsticks’ the therapist and sometimes the surrogate effect unsticks the client too. Remind about Self-Care Self-Care We all forget to look after ourselves and as a supporter you will probably need to remind your supportee to get a good balance of work, rest and play. Good things to suggest that we can all do are balancing the time we are serious with time having fun; and the time we are noisy with time being quiet; and the time we are sitting at a computer with time moving whether walking, running or dancing. There are many ways to relax, re-energise and let go and they all work but sometimes we need a supporter to be remind us to plan them into our lives. lives. And of course course we need to be reminded to tap. Being a supporter is rewarding in itself and an added benefit is that there is so much that our supportees can teach us and that we can learn from their experiences. Outside of the licenced and mandated mandated professions where supervision requires specialised training and
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qualification all of us with natural human empathy and common sense can be supporters if we follow these suggestions. Gwyneth
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11.
A H umorous R eply to an EFT Skeptic S keptic
Hi Everyone, Skeptics are everywhere, especially regarding something as astonishingly different as EFT. Gwyneth Moss, one of our EFT Masters from the UK, encountered such a skeptic on a professional email list and responded with an entertaining, light humor. I thought you might find it useful. Hugs, Gary
By Gwyneth Moss Can you remember your reaction when you first heard about EFT? Were you a skeptic? I was. When a hypnotherapist friend told me that he was getting better results by tapping on people's faces and was hardly doing any trance work any more my reaction was to conclude that he was away with the fairies and to dismiss it completely. Thankfully the universe kept on at me with EFT and eventually I paid attention. We all meet skeptics and our EFT enthusiasm e nthusiasm can reach a brick wall. Over the years I have been making attempts to spread the word of EFT to the members of my psychotherapy professional professional body. One of my postings to the association's e-mail group was greeted with this response; its the old joke about the guy who goes to the shrink and says that he thinks that he is a dog. Here it is and here is my reply. I have found with skeptics that it is best to go with their view of reality and then to tweak it slightly with some humour. Dear Gwyneth,
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I wonder if EFT would have worked on this client I had the other day, he came to see me quite agitated... I asked him to calm down and tell me what I could do for him....he then went on to explain that he had a strange delusion.....he believed himself to be a dog, a spotted terrier to be precise... I didn't know what to do so I asked him to take a seat and tell me all about it...to my surprise he refused. I asked him why, he replied "I'm not allowed up on the furniture!" can you help? best regards J **************************** Dear J Our philosophy with EFT is to "try it on everything" and in true Ericksonian fashion to respect and utilse the clients own reality and experience. So regarding your client who believes himself to be a spotted terrier...here is an outline of the approach that I might take.
Me: Spot, what would make this session valuable for you?
Spot: I'd like to be able to sit on that sofa and feel ok
Me: Spot, what would you experience now if you were to sit on the sofa?
Spot: I'd feel tense, scared and quite panicy
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Me: And would that be a little bit scared or a lot scared?
Spot: A lot
Me: Spot, I know a simple mind-body technique that has helped both dogs and people. Now it looks daft and it feels silly and I don't even know for sure if it will help you or not and what I do know is that it is very quick and we will know in a few minutes if this is going to be the way to help you. Would it be Ok to try this?
Spot: Yes fine
Me: Well lets just do it and then I can give you an explanation, because after we do this you will be able to ask better questions and I'll give better answers. OK Spot can you tap here and say these words after me "Even though I feel fe el scared and panic on the sofa, I'm alright, I'm OK" that's right and now watch me and tap where I tap and say these words as we tap "sitting on the sofa" Great, now then Spot, could you climb up on the sofa and let me know how you feel?
Spot: Well this is surprisingly Ok, no panic at all. Not scared anymore. A bit guilty though. I remember one time I got muddy paw marks all over the cushions and they shouted at me.
Me: Ok Spot, sit there and lets do some more tapping "Even though I got mud on the cushions and they shouted at me, I accept myself, I'm Ok" and now tap where I tap and say "Mud on the cushions" and here "They shouted at me"
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J, I suggest you simply continue with Spot, tapping on whatever aspect or emotion arises until he feels quite comfortable on the sofa. In the next session, or when he is ready to, you can address his species identity confusion, if it is still a problem for him.
hope that helps best regards Gwyneth
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12.
Tw o Cats Cats and a P uppy
Hi Everyone, EFT Master Gwyneth Moss from the UK helps us understand (1) how well EFT works for animals and (2) the power of surrogate EFT. Note how this was all done in a workshop setting where the animals were not even present. Hugs, Gary
By Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master Dear Gary, I’d like to share three very special and moving EFT experiences. People often ask me if they can can use EFT to help their pets. pets. So I tell them yes.
And because animals don’t always like to be tapped on
and because we may not be sure where their tapping points are, it is helpful to use surrogate tapping. Now, for some of us, especially those who are Reiki trained, the concept of healing healing at a distance distance is nothing nothing new. And those with a homeopathy background background are accustomed to treating animals. animals. But for me with my scientific upbringing it always seemed a step too far to use EFT at a distance distance for an animal. animal.
And so it was with more more
than a little uncertainty that I built into my EFT workshops a group exercise to tap as surrogates for an animal. I need not have have worried as the results have been little short of astounding. In each of these three amazing cases a group of 12 tapped together for a pet known known only to one of them. them. The one who knew the pet
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acted as the pet (mentally stepped into the pet’s body) and I acted as therapist leading leading the “pet” through through EFT. The others in the group tapped along with us, repeating the words we used and borrowed benefits for for themselves themselves as well.
For the set up phrases phrases we used
whatever words came to the person speaking for the pet or to me as therapist and then added something about the pet being loved, safe and cared for. Each of these these cases took took about 15-20 minutes of tapping. Oscar's shaking tail In September the the group tapped for Oscar. Sue Ashdown Ashdown was offering a temporary home to Oscar (the cat of a friend of hers) who, due to changing circumstances, was unable to look after him. Sue was worried about Oscar - his tail and whole rear quivered and shook and he stumbled as he walked and sometimes sometimes fell. Her three other cats would not eat with him and he was generally in poor condition. We tapped as a group with Sue leading us and speaking as Oscar "Even though my tail shakes, I'm a good cat and Sue and Dawn love me" "Even though I don't know know where I live I'm a good cat and these these people care about about me" me"
and more, Sue Sue was "guessing" at
Oscar's emotional state and events that had happened to him just came to her. The words “came “came from nowhere” nowhere” she said with surprise. After about 15 minutes of tapping, tapping, Sue felt a deep sense of calm and we tapped a round of “I am Sue” to separate her energy connection with Oscar. When Sue got home from the workshop she found that Oscar's tail was no longer shaking, he was walking better, not falling, the other cats were much more relaxed with him and he with them and they
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were all eating together. together. Its now December (3 months months later) and and Sue confirms that these improvements are sustained. Kitte n the 'Scare-dy Cat' A few weeks later another group of 12 tapped for a middle aged cat who goes by the name of Kitten. Kitten. Kitten’s owner is a friend of of Moira who spoke as Kitten and once again I acted as therapist and the group tapped with us. Kitten was a ‘scare-dy cat, very nervous, startled at any movement and spent most of her time time hiding hiding upstairs.
We started tapping
with “Even though I’m scared of footsteps I’m a good cat and Moira loves me”. Then I asked Moira if she knew what had happened to Kitten when she was a kitten. Moira didn’t know and so we made up imaginary events. events. "Even though that man hurt hurt me and I bit him and I couldn't escape, that was then, this is now, I'm with good people now, I’m safe now"
“Even though footsteps remind me of
that man and I’m terrified there are good people around me now and they love me”. We tapped together as a group for about 15 minutes until Moira felt a sense sense of deep calm.
I asked asked her to picture picture Kitten and she she
pictured her snuggled snuggled up all relaxed. When she got got home Kitten’s owner said "I don't know what's got into this cat, she's so much calmer". Weeks later Moira confirms that Kitten is much calmer, doesn’t startle at footsteps footsteps and spends spends most of of her time downstairs. downstairs. It is interesting that when she enquired of Kitten’s owner as to Kitten’s early experiences she found out that Kitten had been the runt of the litter and was raised in a chaotic household and her experiences had probably been more more of neglect than of cruelty. cruelty. So even if Moira’s Moira’s imaginings were off track the tapping did the trick. 96
P oppy: Destruction and Disruption The third case is the most moving. Sue Hanisch told us of of a tragedy. Her brother and and his wife have have four young children, four cats and until recently a vibrant and intelligent Border Collie named Shadow who was like a fifth fifth child. One morning in the summer, Shadow was hit by a car and was so badly injured that she had to be put to sleep. The raw and painful painful grief of the family was such that they believed that no dog could ever replace Shadow. Then they heard from a neighbor that a Jack Russell 6 month old puppy was to be returned to the rescue centre because his new owners could not handle him. The family felt sorry sorry for the puppy puppy and agreed to take take Poppy. Well Poppy proved to be more than a handful and chewed the carpet, terrorized the cats, jumped and barked and was constantly on on red alert. Sue told us that this was a turning point for the family, Poppy’s young life had brought hope and if Poppy had to be returned to the rescue centre the children would be inconsolable. However, Poppy’s behavior was causing havoc. So Sue "became "became Poppy" and I led the group. group. We started with with the behavior “Even though though I bark and jump I’m a good good dog and they want to love me” then we went onto Poppy’s insecurity “Even though I’ve been in three homes and I don’t know where I belong and nobody wants me and I have to be b e noticed, the children love me and want me to stay”. Then “Even though though I’m scared scared I’m not good enough its ok, this family loves me”. As we tapped Sue was feeling Poppy’s emotions and feeling some shift but it wasn’t until it came through me to offer “Even though I can’t be Shadow I can be Poppy and Poppy Poppy is Poppy”. At this point point it was like like an electric shock went through Sue and as we tapped that subsided to a deep calm and she tapped a round of “I am Sue” to de-role herself.
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Sue visited her brother a week later. The front door door was opened and left open (previously Poppy would have rushed out barking and jumping) as Sue walked into the kitchen she found Poppy curled up in a basket, a quiet little angel. A month later later Sue has reported that Poppy has all the natural enthusiasm of any puppy of 6 months and there is no no more destruction destruction and disruption. disruption. The cats are now now friends with Poppy who in her young fun way is helping the whole family to heal. In Conclusions So, my conclusion is that if you want to use EFT to help an animal or pet I would suggest that you find at least one other person to tap with you. The one of you you that knows the pet can then then tune into the feeling of the pet, or simply speak of what you know happened or imagine what what could could have happened. happened. If in doubt, guess. The other other then acts as EFT therapist, asking questions and leading/guiding through the EFT process. Having one of you manage the process frees the other of you to manage the content and to be open to what comes to you without having to think think about the words. If you can find other people to tap with you, then that’s even better, though there is no proof, my gut feel is that these three cases were turbo charged by the action of the group. Once you sense sense the work is done the person person speaking as the animal needs to de-role themselves by repeating and tapping with “I am me” and saying their own name. Happy Tapping, Gwyneth
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13.
"How do I G et That That Good?" G ood?"
Hi Everyone, EFT Master Gwyneth Moss from the UK shares several helpful concepts for improving your EFT skills. Hugs, Gary
By Gwyneth Moss One of my students recently watched Gary working with Kim on the Borrowing Benefits Benefits DVDs. She turned to me and sighed “He’s an artist! How do I get that good? Can I ever get that good?”
Yes
you can. Yes. Each of us when we first come to EFT starts with the needle-andthread that is the basic recipe. recipe. Then, though our our own practice practice and repeated observation of Gary and others at work, we learn the simple stitches of the gentle techniques and the approaches to trauma. We learn detective work to uncover aspects and core issues and imaginative imaginative forms of testing to check our work. work. As practice continues we further develop rapport, flexibility and adaptability, we learn to use EFT over the phone and how to introduce EFT to individuals and groups. Progressing and practicing further we learn how to explain and teach these processes and skills to others. Through the repetition of practice practice and the challenge of real cases our skills develop into a channel through which art can flow. Any artist whether painter, potter, pianist or cook must practice and practice and practice basic techniques until those get into the
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muscles and no longer require require conscious thought. Art is created in the paradox of simultaneously being present and being not present. Any artist will will tell you that that in the moments moments of creativity creativity they are not there, they get out of the way and the inspiration seems to come come from nowhere, nowhere, from beyond. beyond. However any art is also totally individual: a product of that person’s unique qualities. It is as if art flows though us and like light though a lens it is colored and shaped by our uniqueness. Dr Nick Baylis of Cambridge University says that “just about anyone with average learning ability is quite capable of acquiring a professional level of expertise in virtually any endeavor”.
What
makes someone excel in the art of delivery of EFT is what makes any great artist.
So how do we get that that good? good?
Lots of Determined Practice Committed practice is the single most important factor in how good we get at something. something. In practice we we must be always always aiming to improve, stretching ourselves and working near the limits of our comfort zone, neither too far beyond nor too far within our current level. In EFT this means working with lots and lots of cases so that the basic skills become second nature. Practice allows us to appreciate human individuality and to develop the flexibility to work in different ways with different people. Patch Adams describes life as an endless repeating cycle of Intention, Performance, and Feedback.
Those developing artistry
pay crucial attention attention to Feedback. Feedback. Clients may or or may not give give us direct feedback and whether they choose to or not, we have to review and appraise appraise our work ourselves. Improvement is through learning and learning is through experience so in every experience we have to ask ask “what did I learn?” and “what would I change?” So
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show enthusiasm for feedback and don’t be afraid to try something new or to stretch your comfort zone. Dr Baylis says that 95% of us reach a plateau of competence after the first 100 hours of practice and then our progress levels off as we cease to challenge ourselves and remain well within our comfort zone.
This can can often be because because as complete beginners we are not
afraid of failure whilst once we start to develop some expertise we fear the humiliation of “getting it wrong” and stop taking the risks from which we learn. This plateau (which (which many reach at EFT level 2) is a rich mine of Writings on Walls and the 5% or so who are the true artists will find the motivation to climb beyond the plateau by clearing their own own blocking beliefs. beliefs. Any of us can do that, any of us can be that 5% and if you don’t believe that, then start tapping. My first therapy teacher Wilf Proudfoot said “I can teach you to be safe; your clients will teach you to be effective”. I began to feel like a competent and confident therapist after my first 1,000 hours of client work but I didn’t do that on my own, it also took the several hundred people who who sought me out for help. A pianist can can shut themselves away with a piano to clock up the 10,000 committed hours that make make a professional. professional. To get such practice in EFT EFT we have to convince convince others of of its merits and and attract them to us. So an EFT artist also needs to be an artist of marketing and communication either in establishing and maintaining a private practice or in persuading an employer or not-for-profit agency to accept something new and seemingly weird. A Shining Passion All this practice and practice-building requires a heart-felt, deep, self motivating passion to fuel long hours of studying and marketing, to overcome set backs and to communicate at every
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opportunity. Passion is fed by a curiosity curiosity for learning and new experience and strengthened by enjoyment. Artists do do EFT quite simply because they love it and gain a deep pleasure from the experience. Passion shines shines out of them and and manifests as the creativity and intuition that builds on the foundation of practice and enables a truly truly individual style to emerge.
Mohammed Ali said
“champions are not made in the gym; champions are made from something they have deep inside them – a desire, a dream, a vision”. Such passion passion comes from the heart and and cannot be be imposed by the head. When we are working at the peak of our abilities and passion we are working from our strengths. Positive Psychology Psychology the brain-child brain-child of Professor Martin Seligman identifies 27 signature strengths of which we each exhibit three primary strengths and several secondary strengths. I would encourage encourage all who who want to become EFT artists artists to take the signature strengths questionnaire on the Authentic Happiness website and to build on their own individual strengths in their work with EFT. Once they have developed competence and confidence in applying EFT, artists begin to play with their own ideas and to innovate. Creativity flourishes and artists develop their own ways of introducing EFT, their own reframes and their own teaching tools. Or they find specialties in working with children or cancer care or some such population where they feel at home and have a passionate vision for the possibilities of EFT. A Rich Learning Environment Developing skill in EFT is not done alone and artists have an insatiable hunger for learning. As well as the many clients who teach how to be effective, EFT artists surround themselves in a rich
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learning environment. environment. They watch Gary Craig’s DVDs over and over. They trawl trawl the internet and and keep thick files of articles. They go to workshops with different trainers and train in the related fields of NLP and psychotherapy. psychotherapy. They read widely on human nature, psychology, philosophy (a rich source of reframes), spirituality and physics. They develop and maintain a spiritual practice that steadies and centers centers and expands consciousnes consciousness. s. As we get ourselves out of the way and the healing art flows through us, it picks up fragments of this diversity of learning and experience that enriches our unique human filter. EFT artists attract each other and become friends and tappingbuddies who offer support and encouragement and work on each others issues. issues. They put themselves in learning environments environments like one of my trainees who walked into an Alzheimer’s society meeting and said, initially unsure of herself, “I think I can help” and has since proved it. Supporting Artistry I help those who come to me for EFT Training to continue to learn after the workshops and to develop the habit of learning, by building a coaching coaching program into the initial training. This requires them to do three assignments and to call me after each one. one. In the calls I stress that I am not an assessor but a learning coach and I ask them to tell me what they learned from the assignment and then do all that that I can to make the calls calls enjoyable. We discuss the learning and I encourage them with further possibilities of continuing that that learning. The third of their their assignments is to do a Palace of Possibilities session for themselves: to identify and clear a Writing on their their Walls. This assignment assignment and the coaching coaching call are designed to give them the know-how and motivation to climb beyond the learning plateau and to keep heading towards artistry.
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So how do you get that good? You get that good through through determined practice, shining passion and learning partnerships. And like climbing a mountain – you just keep going! Gwyneth Moss
(and if you read this far – w ell done!)
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