Tuesday 21 January 2014

EFT - Tapping into Potential

So this week I was taking my first webinar about the foundations of business practice in the arts, and this webinar, which was the first to be performed by this woman, went severely pear shaped – that’s to say I could hear nothing through my phones but white noise. But I did hear her say ‘You have to get this book: EFT Emotional Freedom Technique “it will change your life”’.

Well this kind if information is often ignored, I’ve done it a million times before, but this time it came from Rosalind, who I’d worked with and had much respect for. She’d already helped move my art business forward from a very stagnant place to quite a significant place. So if she said EFT had the potential to change people’s lives, I thought it worth giving the time of day. As I write the book is winging its way to me.

EFT, or also commonly known as Tapping, was something I’d come across before; I’d met others who’d used it. I’d read the Healing Codes and used some of those ‘touch’ techniques, but to little effect because I’d become so frustrated with the process.

EFT works by releasing blockages within the energy system which leads to limiting beliefs and behaviours. It is said that these blockages cause emotional and/ or physical issues and include lack of confidence and self esteem, feeling stuck, anxious or depressed, or the emergence of compulsive and addictive behaviours, even physical issues such as long term back pain.

So it goes back to ancient Chinese beliefs based around the meridian system which believes there are electrical energies passing throughout the body. These charges need to somehow be balanced in order to function at an optimum level. The tapping on these meridian points release blockages in these energy paths, allowing things to flow more naturally.

So EFT treatment involves the use of fingertips rather than needles to tap on the end points of energy meridians that are situated just beneath the surface of the skin. So it’s like a kind of finger acupuncture, or acupressure.

The process involves one focusing on their own specific problem whilst tapping with fingers on the end points of energy meridians. The combination of sending kinetic energy to our energy system, whilst uncovering and focusing on root causes facilitates a balancing of the energy system thereby eliminating the “short circuit” to the body’s negative emotion. The tapping areas are:-
1) Top of the Head, 2) Beginning of the Eyebrow, 3) Side of the Eye, 4) Under the Eye, 5) Under the Nose, 6) Chin Point, 7) Beginning of the Collarbone, 8) Under the Arm. The setup area is the ‘karate chop’ area of the hand. These would be classed as the basic tapping areas, though there are further areas around the body.

So the ‘Setup Phrase’ might be: ‘I really don’t deserve to be happy because when I was a soldier at war I hurt many people.’ (Apparently EFT is great for post traumatic stress disorder.) This would involve tapping on the karate chop area of either hand. This is a difficult thing for me to get to grips with, because it’s repeatedly stating a negative, and focusing on that negative, and I’ve often worked hard to do the exact opposite! But in order to shift the problem, we need to truly understand the problem and connect with it on a deep emotional level.

After stating the problem, you’d begin a round of tapping whilst using the ‘Reminder Phrase’ which in this example might be, ‘I don’t deserve happiness.’
The key is to get to the real core of the issue, digging around until you find statements that really resonate with your problem on a deeply profound emotional level. These core issues, the powerful ones which bring about real change, are often deeply buried, and stemming back to our early years. So it takes a little emotional intelligence to root around until you find these core issues. Often it is suggested to fire off several arrows in the hope of hitting the true core issue.

And the way to determine whether the process has been successful or not is by gauging the level of emotional or physical pain before you start, and again after several rounds of tapping. So if the emotional pain in our example remains at 10, we need to try other statements, if it comes down to 5, then we continue through as many rounds as it takes to bring it down to 1 or 2, or even a zero.

Nigel Prestatyn

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