I am teaching horseback riders to use Relaxation Tapping, aimed primarily at fear issues. Fears are a huge block for riders. Of course, since horses are such exquisitely sensitive animals, they quickly pick up on our anxieties and often fulfill our worst fears!

I taught tapping to a group of riders of all ages this summer, in a lesson where the riders were practicing jumps. One rider, that day, stood out for me, and taught me a lot about trusting intuition and letting the process work through me.

The class learned EFT on a break, then went back to work practicing going over small jumps. I was watching the class when I caught sight of Sarah, an 8 year old rider. She was furiously tapping her collarbone, and reported that she had butterflies in her stomach. I asked if she wanted me to tap on myself for her, but she said no.

I began to talk to her about the butterflies and she told me she felt nervous. She said, “I don’t like being around people, it makes me nervous, and I’d rather be alone.”

I smiled and assured her that I often felt the same way, trying to build rapport. It was pretty clear I wasn’t succeeding, though, and I began to anxiously pray for some guidance!

By this time, she had tears in her eyes. Great, I was making things worse. Finally my intuition and EFT began to work through me, in an interesting way. It occurred to me I had been staring intently in her eyes, trying to read her affect. The cardinal rule for frightened animals popped into my head: staring directly at them will increase their anxiety. I realized I should take the pressure off in the same way I would with a horse or dog: by facing slightly away and not looking at her. I dropped my gaze to her horse, and asked again if I could tap on myself saying the phrases for her. This time, she said yes.

I stood near her horse’s neck and touched his shoulder, looking at him and with my body angled a little away from Sarah, who was still mounted.

I stayed faithful to her words and tapped a round on, “Even though I don’t like being around people and I’d rather be alone, I’m an awesome kid.” I checked with her when we finished. She said it didn’t help much, but I noticed the tears were gone from her eyes and she changed her focus from the people to the horses. She told me, “No matter which horse I ride, these horses keep trying to buck me off.”

We made this our next round. This time, I tried including some emotionally-laden phrases, including

“Even though these horses scare me…”
“Even though these mean, bad scary horses keep trying to buck me off…”
“I don’t like it, I don’t like these horses trying to buck me off…”

We tapped a few rounds with me saying these various statements as we went around the points.

Next I tried “Even though I don’t trust these horses” but felt intuitively that I needed to check that. Sarah’s response was, “I do trust them, but I came from another barn, and I’m not used to it here yet, and it makes me nervous.” (Interesting how clearly her aspects showed up and she was able to articulate them for me.)

So I tapped on that while she watched. I saw a tiny yawn, so I stopped. Even though she did not say she was feeling better, her whole affect changed. She perked up, and shifted her attention from me. She was no longer focusing on me, no longer seemed concerned, and transformed into a wiggly little girl wanting to spend a little more time on her horse. She even wanted to ride through the course of jumps again. The entire session had only taken about 5 minutes.

The lesson for me was, the changes were so quick and so subtle, they might easily have been missed. Again comparing it to working with animals, I realized that I needed to really notice these physical changes and not push beyond the moment of success–adults might be tolerant of that, but not kids. It reminded me that healthy children take the state of emotional equilibrium for granted; once they’ve achieved it, they’re simply off to the next thing, not exclaiming over how good it feels to be free of their problem.

A follow up from five months later: Sarah came up to visit with my horse as I saddled him, and I asked her about school. She told me her teachers yell a lot. I reminded her about the tapping and said she could use it for that when the teachers got her upset. She looked at me like I was a bit slow in the head, and said, “Oh, yeah, I use it all the time!”

Sarah taught me a lot about relaxing and letting the process work through me.

Ange Finn

This article is available in Spanish. Go to the Spanish translation.

I recently did a weight loss class for a group of elementary school teachers in which I taught them EFT. The next week, one of them reported to us on how she had been using tapping with her kindergartners. Each morning the children have a sharing circle to start their day, and their teacher helps them focus on good thoughts and positive feelings. Now she is incorporating a simple version of tapping.

In their sharing circle, the teacher tells the children, “Let’s tell your body to have a peaceful day.” Then she has them tap on the Karate Chop spot and say three times, “I’m going to have a peaceful day.”

Then she tells them, “Let’s tell your mind to have a peaceful day.” She has them tap on the Top of Head and say three times, “I’m going to have a peaceful day.”

The teacher told me she is not sure the whole tapping procedure would be an easy sell to parents or administrators, so she prefers to keep it simple. The version she has created is easy to blend into their morning ritual. She thinks it is releasing stress and helping the kids get a good start to the day. And now they are all familiar with tapping so that if she needs to calm a child, she can say, “let’s tap again to get rid of that anger so you can have a peaceful day.” Then she can guide the upset child in some tapping.

One of the wonderful features of EFT is its flexibility. I often tell people that EFT can be woven seamlessly into whatever approach we already have and that it will simply enhance whatever we are already doing. This teacher seems to have a very gentle and supportive approach in her kindergarten class. It is beautiful to see how she found a way to creatively bring in some EFT, and how this daily dose of tapping is supporting their classroom goal of everyone being able to have a peaceful day.

Today was rather interesting. I am an elementary school counselor, and I have a student who comes to me because he has difficulty controlling his anger. He often yells that he has anger problems. He also hates the tapping. He thinks it is dumb.

So today he came again and was talking about how everybody else makes him mad, that he can’t help it, that his body just takes over, that he is just so mad!

This time, I decided to try things a little differently. I told him that he did not have to tap, but he did have to pay attention. I would just tap on myself, if that would be ok with him. It was. I also asked if I could be him. He agreed.

So I began with,

Even though I’m so mad that I can hardly stand it, I’m still ok. All this anger. I deserve to be angry. I should be, with all of the garbage that I put up with. I probably should be even more angry than I already am.

All the while, he is playing with toys. I remind him that his part is to pay attention. He agrees. So while I am going through this anger protocol, he begins to add to it, little things like. “Yup, that’s right.” “Yah, I should be.” “You know what else they did to me?”

After about 5 minutes of this at the most, he has a shift. He starts telling me how good he is feeling. Then he tells me what a great counselor I am and how he has told his brother, who he says has the same problems, that I really help him. I incorporate into my tapping that “I am a great kid, and I really like this nice feeling.” “Maybe I can choose to have a good rest of the day.”

He left me with a completely different demeanor.

Talk about surrogate tapping!

Monica Broadfoot Johnson
www.eftgetsubetter1.com

Last week my daughter took four days of nature classes in Yosemite National Park. On the second day I helped chaperon the group of eight kids. We began to hike up a steep trail toward the top of Yosemite Falls, but one little girl, “Anna”, age 9, was really holding up the group. She kept repeating that she “hated heights” and wanted to go back down right now. She would only walk very slowly, and only with the teacher holding her hand.

When we stopped for a break I could see the teacher was frustrated and at a loss, so I asked the little girl if she’d like me to help take away her fear. I told her that was my job back home and it was very easy and wouldn’t hurt at all.

After some hesitation she agreed and I had her tap on her karate chop point with the set up statement:

“Even though I have this fear of heights I’m a great kid.”

We tapped the short cut points with “This fear of heights” but about halfway through, another little boy shouted “does anyone want my apple?” totally distracting Anna.

I had to ask for her attention again to complete that single round of tapping. Nevertheless, when I asked about her fear, she in a very matter of fact voice: “It’s gone.”

And it was! No more problems hiking.

The other chaperon was very excited by this success. He asked if this EFT only worked on children? This made me laugh since I rarely get to work with kids in my practice. He told me his wife, “Jane” had a severe height phobia and I agreed to work with her back at our camp the next morning.

When I asked Jane to just think about heights in the most general way, she reported her anxiety as an 8 out of 10. A round of tapping on “this fear of heights” only brought it down to a 7. Not much improvement. I added in the 9 point gamut, but got no real change.

I asked how she knew it was a 7 and she said there was a heavy feeling on her heart. So we began tapping on “This heavy feeling on my heart” and after six or seven rounds we got it down to zero. It took some persistence!

After that I asked her for specific situations that had triggered her fear. Climbing to the top of a ladder, to get into her attic, was a big one. Especially the feeling of falling over backwards. She started about a 7 again, but this time it only took three rounds, which included “This falling over backwards feeling”.

The next memory was about going on a carnival ride with her son. Even though the ride was “only” about 15 feet high, and she trusted it enough to put her son on it, she’d been in tears the whole time and very embarrassed by her fear.

I had her tap the karate chop point and say:

“Even though I was afraid of this dumb kiddie ride…”

and at that point she began to laugh. She laughed and laughed harder until tears were running down her cheeks. Her husband looked at me in astonishment. I’m used to sighs and yawns, but this was a huge release of energy. We never got past the set up statement because she said all the anxiety was gone.

I asked her to vividly imagine various scenarios—standing on a cliff edge, at the top of a wobbly ladder, etc. She said she could maybe get up to a “2” so we did one more round of general tapping.

Luckily there was a fairly large boulder right next to the campsite. I had her climb up to the top and stand on the edge, about 10 feet off the ground. No anxiety. I had her husband hold onto her coat while she put her feet right on the edge and closed her eyes. I had her imagine she was on the edge of a precipice. No anxiety.

It had taken nearly an hour—no one minute miracle this time, but we called it a success.

That evening her husband came up to me and said he had “photographic evidence” on his digital camera. The pictures showed Jane climbing the very steep and sheer path up to Vernal Falls, then standing a foot away from a vertical drop (she was still using normal caution). I was elated, but it wasn’t till the next day, when I hiked up that path myself, that I really got how successful we’d been.

I’d have to say we were three happy campers!

Rob Nelson
www.TaprootsEnergyPsychology.com