Wall Street Journal and EFT

EFT got some billing in the Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago!

We all know most of the other techniques mentioned here work rather poorly for various reasons. They are methods touted over and over in health journals, and if they worked well, the world would be stress free!

Tapping is different - it works with the subconscious mind where the destructive, health damaging thoughts reside, not with conscious thoughts that are difficult to change.

God intentionally inserted into our bodies a method for us to heal. It can happen naturally, but stress, anxious thoughts, trauma, etc. gets in the way of that healing. This is why we use tapping. It gets to the root of the issues with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Thinking about your problems won't make or allow them to go away. Tapping just might! Learn to tap today! Like any other learning curve it needs some effort and a bit of time, but it may be one of the most important lessons you will ever learn.....and you just might be amazed how much better you will feel!

Wall Street Journal Stress Article

Remember, EFT is not a substitute for sound medical care, so should that need arise, contact your own personal physician.

Author of EFT for Christians book series 

Order your book copies today and get on God's road to His healing!

Sherrie Rice Smith

EFT and Worry - Philippians 4

Philippians 4:6 reads, “in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God”.  All our fears, anxieties, and worry are to be placed into His loving arms. It is His to carry.

But what happens when the fear, worry, or anxiety continues to rear its ugly head?  Is God not answering our prayers?  I don’t believe that to be the case at all. God created us with a specific physiology. He knows what He created and how we function within our bodies.

God’s physiology goes something like this:  We learn worry early in our lifetime. Oh, it might be something that today we would find inconsequential, like not being picked for a kickball team, or not understanding the math in an upcoming big test. Worry and anxiety set in. The cognitive learning process instilled in our mind has just begun.  Over the following decades, other problems arise that reinforce all that worry and fear and anxiety. Each time, it seems we worry more and more, or the worry is more deep set. Finally, by middle age, we find ourselves literally worrying about nearly every single thing in our lives. We can tell ourselves a million times that we have nothing to worry about – God has it all under control, but, for some reason, that never really reassures us, and we continue to worry.  Eventually, the guilt about worrying begins to set in, adding to the angst. We know in our heart it is wrong, and we pray diligently to be delivered from it.

We all know God can do whatever He finds necessary. Sometimes, He simply rescues us from our deep-seated worry, setting us free. Other times, it continues, like St. Paul’s thorn, leaving us overburdened and sick. God, at other times, brings alongside us something else to assist us, and answering our prayers in other ways.

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is another of those answers to prayer. While He allows worry, fear, and anxiety to be part of our human experience, one started in response to original sin our first parents committed in the Garden of Eden, He also instilled in us a mechanism to relieve just those emotions.

EFT, or tapping, is a physiology process where by these fore mentioned emotions can be permanently dismantled. How? By allowing the subconscious to bring to the surface those early memories where the worry first began, and tapping away the emotions attached to those events.

The tapping sets up a vibration that interferes with the neurochemical reaction at the cellular receptor level, breaking the cognitive learning pattern of childhood.  It re-regulates the amygdala, the alarm center of our brain, telling it we are safe. God is handling our issues. It’s how God created us when He breathed breath into Adam’s nostrils on the sixth day of creation.

Free yourself of those emotions of anxiety, fear, and worry through EFT, opening you up to an awakened spiritual experience through God’s mighty grace.  Allow God to instill into you the peace of God that passes all understanding by using this EFT mechanism God implanted in you at birth.

If any of these emotions or any other overwhelming emotion is running your life, messing up your prayer life and spiritual walk, email me. It would be my Christian privilege to teach you how EFT can change your spiritual life, as you dismantle the crippling effects of those early leaned memory patterns. Or attend one of my EFT classes in Milwaukee.

Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being. EFT is not a substitute for medical care.

God bless your walk with Him!

For more information, go to  www.EFTforChristians.com

To schedule a free EFT 15 minute consultation session, email me at EFTforChristians@gmail.com

Sherrie Rice Smith

Certified EFT practitioner

Author of EFT for Christians

EFT & Cortisol

Why does excitement in our lives make us feel alive as humans?  What causes the buzz we feel when we are participating in stressful things in our lives?

The answer to both questions is learned stress hormones.  Adrenaline, Cortisol, Norepinephrine are the 3 major stress hormones in our lives that are triggered by our limbic brain.

So, how does all of this connect together, giving us an understanding of how this impacts our lives today? 

Our limbic system, comprised of Thalamus, Hypothalamus, Cingulate gyrus, Amygdala, Hippocampus & Basal Ganglia, was created by God to keep us safe from predators and other bodily threats. If a loud, unexplained noise occurs, the hypothalamus, a small area in the base of your brain, sends an alarm through the body via intricate system of nerve and hormonal signals, prompting the adrenal glands, sitting on top the kidneys, to release a flood of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol. The flight, freeze or flight mechanism has just been activated, keeping us alert and aroused, watching out for danger.  Heart rate increases, blood pressure is elevated, glucose to the tissues is released, blood leaves the neo-cortex for the larger muscles in the legs in case flight is necessary, digestion is interrupted (no time to eat now!), immune system literally takes a hit, suppressing it, sex and growth are out of the question at the moment, as survival is utmost in the body’s mind. Estrogen, testosterone, & the neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin, are also involved in this struggle to a lesser extent. All non-essential bodily functions cease until the situation resolves.

This survival mechanism was implanted only for short-term use. The limbic fight, flight, or freeze is activated, problem gets resolved, and the stress hormones return to normal levels, dropping the heart rate & glucose levels back to normal. Sometimes it takes days for the stress levels to fall back to normal levels, especially when the body has chronic stress.

DHEA levels are restored from their depressed levels for more bodily repair and growth, allowing immune system to take over maintaining good health. Now, time has come to think about food and sex!  The body has returned to a relaxed state.

A problem remains today; however, in that we humans tend to remain in this high state of alert because of the high functioning lifestyles we lead, many times by choice. We actually become addicted to the elevated stress levels, leaving us feeling sad and uncomfortable when we begin to slow down for a short period of time. Once accustomed to high stress levels, the subconscious tends to want to keep us there. It has become our standard MO. In fact, the subconscious will even put us in situations to provoke an increased stress level, keeping the hormones & glucose at higher levels. It truly is addicted to the chemicals!

We may feel relaxed, but most times we continue nearly constantly in a high beta brain wave state. It’s the state of modern life.  Unfortunately, it is killing us - literally, killing us. Our bodies weren’t built for long term limbic activation.  Continuous high levels of cortisol are known to cause huge physical issues, including increased abdominal fat, weight gain, obesity, memory impairment, heart disease, etc.  Metabolic syndrome, with its illness list, is caused by these huge glucose level increases, necessitating activation of the pancreas to pump out extra insulin to deal with it.  This introduces diabetes, more heart disease, & stroke. The depression of the immune system is a gigantic issue, as it opens us up to every infectious disease we encounter, including just that continuous cascade of one viral cold after another, that chain of unending illness that sap our strength & endurance, giving our employer fits because we need sick day after sick day.  Because of the decrease in immune function and the lack of DHEA to promote growth, we open ourselves up to other illness, such as cancer.

Since most of us no longer face true physically life threatening situations, the threats are really just “paper tigers” – they are all in our mind. Because of the physiology of the brain, particularly the limbic system, our mind doesn’t know the difference between a real physical threat and the one we create in our own imagination. Case in point: The body treats worry just the same as it treats something really happening. Worrying about the boss firing us or the boss actually firing us will trigger the exact same chemical release in our bodies. Each situation appears to be the same to our mind during our thinking and feeling process. The limbic system doesn’t differentiate between perceived and real situations. Worry is stress, as we all know. That same worry will break down our bodies, causing physical illnesses.

So, how do we solve this problem? There are many true “relaxation” techniques out there, including meditation. Often times, when we feel relaxed, we actually aren’t relaxed at all.

Here is where Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) excels. When employed regularly, EFT will cut through this stress and worry, taking us back to a state of relaxation on a daily basis, allowing us to short circuit this flight or fight mechanism implanted in us. The neural networks are reconfigured. We unlearn the cognitive patterns of our earlier years, breaking down those destructive habits that keep us locked into those stressful states, whatever they may be.

EFT is easy to learn and it takes much less time than meditation. In our hurry up world, we all look for shortcuts. EFT is one, but it is a good, healthy shortcut.

I can also teach you other quick stress reduction techniques, if that is of interest. There are many other ones out there.

Is EFT God’s healing mechanism for you?  Pray about it please, and email me for a free Christian coaching with EFT consultation. I’d love to talk with you.

For more information, go to www.eftforchristians.com

To schedule a free EFT coaching session, email me at eftforchristians@gmail.com

Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being.

EFT - Nothing is as it appears

Dawson Church teaches in his EFT classes that, "Nothing appears as it really is."

Today, while cleaning our bathrooms, a thought came to me around this idea.

First, why does God always seem to use the ordinary, nearly "profane" times to speak deeply to us? Jesus, when curing those around Him, used spittle, mud, and bathing facilities as physical means to make those He cured whole. He does the same to me.....often. Maybe I should just set up shop in the bathroom!

If, as Dawson says, what we see in the physical realm as related to our bodies is not as it appears because the physical, as the new physiology teaches, tends to be rooted in the emotional, doesn't that parallel what God does in the spiritual world?

We humans without the mind and eyes of Christ have no idea what is going on around us in the spiritual realm. Apostle Paul talks about those spiritual battles raging all around us. Do we actually see them?

No, we don't, except with our spiritual Jesus eyes, and even then it is difficult to believe it all is really happening. We deny those spiritual battles, and we deny that many of the physical manifestations in us are really our emotional issues coming home to roost within our bodies.

Jesus sometimes forgave sin, and then healed. Other times, He healed, and then forgave the cured person of his sins.

This sounds like a chicken or the egg scenario. Which does our God do?

Honestly, I don't know, but knowing my God, I suspect He is very creative, doing just as He pleases when He so pleases to do it!

The longer I live, the more I see so many, many parallels between our physical life and our spiritual life.

We humans seem to separate them, and even we born-again committed Christians don't at times seem to get it either.

God has set up His eternal principles as to how the universe, creation, and humanity works. It's beginning to look more and more similar. Everything is a bigger or smaller version of something else, all reflection of the Father Himself.

As an example, fractals is one of these ideas.  I don't profess to even begin to understand mathematical fractals, but I see the esthetic-ness in the them; the artistic beauty. And I see how God has set up everything He created in the same basic manner. It's so simply that it confounds the most brilliant of scientists, just like the salvation He offers in Jesus is so simple that, sadly, so many people simply miss it!

I found this definition of an artistic fractal on the internet: "A geometric pattern that is repeated at ever smaller (or larger) scales to produce (self-similar) irregular shapes and surfaces that cannot be represented by classical (Euclidian) geometry.

"Relative to science, fractals are essentially geometric shapes or forms that are represented in natural objects, from a fern leaf or tree, to a spider web or snowflake, to larger phenomena such as clouds, hurricanes, or even galaxies in space. The discovery of fractals allowed for defining irregular shapes which could not be defined, or represented before by mathematics. One could define (or model mathematically) a square, rectangle, triangle, etc., but one could not define, or model, the irregular shape of a cloud formation, or tree outline, or coastline.

"One very common shape or form, found both in fractals & throughout nature, is the spiral. This is one of the most common forms represented in the fractals one sees frequently on the internet, and this mathematical shape is pervasive throughout nature as well. Is there a connection between the mathematics and science, and creation? Fractals have been called the "Thumbprint of God", perhaps they are!" http://fractalarts.com/SFDA/whatarefractals.html

Our Creative God often, when we seem to need it the most, offers us a glimpse of Himself. As He opens Himself up, allowing us to know small pieces of Him, I see the interaction and the interconnectedness of our emotions, our physical selves, and our spiritual selves, just like fractals appear to be a possible building block of nature. The deeply profound is found in simplicity.

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) often seems to be that unique tool God uses to make much of this make sense to my human mind. He so uniquely created us to remain in communion with Him. The more I study His Word and all the newly uncovered science, the more I see where EFT surely appears to be the tool that allows it all to make the most sense!

The God of the Universe continues daily to astound me with His diversity and beauty. I don't profess to know the Mind of God, but I surely do want more of Him, more of His wisdom, grace, and mercy in my life.

Open my eyes, Lord, open my eyes!

EFT is not a substitute for medical help, so please take responsibility for your own physical and emotional health.

Sherrie Rice Smith, R.N. (Ret.), B.A., EFT-EXP
Mentor of Christian Women
Certified Emotional Freedom Techniques Practitioner
EFTUniverse Trainer
http://eftforchristians.com
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam 

Guilt from an Abortion 30 Years Ago Gone with Christian EFT

Recently, I had an EFT session request from an out of state relative with whom I’ve had a few email/phone exchanges about the subject. Annette had downloaded the EFTUniverse.com mini-manual & tapping site sheet & she had done a bit of tapping on her own on a few personal issues, such as a headache & anxiety with good success. What she wanted to discuss was bigger than she figured she could handle on her own. We made a noon appointment to do EFT over the phone. When she answered the phone, I made sure she had the tapping site sheet available, along with a class of water. I had texted her earlier in the morning to remind her to find the tapping paper. Once again, I made sure Annette understood that I would tell her where I wanted her to tap and how I needed her to repeat what I said. If she didn’t feel connected to my words to please change them in any manner she felt appropriate, as this was her session, not mine. I was simply guiding her. A word of explanation to the tapping community here – I’m a Christian EFT coach which means that if I have a Christian client, I will pray with the client before we begin a session, asking the Holy Spirit’s guidance. I will also use Christian-based tapping phrases. I have used this in multiple cases and it works just as well, if not better, than the standard EFT phrases. My clients connect with these phrases better, as do I. Annette indicated to me that she had a fairly high anxiety & stress level, pre-anticipatory grief over the soon to happen death of her father, who is quite ill. Her SUDS was a 7, on a scale of 0 - 10. The set-up: Even though I have all this stress because I know Dad is going to die soon, I know God loves me. Even though my anxiety level is through the roof, I know Jesus loves me. Even though I’m already worrying about how I’m going to handle all the hassles of the estate with my brothers and sisters after Dad passes, I know God loves me very much. TH: I can’t stand all this stress about Dad. EB: I’m nearly beside myself worrying about all the stuff I will have to handle. SE: I know the other kids are going to give me all kinds of grief about the house. BE: I can’t live here forever; the house is too big. UL: I won’t have anywhere to go when Dad dies. CH: I can’t imagine I will be able to handle all this. CB: All this work that is going to fall on me when Dad dies, so I try to keep him alive as long as possible. UA: DAD’S dying and I can deal with that, as he is old, it’s all the after stuff that is so hard to think about. We did a couple rounds of tapping around these issues with Annette changing a few words here & there to match what she was feeling. At this point I stopped her & had her drink some water, deep breathe, and tell me where she was with her SUDS & what she was now thinking. SUDS had come down to a 3 or 4, but a new aspect had arisen. “I talked to Jimmy about this, but I think I deserve all this hassle & I shouldn’t be complaining at all about it because I had that abortion in high school.” Annette went on and on for a good 15 minutes about this issue, so I let her talk, as I had time, but I told her to keep tapping while she “ranted”. By this time her SUDS went back up to a 6. We tapped: TH: I deserve all this hassle. EB: It’s all my own fault that I have to deal with this. SE: I know God has forgiven me, but I still feel guilty. UE: When I don’t feel guilty, I feel guilty because I don’t feel guilty, and I think I should be feeling guilty. UL: I worry about what other people are thinking. They think I should have more remorse than I’m showing. CH: How can I face that child in heaven? I killed that baby. CB: I deserve what I get taking care of Dad. I caused it all. UA: This is my punishment for what I did. Someone has to make up for killing that baby. We stopped after 2 rounds, reevaluated, drank some water, and tested. The SUDS was down to a 2. Annette brought out another aspect that popped up. “I have no self control with food. I have all these weight issues which are punishment, too, for what I did”. Hesitantly, she went on about lack of interest in sexual matters and my body is “tired and not holding up well”. She was frustrated with herself, “doctors, insurance, and hospitals”. She discussed for a short time the Catholic Church teachings on sexuality now that the subject was opened up. Her SUDS went back up to a 10. No setup done again. We went right back to tapping. TH: I’m disgusted with myself. EB: I have no self-control. I just keep stuffing food in my mouth. SE: I’ve gained all this weight & I can’t keep up in life. UE: I’ve lost all interest in sex and Jimmy just keeps going. UL: I’m just so tired keeping up with Dad and the kids. CH: I’m frustrated with myself that I can’t seem to be able to do this job. CB: I’m tired of all the doctors, insurance and hospitals. They wear me out, too. UA: I’m so very disgusted with myself, but I know God still loves me. After 3 rounds with the above reminder phrases, we again stopped to check where she was. Some deep breaths, a drink of water, and a short break told me she was still at a 7. Because this was a phone session and I was listening extremely intently to any changes in her voice, I knew she was starting to break down, as her voice was cracking. I knew she was near to tears. Asking how she was, Annette told me this all brought back an incident from when she was aged 12. I had at one of the previous breaks quickly explained to her that EFT was particularly effective, if one could link the present emotion to a childhood event. Annette had just come up with a childhood event. I told her to keep tapping while she told me this story: While playing around an old building with some friends, playing hide & seek, a man ran up to her and grabbed her across the chest on “my boobs”, then ran off. None of her friends witnessed it, but she told them about it when they returned. Her girlfriends asked why she hadn’t screamed. “I tried, but nothing came out”, was her answer. Of course, none of them believed her, so one of her friends asked, “Did you enjoy it?” Her answer was an emphatic “no”, but she had realized she had a bit of sexual arousal around the event, so in set the guilt & conflict over not being able to scream and the “nice” feelings. “I was a coward for not standing up for myself. I was too weak to scream. I was too weak to say no to the abortion. I was too scared to make a decision about anything. And now I can’t make any decisions about much of anything either,” all came streaming out without a break. I quickly asked for a SUDS which I suspected was pretty high because the tears were really beginning to flow. Again, no set-up, as she was definitely in the moment & her SUDS was an 8 & she was in tune with her intense feelings. I asked if she had Kleenex. She did. I could hear her blowing her nose…a lot! TH: I’m a coward. EB: I don’t know how to stand up for myself. SE: I was too weak to say no to the abortion. UE: I’m too scared to make any decisions about anything. UL: I tried to scream. Nothing came out. CH: I’m such a coward. CB: I’m weak. UA: I don’t know how to stand up for myself. Crying had slowed a bit, so I continued. TH: I was alone when that man came. EB: I told my girlfriends what had happened. SE: They asked why I didn’t scream. UE: I did scream, but nothing came out of my mouth UL: He grabbed my boobs. CH: I was so surprised and embarrassed. CB: Did you enjoy it? UA: Did you enjoy it? Crying began again, so I continued. I knew I was hitting a really sore spot with Annette and I wanted to disarm it quickly and thoroughly. TH: Did you enjoy it? EB: I couldn’t scream. SE: He grabbed my boobs. UE: Did you enjoy it? UL: No one believed me. He ran off. CH: I feel guilty because it aroused me. CB: I feel that guilt, but I know God has forgiven me. UA: God forgave me, as I was only 12 and it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t ask for it. Crying slowed again, but I did another round on the hand points on the last 4 phrases as above to make sure the issue was gone. We reevaluated again, along with getting another glass of water for both of us, and taking some deep breaths. Annette said she felt much better and had a SUDS of 2. Another aspect change showed up, as Annette’s voice softened and I knew she was thinking about something else now. “That progression of growing up with so much immorality. All that feminity. I allowed guys to walk all over me. I was so promiscuous. I never told Jimmy too much of it because I feared it would damage our relationship. He didn’t want to know he said. I was taught right and wrong. I feel so guilty. I remember feeling like trash. I was always heavy and bigger than my older sisters, but everyone told me I wasn’t heavy, I was just big boned. I was told I looked like Dad, and Dad always had weight issues until recently, so I figured I would be fat, too”. “What am I going to say to that baby when we meet in heaven?” I assured her that the baby is in heaven and I suspect the baby will run to her, wrapping her arms around Annette, saying, “Hi, Mom!”. I asked Annette if she had confessed her sin to Jesus. “A hundred times, but I still feel so guilty”, she answered. I had her tapping while she talked. Usually, I would ask a client where they physically felt all these issues, but Annette had no problems articulating what she was feeling, nor did she have any problems getting into the moment of the issues. She was such an easy client to work with even though this was all being done over the phone! She was once again beginning to cry. I asked her to give me 2 different SUD levels – one on the “immorality” and another on the weight issue. Both were 10s. I decided to do one at a time, rather than confuse the issues. This would enable me to know where the SUDS level was on 2 different issues, and make sure I disarmed both of them adequately. We began again without a setup, as she was sniffling quite a bit, with me tapping using her own words: TH: All that growing up. EB: So much immorality. SE: I allowed guys to walk all over me. UE: I never told Jimmy much of this. UL: I felt like trash. CH: I’m ashamed of myself. CB: I went to all those clubs and drank like a fish night after night. UA: All this guilt over that behavior. Next round continued as I could hear the crying subsiding, but not completely: TH: All this immorality. EB: I didn’t feel too feminine, so I let the men walk all over me. SE: Those men used me & I let them. UE: I knew right from wrong. I was taught better than this. UL: I feel so guilty. CH: If I tell Jimmy, it might damage my marriage. CB: I felt like trash. UA: I still feel like trash. Again, the crying was nearly finished, so I went one more round: TH: I feel like trash & I killed that baby, but I know God loves me. EB: I feel so ashamed, but I know Jesus died on the Cross for me & this shame. SE: I feel so guilty because I killed my baby, but I know Jesus loves me very much. UE: I let men use me because I wouldn’t stand up for myself, like I didn’t stand up for myself when I was 12. UL: I think I can let myself forgive me because God loves me & forgives me. CH: I think I can forgive myself because Jesus forgives me. CB: I do forgive myself. UA: I do forgive myself because Jesus has forgiven me & has tossed those sins as far as the east is from the west. Annette was down to a 2 on the sexual immorality guilt & shame and she wanted to leave just a little to remind her of how she had behaved in her younger years & to keep her from never taking for granted all the forgiveness God and other people have given her for these issues. That was her choice and I honored that, as I know that at times that the SUDS of 2 might well drop lower as the calm & peace of the EFT effects set in. We next tackled the 10 SUDS issue of weight: TH: I was bigger than my older sisters by the time I was 8. EB: I’m not heavy, I’m big-boned everyone told me. SE: I’m so ashamed of my size. UE: I look like Dad & he always had weight issues. UL: I figured I would always be fat like Dad since I looked like him. CH: I was bigger than Sis and that made me feel fat. CB: I think I can forgive myself for my weight. UA: I know I can forgive myself for my weight. We did a 2nd round on this with the second round emphasizing the forgiveness part a bit more and this weight issue dropped like a rock to a big fat 0! Pun intended! Annette was elated on how wonderfully relieved she felt and wanted to leave the session right there. Her following comment emphasis revolved around the Christian aspect of forgiveness and “how much God does love me”, which she says, “I needed to hear, so thank you.” I gave her instructions to keep tapping daily, but not to neglect her prayers, confessing her sins daily, particularly making sure she went over her day with the kids mentally and tapping away any problems or issues, so they didn’t build up into some larger emotional issue. She is to call me to set up another appointment when she is ready, or email me if she gets stuck, allowing me to help her frame out the wording, etc. It was a classic EFT session, Christian style. I checked on her via email the next day and Annette was thrilled because “I feel so calm today and I don’t know why!” I giggled and told her, it is the EFT. That’s the way it works! 8/12/13 Another text arrived from Annette thanking me again for taking time to tap with her. “I’ve never had this much peace in my life. Many of my fears and anxieties are gone. I’ve lived with those for years. God is so good. I’m grateful He sent me to you. I’m sorry Bill died, but what a benefit to me that he did. I reconnected with you.” For more information, go to www.eftforchristians.com To schedule a free 15 minute EFT consultation session, email me at eftforchristians@gmail.com Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being. Contact a medical professional, if necessary.