A few weeks ago, I said goodbye to one of my dearest friends – my brindle-colored mutt named Scoot, my faithful companion for over 11 years. At least since Easter, he had developed very sudden and rapid form of cancer, and it was becoming clear that I needed to make arrangements to end his suffering.

Mercifully for the both of us, the whole process unfolded rapidly enough that he did not suffer unduly, but not too fast that I was overwhelmed or unprepared. I deeply appreciated, for example, that in that last week, many of his friends and caregivers were able to come over to say goodbye, and he was able to visit with them. The ease with which it all unfolded didn’t lesson the grief I was experiencing, but it did give me the opportunity to prepare for what was to come. When the day finally arrived, our vet helped me see him on his journey, and we took him into the woods where he was peaceably laid to rest.

This all happened before 10am the morning of, and by noon I found myself in a haze of grief and sadness. The weeks preparing for this had taken an enormous amount of focus, I realized, and today I could barely hold a conversation much less think about moving forward. Then at some point in the afternoon that I remembered I still had a 5pm Skype EFT session to do! Perhaps sensing that helping someone else would do me good, I just decided to go with the flow.

Diving In

My client, a friend I’ll call Joan, wanted to finally heal what she described as “PTSD.” This embodied, in her estimation, a series of past traumatic life situations that remained unresolved. She shared that her relationships with others were consistently troubled – causing a lot of pain and self-blame, and she sensed that these big earlier traumas were playing a big part. We had worked through one of these situations in an earlier session with very positive results.

When the hour of our session approached, I half-heartedly set a Borrowing Benefits goal for myself. In other words, I named a specific healing intention for myself before giving Joan my full attention. I chose to trust that the quality of my interaction with her might somehow help relieve some of the pain and loss I was feeling, although given the events of the day and past several weeks, I had very low expectations!

A week or so before we got together this time, Joan shared with me that she felt like her previous session had left her almost too exhausted, and she sensed she needed to proceed even more slowly than we had during our second session. Our rapport (i.e. our way of communicating in harmony with one another) was still quite delicate and in many ways tentative, and I took her desires especially seriously. I wanted to be ever mindful to reflect her exact words back to her (to honor her subjective experience) and to always proceed slowly and steadily – at her pace.

Big Life Movies

Joan presented a very complex relationship to her self-esteem and was very open about how her negative sense of self was affecting her interactions with others. Her belief was, “I’m disposable,” and it had come up a number of times in our work together. She was also in an affordable housing situation as well as on disability, and therefore I knew she had a very complicated and long-standing relationship to her troubles. While we might’ve followed any one of the many intense aspects she was presenting, it was when she mentioned “PTSD” that I remembered our earlier session clearly where we had identified several “big life movies” that still haunted her.

I asked her to think about how many of these difficult areas there were. She said there were probably around five big movies she could think of easily. When I asked her which of these movies was foremost in her mind, she told me that the most intense one pointed to the relationship with her father. I asked her what the title might be. She said, “My Dad. Definitely,’My Dad.’”

Usually The Movie Technique involves isolating a very specific past event – a short movie of roughly 20-minutes or less, which can then be broken up into several 2-minutes scenes. By tapping on the title, then tapping on the most intense crescendos of feeling in each scene, a person can get some major relief.

Slowing Down and Stepping Back: A Flexible Approach

In my experience, this “by the book” version of The Movie Technique is not appropriate in every situation. Basic Movie is certainly a tool to reach for when the time is right, but sometimes the situation is complex and specific events are not always evident or necessarily appropriate to visit. In fact, in my experience, clients benefit the most when Movie is used flexibly.

I sensed that the best way I could help Joan was to slow the whole movie process down to a crawl. As a helper or practitioner, this approach allows me to stay very present with the person and with the energy of the title of the movie. It helps me meet them where they are in their subjective experience without skipping anything important. It also allows me to approach highly charged emotional areas gently – without pain or pushing.

The Nuts and Bolts of Leading “The Marquee Technique”

For me, slowing down The Movie Technique involves starting globally – choosing a big life movie (which may hold many, many scenes), in an effort to be gentle and allow specific scenes or other movies to reveal themselves naturally. This approach usually involves hanging back with the intense energy of the movie title only, for as long as there is intensity. In my experience, we may never get to narrating the movie at all.

This slow, visual approach usually involves seeing the title up on a movie marquee. Doing so helps us easily take advantage of what are called submodalities (i.e. How close are you to the marquee now? How far? What color are the letters? Are the letters clear or fuzzy? etc.) which can help the person be as present as possible with the energy of their “big life movie.” Just allowing the title to be and responding with tapping helps a person be present their own unique experience. This is usually the opposite of what they have been doing which is probably resisting anything that mirrors or has the potential to mirror this painful time of life. Consequently, this approach can yield very surprising results!

The Setup phrase we used at the beginning was a blend of Joan’s words – those that reflected the intensity she was feeling. I also did what I call “open-ended tapping,” where I gave her the opportunity to fill-in-the-blank (which I show in bold letters). You’ll see that I also offer her gentle reframes that included phrases like, “this is a really big movie,” to help her stay distant from it and keep perspective – to remind her that we are safely outside of all the tauma. You’ll notice this reframe was useful, as she then offered, “about relationships and love,” which showed that she felt empowered to take the session where she needed to go.

Tapping With Joan

Below is how some of the tapping unfolded. While I can’t include most of the session (which was about an hour), notice how much it involved helping Joan stay very present with her experience of the movie title while tapping through the points. Even though we were on Skype (on video), keep in mind that I say the name of each of the points and reflect her language back to her to help her keep the process flowing. Notice how being extremely present helps the process unfold rather rapidly.

We began on the Sore Spot:

Even though I’m seeing this marquee outside the theater, and it says “My Dad,” and the letters look like black block letters, this is a really big movie for me, in my whole body, in my life, my beliefs about me, my relationships in love, all happened in that movie…

(Jade: Tapping on the Eyebrow Point, tune into that title and say, “My Dad”)
EB: My Dad (Jade: Stay with the marquee… “My Dad”)
SE: My Dad
UE: My Dad (Joan: It’s kind of getting blue)
UN: It’s kind of getting blue
Chin: It’s kind of getting blue
(Jade: What’s getting blue? The letters?)
CB: (Joan: Yes, kind of a lighter blue)
UA: Kind of a lighter blue (Joan: Mostly a powder blue, baby blue. How could that happen?)
Gamut: How could that happen?
(Joan: It should be deep dark black, blazing black, hell back!)
Wrist: It should be deep dark black, blazing black, hell black!
Inside Wrist: (Joan: I’ve only worked on this a few seconds – instead, it’s powder blue)
Top of the Head TOH: (Joan: Now it’s more grey)
CB: (Jade: How far away from the marquee are you now? Joan: When I was looking at the black letters I was pretty close, but as I tapped I got farther away. I was 7 feet – I’m uncertain.
EB: This Movie, “My Dad”
UE: Looking at this movie, “My Dad”
SE: (Jade: As you’re looking at the grey letters, what’s that tension now?)
(Joan: It’s definitely released. I’m not feeling that tension in my shoulders, a little in my throat. (laughter) I’m seeing flowers and roses blooming – crap like that! (Jade: Wow, where are you seeing those in the scene?) (Joan: Maybe he died right now!)
UN: Maybe he died right now
(Joan: Maybe he’s sorry!!)
UN: Maybe he’s sorry
Chin: Maybe he’s sorry. (Joan: He should be)
CB: He should be
CB: He should be
(Joan: You know what I got right now? Maybe I’m sorry)
UA: Maybe I’m sorry
Gamut Point: Maybe I’m sorry
TOH: Maybe I’m sorry
(Jade: Keep looking at that marquee, maybe I’m sorry)
EB: Maybe I’m sorry
(Joan: Now I’m seeing green stems and leaves. Maybe I’m sorry)
SE: Maybe I’m sorry
UE: Maybe I’m sorry
(Joan: the stems and flowers are covering up the marquee. It just kind of grew in front of it or it manifested)
(Jade: What’s more intense, Maybe he’s sorry or maybe I’m sorry?)
(Joan: I’m sorry)
EB:I’m sorry
SE: I’m sorry
UE: I’m sorry
UN: I’m sorry
(Joan: I’m sorry to myself)
Chin: I’m sorry to myself
CB: I’m sorry to myself
UA: I’m sorry to myself
(Joan: I’m sorry Joan)
UN: I’m sorry Joan
(Jade: Just stay with the marquee, however you see it and say, I’m sorry Joan)
Chin: I’m sorry Joan
CB: I’m sorry Joan
UA: I’m sorry Joan
…

On and on we went, slowly – stopping to laugh or talk a little and then refocus on the marquee. Me: managing the process, encouraging Joan to respond to the movie title while she managed the content. When we tested, she indicated that the whole “My Dad” movie as she had been experiencing it had shifted. She indicated that she felt more stable and secure in her body (as she was typically in a state of fight or flight). She kept saying that she didn’t expect to feel so grounded. Eventually, a significant past event (one that involved being angry with herself) did rise up, although we never actually got to tapping on it since some other more intense aspects emerged. We did however do “continuous tapping” while she shared the event and moved on to more present feelings.

Eventually, I asked her how she experienced the words, “I’m disposable,” she said it was no longer a 10+ on the intensity scale, but more like a 3. She also shared her realization that being a victim had, in the past, helped her get needed attention. We then tapped on a huge realization she was having, “I want other people to take responsibility! I want them to take responsibility for my well-being!”

Follow Up

As we tapped, Joan’s voice became lighter and, as we went along, the personal realizations and self-compassion began flowing abundantly and effortlessly. It was the first time in my recent interaction with her that I experienced her expressing feeling so grounded and positive about herself. At one point she even said, “disposable doesn’t feel true at all.” A week later she let me know that she is “feeling much less self-conscious” after our work together. I believe the approach of allowing and responding to the Movie title facilitated this.

What was so wonderful about this session, to me, was our rapport together. Joan and I are old school friends, so we have a history of honest communication and an easiness in our interaction, which certainly helped. She had clearly allowed personal insights to flow and find expression during our tapping rounds, and in return I reflected her language as best I could, ever-mindful to stay with with the emotional intensity while helping respond to the words on the marquee. While it could have been “tough” work, it did not feel that way to me – more like an allowing of tough stuff to naturally evolve – which is what I find amazing about EFT.

Borrowed Benefit

I experienced a profound awakening after helping Joan. Immediately after our session, MY deep body-level, crazy-making grief, exhaustion and sadness was no longer the same – at all. Instead, in it’s place were the words, “this was hard, but it was right,” words that I found myself speaking to a friend easily. Later that evening, I was able to go socialize, initiate conversations – even have an impromptu meeting for a non-profit group.

A week later, the rightness of the words, “it was hard, but it was right,” still resonate, somehow solidifying the ground on which I stand. I’m secure and resolved in the knowledge that Scoot and I had to go through his passing together, and that somehow communication between us is still happening at deep levels even now. I feel the loss, but the love between has been more present – a very gratifying and surprising result of Borrowing Benefits.

Editor’s Note: This article comes via Huffington Post and is reproduced here with permission from the author. Since it was originally published without comments for some reason, we encourage you to leave yours below.

As a musculoskeletal radiologist specializing in MRI of the joints and spine for 27 years, I have read thousands of scans documenting the ravages of time on the aging human body. However, I am also acutely aware of the presence of numerous MRI studies in the medical literature that demonstrate significant abnormalities in the spine, knee and shoulder in up to 25 percent of asymptomatic “normal” volunteers. It is actually possible to have a disc herniation, meniscal tear or rotator cuff tear without any pain or other symptoms. In fact, it is rather common. How can this be?

In search of an explanation, I will put on my other hat for a few minutes. As a holistic medical practitioner of acupuncture, hypnosis and EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) for 10 years, I frequently have this conversation with my patients, especially those with low back pain. Many of them come in carrying their MRI scans saying, “This is the cause of my pain.” I share with them that some people have similar findings with no symptoms, and they are usually quite puzzled by the information. It undermines their belief in the assumed cause and effect relationship.

To use a dreaded insurance industry term, what if it is a “pre-existing condition” that has nothing to do with the current acute bout of pain? If that is the case and surgery is performed to cure the physical abnormality, will the pain go away? I have seen numerous cases of “failed back” syndrome in patients who undergo multiple operations with no pain relief, perhaps because there are underlying emotional issues that have not been addressed. It is important to recognize that pain is a very subjective mind-body experience, and there is often a significant psychospiritual component that is calling out for healing.

Of course, faced with the risks of surgery, many patients will just want a pill to suppress the pain. It is the shoot-the-messenger approach that we were all taught in medical school pharmacology courses. After studying the elegant signaling pathways of the body in biochemistry and physiology classes, we next learned how to interrupt them all with drugs, albeit with numerous anticipated side effects. In fact, these expected by-products of suppression result in more than 100,000 deaths per year. Our society has decided that this risk/benefit ratio is acceptable to get rid of our symptoms at any cost.

An Urgent Message?

What if that symptom represents an urgent message from your body that your subconscious is attempting to get through to your conscious mind? It might be analogous to having the red oil light come on in your car. Since it could be a sign that your car is dangerously low on oil and at risk for serious engine damage, you would take it immediately to the garage. If the mechanic tells you he knows exactly how to fix the problem, and then takes it back into the shop and cuts the wire to the light, would you think that was automotive malpractice? It seems we take better care of our cars than our bodies.

The alternative would be to treat a symptom as your body’s way of getting your attention that something is out of balance in your life. If you ignore it or suppress it, the underlying issue doesn’t go away but may need to scream louder before you finally get the message. What if instead you honored the wisdom of the body and made friends with your symptom? For example, there might actually be a meaningful metaphor that can be discovered at the root of your low back pain. It might turn out that someone is “stabbing you in the back,” and you need to remove yourself from an unhealthy situation.

There are many other simple metaphors that can be explored for common conditions that are often stress-related in origin by asking relatively simple and straightforward questions. For high blood pressure, what is making you hypertense? For obesity, how many pounds of emotional protection do you need? For diabetes, why don’t you have enough sweetness in your life? For gastroesophageal reflux, what is it in your life that you can’t stomach? For shoulder pain, what burdens are you carrying? For postnasal drip, why are you experiencing inner crying? The answers are frequently quite revealing.

Getting to the Core

From this perspective it is often possible to address the psychospiritual roots of the symptoms using any of a number of mind-body-spirit techniques such as EFT. These metaphors or beliefs held in the body usually stem from past negative experiences that need to be released or, in the case of EFT, tapped away. We have been programmed to think that we will have to take these accumulated traumas to our grave with us, but there is increasing evidence in the energy psychology literature that this is not the case. Many people have healed themselves from fears, phobias, and anxieties of all sorts using these approaches.

Our self-healing capacity has been greatly underestimated by our culture and our medical system. It is the true answer to the health care crisis, and it has been available to us all along, although well-hidden and obscured by the drug companies that profit from our ignorance of our own powers.

Author’s Note: Early Life Traumas – isn’t that the material that most EFT practitioners find themselves working with nearly every client on eventually to get to the root of most problems? For those EFT practitioners/students who have not heard of the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) studies, this should prove to be an eye opening article.

Please note that the purpose of this article was to introduce this body of work to my personal profession, the field of chiropractors who in general may not be nearly as attuned to the connection of childhood emotional trauma and adult physical and emotional dis-ease. I hope you find this article useful and feel free to share it. – Craig Weiner, DC

After 22 years as a chiropractor, I have no doubt that most of my patients’ symptoms have their origins in more than just the obvious physical causes. There is nearly always more involved than a patient having “slept wrong” or “moved the wrong way.”

Every day I take patient histories, I’m told what they think caused their headache or sciatic pain. When I inquire deeper, I will often uncover a significantly stressful event that occurred prior to the onset of their pain.

Stressful or negative emotions resulting from challenging circumstances have direct bearing on the manifestation of physical pain. Hearing that a patient had an intense argument with their spouse the day before their neck pain began, or that another patient’s back pain sent them to the ground two weeks after their spouse asked them for a divorce, are not unusual scenarios. The initiating cause of a patient’s “pain in the neck” may often be a “who” and not a “what.” I propose that to understand patient’s symptoms, one must look deeper than the presenting physical complaints alone.

Yet, when patients present to us with a fully shaded in pain diagram, and their medical history form has notes of heart or liver disease, they smoke and drink too much, we must have a broader understanding that their current health status and lifestyle choices are likely to have their roots in early childhood trauma. It behooves us to take this into greater consideration when we both perform an intake on our patients, and when we advise them on lifestyle behavior modifications; i.e. losing weight or smoking cessation.

As The Twig Grows

The notion that physical conditions have roots in “emotional and psychological subluxations” is not a new one. As an example, Dr. John Sarno’s groundbreaking and controversial books have been read by millions. In Healing Back Pain, he writes how, as the head physician of a large rehabilitation facility, he was able to help most of his serious chronic pain patients without physical intervention. His methods did not include prescribing medications or injections, and eventually he even stopped recommending physical therapy (at no point did he recommend chiropractic). Instead, he offered them lessons in re-wiring their thinking regarding the mind-body connection with regards to the relationship of unexpressed emotions and physical pain. He hypothesized that most back pain, and in fact most joint pain, had at its origins in unexpressed negative emotions, most often anger. He referred to this condition of emotions manifested as physical pain as TMS, or Tension Myositis Syndrome.

It is much easier for people to believe that physical symptoms or diseases are a direct result of purely physical causes, it makes sense to them and is often quite linear. The idea that how we think, how we feel and how we express ourselves has a direct bearing on our health, is an idea that many are beginning to come to accept more fully.

Nature vs. Nurture

For several decades research had focused largely on mapping the genome in order to best understand the likelihood of the pathology resulting from our DNA maps. Yet, more studies seem to view our chromosomal inheritance as a tendency rather than a reliable predictor of disease. Studies have shown that when twin’s genetic makeups are examined with respect to genetic markers for disease, they were as likely as not to manifest the predicted conditions that they were pre-determined to be susceptible to. The work of Stanford biologist Bruce Lipton and his groundbreaking book, The Biology of Belief, addresses the idea that what determines the health of a cell and the body is its relationship with its environment, internally and externally. That epigenetic, non-chromosomal factors, are the keys to the switches that determine whether the blueprints turn into reality. That means that what we have been exposed to, especially during our early developmental years, has significant implications for our health and well-being later in our lives. Nobel laureate Eric Kandel said, “The gene was the central issue in biology in the 20th century; the mind is the essential issue for biology in the 21st century.”

A good example of how research is tying together that which affects our mental and emotional development to adult physical health is the 1998 breakthrough study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine that rocked the underpinnings of our understanding of how traumatically stressful situations in childhood had a direct bearing on the leading causes of morbidity, mortality and disability in adulthood. The study, by Vince Felitti and Rob Anda entitled, “The Relationship of Adult Health Status to Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction,” addressed the relationship between how childhood trauma/dysfunction affected everything from cardiovascular disease, mental illness, substance abuse and more. Repeated studies around the globe have confirmed these original epidemiological findings.

The idea that a child’s exposure to traumatic situations, or Adverse Childhood Experiences, (ACEs), proved to be reliable in predicting at-risk health behaviors and revealed an increased risk of earlier mortality. This serendipitous connection began in 1995, when Felitti, an internist at Kaiser Permanente San Diego, was working to find more effective ways to help obese patients lose weight. He discovered that a higher than expected number of those patients who were unsuccessful in losing weight, had experienced physical or sexual abuse as children. This discovery eventually led to a broader study in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between 1995 to 1997, with more than 17,000 volunteer Kaiser patients participating.

The original study found that 63% of the people had experienced at least one category of adverse experience and over 20% had experienced three or more. These adverse experiences were defined as emotional, physical or sexual abuse, emotional or physical neglect, and growing up in a household where someone was an alcoholic, a drug user, mentally ill, suicidal, where the mother was treated violently or where a household member had been imprisoned during the person’s childhood. The original study found that in most cases, where one ACE occurred, often several were experienced. Individuals with an ACE score greater than 4 were two times as likely to smoke, seven times as likely to be alcoholic, 10 times as likely to have injected street drugs and twelve times as likely to have attempted suicide. Additionally, The higher the number of these ACEs, the more direct a relationship occurred with an increased risk for intimate partner violence, multiple sexual partners, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), early initiation of smoking, early initiation of sexual activity and adolescent unintended pregnancies, alcoholism and alcohol abuse, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), depression, ischemic heart disease (IHD) and liver disease.

Emotional Trauma Damages the Brain

The development of a child’s brain is more vulnerable to emotional trauma at specific ages. For example, the corpus callosum, which assists in the regulation of negative emotions, processes social cues and promotes learning, has been shown to be vulnerable to infant neglect and sexual abuse trauma. The cerebellar vermis regulates attention and is one of the known areas of the brain that can grow new nerve cells and regulates our ability to hold attention. It has been found to be negatively affected by many types of abuse before the age of nine. Damage to this area may result in attention deficit problems and a tendency for higher cortisol production. When a child experiences trauma, which always includes some sense of helplessness, the damage goes far beyond the event, it literally can rewired the brain in sub-optimal ways.

Neurophysiology Empathy

We have to understand that many of the unhealthy patterns that our patients have are deeply rooted in emotionally traumatic childhoods that in a sense have become embedded in their neurophysiology and might be mechanisms that they have learned to habitually employ that covers a deep emotional wounding that may not allow them to easily change unhealthy habits such as compulsive and addictive behaviors resulting in a lowered state of health, and is not merely a lack of motivation to change.

So what should we do with these insights? As a chiropractor, it is important that we treat the patient in a manner that most supports their healing and is within our scope of practice and competence. We need to understand that many of the most significant health problems individuals face are compensatory habits and mechanisms that provide partial and temporary relief for the wounds of earlier developmental emotional traumas. We must provide a safe and confidential space to establish rapport and trust with our patients in order for them to reveal what may be key factors for their unhealthy patterns that lead them to our clinic doors. It is necessary to have referral sources to other health care professionals who can work effectively with patients who may be suffering due to the connection between their current condition and a traumatic past history.

Megan (not her real name), 43, came to me because she has a constant, intense fear of being visible on the dance floor. She says: “Dancing is my life!” and has been an amateur ballroom dancer for seven years, now performing on the International Open Gold level. Nevertheless, showing up in front of people, just for a lesson in the studio, is stressful for her.

While successful as a health care professional, she has problems finding a long-lasting romantic relationship and often feels isolated and rejected.

Megan’s childhood had been deeply unhappy. Her mother was mentally ill and mostly absent from her life, and the father did not see her, did not hear her and never gave her the feeling that she was important to him in any way. Megan: “As a child, I was begging for love and never got it. And nobody wanted my love which was even worse.”

We did three sessions over the phone.

First Session

I asked Megan: “What is the worst, emotionally most intense situation for you on the dance floor?” She responded: “When my pro, Mike, and I rehearse the entrance for a solo routine, and I have to stand in front of him.” (I call her teacher Mike, not his real name).

Megan: “I feel very self-conscious, actually completely and utterly exposed. I am scared that I will trip at any moment, and I look repeatedly down.
I really, really don’t like to be ‘showy’ although that is something you are supposed to be on the Gold level.”

After we talked in detail about her feelings and body sensations while she was imagining being in the “showy position” as she called it, we started the tapping. Her level of discomfort was at a 9 on a scale of 0-10.

The Set-Up:

Even though there is this pressure around my eyes, my shoulders fall forward, I just want to cave in, and I should disappear anyway, I accept every part of me

Even though I feel this humiliation and shame when I am in the “showy position”, I feel utterly exposed , and I want to hide, I treat myself with kindness and compassion

Even though I can’t do that, I really don’t want to be visible, and I am sure that people make fun of me, I allow myself to relax now

While tapping through the points, we used as Reminder Phrases:

Alone, exposed, unprotected
I can’t do that!
People look at me, that scares me to death
When I wear a form-fitting dress, it’s even worse
This shame
This humiliation
I should disappear from the face of the earth
I know I should, but I don’t like to express myself
I don’t want to be visible
Don’t want to be alone. It’s safer to be in the closed position with Mike

After taking a deep breath, Megan reported that the edge was off, and the intensity of her discomfort had dropped to a 6-7. However, she now felt a knot in her stomach and deep sadness in her heart. So we continued to tap on the thoughts and feelings that came up:

Others will judge me
I feel vulnerable
Helpless
Powerless
Threatened
I don’t have the right to express myself
Who am I do stand up and be somebody in the world
I have no right to be there
Who do I think I am

After that round, the emotional intensity was at a 5, and I asked her a classic EFT question that often leads straight to the heart, means the underlying cause of the issue:

“What Does That Remind You Of?”

And there it was. Megan: “My dad when I was growing up. This constant anger, his yelling and screaming at me. He said that I was demanding and high maintenance every time I needed something, just basic things every child needs. After a while, I stopped asking him. I knew that I would never get it anyway because I was undeserving.”

When Megan is on the dance floor, she feels “attacked” and re-lives this old feeling of shame and humiliation she experienced with her father. In her mind, spectators are yelling: “You are just awful!” “Who the hell is dancing there!” “You suck!” “Go away!”

After tapping on these experiences and phrases, Megan’s intensity went to a 3-4, and she felt much more relaxed.

Second session

When I asked Megan to imagine herself in the “showy position” again, she reported that something had shifted, that the intense, deep fear was gone. However, anxiety of looking “stupid” and making a mistake came up.

So we tapped::

What if I mess up
What if I make a fool of myself
On the Gold level, I should be able to own the floor
I should give something to the audience
I should receive something from the audience
But I can’t own the floor
I trip
I fall over
I don’t look good
If only I were a better dancer
But I am inadequate

Shock

After that round, Megan actually felt much worse: “My stomach dropped, I am shaking all over, I feel panic rising!”

I said: “This sounds like shock, like post-traumatic stress. Do you remember a trauma that is related to making a mistake? Not on the dance floor, any trauma.”

Megan came up immediately with a trauma that she had suffered when she was 9 years old. She called it “The Mistake”. Its emotional intensity was at a 10.

She had walked home from school with her little sister. When she was close to her house, a man stopped his car, got out, and started talking to her. He was very nice and wanted her to come with him. Megan walked up to him, and he held out a handkerchief. When she reached out for it, he grabbed her hand and pulled her towards him. Megan yelled and screamed until the man got nervous and let her go. Megan ran with her little sister home, hid in the bathroom for a long time and did not tell anybody about this incident until she was 15 years old.

When we worked with this memory, Megan’s panic and shock symptoms disappeared, but she started to feel angry at herself: “I was so stupid! Why did I follow him, why did I reach for that handkerchief?” I started a series of reframes:

I was only 9 years old, I didn’t see the danger
I forgive myself
I did the right thing when I was yelling and screaming
That was smart
This is exactly what kids should do in a situation like that
I got my little sister home safely
I was protected by my Guardian Angel

The intensity went down to a 2.

I asked her to repeat the sentence: “If I make a mistake, I am a failure”, and it did not ring true to her. However, there was still a feeling of resignation left.

Third session

While the fear of making mistakes had decreased, the feeling of resignation was still strong for Megan. We came up with a string of limiting beliefs about herself as a dancer and tapped on these phrases.

I shouldn’t be dancing if I can’t be perfect
I have to be perfect to be loved
I take all these lessons, but I am not good enough
I am a failure
I never get there
Why do I bother
I don’t look good
I am a high level dancer, but I am not good enough
Everybody else is better than me

Guided by my intuition, I added: If I’m not perfect, I shouldn’t live
That sounded shockingly true to Megan, and she had an “instant biochemical release”.

When the intensity dropped from 9 to 5, I asked her what her insistence on these self-judgements was doing for her, and she said: “It protects me. If I say it first, you can’t hurt me.”

“And what does that remind you of?”

More Memories

Megan: “Kids in Middle School bullying me. They sneered at me, they did not include me, they said I was gross, I had a pancake face.. . I felt that they were right, and that there was something seriously wrong with me. And there was nobody at my home who helped me with that. This is where the resignation feeling comes in, this sadness. Saying to myself: I already know what’s wrong with me, you don’t have to tell me. The kids had it right. There was something weird about me, not likable, unlovable.”

After we worked on this memory, I asked Megan to repeat the sentence: “I am a good dancer.” She responded: “I cannot say that, it is not true. I want to be a great dancer, but it is my experience that if I really want something, I won’t get it. There will be a crushing disappointment, and I won’t get it. So better not to say what I want. It is dangerous and unsafe.”

At this point (the session was coming to an end), I introduced a series of reframes to her:

I am free to be me
I allow myself to get better and better
Dancing is so much joy, and I have come far
I love doing it
If I make a mistake, so what
I allow myself to be a great dancer
I am a great dancer…

“No!” Megan exclaimed. “I can’t believe the last one.”
“O.k.”, I said: “How about: “I am a great dancer in training.”
Megan loved that, and I asked her to tap on that phrase every day, say it aloud, or write it on post-it notes.

I am a great dancer in training getting better and better

Feel free to borrow.

I have found that there are often “invisible barriers” when it comes to releasing stubborn weight. We often have a very good reason why that weight won’t budge even though we’d really like it to.

Is it our hormones? Is it our diet? Are we not exercising enough? Are we doing everything right but still can’t seem to change anything? What is going on?

Invisible barriers as I call them exist when we say we want to do something but just can’t either get into action or stay in action. They exist when everything seems to get in the way of our goal and we have out of control cravings or binges.

Some of these barriers are the accumulated emotional stress from the past that has never fully been released or from present life circumstances. Other barriers come from our negative beliefs – again both accumulated from the past or present experience.

Poor body image can be one of the greatest “invisible barriers” to weight loss there is for many women.

Do You Have Negativity Around Your Body Image?

Though it affects everyone differently in my experience, I’ve yet to meet a woman without some negativity around body image. The effect it has on weight can be tremendous.

The most significant way in which I see it play out in my practice is when someone feels so much negativity and stress about how they look that the impulse to diet and food restrict (and therefore often yo-yo with weight continuously) is in place.

There are many ways to approach this issue, and I’d like to give one way in this article.

First Step

Ask yourself how urgent you feel about needing to lose weight. Rate this on a scale of 1-10.
Now rate any strong feelings of negativity about your body. Be specific if you can about things you are very unhappy about and how strongly you feel that.

Second Step

Tap for the above urgency to lose weight first and then the negativity about how you feel you look, or your present body image. Believe it or not, this can be an extremely productive area to tap in if this is relevant for someone. Taking away some of the urgency and negativity about the issue itself can help to approach it with calm and objectivity and even hopefully acceptance and love. From a place of acceptance and love we tend to give ourselves what we really need instead of constant punishment (and food restriction.)

Third Step

Go to where the issue began if you can. Ask yourself when the first or the worst time was when you recall feeling badly about your body. Find specific events and tap for them individually.

I have found that when a negative body image is released, many women are able to approach weight loss from an entirely different perspective. Cravings, binges and emotional eating diminish and eating becomes more natural and has so much less judgement.

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth. – Niels Bohr

When we are working with our difficult feelings we may find that our minds are constricted by those feelings. For example, if we are very sad, we can find it hard to imagine how we might be happy. The sadness itself changes our perceptions of the world and what’s possible.

Using standard EFT we can tap on negative emotions to bring down the intensity to a more manageable level: “Even though I feel sad I accept myself and how I feel…” and so on.

This approach works well, but what if we could assist the process and expand the ability of our minds to hold helpful alternatives while we are in the midst of the negative feeling?

Yin-Yang

The concept of yin-yang and its familiar symbol represent the Chinese understanding of the balancing of opposites.

The outer circle represents “everything,” while the black and white shapes within the circle represent the interaction of yin and yang. The shapes are not completely black or white, just as things in life are not completely black or white, and they cannot exist without each other.

Paradoxical Tapping introduces the opposite of the emotion or belief you are working on into the tapping, to open out your experience of possibilities more quickly and powerfully than standard EFT.

Here are some typical statements you might be tapping on using standard EFT:

I am struggling
I feel sad
Working for myself is difficult

Simple Paradoxical Tapping

Each of us has our own unique experience and understanding what things mean and what their opposites are. For example: the opposite of “hard” might be “soft”, or “easy”, or “smooth”, or…

Whatever your opposite for a feeling or situation is – it is going to be right for you. As we go through the examples, substitute your own opposites for the feelings and beliefs described.

The opposite of “struggling” might be “thriving”
The opposite of “sad” might be “happy”
The opposite of “difficult” might be “easy”

The Word “And”

Now that we have an opposite, how do we introduce it into the tapping phrase?

The simplest approach is to use the word AND which combines, joins, and unites the words and phrases on either side of it. In the simplest form of paradoxical tapping we create a standard Setup statement and alternate the tapping between the original feeling and its opposite.

For example:

Even though I am struggling, I accept myself and how I feel x 3

EB: I am struggling
SE: and I am thriving
UE: I am struggling
UN: and I am thriving
CH: I am struggling
CB: and I am thriving
UA: I am struggling
TH: and I am thriving

Likewise:

I am sad, and I am happy
Working for myself is difficult, and it is easy.

The and in these statements join the apparent opposites together.

If you try tapping routines like this you may find that they work well, but often they can be a bit too much of a stretch for the mind to cope with. The second half of the reminder phrase may be greeted with a lot of internal resistance.

Smoother Paradoxical Tapping

If it is too much of a stretch to go from “I am sad” to “I am happy” in one go then we can make the alternative much easier to introduce by using the following form of words.

Use the standard Setup statement, “Even though I am struggling, I accept myself and how I feel.” x 3

Then use this form of the paradoxical tapping to introduce the opposite more smoothly.

EB: I am struggling
SE: and in how many different ways could I be thriving?
UE: I am struggling
UN: and in how many different ways could I be thriving?
CN: I am struggling
CB: and in how many different ways could I be thriving?
UA: I am struggling
TH: and in how many different ways could I be thriving?

Likewise,

I am sad, and in how many different ways could I be happy?
Working for myself is hard, and in how many different ways could it be easy?

Let’s unpack this sentence:

in how many different ways… is an invitation to your unconscious mind to start creating alternatives, not just one alternative but many different alternatives.

… could it be [opposite]? “Could” is a question that invites you to be hypothetical about the possibilities in the future: “Could it rain on Thursday?” “Could we have pancakes for lunch?” Both are possible, they might happen, they might not, we’re just imagining the possibilities as we answer those questions. Our minds are not under pressure to agree with anything.

Combining the invitation to come up with many hypothetical ways in which the opposite might be true allows the mind to free itself from the clash of opposites and learn ways of making it happen.

Using this form of word makes it significantly easier for the person doing the tapping to “let the opposite in.” There is one simple addition that makes the Paradoxical Tapping even more powerful.

“Now”

Add the word NOW to the paradoxical alternatives:

I am struggling, and in how many different ways could I be thriving? Now!
I am sad, and in how many different ways could I be happy? Now!
Working for myself is hard, and in how many different ways could it be easy? Now!

The word now invites the mind to bring the hypothetical alternatives that it has been considering (all in the space of a few seconds tapping) into the present moment. This seems to intensify the power of the Paradoxical Tapping.

You will see that the word now appears after the question mark and is emphasised. The word needs to be given a little bit of verbal emphasis and a downward inflextion to indicate it is a command rather than part of the question.

If you are not sure of the difference try saying:

Do it now?
vs
Do it now!

There will be a difference in tone that differentiates the question from the command. Use the command tone for the now in the Paradoxical Tapping. Using the powerful version of Paradoxical Tapping makes it possible to change feelings quickly, often with just one round of tapping.

Important: If the feelings you are working on are very intense, paradoxical tapping is best used after any raw intensity of emotions have been soften with standard tapping.

Since childhood piano recitals, I have had anxiety and fear about performing on stage before a group – large or small. Because I had not done this in 40 years, this fear had not been a problem. This anxiety re-emerged earlier this year when a friend I was coaching on the mountain dulcimer began urging me to enter the dulcimer competition at the end of February this year. I gave her an emphatic NO revealing my stage fright.

She kept urging gently and I continued to say no, but this urging did motivate me to face the fear. Then the light in my brain flashed; of course EFT should help (I still had my doubts that it could help this long-lived anxiety). I gave myself an out, saying I could always back out at the last moment!! It was time to face the fear.

Imagining Being On Stage

I began the tapping process by imagining being on stage before a hundred or so people then let the fear feeling emerge. At this point I began the tapping protocol by repeating, “Even though I feel anxiety when performing on stage, I deeply and completely accept myself.” The process was continued until the fear emotions began to subside.

After each round I would rate the fear level from one to ten (ten the highest). At about level five I repeated the follow-up, “Even though I still feel some anxiety, I deeply and completely accept my self,” until the fear level abated even more. This procedure was practiced about three times before the actual date. Genetically possessing a fair share of chicken genes, I continued to tell myself I could always back out at the last moment.

The Day Of…

The morning of the competition was spent in dulcimer classes and practicing the pieces I would play in the competition – not too much anxiety. As the competition time neared, I felt the anxiety rising. When we drew numbers for order of appearance, I drew number one – anxiety went through the roof! While waiting back stage I did deep breathing and mentally went through the tapping process.

Even though tense and anxious at first, I completed the first round, sat back, heard the other competitors and thought, “Well I did it, I’m glad I did it, and I won’t be chosen for the second and last round of competition.” Blood pressure and adrenaline abated, dulcimer packed away, I sat back to enjoy the rest of the program.

Mentally Tapping

Shock! My number was called for round two. I unpacked my dulcimer, hid away and practiced the last two tunes to be played, and mentally went through the tapping routine. The second round was completed with much less anxiety. The last surprise was that I placed second. It was a thrill not only to be able to overcome the fear, but to be rewarded for it. As the old Beatles song goes, “I’m a Believer.”

Elise (names are changed for privacy) is a wonderful, active, energetic 87-year-old woman. She recently broke her ankle, and came to me to work on post-surgical concerns—she particularly wanted to accelerate the wound repair and healing, as well as moderate pain in her leg. Her daughter referred her. Her daughter and I had worked together a few times, and she (Kate), was enthusiastic about her own results, and wanted her mother to benefit from EFT. She was out to be with her mother for the surgery, and they arranged for a session by phone with me just a few days after the surgery. Kate had done some tapping rounds with Elise, to introduce her to the procedure and familiarize Elise with the points.

First we began by discussing what was most troubling, what was “in the way” of healing, if anything. We discovered a number of things. Elise was very disappointed in having the break, because she has just about fully recovered from a recent sprain on her other ankle, and was days away from getting a supporting boot off her left leg (and having it on was probably what caused her to fall in a contorted way, and breaking the right ankle). She is planning on a trip to visit friends in three weeks, and doesn’t want this new injury to cause her to cancel the trip. Additionally, her current surgeon is the very same surgeon who had worked on her left leg ten years earlier, who had not given her the option of surgery, and as a result the left ankle had healed badly.

Tapping on Negative Emotion and Talking to the Muscles

We tapped on each of these concerns — first the frustration and disappointment about having broken the ankle, then the frustration about not being sure about whether she could travel. We then worked on the frustration and resentment she had toward her doctor. She also was experiencing compensatory muscle tension in her right hip, thigh, and glutes, and it was often painful. So we tapped on that, and “talked” to those muscles. She was extremely relaxed.

We then moved on to the wound-healing encouragement. She had told me that in the past, she always surprised doctors by her quick healing, and so we used that language. We talked to her fibula (which was broken and now mended surgically), encouraging it to grow perfectly and quickly, and as easily as an 8-year-old’s. We thanked her ankle for supporting her all these years, and told it it can just grow and grow, mend beautifully, quickly, perfectly. We included the metal and pin that are now in the fibula, and acknowledged that Elise is now a “bionic woman.”

After each round, she was more and more relaxed. There was no pain or discomfort, and she was energized and delighted. She said that once we began “talking” to the fibula, she felt as if she could feel it, and could feel tingling and what she felt was growing. She felt as if the whole area was mending, and that the tingling was part of that. It was absolutely delightful to work with Elise. We will be meeting for a few more sessions, and she will, no doubt, once again surprise her doctors with her fast rate of repair!

About a month ago, while riding my horse in a lesson, I had what we euphemistically call an unplanned dismount.  I’d like to share how EFT helped me, including an interesting little discovery of what can happen when you don’t tap on a trauma.

It was a windy day, my horse spooked, I was off balance, and I came out of the saddle.  I flew through the air and landed hard on my side, knocking the breath out of myself.  I made a couple of convulsive gasps, and then I instinctively did what I’ve programmed myself to do in any crisis—I started tapping.

Even in my confused state I knew that tapping would keep me calm long enough for my diaphragm to un-spasm and start working again.  After it did, I kept up the tapping until I felt it was safe to try sitting up.  I had a lot of pain and pressure in my side, but it wasn’t overwhelming by any means.

After riding again for a couple of minutes (a tradition intended partly to help keep the rider from fearing to ride later on), collecting myself to make sure I could drive, and taking a painkiller offered by my trainer, I set out for the drive home.  I stopped at my favorite fast food place to eat; standing at the counter, I felt close to fainting but held myself up at the counter.  That was the moment I felt most worried and vulnerable the entire day.  I suspected I’d broken a rib, even though the pain was never extreme.

Next I met a client to give a session.  Although she offered to reschedule I knew the tapping would help me too, and we had a good session.  Then I took myself to an urgent care center.

Five hours after the fall, Xrays confirmed I had two broken ribs.  The ER doctor told me it was crucial to take a deep breath once an hour, to keep pneumonia from setting in.  Other than that, time is the only treatment. Time and tapping, that is.

I sent out an all-points bulletin to my EFTFree co-editors and asked for some triage tapping the next day, and received the gift of not one but two sessions.  In my injured state I really needed to be the “client” and have my skilled colleagues lead me through sessions.  We worked on the pain; on fears about healing; on the memories of the fall; on my emotional reactions and self-judgments about having fallen; and even on what I felt and imagined my horse’s experience might have been.

I expected other areas of my body to be sore or strained the next day, as often happens when you’ve had an accident.  However, I never had any pain in any other part of my body, nor did I have any bruising.  I attribute this at least partly to the tapping; because I started tapping immediately, perhaps my body did not tense and retain the shock of the fall as it might have.  Because I tapped for an hour with my client shortly after the fall, I “borrowed benefits” to ease the physical processes taking place as a result of the injury, and kept myself from catastrophizing about the pain.

The tapping I did that day kept me mentally focused, unafraid, able to remain alert and aware so that I could safely drive, and reasonably calm even with pain.

I also used tapping to manage the hourly deep breathing I had to do; although I used pain medicine as needed, I didn’t need as much as I expected.  Before each deep breath for the first couple of days, I would tap.  The breath would hurt less, and I could take it without tensing up.

About a week after the fall, I began to realize I had vivid visual images of things that happened as I was starting to fall.  I was anxiously rerunning them like a movie, a sure sign of traumatic memory.  I tapped until they became indistinct and didn’t trigger anxiety or fixation, a signal that I had integrated the memories without the trauma.

Three and a half weeks after the fall, when I was again moving around pretty comfortably, I couldn’t stand it any longer and went back out to ride in a lesson.  I promised myself that I’d only go at the walk or gentle jog, only if it didn’t hurt, and ride only for a short while.  Although I’d done all my tapping work, I still wasn’t sure whether I would feel scared. I did mental tapping during the hour-long drive to the barn.

Once mounted, I felt wonderful.  It was great to be back on my horse, and I felt relaxed and grateful, no anxiety.  I kept the ride short, and was relieved to find that I had only a twinge now and then.

Perhaps the most surprising thing happened when I made my usual stop for a soda on the way home.  At the same fast food place, I approached the same end of the counter where I’d propped myself, injured, in pain and feeling extremely faint, three weeks before.  As I stepped up, I had a distinct sinking sensation like a mild replay of what I had experienced before.  I hadn’t tapped on that moment, not thinking it really needed addressing.  And there it was, resurfacing, because it hadn’t been cleared physically and emotionally.

That tiny moment was significant for me.  It was a clue to how hard it might have been to mount up again if I hadn’t tapped as soon as I hit the ground; if I hadn’t asked for help from skillful practitioners soon after the fall; if I hadn’t specifically tapped down the vivid recurring visual memories; and continued to tap on both physical and emotional pain during my healing process.

And it reminded me of Gary Craig’s favorite maxim:  Try It On Everything!

Ange Dickson Finn is an AAMET-certified Level 2 EFT Practitioner. She is based in Houston, Texas, USA, 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.

There are always new, and often unexpected ways of using EFT to get over the big and small stumbling blocks in daily life. Here is one of them…

If you have a cat, or even more than one, you know that odor control around the litter box is an issue. All brands of cat litter promise that, but, believe me, there are real differences in effectiveness. I have tried many brands, and some are definitely better than others. So I have been o.k. However, recently I came across a new technology that involves sort of crystals instead of of the sandy, pebbly consistence cat litter usually has. Always looking for improvement in my life, I decided to try out a bag.

When I poured some of it into the litter box, it was quite noisy – and my cat freaked out. He ran away on low legs, ears laid back. That was a day ago, and he has not been in his box since. No amount of coaxing and showing him that it is harmless, helped. Oh my.

Well, again, EFT to the rescue. Try it on everything, right? So I did surrogate tapping for my cat.

I am Bani. Even though there is this scary, noisy stuff in my litter box, and I hate it, I am a good cat.

Even though she cannot possibly expect me to go there, I am a neat, clean cat, and I want to do the right thing

Even though my box is so noisy and it freaks me out, I trust my mama that she wouldn’t do anything to harm me.

This noisy, scary box. Does she really expect me to go in there? No way!
This noisy stuff in there freaks me out
I want my old litter back!
Why did she do that? I was just doing fine!
I am so sensitive to noises, and this scares me.
Not going in there, ha!
Only, It’s just so uncomfortable to hold it in…
I am a neat, clean cat, and I would never…
Maybe I should try?
No way!
Just go and check it out?
Nope!
Maybe it got less noisy?
Maybe…
My mama would never do anything to harm me, that much I know
O.k. I’ll poke my nose in there and check it out
Let’s do it!
I am such a courageous cat, it’s downright scary!

Testing the work: What can I say. Two minutes later, he used the litter box. And it smells so good.