OCD Like Behavior Gone with Clinical EFT!

This past summer a client, whom I have known for many years, presented to me with a fairly common problem. Tom is male and doesn’t always identify with what emotion he is feeling, but this he did know: he was sick & tired of his wife always yelling at him for forgetting everything! I snickered to myself with this one as how many times I have heard this complaint from all the women I know; however, what presented itself was no giggling matter! Tom & I have tapped in the past & he has exactly 4 emotions – fear, frustration, anger, & sadness. This time proved to be absolutely no different. Tom lays fear and frustration out on the tapping table, telling me no matter how hard he tries, he always forgets something, then his wife gets angry, yells, & the day gets ruined. I had Tom tune into that fear & frustrated he told me was in his chest and tap for a minute or 2, allowing his subconscious to bring to his mind the earliest event with this feeling, he could remember. Sure enough, back to his childhood he went, again. “Dad was always yelling at me about something. I never did anything right, so I would check and recheck everything, like light switches, by turning them off and on about 4 times. Of course, that just made Dad madder and I got yelled at even more, but I had to be sure I wouldn’t burn down the house!” Tom’s fear & frustration was a SUDS of 7, so we began the tapping. I’m not going to take you all through all the tapping phrases I used because they are the usual Clinical EFT ones, but what I want to relay to you is something I learned from Valerie Lis, an EFTUniverse instructor. As Tom & I tapped this session, his fear and frustration dropped as it always does, but I wanted to take this a bit further. I questioned him about the light switch issue. Did he still do that behavior in his adult life? Tom admitted that he always has, but he went further, telling me he had a few other habits that were similar, like double checking doors and stopping the car about 5 miles down the road when leaving on vacation to make sure he had packed one thing or another. This infuriated his wife, too. To me, this was beginning to sound like an OCD problem – Obsessive Compulsive behavior of sorts. Now, I can't diagnosis OCD, but I sure can tap on the symptomology of it. And that was what we were going to do here and now - tap on those symptoms! Tom is a very accomplished man & to look at him one would never suspect this behavior, but it obviously was giving his married life some challenges. I asked Tom if I could try a method I had learned from Valerie on him. He was agreeable to try just about anything! The fear and frustration were reduced to his usual 1, so now he was ready to re-program some neurons! Valerie teaches to have the client tap on both sides of anything OCD like. I had Tom close his eyes and imagine that he can never, ever again do anything in his life except turn light switches on and off, 24/7/365, no eating, no beer, no vacation, no sleep, nothing except turning those damn switches on and off. “How do you feel about doing that?” I asked Tom. Tom’s anger & frustration was way off the chart, probably above a 10 SUDS. So, we tapped down that 10 anger & frustration again to his usual one. Tom is an engineer and he will never, it seems, admit he is at a 0. His one is everyone else’s 0! I then asked the opposite side of the question. “Tom, you can never, ever again touch a light switch to double check it. You turn it off once and you walk away. How does that make you feel”? His answer was similar to the first question, “frustrated”. This frustration was a 9 SUDS. We tapped the 9 frustration to a 1. As I think about how this method works using the standard EFT, it appears to me, and maybe Valerie said this, so I will give her credit, that neutralizing both sides of issue by using the “never, ever 24/7” phrases, the client tends to land somewhere right in middle between the 2 odds or extremes. I’ve used exact technique on a couple of occasions and it appears to do just that. The unbalanced, severely tipped behaviors seem to ameliorate themselves back towards something more controlled. In this case, it happened immediately! Dawson Church asked me to write up this case as part of my EFT-EXP certification. This case was tapped on July 10, 2012 according to my records. I asked Tom yesterday, August 16, 2013, about the status of his light switches and door checking. He proudly related to me that he never again double checked a thing since the day we tapped his forgetting things! Isn’t EFT a glorious thing? To God be the glory! 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. Contact a medical professional, if necessary.

Curiously, as I read the big, long article I posted below, it hit me that the author put into words something I think the Holy Spirit has been whispering to me for the past 3 weeks. He whispers and I ponder for awhile, and then He clarifies, just as He always does to me through an article or a conversation. I'm very quiet during this contemplation period, not even articulating to Brad what I'm thinking, only because it is a stirring in my soul, and I finally wised up to know Who is speaking. I need to await His pleasure and conclusion of what He has to tell me. He just did it again! Wow! As I tap with clients, particularly the non-Christians ones, and specifically the ones who use the term "Universe" as their theological base, I've wondered how do I gently, but passionately bring in God as a refutation to their concept of "Universe" without being completely disrespectful and coming off, like so many Christians do, in an alienating manner. I need a God glorifying way to say He is in charge without coming off looking like a Bible thumper. I want to be a bridge between these crazy new agers and us Christians. I have the mechanism in my hand. Now, how do I say it kindly? In their language, but not compromising my own? I haven't figured out how to do that just yet, but this Matt guy's article says to me exactly what I have been thinking! We can use Christian EFT as that bridge, pointing the new agers to the King of the Universe, the real King! I believe that is why I'm so empathic about this going to the churches, and then coming back out of the churches. This is language these unbelievers understand. The Church can talk to them without compromising its own personal belief system! Anyway, I will continue to ponder the exact line I need to say. It will come. It will be a classic. It will be God's words to those I tap with; those He has chosen to hear these exact, perfect words of His. I just find it so curious how and what He uses to talk with us. Now that my soul is quiet; much of the overwhelming emotions released; the ceaseless chatter gone, I can actually listen. It is incredibly refreshing! http://mattstone.blogs.com/christian/2009/08/energy-healing-a-christian-theological-appraisal.html For more information, go to www.eftforchristians.com To schedule a free EFT consultation coaching session, email me at eftforchristians@gmail.com Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being.

EFT and Magic Words

Often I’m asked by clients when I instruct them to tap for themselves at home about “what words do I use”? I’m hoping to settle this question here and now for you readers. While all these tapping protocols and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) Youtube videos out there on the internet are nice, as they give a wonderful visual of how EFT is done, I’m not convinced they do a completely healthy service to the EFT world. Now, I can’t complain too loudly, or I will look like a hypocrite here because I, too, have Youtube videos available on the web. However, my concern is that many times the video producing practitioners goes on and on with fancy words and different phrases on each tapping point. It looks complicated and involved to the novice tapper. EFT isn’t that complicated. It really isn’t, nor does it need to be fancy to get excellent results. EFT works at the cellular level to eliminate negative emotions. Words aren’t the key here. Feeling the negative emotion is. That’s why it is called Emotional Freedom Techniques! Few practitioners use the setup phrases anymore. And I agree with them, if the client is really feeling whatever emotion is causing their problem. If a SUDS (subjective units of distress, emotional pain scale) is over a 3 or 4 on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being no pain and 10 being terrible, there is no need to do a setup, as the client is already in the emotional moment. Just begin tapping the points. A setup is needed if the client has an issue but isn’t feeling the issue. That is when they possibly could be reversed and they need the setup phrases done at the karate chop point. My point here is that EFT doesn’t need words to work. All that is needed is to tune into the emotion and really feel it. Magnify it. Intensify it. Just get into it, and then tap it away. Words are useful for the practitioner to understand where a client stands in the process. Sometimes clarification is necessary. Words are useful for that. Other times, like I do, my intuition, which is really the Holy Spirit, kicks in & I will say something I extrapolated from what the client says. Often the client will acknowledge that my words are exactly what they are thinking or feeling. It gets them back into feeling whatever emotion there were feeling. I want to keep them in that emotional moment to get all the bodymind clearing I can get for them. Intensifying the emotions tends to get a more thorough clearing for the client. It’s the vibration of the tapping that knocks the emotion loose, not the words. So, for all you novice tappers out there don’t get all hung up on the right words. Those words really don’t matter. Start tapping, tune into whatever it is you are feeling, intensify the feelings, if you can, and persevere until you completely clear out the problem. If you can make yourself cry about the problem, all the better, as crying is a sure fire sign you know exactly what you are feeling. Cry and tap. I’m pretty sure you will feel a whole lot better when you are done than you would if you simply sat down & had a good old fashioned cry without the tapping. Tapping extracts the emotion, neutralizing it, and it tends to do that on a permanent basis. Crying is only a temporary relief. Personally, I go for anything that improves my emotional lot long term. So, happy crying and happy tapping! Your subconscious thanks you for the relief, as does all your clogged up cells, all 100 trillion of them! 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.

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.

EFT Makes Me Laugh

EFT makes me laugh inside. The effectiveness on the little things in life is astounding. EFT just plainly makes life so much improved.

Monday, my husband announces to me, after I asked him several times what was bugging him (I always notice something is wrong with him long before he does for himself), that he is overwhelmed. I inquire about what. He tells me the details. I ask, “Have you tapped?” Sadly, as usual, the answer was, “no”.

We were eating lunch out when he decided to tell me how overwhelmed he was.  I never care where we are or what we are doing, I tell him to just begin tapping – fingertips under the table, and let’s go.

I start him off with “overwhelmed”, and then I add “discombobulated & frustrated” to the tapping mix, after he explained his feelings.  At that point, I just leave him alone, as he knows quite well how to handle it; he’s just not to the point where he recognizes the problem.  I guess we make a good team. I notice the problem & he taps for himself, fixing his own issues.

Now, the part that makes me laugh is this:  It took him all of 90 seconds to discharge the frustration, “discombobulation”, & overwhelm completely.  Here, he has been fighting the feelings for 5 or 6 hours, doing some disorganized stunts, getting nothing accomplished, by his own admission, and 90 seconds of tapping eliminated the entire issue. “I can’t believe how calm I am,” were his words as he stopped tapping. His SUDS dropped from an 8 to 0 in 90 seconds flat!

I told him that he would go home and in less than an hour accomplish everything he hadn’t fixed in the previous 5 to 6 hours. He agreed. He knows well how the science works – put the blood back in the neo-cortex and suddenly thinking makes sense!

About 2 hours later, he phoned to inform me, all was accomplished in about the hour I said + he had an added bonus. For the past 3 weeks, he thought he had 2 huge weekend long events happening on the exact same weekend. He wanted to attend both events as much of as possible, and he was getting flak from other participants because they wanted him to give up the “other” event for theirs. That was part of his frustration. He said he didn’t care, but obviously he did, or he wouldn’t have felt the overwhelm. Anyway, one of the organizers informed him that the 2 events weren’t the same weekend at all, but on successive weekends. He was discombobulated for no good reason, but it wasn’t until he settled down with tapping, & made the appropriate phone call, that he realized he had his weekends all messed up.

Did EFT fix Brad’s calendar? Well, probably not, but it did clear him enough so he could ask the appropriate questions, completely clarifying all the issues around his overwhelm.

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.  Contact a medical professional, if necessary.

EFT & Relaxation & the Subconscious

Accessing the subconscious is an issue with most of us humans, since it runs 95% to 98% of our life; I would think we ought to know what in the world it is thinking.  It contains all our early programming. Everything anyone has ever said to us is stored in our mind. I think it was Dr. Bruce Lipton who said our subconscious intakes something like 40 million bits of information per second, but our conscious minds only processes 40 bits of it. That’s a huge disparity.  What in the world is the other 39,999,960 bits of information doing to us?  That’s the ultimate question. What is it doing to us?

According to all the newest research, it is the underlying programming that actually runs your life. You think you do, but you really don’t. What gets stored from every teeny tiny comment or facial expression or other environmental input is what runs your life. Your subconscious processes it as quickly and efficiently as it can, storing it for later analysis (sleep and dreams), or putting it in an experience file to compare to any upcoming events you might encounter. It apparently loves to mix and match life’s stuff. Once you experience an emotion, the body is signaled to mix up a particular neurochemical mix to match the emotion, and the next time you experience something akin to the first event, the body mixes up another batch of that very specific neurochemical mix, giving you, once again, the exact same emotion you experienced with the first memory.  Does that make sense?  Your subconscious is a great big memory bank. It would rival the largest most powerful computer on earth.  It remembers everything, even if consciously you do not, but it also chemically imprints all those emotions deeply, strengthening all those learned cognitive neural pathways. That is what controls your emotional responses to daily living.

So, how do we access all that information? Meditators for millennia have known how to do this. My problem with meditation is I don’t think I have time. Everything I have read makes meditation sound long and boring and tedious. Anything that drab won’t allow me to relax! I will only mull the laundry list of what I should be doing instead of meditating! Western culture doesn’t afford us that much self-reflective time in any one given day, and, even if it did, do I want to use my time for that purpose?

With all the new science coming out of research labs explaining to us how our mind is really in our body, causing much of our physical issues, I suspect time has come to pay attention to what the subconscious has packed away. So, how can we do this effectively and quickly and still have time for that baseball game?

My answer to that question is Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). EFT breaks through all of the barriers, allowing us to answer the questions of what are we really thinking inside that subconscious. What is the bottom line of who we are and what we really believe about ourselves and our environment? Those are the beliefs that are impacting our health & life decisions today.

I would like to suggest another step in addition to tapping with EFT that might facilitate getting inside the subconscious more quickly. I’m going to take a chapter from ancient times here. How about 2 simple techniques that will take less than a minute to do?

First, drop your tongue onto the floor of your mouth, allowing it to relax there (thank you, Dawson Church). Teach yourself to do this as much as possible during the day, or, at the minimum, when you feel under stress, try to remember to relax that tongue!  Do this immediately when you sit down to tap, too. To demonstrate why I suggest this, try something.  Right now, with your tongue totally relaxed on the floor of your mouth, think about a distressing, angry thought and attempt to get mad about it.  Are you succeeding?  I bet not. For some physiological reason, if the tongue is relaxed, emotions don’t seem to be able to flair. Play with the technique a bit. Let me know via email (eftforchristians@gmail.com) if you get any further insights into the technique. I’m always interested in feedback.

Secondly, and this is one I’m borrowing from the ancients, start some deep breathing. Take 5 five second long in breaths, slowly, counting, and then pause for one second, exhaling slowly for another 5 seconds. Do this routine 5 or 6 times, or 10 or 12, if you so desire, but just make it a minimum of 5 rounds. This small amount of time invested in deep breathing will drop you into high alpha or low theta brave waves. You have descended out of the everyday hectic beta brain waves into the lower realms of meditation.  It really does happen that quickly. I use this technique to relax me once I lay down at night to sleep. Get a head start of slowly dropping into the delta brain wave state, where REM sleep thrives.

I read somewhere, and I wish I had written it down from where exactly, so I could give proper credit, but the author suggested that by taking a couple of minutes at the beginning of the nightly bedtime relaxation period to deep breathe in some rhythmic, slow method, we could knock off the need for a couple hours of sleep. Now, I don’t advocate only getting 5 to 6 hours of sleep each night because you did 2 or 3 minutes of deep breathing, but I think the author was trying to illustrate that the deep breathing nearly immediately gets us out of our daily beta state into the lower brain states where relaxation dwells. The faster we get there, the quicker the REM and delta states arrive; thus the better we sleep & the more restful we sleep.  

However, I want to take this relaxed state on step further, if I may. I also believe because I use it quite frequently that when we get ourselves relaxed by whatever method we choose, it allows the Holy Spirit to “talk” to us. Now, I don’t hear audible voices, but I do hear that “still, small voice” whispering. Sometimes, it’s not a “voice” at all, but suddenly clarification of something that happened during the day comes. Other times I get a brilliant idea, like the proverbial “light bulb” going on. I personally attribute it to the Holy Spirit. Others call it intuition or the universe or whatever they choose. My Christian worldview says the Holy Spirit is the Great Counselor, the One who reveals all.

I believe this is why EFT works so effectively. As it drops us down into lower, relaxed brain states, the Holy Spirit begins to speak, opening up our subconscious, allowing old hurtful memories and pain to come to consciousness for release from our “bodymind”. This is an amazing combination! The Almighty of the Universe indwelling us through the Holy Spirit, helping us process all our emotional concerns. He’s not an impersonal God, but a God who is hands-on, who loved us so much He sent His only Son to earth to expiate our sins, but He goes a step further by having sent His Holy Spirit, the Great Revealer, to keep us on track and on course in our lives for Him. It is much more difficult to do this on-track thing, if we are preoccupied with all of our past distressful memories, trapping us in our inner self-centered selves.

Use EFT regularly, losing those emotions about those distressful memories and watch how quickly your spiritual life opens up fully to God. It blows it right open!  How do I know? I’m living proof of this exact thing. God, using EFT, has blasted open all things Christian to me. It is an amazing process. I hope you decide to try it.

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.  Contact a medical professional, if necessary.

EFT & Trauma

Trauma in our lives, and I’m talking about the big “T” traumas, like physical abuse, war memories, rape, sexual abuse, etc. are huge. Anyone carrying them around knows exactly what I am talking about. These issues shape every facet and minute of our lives. They override and overwhelm every thought process we have. They cloud our thinking about who we are in Christ.

Often the memories shape our personality. It’s the physiology God put into us that makes this all so. He didn’t mean it as destructive, but as a protective mechanism.

The problem with the subconscious, if it is really a “problem” is that its main function is survival. Anything it perceives as a life threat, it will bury, hide, disguise or do anything it needs to do to protect us.  And I’m talking “us” here, because I have firsthand experience on this subject. Sadly, for me, I know it intimately, and the deep burial of the memories nearly killed me. God using EFT saved my life.

So, let me continue, explaining why traumas get buried so deeply into the subconscious, where no one or nothing, including the conscious mind, can access them. Traumas are overwhelming, trapping us in the freeze part of the limbic system’s “fight, flight or freeze” mechanism. During the trauma, the person feels helpless, hopeless, without any resources. If it happens to a child, it is even worse, because up to the age of about 7 (Remember, all you Catholics, and probably other denominations, how the Church used age 7 as the “age of reason” when the sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion were permitted?), children function purely in delta, theta, and alpha brain waves, sucking up information, with absolutely no processing ability whatsoever. They are building a lifetime of neural pathways. Repetition is what builds those. That is why 2 or 3 year olds repetitively ask the same question over and over and over again. They don’t do it to irritate the adults in their lives; they do it because that is precisely the way their brains work. Kids have no cognitive neural pathways when they are born. They are a clean slate. Every event, good or bad, that happens to them begins that neural learning, all cognitive, creating a lifetime of neural connections & memories. In order to make those learned neural bundle stick, kids must ask the same question time and again to make the bundle thick and heavy duty. Our thoughts will ascend a thickened neural pathway much quicker than a lesser used one.

It is the same process that is involved in habit changing. We always hear that it takes 3 weeks to change a habit. That’s about right based on the neurology involved. You decide you want to stop eating toast for breakfast and eat fruit instead. You’ve eaten toast your entire life, so what does your taste buds want when your feet hit the floor in the morning? Yes, toast, because it is a comfortable, known habit. You’ve done it forever, it seems. In order to change that habit, you need to become mindful that you want the toast habit changed, and keep it in your mind for a couple of days. The subconscious will want you to revert back to the old toast habit, and you might even slip up a day or so and have your toast half eaten by the time you remember you had chosen to switch to fruit. Don’t fret, get up the following morning & eat your fruit. After about 3 weeks of fruit eating, you will, in the future, probably reach for fruit without thinking. Why? Because you simply, by choice, changed that particular, mundane as it might seem, neural pathway to another idea. After about 3 weeks, the body, which never wastes a single component part in the brain, disassembles the toast pathway and puts those component parts elsewhere where repair is needed.

Young children are the same way. In order to remember that the color blue is the color blue, the concept must be repeated a 100 times, or what feels like to an adult a million times. We, as adults, tell kids to quit asking so many questions. Don’t bother telling them that – they will just continue to ask the same thing over and over. Kids have to – it’s the way God programmed them to learn and to build up the neural bundles they need to function in life.

But, back to traumas, the concept here is similar. At the time of the trauma, the event is fixed in our memories; much of the details in our subconscious, where we cannot access it, the things we tell ourselves around that memory are what begins the problems. We aren’t good enough, it was all our fault, men are scary, Mom doesn’t care, red cars crash, public speaking is uncomfortable, etc.

EFT goes in & dismantles all those encoded details that are getting into our way, causing us anxiety or fear, stalling us out in life. Once 2 or 3 or 4 aspects (details) around an event are disabled, the event becomes a non-issue, allowing us once again to move forward in life, to that abundant life that God has called us to live.

It’s all in the God created physiology. God made us this way, so why not use what He gave us to improve our relationship with Him & others.

Are you stalled, or are some emotions getting in your way of your abundant life in Christ? If so, email me. I believe EFT can help!

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.