“Eileen” is just 19 but she has already been through some challenges in her young life. When she first came to see me, a bout with severe depression had left her shaken. She had also experienced a brief psychosis, which had scared her a lot. Eileen had dropped out of school for a semester and had been getting treatment, hoping to become stable enough to continue her life. I saw my role as helping her process what she had been through using EFT, hypnotherapy, and the combination of the two that I call Inner Theater. I was hopeful that these tools, which engage the body-mind and the subconscious, could release some of the painful feelings and negative beliefs about herself.

In the first session, we primarily used EFT and tapped for various feelings — lack of confidence, hopelessness, sadness, feelings of failure, etc. — by going through specific events that she still felt bad about (things that had happened during her bad time). At the end of the session, her mother picked her up and was astounded to see the change in her. I remember her mother’s words: “I left her in tears and, when I come back, she’s smiling!”

After several sessions, we tried engaging her own inner imagery along with the tapping, which is the Inner Theater process. Eileen settled into my recliner and closed her eyes. I guided her to go within and to find an inner place of healing. I then asked her to get in touch with her depression and see what image might form in the healing place.

She said, “I’m lying down… and the depression is a black dome over me. I can’t see through it. No light comes through. There is beautiful nature all around me, but I can’t enjoy it.” With her permission, I gently tapped on her using her words:

“Even though there’s a black dome completely over me… no light comes through… I deeply and completely accept myself… and I want to bring some healing to this.”

I tapped the points:

“this black dome… completely over me… no light comes through… it’s so black… I can’t see the beauty around me…”

We did many rounds of tapping. Each time we tapped, she would report small changes, so we incorporated those in more rounds of EFT. The image and the energy seemed to be changing.

“Even though there’s still a black dome over me, it seems a little gray now, not so dark…”
“Even though I’m still lying under this black dome, I deeply accept myself, and a little light is filtering through…”

Eileen was feeling calmer, feeling better. Finally, after more rounds of tapping, she reported, “The dome just shattered! It broke into pieces. I can feel the sun and see the sky!”

This inner experience felt transformative to her. I asked what was happening. “I’m getting up now. I feel free. I can walk around. Oh look! The pieces from the black dome are becoming stepping stones!”

This was very moving for us both. Eileen reported that the shattered pieces were aligning themselves to form a series of stepping stones, creating a path. She said, “I know now that everything I’ve been through has taught me something. I think that I can use what I’ve learned to help others. And I want to believe that if I go through the bad times again, that’s just another stepping stone… I’ll learn even more and then get better and use that too.”

Eileen did have further ups and downs in her path of recovery, but the stepping stone imagery really sustained her. It gave her a great deal of hope to believe that her journey had meaning and could be used to help others. She has thought about a career in the healing arts or perhaps writing a book. She is a very creative, sensitive, and gifted person and I believe she will find her path.

One’s own inner imagery is often very meaningful and becomes a part of one’s inner world, like a personal healing vocabulary, or an inner refuge and source of inspiration. The Inner Theater approach, a simple process of using the EFT tapping with the imagination, can open us to finding meaningful personal images and transformative inner experiences.

What I’m about to describe is a variation on the movie technique that I have used to great effect. I call it the Bundled Movie Technique. It builds on the invaluable original.

In the original form we take one clear incident that troubles the client, create a movie that at most is a few minutes long, tap on the title and each scene of the movie to neutralise each specific element of it. I regularly use it to help work through deeply distressing incidents.

The twist I’ve used with success is when there are too many memories of the same type of event happening over time. With this type of history the similar memories tend to blend into one another. As a result, it’s often hard for a client to pick out one memory to deal with at a time. I call this variation the “Bundled Movie” Technique.

To use the Bundled Movie Technique I ask the client to create a two minute movie drawing on elements of what they’ve experienced. This seems to have the effect of neatly gathering together many similar memories, whilst still giving the focus and specificity we need to neutralise their emotional distress using EFT.

I found this variation so helpful when working with long term physical and sexual abuse cases as it achieves such rapid gentle results. Here’s an example of how I helped one client.

“Louise” came to me distressed at not being able to sleep much. She was suffering from nightmares, and felt close to a nervous breakdown. She’d suffered intense nightmares since leaving home at age of 18 and would wake every night screaming with terror. She’s now in her mid 30s. She’d been introduced to EFT by friends but together they were not making sufficient headway and so she decided to get help from a practitioner.

In the first two sessions we relieved heavy guilt over a pregnancy termination, intense grief at losing her beloved grandfather when she was a child, and guilt at not being able to help her dying grandmother more than she did. We used plenty of reframing. For example, she felt guilty at not being able to save her grandmother. Once her SUDs levels were greatly reduced we reframed that even the skilled and experienced medical doctors were unable to diagnose what was wrong with her grandmother, so how could she have done more. The negative feelings for each issue were swiftly resolved. These were issues that naturally came up in conversation and helped her gain strength of mind before turning to an issue that has tormented her since childhood.

We came to her relationship with her abusive mother. Since early childhood Louise had been subject to repeated physical violence and daily mental torment. She could not easily pick out a few incidents. They merged into each other. The abuse had started more than 30 years before, but she still felt it on a daily basis.

I asked her to create her own two minute movie based on elements of what she experienced. First I asked her to create her own title. She called the movie ‘Rejection’ and we took a rating: 10+. She was visibly terror stricken. I tend to use a stream of consciousness style of wordplay. I prefer this style of work as I can follow the flow of my intuition whilst staying alert to how the client is responding. What follows are elements of the wordplay that I used at the time.

Even though I feel this dread in my chest at this movie title . . . my body feels the turmoil of that movie . . . this dreaded fear for my life . . . my being is in panic mode . . . this movie brings heavy panic

Even though I can feel the panic in my whole being at what I experienced in this movie . . . there’s a sick feeling in my stomach . . . this heavy panic that smothers me

Even though I’m furious that she did this to me . . . how dare she . . . she was my mother . . . she had no right to reject me . . . she should have been there for me . . . and yet she rejected me

Even though I’m saddened at the treatment I received at her hands . . . I thought she would love me . . . but she didn’t . . . I’m sad I had to go through that hell . . . sad that I remember the torment every night

Even though this rejection hurts . . . it pains me . . . I was so alone . . . no one to care for this little girl . . . just rejection

We gently tapped all those negative emotions down to zero. She looked and felt calmer.

I then asked her to talk through the movie scene by scene. I watched her face for emotional intensity, and used my intuition to check for distress. Anytime negative feelings came up we stopped to clear it. We tapped through many scenes of being physically assaulted by her mother.

Even though my mother and brothers encircled me to hurl abuse . . . she encouraged them . . . egged them on . . . they said appalling things . . . there was no escape . . . they had me circled . . . penned in . . . those foul words . . . .that venom

Even though it hurt that my own flesh and blood could do that . . . didn’t my brothers know better? . . . I guess if it wasn’t me it would be them . . . they were grateful it was me and not them . . . . poor them . . . still living with her nastiness . . . . they’re adults but not yet free

Even though part of me hears her tread on the stair . . . . there’s a heavy uncomfortable feeling in my chest . . .

Even though my mother is coming into my bedroom whilst I’m half asleep . . . . I can feel the fear in my throat . . . I can’t breathe . . . I daren’t breathe . . . please ignore me . . . . don’t come in

Even though I feel sick at the change of light in my darkened room as she opened the door . . . the desperate whisper of her breath on me . . .her eyes boring in to me . . . I’ll pretend I’m asleep . . . she doesn’t care

Even though she took such pleasure in hissing abuse at me . . . she’s telling me I’m not good enough . . . I can’t escape her . . . there’s poison pouring out of her mouth . . . she’s full of evil . . . thank God I’m far away from her

Even though she was a nasty person and still is . . . at least I’ve left that behind . . . I’m free . . . I don’t have to accept that anymore . . .

Once we had calmed down all the elements that were causing her terror, I asked Louise to go through the movie again in her mind to test for any remaining fears. We tapped through a few more that were at much lower levels until she could feel completely calm about what used to happen to her. Upon further testing it became clear that the other times she experienced abuse were no longer troubling her.

We switched to tapping on the present, and replaced the nightmares with choosing to experience peaceful rest at night from now on. We also brought in divine peace and love to support her in her life going forward.

She felt much lighter at the end as if a weight has been lifted. In the weeks after the appointment she noticed an improvement in her sleep. She woke up much less and no longer was she screaming in her sleep. When she does wake up at night she finds it easy to get back to sleep within a few minutes. We’re working on the remaining factors behind this – none of these are connected to the abuse she suffered at her mother’s hands. However, it’s clear from what Louise says that the one movie we tapped through a month ago has brought about a significant improvement in her quality of life.

I’ve used the Bundled Movie technique with several other clients who have experienced long term physical or emotional abuse and have had success every time. I’ve even found it to work with one client who doesn’t consider herself visually creative. I think this is because she is accessing images she has experienced rather than creating from afresh.

Halloween…. it begins the long slide into the holiday season. Next is Thanksgiving, then comes Christmas and New Years. A lot of opportunities for socializing. This is fun and also terrible for many of my clients and women I know. There will be a lot of food and a lot of dressing up and sometimes a lot of comparisons and fears about how one looks.

I recently had a painful experience with someone whom I love who was really upset about having to go to a party and not feeling attractive. The more I tried to “convince” and talk to this person, the uglier she felt. I felt like I was in a trap. I realized, there is absolutely nothing and no one who could convince this person that she is beautiful. NOBODY. Even a gorgeous man (by her estimation) flirting with her would not change a thing. She would get temporary relief but it would never sink in to the bottomless pit of low self worth she was feeling. (I didn’t tap with her as it was not something she would do, unfortunately.) It made me really sad because to say that this was someone I cared about would be a huge understatement…. and then later I felt PISSED OFF. Because you know what I realized? This woman was just like me and so many women I know and work with.

I chose to work with body image, weight, self-worth and healing for women for a very good reason. It is my issue too of course, or has been to some degree or other over my lifetime. Though I feel I am a relatively confident and happy woman and love my body now, I am certainly not perfect, and things come up that trigger me, like this incident.

Healing is like peeling back layers of an onion. We heal many things and we are feeling good and then we get triggered by something and know there is more to clear. Well that is what happened here with me. I was grateful for the opportunity to go deeper into my own healing with this issue. I hope that we can all feel that way when something painful comes up. It’s an opportunity for more healing and growth.

Here is a simple process I use for this issue with clients.

The First Step:

Become aware that you are triggered and don’t brush it off. Pay attention to what is bothering you about having to get dressed up and socialize. Is it the clothes and how you fit in them? Is it seeing others and knowing they will say something about the way you look? Is there someone you judge yourself against? Do you wish you were taller, shorter, smaller, bigger (yes, that happens a lot too!), had different features, hair, etc. Be honest, and maybe write it out in a journal to tap on when you have time and space to address it fully.

The recent example from my experience: I was triggered by what my close friend was saying, how ugly and unattractive she felt and that she would never be the “ideal” woman next to all these model type girlfriends she had. She almost didn’t even want to go to the party at all… My first reaction was to justify, explain away how “wrong” that feeling was. Didn’t she know that nobody is the “ideal” woman and images in our society have changed so drastically over the years? I went into my body image rant about size and beauty and cultural ideals over the ages.

However, none of this intellectual explanation really touched the issue at all, of course. I also realized that I felt bad about how I feel I am not measuring up too. I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t having a reaction in that moment. I felt bad about myself next to those women too…. sad but true. I am deeply aware of the cultural norms and standards and how ridiculous they are, still hurts, ouch. One more layer to peel back of healing. Good to know!

The Second Step:

Release the beliefs and pain of them. Do not skip this step please. I think sometimes we get intimidated by our beliefs and emotions thinking this one is “the big one” I’ll never be able to change it…

No. Not possible.

One thing that I have learned in all the years of doing this work is that any belief that isn’t total love and acceptance for ourselves- no really- is simply false.

So please give yourself a chance and use any and all techniques, especially tapping of course to begin to address your beliefs around attractiveness and beauty.

Tapping For Feeling Beautiful:

1. Start with how you really feel about the way you look. Say whatever you need to, get it all out. Write it down if need be and tap on each feeling it piece by piece. Examples:

Tap on the side of the hand and repeat 3 times whatever the predominant feelings are:

“Even though I feel unattractive right now… I love and accept myself”
“Even though I feel awful when I compare myself to others…. I choose to love, accept and forgive myself now”
“Even though I still feel unattractive deep down and like I’m not pretty enough… I should look like..xyz.. I choose to fully and completely love, accept and forgive myself.”

Through the points on the body:

“I’m not pretty enough”
“I’ll never look like those women (you can insert whoever it is that you judge yourself against)”
“I’m not xyz enough” (tall enough, short enough, thin enough, you name it)
“I’ll never be the right size or shape”

Repeat all of the things that you find yourself feeling about the way you look. Be specific with it.

I recommend doing several rounds of tapping through the points until you feel some release or it brings up a very specific incident for you where you felt unattractive when you were much younger. That is what you want to tap on next.

While I was tapping I recalled a locker room incident that literally ruined sports for me I think when I was younger. I developed early and was the only person I knew with dark skin. I felt like I looked so different and of course, weirder than anyone else. Kids. We judge ourselves against our peers but we often retain the wounds of those beliefs into adulthood even though our adult minds know better. Our hearts and subconscious minds don’t. That is why all the intellectual reasons we give ourselves why we should “know better” don’t work. We have to pull out those thorns that still make us hurt deep down.

Tapping on the memory of feeling unattractive that came up:

On the side of the hand:

“Even though I remember feeling like a freak in the locker room in 8th grade, being so much more developed than the other girls and looking so different from them anyway and being sensitive about that already… I deeply and completely love, accept and forgive myself for taking on this hatred and shame”

Through the points I simply tapped on all of the different parts to the memory:

“I felt so freakish”
“I developed early and felt so embarrassed”
“I was too different”
“I had dark skin and totally different features to begin with”
“I hated being different”
“I hated being so much bigger than them”
“I was like an adult and had to hide that”
“I hated it”
“I was so ashamed”
“Why did I have to stand out so much?”
“Why wasn’t I like them?”
Etc…

Once I could feel myself getting a lot of emotional distance from it I tapped in some positive beliefs:

“I love and accept myself as I am”
“I’m just right, right now”
“I love myself, I’m a child of the divine”
“I am beautiful just as I am”
“I love my skin”
“I love my voluptuous body”
“I am special and unique”
“I love being my beautiful and unique self”
“I’m blessed and lucky to be me”
“There will never be another me, ever in all of creation”

For good measure I tapped on all the things I love about myself. I recommend doing that as well. Go crazy. Are you a good cook? Do your friends love to talk to you and say you are kind and loving? Do you love your hands? Your eyes?

This one cleared pretty quickly for me and left me truly believing what my intellect was saying again about beauty.

I have done this exact same process with so many of my clients now that it is truly amazing. I wonder sometimes if any of us escaped our childhood and teen years feeling acceptable?

It’s not real, this whole beauty thing. It truly is in our heads and hearts.

Let’s let compassion begin with ourselves.

The Dalai Lama says: “The world will be saved by the Western Woman.”

I believe that we save the world truly when we save ourselves. Let the war with our bodies end now and let’s get on with spreading the love and compassion that we are all meant to share.

Blessings my beautiful sisters,

Sandy

Sandy Zeldes is a Certified EFT Practitioner & Certified Nutrition Consultant with over 7 years experience. She helps her clients find relief relief with weight gain, stress, emotional eating, food obsession, and poor body image. Visit her online at www.eatlikeagoddess.com.

In my practice as a psychotherapist and EFT practitioner, I make extensive use of the “Parts” process, based on the NLP model of Six Step Reframe and significantly expanded and developed by Fran Burgess in her Personality Alignment approach.

Whilst helping a client to meet and communicate with their own Personality Parts can be successfully done through talk therapy alone, adding EFT to this approach significantly enhances the process of alignment and internal “peace-making.”

“One Part of Me”

When trying to make changes in your life, you may have heard yourself say something like, “One part of me really wants to be healthier and go to the gym, but another part just wants to sit in front of the TV eating crisps.”

Metaphorically, you can think of your overall personality as a team of workers, all striving towards better health, well-being and success of the whole system–you! The problem arises when some of the team members do not communicate with others, or reject, oppress or even bully each other. The resultant inner conflict gets in the way of achieving our goals. We can spot such internal battles in most cases of addictions, eating disorders, autoimmune illness, procrastination, but it is also present in less obvious everyday situations – whenever it feels like we put obstacles in our own way.

The first principle for pulling this “dysfunctional team” together and helping them communicate better, is for the therapist to develop good rapport with the Part associated with the dysfunctional behavior pattern which the client wants to work on. You can also do this process yourself with the suggestions below.

Identifying the Leading Players

Whilst there may be quite a number of players in the “team,” at the very least there will be two Parts who play the leading roles – the Part that is responsible for the undesirable behaviour and the Part that is critical, punitive, often perfectionist. The latter has high expectations and blames and chastises the “naughty” part when things go wrong.

When we lapse on our road to change, the internal critic will rouse such feelings of shame and guilt that the obvious solution is to tranquilise the pain with the addictive substance, food or behaviour. For this reason, it is extremely important for the therapist to show empathy and understanding for both the Parts and not to side with one against the other so as to avoid helping to reinforce the ongoing internal warfare.

Basic Tips

Here are some basic tips on how you may incorporate Parts Work into your EFT therapy. When I get a sense of an internal conflict or sometimes simply when I hear words like “one part of me (…) and another part of me (…),” I begin to ask a series of questions:

So if the Part of you that is responsible for [drinking, smoking, procrastinating, worrying etc] was a person, what would it look like? (I give the client time to visualise the Part)

Is it male or female? (The Part can be of the same or different gender to the client, or sexless)

What is he/she wearing? (Clothing and appearance can symbolise significant aspects of the internal conflict)

How old does he/she look? (The Part can be younger, same age, older than the client, or “ageless”)

Does he/she have a name? (The name may be different or the same as client’s own name, sometimes there is no name, or just a descriptive nickname)

Finding the Job Description

The client’s feelings towards the Part can vary widely but are often negative. It is crucial that the therapist maintains neutrality and does not judge this part of the client’s personality, even if its behaviour appears very destructive (e.g. in self-harm or serious drug addictions). Occasionally I find that the Part is so fearful or suppressed that it is unable to “show up” – but for the purposes of this piece we will assume that the client has come up with some visual image of the Part.

I invite the client to tap with me, acknowledging the existence of the Part.

“Even though there is a Part of me which is responsible for my drinking, it is male, wearing filthy rags and is called Roger, I accept myself anyway.” Facing an “undesirable” Part of themselves can emphasize the difficulty the client may have with self-acceptance, and the set-up phrase may have to be modified, such as “I accept some parts of me,” “I accept most of me,” or “I’d like to accept all parts of me.”

Once we have done a round of tapping, I check with the client what the Part is looking like now. Then I ask “If this Part was trying to help in some way, what might its purpose be?” – or I may speak to the Part directly and ask “What job are you trying to do for [client’s name]?” I invite the client to say the first thing that comes to mind. The answer usually relates to some crucial function like safety and protection, being strong, motivation, connection and love – the client is often surprised by this information.

When we have identified the job of the “misbehaving” Part, I invite the client to acknowledge it through tapping:

“Even though I thought this Part of me was putting obstacles in my way, I recognise its purpose of… [include the wording of the positive intention].”

It is important to keep validating the negative emotions and beliefs that the client may still have about the “naughty” Part, also.

Occasionally, simply acknowledging the existence of the Part responsible for the undesirable behaviour and showing some understanding of it may be enough to make a dramatic change in an addictive or compulsive pattern. Often the client will come up with alternative ideas for how to fulfil that crucial task that their misguided “team member” has been trying to work towards – safety, peace, connection, joy etc. If these new awarenesses are not popping up, you could gently prompt them with phrases such as

“Even though this part of me has been [include positive intention identified] through [behavior], I am curious whether there may be any other ways to achieve that.”

If solutions are offered, it is important to check out with the “dysfunctional” Part whether these are acceptable to it – remember that all our Parts are terrified of being unwanted, of literally losing their job! What we are trying to achieve is NOT to “sack” the Part that has been causing trouble. What we CAN do is to give it a new job description.

A Two-Part Conversation

Often, it may not be sufficient just to acknowledge the internal Part responsible for the unwanted behaviour, and we need to summon the perfectionist, critical Part (call it Part B), who is in direct conflict with Part A. I ask questions on the lines of “Is there a Part that is critical of, or does not like Part A?” Inevitably, the client will recognise this Part – in fact it has probably already popped up during the session if the client has been saying disparaging or critical things about Part A.

I would ask the client questions about Part B, and then tap on the client’s description of it, to acknowledge its presence, its purpose and the positive intention.

I will sometimes ask the client to draw the two conflicting Parts – and any other Parts who may be present! – on a piece of paper (drawing skill is unimportant here). This makes it easier to examine the relationship between the two. You can explore this in client’s imagination if they are reluctant to draw.

I ask questions such as:

How far away are they from each other?

Are they looking at each other or away?

What are their facial expressions?

Are they hearing each other?

What do they feel about each other?

What do they want from each other?

We tap on these answers using the client’s words as accurately as possible, without distorting them or trying to force any shifts in the imagery – these will happen all on their own with tapping. If the client has done a drawing, they may make any alteration or additions to the drawing that seem significant.

You are likely to find that whilst at first the two parts may have been positioned in two far corners of the paper (or client’s visual field) and were scowling at each other, through tapping they may gradually move closer and seem to open up to one other. Their appearance, age, clothing may begin to transform. Feelings of love, compassion, warmth, and often tears begin to arise, sometimes very slowly and cautiously, sometimes in a big gush.

Client-Led Integration of Parts

It is not uncommon for the client to spontaneously make a symbolic gesture of holding, hugging or otherwise accepting the previously rejected and despised part of themselves. It is important to note here that there are some techniques in NLP and other therapeutic modalities where the therapist encourages the client to “integrate” or “bring in” the rejected part of themselves – but if the client is not yet ready for this profound process the attempt could further intensify the conflict. Far safer, in my experience, to gently tap on whatever arises, and allow the process to take place naturally and organically.

The details of these transformations are utterly unique to each individual and the length of time that true integration may take can vary widely. It is crucially important for the therapist not to hold pre-conceived ideas. It is vital for the therapist to model patience, respect, and non-judgement towards all aspects of the client’s personality and experience. In addition to the healing properties of EFT, this is the most important component of healing these internal wars that are such a common part of the process of human change, development and transformation.

Yes, this actually works! At the end of this article is an amazing feedback email from the case study.

Many practitioners ask “What do I do when a client doesn’t have any memories?” There are many people that do not seem to have easy access to their childhood memories, especially those early, formative, before-the-age-of-six memories that any good practitioner knows are essential to clearing foundational negative beliefs and learning. When these people become clients, it can seem like they make an otherwise surprisingly easy EFT process extraordinarily difficult. Fortunately, there is a relatively non-difficult way to help these clients address these memories – even those that they don’t believe they have any access to.

The Color of Pain

Modern science and advances in psychology in the last century have taught us that the mind and body work in metaphors. The applied success of this theory can be seen in EFT techniques like Paul Lynch’s Color of Pain, in which the EFT process is applied to a physical ailment after it is described as an object by the client. Through the use of descriptive questions giving the pain a color, shape, size, and the like, the client creates a metaphor for their physical feeling, and as EFT is used he or she is asked to track the changes in the pain’s appearance, thereby tracking the therapy’s progress.

In the same way, we also understand that this metaphoric tendency allows the mind to work much like an Internet search engine. To put it simply, if someone were to say the phrase “bird on a fence”, your mind “googles” that phrase, recalling potentially hundreds of images and instances in which “bird on a fence” has been experienced. The mind then chooses the image or instance that applies itself most effectively to the context of the current experience – and all of this occurs in a split second without any conscious realization. Essentially, this is what allows current events to trigger past emotional states and responses.

“Let’s Pretend”

Sigmund Freud and his contemporaries, including Carl Jung, have demonstrated that the information held in the subconscious, though not always readily accessible, is vitally important to the success of significant therapeutic intervention. They also began to recognize, as evidenced in techniques such as free association and active imagination, that fantasy and dream states could be used to gain access to and potentially use subconscious material. In the same way, “Let’s Pretend” in EFT and Matrix Reimprinting allows clients who have little or no access to memories to make up a story that

a) applies to the issue at hand and
b) is both reasonable and feasible to them to address subconscious material

The subconscious mind will “google” the story and make the appropriate applications, while the conscious mind is free to relax without the stress and pressure of trying to recall memories that seem impossible to remember!

Once the reasonable and feasible negative story is made up, it has a beginning, middle, and an end, and all of the participants have been identified, it can be addressed using Matrix Reimprinting and EFT as if it actually happened.

Kari’s Story

The following case study is a great example of using Matrix Reimprinting to tap on a made up event. The client, Kari, was chosen for this demonstration because she has little to no access to her childhood memories and, even when she does, often times has a difficult time feeling emotion in the matrix. She came to me because she had started a very positive relationship with a man who had two children. She and her significant other were beginning to move toward a more serious relationship, but she was afraid that his children would inevitably “hate” her because she hated her stepparents when she was a child and in a similar situation.

Before we began, I asked Kari to explain what “hate” meant to her. She shared with me that it was different for each of her stepparents: in the case of her stepfather, she felt they just never got along, while in the case of her stepmother, she felt that she always had to compete with her for her dad’s attention. We muscle tested for which of the two we should focus on, and stepmother was stronger. I then muscle tested Kari for an age using Sandi Randomski’s model and got ages three and five. I asked Kari what she did know about each of those ages, even if she didn’t have any clear memories, and she knew that at the age of three her younger sister was born and at the age of five her parents divorced. Never making any assumptions, I muscle tested for which of those ages was stronger. They both had strength, but 5 was slightly stronger, and that was to be the age that we focused on.

Now we knew that we were focusing on feelings of having to compete with step mom for dad’s attention and that the event we were going to make up would be when Kari was about five. With some additional questioning and muscle testing, we figured out that the event would involve both of her parents and was something that she both saw and heard.

“Something is Wrong”

Next, we would start forming the parameters of the made up event. I explained to her that I was going to ask some questions about the event, and that her only instruction was to make up the answers, ensuring that they were feasible and believable to her. She complied, again, entirely making up the answers to the questions I was asking, and we determined that she was at her childhood home, inside, mommy was around but not with her, and daddy was there inside the house. I then asked Kari to tell me what the general feeling was where she was, and she replied, “Something is wrong.” Prompting her for more, she continued, “Something is wrong with dad, it’s like he’s not well.”

I asked Kari if it would be feasible and reasonable to her if the little 5 year old Kari was really worried about daddy. She answered, “No. She’s too little. She just doesn’t understand what’s happening.”

I invited her to imagine her current self could step into the made up picture with little Kari, to introduce herself, and find out if it was okay that she tap on her. It was OK, and we began on little Kari’s karate chop point, “Even though you don’t understand, and something is wrong with daddy, you’re still a good little girl…”

“There, But Not There”

After about a round, I asked Kari for more information. She indicated that she was getting the sense that dad was unconscious, even though little Kari didn’t understand what that meant. It was like he was “there but not there”, and little Kari didn’t understand why he wasn’t responding to her even though she was standing right in front of him – eerily similar to the feelings she would have in the future when she felt she had to compete with her stop mom for his attention. I instructed Kari to keep tapping on her younger self and to explain to little Kari what was happening- in gentle, 5-year-old-friendly terms -and to reassure her that daddy would wake up and be okay.

Little Kari shared with us that she wanted her mommy to be there with her because she didn’t want to be alone. This is a valuable step in the matrix. We want to be able to remove as many of the elements of trauma as possible for the ECHO (younger self) – shock, isolation, no strategy, but little Kari also felt that mom would be upset and she didn’t want to cause problems. I asked if the now Kari could ask little Kari if she would like us to tap on mom, and she agreed.

Tapping in the Matrix

We imagined stepping into another room where we could speak with mom and ask her how she was feeling. Through Kari interacting with her mom in the matrix, we found that she was frustrated, angry, and overwhelmed. She felt like no one else was dependable. Tapping a few rounds beginning with: “Even though you’re overwhelmed, angry, and extremely frustrated, you want to be a good mom – and you can be, even if it’s difficult” led us to Mom wanting her own dad – Kari’s grandfather – to be there with her. When they were both in the room, Kari continued to tap on mom’s points while she explained what was going on in the next room and how little Kari was feeling. I asked Kari, “Can mom go into the other room now and pay attention to little Kari and not get mad?” She answered that she could.

We envisioned mom and Kari’s grandfather walking into the next room. Because the grandfather is there, he is able to deal with the unconscious dad while mom kneels down and hugs little Kari. We reimprint the image of mom hugging the 5 year old. Kari indicates that her 5-year-old self still doesn’t understand exactly what’s happening, but it doesn’t matter because mom is there. At the end of the made up memory, we ask little Kari what she wants to do now, and she decides she wants to go with her grandfather to visit grandmom while mom stays with dad until he wakes up. We reimprinted the image of little Kari being at her grandparents house knowing that dad is okay.

The event was entirely made up by Kari. She guessed at the answers to my questions with answers that were feasible and reasonable to her. She later sent me the following email:

I called my mom after the session. I just had to ask… Apparently, before my mom and dad finally got divorced, my dad’s drug use got worse, and there was this one particular time that my mom took my sister and I grocery shopping. When we got back, I had to use the bathroom, so, with her hands full of groceries and my little sister, who was about one at the time, she unlocked the door and let me in her house first, then stayed outside to get the rest of her stuff, etc. I ran into the bathroom and found my dad passed out on the floor. My mom said I walked outside and asked her why daddy was sleeping in the bathroom – she said that was the last straw and she couldn’t let us grow up with things like that happening, so she kicked him out the same week. WOW.

Karin Davidson is an EFT & Matrix Reimprinting Trainer and Practitioner. You can contact Karin at Karin@HowToTap.com. This session is also available as a download at www.TappingUniversity.com. It’s titled: “Getting to an ECHO.”

I can’t blame my short-term memory lapses on my age. I’ve had this problem all my life. Neurofeedback sessions have helped a lot, but there are still gaps that leave me frustrated and even exasperated at times. To try to fill these gaps, I’ve developed some habits that help, like putting my billfold, glasses, car keys etc. in the same location every night when I empty my pockets, so that finding them in the morning will be routine.

Recently, I was rushing around getting ready to leave for work, when I realized my billfold was not in its usual place. Immediately, my anxiety rose, triggering thoughts such as, what if I get stopped by a traffic cop on the way to work? What will I do if I have to make a credit card purchase?

I frantically raced through the house, revisiting all the places I had been last night, the living room, my home office, my wife’s computer desk, my clothes closet, the kitchen and dinette. In my closet, I’d twice checked the coat and pants pockets of the clothes I had been wearing yesterday. When the second time around the house didn’t locate the billfold, I found my anxiety enhanced by frustration. The thought of having to notify the credit card companies to cancel and reissue, as well as having to apply for a replacement driver’s license, added anger to the above emotions.

Then a thought popped into my mind, why not try tapping? Though new to this tool, with still a lot to learn, I sat down and began tapping:

Even though I know I’ve been careless with my billfold, I very much would like to remember where it is, and I’m a very worthwhile person.

I repeated this several times. Suddenly, the closet flashed into my mind. I rejected the image at first, because I had already twice gone through the pockets of the suit I had worn. Then I got another flash. I hadn’t worn the suit, only the coat. I’d worn a pair of different colored slacks!

Rushing to the closet, I pulled out the slacks I’d worn. There in a pocket was my billfold! Plus, I still had time to get to work by opening hour.

While this may seem a trivial thing to get upset about, my first emotional reaction had the potential to set my whole day on the wrong track. Tapping relieved my anxiety, frustration and anger, and allowed my short-term memory circuits to do their job.

“Compound interest arises when interest is added to the principal, so that from that moment on, the interest that has been added also itself earns interest.”

It’s so easy to forget that we have EFT to use as a day-to-day tool to make life a bit easier.

When disaster strikes and we have major upsets or trauma to deal with it’s obvious that we need to deal with it. Major problems are easy to spot and hard to ignore, with EFT you have an excellent tool for working with these difficulties, but what about the day-to-day stuff?

Many of the minor discomforts and problems that we experience on a day-to-day basis seem too small to bother about, we tend to get on with things and not bother tapping on it.

Most of these incidents aren’t so bad, a little dip in our mood and then we are back on track. A lot of life’s challenges give you repetitive and annoying little jolts of stress or distress that we work through every day.

Let’s imagine that you have a work colleague who has a gift for upsetting you – something in the way they speak or look just gets you annoyed.

If you meet for just a few minutes each day it’s not so bad, you only have to speak to them for a few minutes and then it’s over until tomorrow.

At first glance that doesn’t look too bad, it’s “just one of those things”. But it is not just one of those things it’s just one of many of those things, which added up, over time, can cause you a lot of stress.

Each stressful situation you go through prepares you (in a bad way) for the next one.

We are conditioned beings. What happens in any situation prepares our body-mind for the next time we are in a similar situation. We might get apprehensive or stressed, even when we think about the next time we have to go through that kind of experience again.

Dentist’s waiting rooms are full of people being stressed about something that hasn’t happened yet based on their previous experiences of drilling and filling.

Vicious Circle

This stress response pattern leads to a vicious circle.

* a difficult situation …
* leads to upset and stress …
* leads to apprehension of the next time you are in that situation …
* leads you to be in a less resourceful state when next in the situation …
* leads you to have more upset and distress …
* and so on …

Compound Suffering

You might be able to handle one stressful situation at a time with ease, but if you add them up it doesn’t look so good.

Try this little experiment.

Get a calendar, mark in difficult, recurring events, such as:

* Problem meeting at work
* Weekly dinner with the in-laws
* A problem customer
* Having to deal with a troublesome neighbour.
* Mark the last time this event happened on the calendar.
* Now mark the next event when it is due
* And the one after that
* And the one after that
* And the one after that
* And so on …

These situations add up, don’t they?

Let’s imagine that your stressful event takes just ten minutes and only happens once a week.

Ten minutes are not so bad. Anyone can survive ten minutes of discomfort, can’t they?

But 52 weeks of ten minutes discomfort adds up to nearly nine hours of distress.

Imagine nine full, uninterrupted, hours of that kind of stress.

If you got that all at once would you do some tapping to relieve it?

It gets worse. It’s not just this one example of repeating stress, we probably have a lot of little stress events in our lives repeating at regular intervals and compounding their stress over time.

Happily there is a way out.

Compound Freedom

Let’s imagine that just 30 minutes of tapping cleared that reaction.

If you did that, then for just a little effort up front, you could have eight and a half hours less distress in a year.

Not only that the less triggered and more resourceful you can be in that situation the more likely it is to go well.

Tapping on the upset as it occurs will probably diminish the stress of each situation as it occurs as you get more and more able to handle it. Over time the stress response is reduced and all the later occurrences of this situation will be easier, leading to much less stress.

With a bit of tapping you can transform the vicious cycle with a virtuous one.

Virtuous Cycle

This cycle starts with the same event but goes in a different direction.

* a difficult situation …
* leads to upset and stress …
* cleared with EFT …
* leads to more confidence about the next time you will be in that situation …
* leads you to be in a more resourceful state when next in the situation …
* leads you to have less upset and distress than before …
* and so on …

That’s much less stress in your life and much more freedom for a small investment of tapping.

Putting it into practice

Is simplicity itself.

* Review the last week.
* Pick a modest (at first) recurring stressful incident.
* Take care of it with EFT
* Take care of any residual stress the next time it happens
* Rinse and repeat until the stress response is diminished or eliminated.
* Pick another incident and repeat the process

In the time it takes to complain about something that has happened to you, you could take steps to make sure that it doesn’t happen in the same way again or you could allow your stress levels to increase again.

What’s the first change you could make to invest in your happiness?

Andy Hunt is an EFT & NLP Trainer and Practitioner living in the North East of England. He works with people who give themselves a hard time, judge themselves harshly, feel bad about themselves and spend far more time beating themselves up than living the life they would want. Visit him online at www.practicalwellbeing.co.uk.

I recently had the pleasure of presenting an Introduction to EFT workshop in a day-long workshop on Complementary Care techniques. I shared the day with four colleagues who practice three other complementary or integrative care modalities. Our audience consisted of “traditional” Western-therapy clinicians, who for the most part were unfamiliar with these techniques.

In addition to EFT, our workshop included Healing Touch, a method of transferring healing energy through the hands; Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy, using groundwork with horses to help clients see and change their own patterns of behavior; and Meditation, to achieve balance and mindfulness. Each presentation, except the Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy, included an experiential practice session.

As a practitioner, my favorite part of the day was learning ideas and concepts from these other practitioners that I could relate to EFT.

From Diane’s Healing Touch presentation, I was reminded about the need to ground and center ourselves before attempting to help another. Every interaction between people includes an exchange of energy. To assure that interaction can be healing, we must be centered, mindful and grounded as practitioners.

Diane, an RN and Ph.D. certified as an instructor in Healing Touch, also shared a concept from Native American healing, of becoming the “hollow bone”. This means to allow healing, and Spirit, to flow through you without impedance. The Hollow Bone is an excellent way for us to visualize “through me, not by me,” an important precept of EFT.

Laurie and Beverly, both conventionally-trained psychotherapists also certified for Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy, explained how they use horses, exquisitely sensitive prey animals, to help clients realize how our own energy is played out in relationship. In EAP the therapists closely watch the horse to see what signals it is giving, as well as watching the client react to or try to influence the horse. In addition to my own interest in working with horses and riders, I resonated with this concept from an EFT perspective, as it is similar to the close noticing that EFT practitioners need to practice.

Our clients always signal, at some level, when something big is going on. Regardless of how they may try to downplay a memory or occurrence, they give us clues; an eye movement, a tensing of the voice, or a significant word choice. It’s our job to notice that something’s beneath the surface.

From Alejandro, a Ph.D. and meditation master, we learned how to be mindful of our own internal dialog and attempt to still it through breath and attention, relaxing the tension we uncover as we go along. In administering EFT, we also need to still our own internal dialog while relaxing our own levels of tension, to get out of our own way. As in meditation, this mindfulness needs to be repeated throughout a session, so that we remain responsible for remaining balanced as we work with others.

I often notice, especially with new clients, that I have to consciously relax my body and my ego-chatter. Once I do, I sometimes feel sensations in my body that I hadn’t noticed while I was tied up in myself. I must then ask myself, “Is this feeling mine, or the client’s?” Humans resonate with the feelings and energy patterns of others, like tuning forks. Only if we are centered enough, sensitive enough, and mindful enough, can we then determine whether we are getting some physical information from our clients in our own bodies.

When I objectively notice a feeling, sensation or emotion in my body, I ask my client what they are feeling in their own body. Even if we were already working on one physical sensation, I may be picking up a shift of the blocked energy. I don’t tell the client what I’m feeling; it’s not about me. Instead, I let my somatic sensations remind me to ask them what they’re feeling.

I have two tenets of my own that I pass on in every presentation.

Hold the space, don’t fill it. As energy practitioners, we hold the space for people to do their inner work — we don’t fill the space. It’s not up to me to guide someone where I think he needs to go. If I hold the space and stay true to the core EFT skills, the person comes to the realization they need—even if it’s not the one I thought they needed. In practice, this means using reframes very gingerly, if at all. Many times I’ve had clients experience profound cognitive shifts simply by adding “I forgive myself (or, ‘my body’)” to the set up phrase. I don’t tell them what the “right answer” is; I try to nudge them a degree or two so that they begin to see the issue from a slightly different perspective.

Be the most attentive person there. When I work with someone, I don’t need to be the smartest person in the room; I only need to be the most attentive person in the room. Doing EFT as a practitioner is not about having vast knowledge of what can be wrong with human beings, and how to fix them all. It is about practicing (and modeling) the focus and attention necessary to help a person find her way. This relieves me of the pressure of finding answers, and it helps the person in the session begin to notice for themselves. When they can begin to notice, they can begin to choose. Sometimes people comment on “how good” I am at what I do. But here’s my little secret: all I really am good at is noticing. EFT and the client do the rest.

I believe everyone is good at learning to ride their own bike (resolve their own issues) when they’re ready to. I don’t have to teach them how to ride the bike; I just have to hold the bike steady and run along behind, giving encouragement.

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.

On a recent flight from San Francisco to Denver, just before take off, I saw two young parents trying to comfort their baby who was clearly distressed and really beginning to squirm and fuss.

Compassion (along with the prospect of being trapped for hours near a screaming baby) motivated me to do surrogate tapping. Keeping my eyes on the unhappy child, and tuning into her energy as best I could, I began discreetly tapping my finger points — as if I were the baby:

“Even though I don’t know where I am, and my ears feel funny, and there are strangers all around me, and I’m scared, my mommy and daddy are here and they love me and will keep me safe”

I tapped through the points with reminder phrases like “my ears hurt…it feels funny in here…it’s too crowded…people are looking at me…but my mommy is holding me…my daddy is here too….etc.”

Within a few minutes the baby had completely calmed down and was snuggling in to take a long nap. The parents looked very relieved. Was it my tapping that changed the picture? While I can’t really know for sure, it certainly did no harm.

Surrogate tapping simply means tapping for the benefit of someone else, as if you actually were that person. Because we are all connected energetically through the quantum field, distance isn’t really a factor. We can tap for someone thousands of miles away.

One summer evening I was relaxing in my back yard when the dog next door began to whine and howl. Our neighboring town was doing their annual fireworks show and I could hear the booms and cracks quite clearly. Unfortunately so could the terrified dog.

His frantic barking was soon joined by another dog nearby and then a third one across the street. They seemed to be setting each other off, getting more and more hysterical as the fireworks exploded in the distance. Without much thought I began tapping for the dogs.

“Even though I’m so scared of the loud sounds, my master loves me and will protect me and I’m safe”

“Even though the other dogs are scared too, so it must be something really bad, my master will keep me safe”

“Even though these sounds are freaking me out, I’m going to be okay and my master will protect me”.

I tapped around the points saying “these loud sounds” “so afraid” “these scary sounds” “my master loves me” and so on. Within two or three rounds of tapping — even though the fireworks were still going off — all three dogs were completely quiet. It was like flipping a switch. There was no doubt in my mind that the tapping had worked.

Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of surrogate tapping. It seems a bit like Voodoo — trying to influence some unwitting person at a distance. And don’t you need to get their permission?

For me, there’s a tangible difference between wanting to help someone feel better and trying to manipulate or control their behavior. It’s true that I wanted that baby to not cry and for the dogs to stop barking, but the entire focus of my tapping for them was about feeling safe and loved. The change in behavior was secondary.

I once had a client whose son was planning on joining the army. She was very upset about this. If she had asked me to do surrogate tapping on him to get him to change his mind, that’s clearly manipulative and I would have said no. Instead we simply tapped on her own emotional intensity.

But this same client had problems with her ex-husband, who had become a meth addict. He really seemed to hate her and went out of his way to make her life miserable. We’d already tapped on her negative feelings towards him, clearing them over a series of sessions. So I agreed to do surrogate tapping on her ex, to try and help him release his anger, hatred, jealousy and rage.

In a case like this I do ask permission from the recipient’s higher self. I simply visualize a traffic signal and see if we get a green light. We did, and somehow I tuned into this man’s energy field. His suffering was terrible. I led my client through some long and very intense rounds of tapping for him — as him.

The following week my client walked through my door with a radiant smile. She had just met with her ex the day before. He wasn’t friendly. He didn’t apologize to her. But he was civil and wrote out the child support check without argument or invective. After two years of bitter antagonism — to her it was a miracle.

Certainly her ex has a lot more work to do. His meth addiction is a serious problem and a few minutes of surrogate tapping isn’t going to make that go away. But something seemed to shift for him. Maybe it was a start.

The idea of tuning in to another person (or animal’s) energy field at a distance, and healing it through intention, may seem unscientific to some. But then, not many of us really understand the insights of quantum physics yet, even though we’re happy to use our cell phones. We don’t really need to know how they work — we just use them.

We may not understand how surrogate tapping works. I certainly don’t know enough about quantum physics to explain it clearly. But science is built upon experimentation and observation, not dogma. Why not experiment with it yourself, and observe the results? If surrogate tapping really does work (and I’m convinced that most people, with a little practice, can do it successfully), then it’s a wonderful way of expanding our healing work into the world.

Rob Nelson is a Certified EFT Practitioner in Santa Rosa, California. Rob offers EFT and Matrix Reimprinting sessions by phone and by skype, as well as in person at his Santa Rosa office. He can be reached at www.TappingtheMatrix.com