This one was a surprise issue. My partner has a huge plastic bottle into which he has been putting coins for years. It’s about half full. I don’t know how much is in there now, it hasn’t ever been counted yet. I noticed that when we moved in together I took a while before I began adding my “extra coins” to the pot. I obviously had reservations about “his” and “mine.” I logically realize this is totally silly because if I asked him for anything, he’d hand it over in a heart-beat if I needed it. I noticed this interesting emotional programming I have regarding trust in relationships.

Recently, my wallet was heavy with too much small change and I wanted to get rid of the excess. I had noticed my partner putting loonies ($1 Canadian coins with a loon on them) and twoonies ($2 Canadian coins) into the pot … as if he didn’t need them to pay for things. I compared my own habit of putting in pennies and nickels.

I’d been listening to a Mike Dooley audio program lately and he talks about acts of faith as a way to tell the universe that you’re ready for something that you don’t presently have. As I put my money into the jar this time, I decided to stretch myself as an act of faith: acting AS IF I don’t need that bit of change in my wallet to pay for things, telling my subconscious that I have more than enough elsewhere – which IS actually the truth. Apparently, however, I have an emotional part of me that DOESN’T believe that. My act of faith would be that I’d throw in my dimes as well. Sounds easy enough…

Well, I would never have imagined there could be so much resistance! I threw all my dimes in, maybe 7 to 10 of them, and I forced myself to throw in a quarter as well. I had three others that I did NOT put in.

Recognizing “Writing on My Walls”

As I sat down after doing that I immediately became aware of an emotion and a bodily sensation telling me that all was not fine. I could feel such sadness welling up and my body was physically tight with fear. Where there is fear, there is no love… and there certainly isn’t any faith. I recognized this as some of the “the writing on my walls” regarding lack of abundance.

Contrary to what I generally do with clients, I didn’t bother with any Setup phrases. Nor did I take the time to check the level of intensity. I did not believe that I had any Psychological Reversal on this issue so I simply began tapping the 8 shortcut points that I most often use: EB, SE, UE, UN, CH, CB, UA and top of head.

Phrases: This sadness about giving my money away. This sadness about putting my money in the common pot. This tightness in my body about putting my dimes in the pot. Let’s not think about the quarters. A whole quarter!

Feel like it’s no longer mine. Feel like it’s lost to me now and I might need it. What if I need it? I can’t get it back. It feels so sad. Can’t ask for it back.

I don’t know how much is mine. What is my rightful part? I might need it and I won’t have it. Such sadness, such fear, needing the money and not being able to get it back. I had it once but I gave it away. I might need it. Such fear. This sadness.

I stopped when I experienced no more distress and “Aaaaahhh, that felt better!” No more fear, no more sadness, no more tightness. It felt like a 0 out of 10. I decided to test my work by going back and throwing in the other three quarters!! I stood and watched, emotionless, as they fell into the bottle. Okay, I haven’t tried throwing the loonies or twoonies in yet but I know that some day I will and, for the moment, I am celebrating my success at bringing about quite a large shift in perspective about small change and feeling that much lighter and more enlightened.

How many little things like that do we deal with every single day of our lives? They seem so trivial yet how do they limit us? We are often not even consciously aware of them, these seemingly inconsequential thoughts and beliefs, and yet they are stressors running constantly in the background and they have an impact on our emotional and possibly even our physical well-being. What a relief and a change in our lives when we are able to remove them using EFT or any other modality for that matter. Again, all I can say is “Aaaahhhhhh!”

Tap on even the small things!

Follow Up

Follow up about 2 months later: I have since tested the work by throwing in more change which included dimes AND quarters. There was no resistance. Next step: (to paraphrase Dorothy and the gang) “Loonies and Twoonies and Bills! Oh my!”

Kelly Roughton is an EFT Practitioner and NGH Certified Hypnotherapist living in the Montreal, Quebec, Canada area. Using a good dose of humour and a lot of compassion, she enjoys working privately with clients and facilitating personal development workshops. Visit her online at www.InnerShining.com

Editor’s Note:This article comes to us via Gwenn Bonnell’s Tap into Heaven Newsletter. It is republished here with permission.

Yesterday Hurricane Irene blew past us here on south Florida. This storm is so massive that even though the eye was hundreds of miles away, the sky was dark all day, the rain bands kept us wet all day, and the wind was strong enough that our yard was littered with palm fronds this morning. We were lucky though – parts of the Bahamas really got blasted and the storm is traveling up the east coast of the United Stated today.

Living in south Florida I am no stranger to hurricanes – I remember hunkering down for the last direct hit we had about six years ago. Three adults and two dogs on the floor in our master bathroom, waiting for hours while the storm passed over while listening to what sounded like horses galloping across the roof because the ceramic shingles were being blown
away.

And I remember students relating how they waited out the storm cowering in closets or other enclosed spaces and living in terror the entire time.

While you must follow common sense and evacuate when it’s necessary, or otherwise make sure you have enough emergency supplies on hand, there is no need to spend hours or even minutes in terror while riding out the storm.

Neurobiologist Jill Bolte Taylor explains that the brain and body are designed to react to trauma by setting off an emotional response. and that the neurophysiology of the body is set up to allow us to feel that emotion AND RELEASE IT within 90 seconds.

It’s when we hold on to the emotion, and replay the pattern, that the emotional response gets caught in our body and we hold on to the anxiety, the stress, and even the terror.

Which means, to me, that the absolute best time to tap away the emotion is when you are feeling it – before it gets a chance to get stuck in your body. If you think about it, releasing the anxiety and stress leaves you more clear-headed to logically deal with traumatic events such as hurricanes.

Tip #1: Tap In The Moment

If you find yourself experiencing this hurricane, or any other scary event, tap while it is happening. As soon as you feel any anxiety, stress or terror, start tapping on the EFT tapping points.

Don’t worry about a setup statement or what to say while tapping the side of the hand/karate chop point. That’s designed to get you focused on the problem, and if you are in the middle of the storm, you are already focused on the problem.

So simply start tapping the points on the face, collarbone, and under the arm. You can say whatever is going through your mind, or relate what is happening around you, or say something that makes you feel better such as, “I’m safe, I’m OK right now, I will survive.”

From How to Weather Hurricane Stress by Gwenn Bonnell:

“Even though I have all these fears about the worst happening, no matter what I do to prepare it’s not enough, I accept myself anyway and know that I always do the best I can.”

“Even though I’m overwhelmed with preparing yet again for another possible hurricane, we’ve been through this time and time, I’m fed up with all this, why do we have to keep dealing with this, I love and accept myself, and choose to remain calm and sane throughout this process.”

“Even though I have all this anxiety about going through another hurricane, thoughts about what can happen keep going around and around in my head, I accept myself, and I choose to release all these fears and focus on how I’ve survived everything in my life.”

“Even though my nerves are shot, I can’t take going through this again, I accept myself anyway and just love feeling calm and peaceful.”

“Even though I’m so stressed and I can’t control my emotions anymore, I don’t know how to get through this, I deeply and completely love and accept myself, and choose to breathe deeply and release all my stressful emotions.”

“Even though it’s emotionally draining to go through another hurricane, we haven’t even recovered from the last one yet, and it seems like I fly off the handle at any little thing, I choose to remember that I’m OK, I’ve lived through the last hurricane and I’m OK, my family is OK, and I will live through this also.”

Notice where in your body are you holding this hurricane stress. There’s that helpless feeling, that stress of not being able to control the situation that you might experience in your back.

For me, it’s in my jaw… grinding my teeth at night and waking up with a toothache in the morning. For my mother-in-law, it’s in her shoulder… after repeatedly moving furniture and plants in and out of the house. I’ve heard others say they are just “wiped out” or “blown away” by all this. And of course (especially when the electricity fails) we’re all just “sweating it out…”

Tip #2: The Forehead Hold

This is great to teach children, or to do with children, and of course for yourself.

Placing the palm of your hand across your forehead helps bring energy and blood into the forebrain of your body and get you out of the fight-or-flight response. You know, that response that drains the blood from your forehead to your chest (fight) or your legs (flee).

Lightly holding the palm of your hand across your forehead – sometimes for 10 or 15 minutes or more – will help you think clearly just when you need it the most. This will also retrain your body not to go into that fight-or-flight blood-rushing-from-your brain response.

You might find yourself doing this instinctively, especially with your children. However, doing this for a few seconds doesn’t help that much – to get maximum benefit, you want to hold your hand across the forehead until you feel the pulsing in the capillaries in the frontal neurovasculars – a fancy name for the lumps above the eyebrows on both sides of the forehead.

BTW, you can supercharge your EFT tapping by placing the palm of one hand across your forehead and tapping the points with your other hand.

Tip #3: Tap the Gamut Point

Mostly forgotten recently in tapping, and hugely underutilized, the Gamut Point on the back of the hand directly influences the meridian (energy channel) that is involved in the fight-or-flight reaction.

Anytime you feel a sudden rush of emotion such as fear or anxiety (or even anger or frustration) tapping or massaging the Gamut Point may help lower the intensity of your reaction.

To find the Gamut Point, make a fist with one hand, and you will see a depression between the knuckles of the fourth and fifth fingers on the back of the hand (not between the knuckles but a little beneath the knuckles on the hand). This depression is where to tap – or rub – to help release the fear so you can feel safe.

View the Gamut Point on the Basic Recipe EFT Chart

Lots of my students tell me that massaging the Gamut Point really helps in social situations when they feel as if they are going to lose it and don’t want to tap the face points.

Again, if you are feeling the fear in the moment, don’t worry so much about what to say. You don’t really have to say anything. Just focus on the feeling, massage or tap the Gamut Point, and notice as you feel calmer and more able to handle the situation.

Of course, you can always add the Gamut Point to your EFT tapping sequence.

Experiment with these three processes – tapping the EFT points in the moment while focused on your emotional reaction, holding your forehead in the palm of your hand (remember this is great for kids) and taking advantage of the Gamut Point on the back of your hand.

I trust that you will stay safe and stay calm through the storm.

Love & light,
Gwenn

I recently participated on a wilderness trip to Colorado with 25 other people, most of us not the “wilderness” type. The trip featured a rock climb on one day, followed by a trek (overnight hike) two days later.

There was a lot of trepidation in the group about many things; the rock climb, the hike, the workshops we were doing, the presence of wild animals, altitude sickness (we all live at almost sea level, and our climb went from 9,000 to 10,650, so it was a challenge for many).

As we shared our gifts in preparing for the trip, I offered EFT as my contribution to the group. We did one 15 minute session before leaving for Colorado, where I explained and demonstrated the technique. Many folks used it, and several thanked me for sharing it, saying it helped them in various ways.

One member of the group, a woman not known for being timid in any aspect of her life, had a special request of me once we got to Colorado. To prepare for the rock climb, she had gone to practice at an indoor rock gym. She reported she was shocked to find herself frozen just a few feet off the ground at the rock wall, unable to climb any higher. She said she was worried about the climb the next day, and asked if we could have a session.

I did a ten minute session with her that evening. We started tapping on her recollection of fear and feeling frozen, like she couldn’t move, as soon as her feet left the ground on the indoor rock face. After two rounds of tapping, she was startled to have the insight as to what was being triggered for her. She recalled a death in the family several years earlier, and the resulting responsibility she had to assume, which had left her with the same panicked, stuck feeling that she had on the wall.

The few statements she made about the issues made it clear that under the circumstances it was not at all appropriate to start to unpack this past event, or even to tap on it at all. In my experience, once a client has accessed a core event, it is difficult to work on it “just a little bit” without triggering that which wants to come out. I elected to stop while she was still in her intellect about the event, and explained my reasoning to her. After all, we had a clear goal for that evening, which was to get her as comfortable as possible about climbing the actual rock face the next day.

Consequently, we used the device of creating a box for safekeeping of the issue she had uncovered, and all its associated fears and concerns. I did not want her to feel we were fleeing the issue—instead we were establishing that she was in control of the decision to safely and strategically delay unpacking this event. After a couple of rounds of putting it securely in a box and storing it away, she felt ready to turn to setting an intention for the rock climb.

We tapped another round or two setting a positive intention that she could allow herself to easily climb the rock, and then we closed the session.

The next day, she was indeed able to climb as high as she was comfortable going, without getting “stuck” emotionally.

This session offered a true gift in the rapidity of the insight my friend achieved—the fastest major insight to come out of a tapping session yet in my experience.

At the same time, it presented a challenge for me, as my friend had opened a large issue that needed to be safely stored away so that she could do what she was there to do. Her ability to access a core issue so quickly along with her facility with using the strategy of creating a safekeeping space meant that our ten minute session in a relatively public setting had a very happy ending.

Ange Dickson Finn is an AAMET-certified Level 2 EFT Practitioner. She is based in the Houston, Texas, and works with clients over the phone and via Skype. Ange has helped clients with issues including physical pain, health and well-being, work-related stress, unresolved grief, equestrian sports and relationships. Visit her on the web at www.TapIntoYourself.com or www.RideWithoutFear.com. Contact her via email at ange@tapintoyourself.com.

EFT can be done almost anywhere. Though I don’t necessarily recommend it while driving, I must admit that I did it today. I drove my 91 year old mother and her dear friend “Irene”(who is in her 80′s) to a casino this morning. Irene sat in front with me. She asked if I had had a bone density test, admitting that she was afraid to get one. I asked her why, and she replied that it was like an MRI, and she felt claustrophobic when she was in such close quarters. I told her that EFT could probably help her with her claustrophobia, and if she wanted, we could clear it before we got to the casino. Irene was game.

I asked her if she could remember a really bad experience when she felt closed in. She related that when she was eleven years old, she went into some very small caves with her mother, grandmother and aunt. Her grandmother had to turn back because she felt so panicky. Irene said that, just like her grandmother, she felt trapped and panicky. I asked her to imagine being in the cave now. Then I asked, “What is the intensity level that you feel right now when you think about being in that cave?” She said it was a 7 (and this was 70 years after the incident).

I had my car on cruise control at about 65 miles an hour. We were past the rush hour traffic. I had done EFT with Irene a couple of years ago, so I didn’t have to explain how it works, I just told her what to say, and reminded her where to tap. I asked her if her experience in the cave was a video, how long would it be? She said only around 10 minutes. I asked her to come up with a title of that video that would make her laugh, and she came up with “Scared Stiff”. I also reminded her that she could add cuss words if she wished, and it felt right to her.

Her set-up phrases were, “Even though:

• I have uncomfortable feelings when I think about going to that cave, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.
• I still feel scared and panicky when I think about going in that cave…
• I feel surprised that I still feel stuff around being in that cave…

We did one round of tapping using “Scared Stiff” as her reminder phrase. I also encouraged her to inhale and exhale with each point that she tapped on her body — working to get it out of her energy system. After only one round, her intensity level dropped from 7 to 4.

On her second round, she got to the point under her eye and she blurted out “Scared Shitless”. We both cracked up, so she used “Scared Shitless” as her new reminder phrase. That brought her intensity down to a 2. I asked her how she was feeling about getting an MRI, and she answered, “Not bad at all.”

So, I encouraged her to do one last round, without set-up phrases, and tapping in the positive. Some of the phrases she used:

• I am whole and complete
• I am glad that I’ve let go of my fear of being in tight places
• I am safe
• I am safe—even in tight places
• I am safe wherever I am
• I am safe in the MRI

After the third round, I reminded her that when we started her intensity level around being in the cave was a 7, then dropped to a 4, and then a 2. “What is it now?” I asked. She reported that there was nothing there. Then I asked about her fear of feeling claustrophobic while in the MRI. With a growing sense of wonder, she replied, “I don’t have any. There is nothing there.”

She said she wouldn’t be able to tap in the MRI machine because there wasn’t enough room. I told her she could just imagine tapping her points, and that should work.

We were able to clear 70 years of fear of being in tight spots in just 20 minutes while traveling down the freeway. EFT is amazing!!!

JoAnn SkyWatcher is a Spiritual Coach who offers EFT via phone from Northern California. She comes from a spiritual perspective, and loves to use humor as well as using her intuition to find those pivotal points where life changing decisions were made. JoAnn is certified Level 3 via the AAMET. She is author of Touched by a Miracle: EFT Healing Stories. You can visit her website at www.JoAnnSkyWatcher.com.

M.E., a woman in her 50s, came to me for help in conquering extreme fear keeping her from enjoying riding the seven-year old Paint mare she had recently acquired. Riding had been M’s hobby for many years, although she had always had some anxiety and tension around it.

M is an RN PhD in the high-stress job of healthcare research. Significantly, she indicated in her intake and our first session that she felt riding was “the only place she could say no” in her life, due to the demands of her work.

She wanted help with the fact that she had bought her dream horse, but was very anxious every time she rode. She was even anxious on the drive out to the barn, which took her almost two hours due to the training center’s recent relocation.

M also had two neck surgeries in the past ten years, which have left her with quite a bit of muscle spasm in her neck, shoulders and back, more pronounced on the left side, and a small amount of weakness in the left hand. This makes her feel physically uneven on her horse. She had also lost her mom within the previous year.

We uncovered the real cause of the fear after only two sessions. It was a surprise to me, and to M as well.

In our third session, M came up with a unique visioning technique that we used to make further progress on her underlying issue. I feel that it might be of great help to others, and I’d like to share the process in the way it unfolded.

I expected we would find that her fears stemmed from early riding problems or accidents, and in fact she related two early incidents that held promise for collapsing her fear. In our first session, I chose to work with the one that had happened when she was 14.

Early Incidents

M was riding in summer camp, and was too proud and fearful to let the instructor know that she wasn’t as good a rider as she thought she was. We did a standard Tell the Story Technique, tapping on each incident as it arose. M recalled being increasingly afraid as she and her horse stood in line, waiting to trot to the far side of the riding arena and begin to canter. She gripped the reins tighter and tighter as she waited.

As she went into the canter, her horse bolted and M didn’t know how to stop him. The instructor stopped the horse, and M fortunately stayed mounted.

It was easy to check M’s emotions through her physical symptoms, which went from a shaky feeling inside to tension in the neck as we progressed through tapping. After three rounds, M noticed relaxation in her trapezius area, felt as a spreading warmth.

As we got to the point where the horse took off, the fear spiked to an 8-9 Intensity Level (SUDS) and was felt in the stomach.

As we tapped through this incident, M suddenly commented, “Now I’d do a pulley rein stop” (a maneuver with the reins that will often stop a runaway horse). This indicated a cognitive shift. I incorporated it into the round: “If I were on King today, I’d know how to stop him. But 14 year old M didn’t know how to do a pulley rein stop. She didn’t know what to do.”

We incorporated forgiveness for 14 year old M not knowing what to do into the acceptance portion of our Setup. This brought tears to M’s eyes, so I knew we had made progress on an important aspect of self-blame.

We finished with a choices round, referencing the earlier fear and incorporating “I choose to let go of some of this nervousness” and ending with the top of the head: “I choose to be delighted at how easy it is to let go of some of this nervousness”.

More to Do

M stated she felt more calm, and I had high hopes for her next report. They were dashed with an email from her that even though she’d done some tapping, she had 10+ anxiety on her drive to the barn for her next lesson. In her lesson, at the walk on her mare, she simply got more and more nervous. Clearly, we’d not gotten to the root of her distress in our first session.

At our next session about two weeks later, M reported she was getting new insights on her fears as she continued to tap. I asked what she wanted to work on, and she said her shaky, out of control feeling.

We started with “Even though I feel shaky and out of control on Luna.” She then contrasted that with how safe she had felt on her first gelding, so we incorporated that contrast into our next round. Some anger came up that she couldn’t feel that way with Luna.

At that point I asked M how she felt about Jungian or archetypal concepts. She’d done some work with it, so I suggested to her that we consider the following: That her horse was female, named Luna (moon), and that M’s physical problems that left her feeling out of balance on her horse were all on her left side. These are archetypal reference points for the yin, or feminine. Taken together, I felt they hinted at some issues with the archetypal feminine. She agreed with that assessment.

It would shortly become clear just how significant these indicators were.

Going back to the tapping, I asked her what the shaky and out of control feeling reminded her of. She quickly responded that they were like stage fright. M’s mother was a singer, and she herself had performed all her life. M had purchased Luna about one month before her mother had a fall that sent her to the hospital. Two months later, M’s mom had succumbed to pneumonia. On the day of our session, the first anniversary of her mother’s death was only a few days away.

I asked M to go back in time and tell me about what was going on this time last year. She became tearful, and we tapped the KC point together as she described “frantic trips to the airport; guilt and conflict because I needed to be with her, I had to do my job, and I also wanted to be with my new horse; making decisions; trying to mediate with my three brothers as we were all in the room with Mother as she was dying”.

There was a lot to work with here, so we started with some general, and easier, statements first. We tapped on “Even though I feel guilt and conflict resurfacing from this time last year,” and M added, “I know I did the absolute best I could.”

Energy Moving

She got some relief and relaxation from this round, and felt some tingling in her fingers. She felt that it was energy moving, and we tapped on “Even though I’ve had this grief and conflict since last year, and I have all this balled up energy trying to keep it at bay, I am so glad to feel this energy moving through me, and I can release this energy into Mother Earth.” The affirmation of releasing the energy into Mother Earth was M’s contribution to the phrase.

I then asked M to summon a strong memory of felling conflicted during the past year. She recalled receiving an emergency call from the doctors that her mom was hypoxic (oxygen-starved), necessitating M’s making immediate arrangements to fly to the hospital, give the doctors an instant decision on a do-not-resuscitate order, and communicate the situation to her brothers. During all this, one of her researchers called with a problem that he wanted addressed immediately, objecting when she explained she could not talk with him right then. Through this extreme stress, she over-functioned for everyone magnificently and kept her outward calm, even calling back her colleague from the airport to give him the information he needed.

As M remembered this situation she felt shaky and out of control, with an Intensity Level of 8-9 and tears. We incorporated all this into a tapping statement: “The doctors called, she was hypoxic, I had to make the DNR decision, I had to explain it to my brothers and deal with their feelings, which was just exhausting, I had to make all the arrangements and then my colleague called, and I had to keep taking care of everything even though I felt shaky and out of control….”

Her Intensity Level (SUD) came steadily down over subsequent rounds of tapping, to a level of 2 by the end of the session. I guided her through a relaxing closing tapping, on how natural this grief, guilt and feeling of loss of control was, and that it is safe to allow it to pass out of her gently, to release it, that she did not need it anymore. She smiled at these rounds.

We tapped on the KC as I suggested to her that although she would have some grief at this anniversary, her new tool would allow her to easily pass through it, easily have the phone conversations with her brothers, nephews and nieces she needed to have, and find blessings in those conversations.

At the very end of the session, as she had gathered up her things to go, she got the insight that proved to be the key to her riding anxiety. She realized that it was not fear over riding Luna that made it so difficult for her to drive up to the barn, it was because the Saturday two-hour drive used to be when she would talk to her mother. She surmised “That’s what caused the out of control shaky feeling each time.”

Eureka—EFT had delivered to us the root cause of what we originally thought was riding anxiety.

More Insight and Clarity

At our next session about 10 days later, M wanted to work on how her joy and excitement of finding and buying her dream horse were “muddled” with the illness and death of her mom. Tapping between sessions was giving her more insight and clarity all the time.

We started with those Saturday drives. We acknowledged that the fear she felt as she drove to her lesson was a displacement of the grief over the loss of her mother—no longer being able to make that call to her mom as she drove brought the loss of her mother into painful focus sublimated into anxiety about the ride. We tapped on the following phrases:

“ Even though my drive out to the barn was my talk-to-Mother time, and I can’t replace that, I deeply and completely…”

“Even though I thought I was anxious about riding my horse, and now I believe I am simply anxious because I am missing Mother, I deeply and completely….”

“Even though I was really anxious about the void in my life, and I chose to displace that into anxiety about Luna, something I could ‘control,’ I recognize that now, and can let it go.”

We transitioned into choice statements such as, “Even though nothing can replace that time talking to Mom, I choose to recognize that I am not anxious about riding Luna, but that I’m anxious about missing and grieving my mother. I choose to let it go easily and gently. I choose to use the time to remember and honor her, in place of being anxious.”

I used the device of a container that M could put her anxiety in just for the duration of her drive out, her lesson and drive back from the barn. She described a lovely black lacquered box the size of a card file, and we tapped a few rounds on this.

It was at this point that M shared another very crucial insight, and proposed a beautifully elegant way of visualizing and working with her emotions.

She explained that she had not even had time to assimilate the fact of owning, much less riding, Luna before she was caught up in the maelstrom of her mom’s fall and subsequent decline. She had felt guilty that she was not spending time with Luna, and guilty when she was with her mother for wanting to be with Luna. Happiness, guilt, and regret were all mixed in M’s emotional field, encompassing her new horse and her mother.

When I asked M if she could give the feelings an Intensity Level (SUDs) level, she offered her own version instead. She said that she saw these two things, the happiness and the grief, as a Venn diagram. (Venn diagrams are overlapping circles that are used to represent relationships between qualities, or elements, and the properties they do or do not share.)

The circle that represented her happiness over Luna was luminous pink, and the circle that represented the grief over her mom was sad midnight blue. These circles overlapped by about 80%, which represented the amount of M’s distress. She had tapped on this herself and succeeded in getting the area of overlap down to 60-70%.

She wanted to be able to separate these circles and appreciate them each for what they were, and she described the desired color for the circle representing her mom: rich, dark sapphire blue velvet, similar to a dress her mother had worn in an opera production.

Thanks to M’s ability to represent her emotional state in a vivid visual metaphor, we had a terrific multi-layered image to work with. We focused on the color and texture in the overlapped area, and tapped on that as it changed with each round.

In the first round, the overlap was a dark, muddy, shit-colored center that M was trapped in, like muck holding her down. (Remember how coarse language can release stuck emotion.)

We began tapping, “Even though this beautiful pink circle that’s Luna and the midnight blue circle that’s Mom are muddled into an awful, mucky shit brown, and I feel trapped and bogged down in it, I deeply and completely…”

We tapped on allowing the circles to gently move apart and when they did, M would be released. After several rounds with small variations, I asked M to close her eyes and visualize the Venn diagram again. I did so as well, and the color in the middle seemed substantially lighter. Hoping that it wasn’t just projection on my part, I asked M what she saw. She said that the color in the middle was lighter and more like a clay or spackle. Note how M spoke in terms of both color and texture in describing the diagram’s middle, boggy part.

I called her attention to the significance of these two things coming together in time, and M said she had not thought of that before, but that it felt important to her.

We continued tapping on the circles moving apart and testing until she said the portion in the middle was even lighter. It now seemed like bread dough, pale but glutinous; the circles were moving apart but forming doughy “strings” that kept the circles joined, she said.

I closed the session with a round acknowledging the significance of these two occurrences coming in the same time-space in her life, even though they occupy different feeling-spaces. We tapped for letting that significance come gently to M, leaving her wiser, more grounded, and more joyful when she receives the import of it.

M said she felt much more relaxed and both hands and feet were tingling. I asked about her neck, and she said it had been much better since our first session, less stiff and painful. She felt the tapping was helping the neck, and was finding it easier also to do all the things that helped her take care of her neck.

Once again, I appreciated the way EFT brings insights to those who use it. The insights fill in the missing rungs in our ladder, allowing us to climb where we want to go: out of our misery, and to greater heights of accomplishment and satisfaction.

I also admired my client for her creative manner of sharing her sensations, visual images, and emotions. The Venn diagram is M’s contribution to my toolkit, and I plan to try it with other clients.

Often it’s hard for clients to name an Intensity Level (SUD number) or to give a new number when it goes up or down, but the percentage overlap of the Venn circles gives us the same indicator. It also gives us an option for working on interconnected aspects in a relational, rather than linear way, as each circle can represent an aspect.

About two weeks later I received a joyful email from M. She had ridden her horse, they moved along smoothly together, and she was happy and confident. The drive out had been easy as well. M continues to use her tapping on many areas of her life, and I enjoy our work together.

Ange Dickson Finn is an AAMET-certified Level 2 EFT Practitioner. She is based in the Houston, Texas, and works with clients over the phone and via Skype. Ange has helped clients with issues including physical pain, health and well-being, work-related stress, equestrian sports and relationships. Visit her on the web at www.TapIntoYourself.com or www.RideWithoutFear.com. Contact her via email at ange [at] tapintoyourself.com.

© 2011 Ange Dickson Finn all rights reserved

A middle aged woman that I will call Lisa had an intense fear when people yelled at her; She felt like she was going to die. She had been feeling this way her entire life – a life filled with experiences of people yelling at her and forcing her to do things their way. She never really felt empowered. As a child she was extremely fearful and compliant and yet as an adult she had learned to show anger to protect herself. She thought she only had two options in responding, either fear or anger.

She explained that her overwhelming fear related to an upcoming event where she would encounter a person again, I will call her Nancy, with whom she had already had a few experiences where she was yelled at previously. She was terrified to go to this event in the future.

We decided to go to the most intense, recent past experience Lisa had with Nancy using “Faster EFT.” The Faster EFT technique (www.fastereft.com), a variation of EFT developed by Robert Smith, is focused on releasing and letting go of the emotions and body sensations that a client is feeling. It aims directly at the details of what the client is doing in their mind, what they are feeling, seeing, hearing, and sensing, while always telling the subconscious mind to release and let them go. Faster EFT does not use the Setup phrase, “Even though I have this _______.” Instead, you tap on each point and say what you are feeling or seeing and add “release and let it go” at every point. Faster EFT uses only five meridian points for tapping which are eyebrow, side of eye, under the eye, collar bone and a gentle squeeze of the wrist and then you take in a breath and blow it out and you say “peace” after every tapping round. It talks directly to the subconscious mind to let go. After all the negative emotions are released, our experience of the memory often changes.

I first asked Lisa to feel her feelings and then imagine herself seeing a tree in front of her and asked her what happens to a tree when it is pulled out from the roots? “It naturally falls over and dies,” she said. This metaphor sets up the subconscious mind to let go.

We tapped on the eyebrow,“release and let go of all of this anger”, tapped on the side of the eye, “release and let go of all of this fear”, tapped under the eye, “release and let go of the looks on her face and that yelling voice”, tapped on the collar bone, “release and let go of all the emotions and feelings associated with this.” Then I had her gently squeeze her wrist, take in a deep breath, blow it all out and say “peace.”

I asked Lisa to go back after each round and we tapped directly on the details of what she was feeling, seeing and experiencing. We would tap and say release and let go of every one of the details that she mentioned while tapping through the points and then she would take a big breath and say, “peace.” After each round she would see and feel different emotions and feelings and pictures and we would tap on them.

During one of the rounds Lisa was very resistant to letting go of her anger, as she felt like she would have to let go of her machine gun and then she would only have the option to run away as she went into deep fear. She felt like she would die. We tapped on these details, but it wasn’t releasing. We tapped back and forth on letting it go and not letting it go and it wasn’t shifting. She said she remembered getting beaten with a strap by her father as a child many times, so we immediately went to one of those memories.

We tapped to release the fear of being beaten and the looks on her father’s face and it released the emotions and the looks and the feelings. After the first round she said she could deeply feel herself in a concentration camp and was watching everyone around her being shot and killed at the edge of a deep pit. She said she could feel the bullet going into her own head, feeling the pain and feel herself slowly dying after being shot by a gun.

We immediately tapped on every detail of what she was feeling, seeing, experiencing and remembering. We tapped to release and let go of all the physical pain in your head, that bullet in your head, let go of that feeling of dying, let go of all the fears, let go of the sound of the guns, let go of seeing the other men dying, let go of the sounds of the men yelling, and ultimately we reframed and tapped into the peace she could feel when it was all over and when she was on the “other side.” After tapping a few rounds her fear of dying and her fear of being yelled at by others was completely gone. Then we sent love back to herself in all of the old memories that we worked on. She said she felt like a new woman. I tested her to see if she could make herself feel any fear when she thought of anyone yelling at her, and she said no – she felt internal power and confidence and she knew she had new choices in responding.

Was this really a memory of a past life, since this didn’t happen to her in this lifetime? I feel that it doesn’t matter one way or the other. It is all just energy and she was feeling it intensely right then in this lifetime, so all we had to do was tap and release and let it go now. I do not think this will bother her again in this lifetime. We can release energy from memories in this lifetime or past lifetimes – all the same.

“Candace” had such a severe terror of flying that she had not been on a plane for 22 years. She called me because an important family event was taking place in a few months and she didn’t want to miss it. But attending the event would involve a 5-hour flight. She was nearly hopeless yet determined to face her fears.

As our phone session began, I gathered history and found that she did have some traumatic memories from her few flying experiences long ago. In one case, a plane had not pressurized correctly, and in another the plane had to be diverted because of fog. The feeling in her body when she thought about being on a plane was, “a little like throwing up — sick to my stomach.”

We started tapping using her words and focusing on the body sensation, which was a 6-7.

Even though I feel sick to my stomach, a little like throwing up, when I think about flying, I deeply love and accept myself…

At the end of the round of tapping, Candace said, “What bothers me is thinking about the plane in the air. All I can think about is a lack of support and falling. It’s a sensation of, I’m going to fall any second!” This felt like a horrible dread in her stomach, an 8 in intensity. So we tapped again using her words.

Even though I feel like I’m going to fall any second, I deeply love and accept myself…

Something popped into my head during the course of that tapping and I shared the thought with Candace. “You know, it’s interesting that your fear of flying is really about fear of falling. I’ve heard that the fear of falling is one of the few natural fears that we are born with. Babies have an innate fear of falling.” This seemed to ring a bell with her and she said, “you know, the whole time I’ve been visualizing myself falling through the sky!” So once again we used her words for tapping:

Even though I visualize myself falling through the sky, I deeply love and accept myself… and it’s time to bring some healing to this…

As we tapped the points, I gave her some blanks to fill in:

I visualize myself falling through the sky… and I think it goes back to___

I visualize myself falling through the sky… and I feel____ And _______(what else?)

As she completed the sentences, she was tuning in more and more to the feeling: “I think it goes back to being very young… and I feel terrified… and no one’s going to catch me! And I’m going to hit! And it’s going to hurt! And it all makes me feel really sad.” So we tapped again, using her words:

Even though I am terrified because no one is going to catch me… and it makes me feel… sad…
This sadness… this little one is falling… afraid no one is going to catch her… terrified… I’m going to hit… it’s going to hurt… so sad… I love and accept this little child.

Candace was feeling very emotional and tears were coming. She said, “I believe I had some early childhood trauma. My sister was 6 years older and hated me intensely. I think she probably did hurt me sometimes. I think she did things to scare me. I wonder if she threw me up and didn’t catch me!”

We tapped and tapped until the emotion had subsided. Then Candace got an image of a little girl being gently bounced up and down by kind and loving arms. She said, “I want to think of the loving arms of the Universe always under the plane, guiding it safely to its destination.” So we tapped a few more times to acknowledge this healing outcome:

Even though I had such a fear of falling… it’s time to bring healing to this… and I see the little girl gently bounced, safely bounced up and down by loving arms… and the loving arms of the Universe are always under the plane…

Candace felt immensely better. When I tested our work by having her think of being on a plane and say, “I feel like I’m going to fall any second,” she could no longer feeling the dread in her stomach and wasn’t connecting with the image of herself falling through the sky anymore. Instead, she felt curious and intrigued! She had no idea that the root of her fear of flying might not have to do with planes at all. Now the idea of being on a plane wasn’t nearly as upsetting.

We ended up doing several more sessions to deal with the previous flight experiences, but the initial intensity never returned. The last time I spoke with Candace, she had bought her tickets!

Looking back at the session, I believe that listening carefully to my client’s own words and paying close attention to her descriptions of what she was feeling were the keys to uncovering the core issue. As we used her words and tapped, it was like following a thread back to the source. Sentence completions are also a great way to uncover more details. As we complete the sentence with the first thing that comes, the subconscious can’t help but volunteer the information.

My client, Tanya, is 45 years old and would very much like an intimate, love relationship with a man, even marriage. However, even though one part of her wants this, another part of her is resistant. She said that she tends to get into her head about it. .

I explored this with her and she expressed a lot of fear about being married and living with someone. Her fear is that she would not be able to be herself and would feel trapped

Further exploration revealed memories she had about her parents’ relationship and what bothered her about it. Her Dad had a raging temper and everyone in the house (her mom, sister, brother and herself) feared him. Her biggest fears from observing her parents were as follows.

-Her mother and, therefore, the wife had no voice. The husband had all the power.
-The wife doesn’t get to be what she wants to be
-The wife had to please her husband

We did several rounds of tapping on this.

Even though I am afraid that if I get married, I will have no voice and have to give up who I really am and what I am really interested in… I love and accept myself anyway.

Even though I am afraid that if I get married, I will feel trapped and have no power… .

Even though I am afraid that if I get married, I will have no freedom and will have to do what I can to please my husband even at my own expense … .

We tapped on the points using phrases like these: this fear of being married, it scares me, I would have to give up my power, I would have no voice, I would not be able to do what I want to do, I would have to placate my husband, I would feel trapped and that really scares me.

This brought up a lot of stuff for Tanya. I asked her to take a deep breath and checked in with her.

She mentioned that in some way she is like her mother in that she feels like she needs to overly please a man. I asked her to clarify that and she explained that when she dates a man, she usually pays for most of the bill. However, she would really like it to be the opposite way around.

After some exploration it became clear that when a man she is involved with romantically does something nice for her, she feels obligated. Yet, she really wants a man who would be somewhat chivalrous and would take care of her, including financially.

We saw that she had a subconscious belief that if a man took care of her, she would then owe this man her freedom and power. She would be beholden to him.

That was an “Aha” moment for her. And she said that was the crux of it. She felt obligated and beholden to a man she was romantically involved with.

We did more rounds of tapping on phrases like:

Even though I feel obligated if a man I am dating is nice to me because I am afraid I will have to give up my power and freedom like my mom did with my dad… I am willing to look at this differently now.

Even though I have a belief that I will have to be beholden to a man who wants to take care of me, I am open to healing this now.

Even though I have a belief that I have to placate and feel obligated to a man I am romantically involved with, especially a man who is nice to me, I can see now that it is an old belief and I am ready to look at this differently.

We tapped on the points with phrases like these: fear of having to be obligated to a man, feeling like I have to placate a man, feeling like I would have to be beholden to him. After awhile we shifted the phrasing a bit to bring in possibilities such as:

Maybe it is possible to have an intimate relationship with a man who is nice to me without feeling obligated, maybe it is ok and safe for a man to take care of me without me feeling fearful or having to give up my power.

This session cleared up a lot of confusion for Tanya, especially during her “Aha” moment. That was a big breakthrough for her. The session really helped her to see how old beliefs were getting in the way of her desire to have a committed love relationship.

Susan Eller
www.healingfromwithin.com

It’s easy to be thankful when life is going our way. When all of our needs are being met, we easily slip into gratitude mode. When the paychecks are coming, when there is satisfaction/contentment in relationships and all is moving well, it’s easy to appreciate the whole world. However, many of us know that living in this world can sometimes mean that instead of flow, we encounter the energy of ebb.

When the paychecks aren’t rolling in, but the bills are, when there is discord in our intimate relationships, when the bathroom is flooded, and the car dies; everything seems to be going wrong. One or two things happen and all of a sudden, everything in life is going badly, or so it seems. This is known as visiting “Scare City.”

What is “Scare City?” It’s a place within that we visit all too often. Scare City mode is when we’ve completely disconnected from our source of strength and abundance, our higher power or whatever we choose to call it. We literally become blind to the gifts and blessings we have in front of us and become paralyzed by the perception of overwhelming lack and despair. We get so stuck in Scare City that we can’t find solutions to our problems.

Fortunately for those times when we find ourselves stuck in Scare City, EFT can shift our energy right out of that place. EFT is the best tool for altering our mood and perceptions of the issues and circumstances. With EFT we can make that conscious energetic shift in our attitude and our energy. Energy follows intention. When we get stuck, it seems as though we can’t get out, because we become so focused on the problem that we can’t see the solutions. Our intention or that which we are focused on by default becomes the worry, angst, and fear. All of the available abundance energy is being blocked — while all of our energetic focus is going to the problems.

The universe is an abundant place. The Law of Attraction says that we are attracting what we focus on at any given time. When visiting Scare City, we focus on the lack and attract more of that energy to us. EFT can help us align ourselves in the highest and best way to attract better energy, gain accurate perceptions and discover solutions to problems.

Combining EFT with the practice of gratitude is an effective way of changing our relationship to the problems. Gratitude is something we can both feel and practice. When we are stuck in Scare City, it is both the best time and hardest time to employ the practice of gratitude.

This might sound nauseatingly cheery, or Pollyanna-ish, if you are hanging out in scarcity. However the best thing to do when stuck in Scare City, is to take a step towards the exit. EFT will facilitate that first step. Take a moment to try some tapping.

The following steps and suggested set-up phrases will help balance your energy and prepare you for realignment to receive positive energy. Often it takes small steps, like tapping on acceptance of present circumstances, before you can move into the bigger issues.

1. Tapping on accepting the current circumstances will allow you to come back to your center.

So even though I can’t seem to find one darn thing to be grateful for, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

Even though things look really bleak in my life, I am deeply and profoundly accepting and grateful for my life.

2. As you accept the situation you find yourself in, you also need to forgive yourself for any judgments, negativities, blame or shame you may be holding.

Even though I’m broke and the bills are piling up; I forgive and accept myself for any and all shame and blame I might be holding.

Even though I feel that everything is going wrong in my life, I forgive myself for any part I might play in these perceived failures.

3. As we know, tapping on the specifics of each issue will reveal more layers and blockages.

When there are multiple layers to an issue, of course there will be blockages to solutions. The key is persistence. Once a certain level of acceptance and forgiveness has been achieved, we can move into more specifics that address the problems.

Even though I can’t see a solution to this problem, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

Even though there don’t seem to be any, I am open to solutions to my problems, and I remain deeply accepting and completely open.

4. The final step is the shift into gratitude through tapping.

Once acceptance and forgiveness have released the initial blockages, we can then begin to look at small things to be grateful for.

Even though I can’t think of one damn thing to be grateful for, I am grateful for my morning cup of tea/coffee.

Even though things are seeming hopeless, I am grateful for my pet’s affection.

When we begin to appreciate the small things we have, we are clearing a pathway for energy to flow. When we can release the lack, we open the door for solutions to problems and the energy of abundance. All problems can be turned into blessings if we choose to learn from them, and use EFT to shift our energy and perspective.

Gwendolyn Evans
www.lovingself.net

“I have a terrible fear of driving,” my client told me. “And it just came out of nowhere.” So—a mystery. This woman had been driving with no problems all of her life, and suddenly, a few years ago, she was overwhelmed with fear and had to stop driving completely. She didn’t know what to do, and hoped EFT could help.

On her intake form, she noted that she had had a fall right around the time she stopped driving. It had been a serious fall, and she had damaged one leg significantly, and had to go to the hospital. When she came for her session, we talked first about the phobia, and I asked what was going on around the time of her stopping driving. “The fall!” she said, referring to the accident. “I had never put the two together until I filled out the form, but after that fall I never drove again.” Could they be linked, even though the fall had nothing to do with driving? Absolutely. Why? Because she sensed a connection. It was a traumatic fall, and worth treating on that basis alone, but what was especially critical in solving the mystery of the phobia was that we followed the thread of her intuitive sense. It rang true with me, too, but the most important concern was that she was very clear that these two situations were linked.

So—first we tapped on the accident, treating it as a PTS (post-traumatic stress) incident. We labeled it something like “the fall,” and assessed her SUDS, or intensity level (a 9), and I asked about where she felt it in her body and what her emotions were. One of the primary emotions was powerlessness, a feeling that was strongly linked to her driving phobia.

We took the event from a 9 to a zero, first sneaking up on it with the movie technique, then, when she reported a significant drop in anxiety, I guided her into a continual tapping technique that I routinely use once the intensity level is down to about a 2 or a 3. (It is very simple—the client just tells the story while we tap continuously around the points. Each time the story is related, we check the SUDS level and make sure it goes down to a zero).

After that, we of course didn’t have a car waiting for us to see whether she could drive, so I asked her to imagine driving. She said it felt pretty good, but she wasn’t completely sure. So we then used a straightforward approach, tapping on “my fear of driving that might remain” “my remaining nervousness,” etc. We then shifted to the positive, once any traces of fear were gone, and opened up the ideas of feeling great in her car, loving driving, enjoying the freedom of being back in her car, feeling calm and confident.

The next week, she came back and said that she had no problems at all—she was driving just as if nothing had ever happened. By both treating the core traumatic event and following the client’s lead and knowledge about herself, the driving phobia gently dissolved, and has not returned. I am so grateful to be doing this work!

Lynne Shaner
www.eftpraxis.com