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I first heard about tapping back in April this year. I was trying to find help for someone who had an overwhelming fear of spiders. The ad read… “Cure your phobia in 1 hour or your money back”.
I was sceptical… but nonetheless intrigued.
So I made an appointment with the “Spider Whisperer” on her behalf… and then when she chickened out… I went along to hear what he had to say.
His first question was…
“What are you most frightened of?” I had to think for a bit… but soon came up with my fundamental fear of public speaking or being on stage or on display. He asked me if I could think of a time that might have triggered it. I thought some more and remembered finally… the little girl of eight… dressed in blue net under the dazzling lights as “Moth” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In my mind’s eye there she was still… after all these years… frozen to the spot and unable to deliver her one and only line. Like the proverbial dazzled deer caught in the glare of headlights she stood there waiting for the inevitable.
For a moment I was right back there on stage. I could feel her panic… her pain and her embarrassment. How I came to remember her after all these years is anyone’s guess… but he did ask the question… and “pffff” suddenly… she was there! LOL
And so it was… I was introduced to tapping. Emotional Freedom Technique (or tapping) has taken the treatment of psychological barriers and blocks to new never before seen levels of success. It’s a simple process of tapping lightly on certain meridian points on the body (in line with Traditional Chinese Medicine) which, quite frankly, looks and feels ridiculous to do… but besides that… has many applications and enjoys a success never before seen in the field of personal development.
The little girl was set free that day… along with a number of other related performance anxiety issues I was mildly aware of but hadn’t ever acknowledged. It was like the forest came down with the lopping of that one single tree.
I can look back now in my mind’s eye onto that stage… and see the little girl (me) for the beautiful fragile thing that she was… without feeling all over again the pain of it. It was a fractured moment which stayed with her for life. A moment the audience had seen and probably felt great empathy for… but had forgotten about a very long time ago! Silly isn’t it? How we unconsciously hold onto the pain of stuff long after it has become redundant.
After that I became really interested in EFT. I participated in the online Tapping World Summit… 12 days of pod cast interviews with practitioners from all over the world… all with the same single goal… to free people from the emotional ties that bind… to release the emotional blocks and barriers which we humans all have (regardless of who you are)… and which prevent us from being the person we really are and realising our potential to be who we really could be. It was an amazing experience.
I have since taken up tapping as a daily practice. It is helping me to become all that I can be… and way more than I thought I could. And not before time she says! LOL
Margaret Lynch is a voice I have heard so many times now she feels like a very good friend. Margaret is… amongst many other things a Success Coach and author of The Secret of Intentional Wealth (a program for anyone who wants to break down the barriers of our learned negative response to money and the guilty bad feelings we get around the making of it).
I have been listening to Margaret now for quite a few months and I love her voice! She has been the voice of reason and calm throughout a very tumultuous and uncertain time for me. What she says makes perfect sense and I think you should take a listen. But if you’re going to do it… don’t forget to keep an open mind like I did back in April! Believe me… you won’t regret it.
Would love to hear your thoughts.
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Great post! This is the first I’d heard of tapping, Jean, so I went online to read more about it. It is certainly interesting and I can see that it can be powerful. I’m not taking anything at all away from it to say that in essence it’s not new (again, please, please, please understand that I don’t mean this in a negative way), but rather taps into (pun intended) the same neurological paths and processes as hypnotism, which in itself wasn’t new when Mesmer was popularizing it. Whatever one calls it, and however one goes about implementing it, it works. Having studied hypnotism (a misnomer, really, since there’s no trance involved, just intense focus) extensively, I’m always astonished by the physical, psychological, and emotional changes possible. The mind is an amazing thing when correctly harnessed. Actually, tapping seems closest to self-hypnosis, or auto-suggestion, since in reality a hypnotist has no “power” over another person, despite what the “entertainment hypnotists” would have us believe. (There’s that word again, believe.) A hypnotist is only capable of guiding us to accessing the extraordinary power we all have, if only we know how to get at it. It seems to me that tapping does the same.
Thanks John
Yes it’s interesting that you draw the parallel with hypnosis… as it was hypnosis that I had originally thought would be the best help for the person with the spider phobia. I hadn’t heard of EFT either.
But what the practitioner told me was that EFT was fast becoming the treatment of choice over hypnosis for Practitioners like him (and now Psychologists) for all manner of emotional issues.
The fact that it can be self administered is appealing on all levels… and turns the practice of it into a personal discipline (not unlike meditation) fully controlled by the person… rather than a treatment that a Practitioner delivers.
This following explanation of EFT describes it’s history rather well:
QUOTE
“The forerunner of EFT was a therapy called Thought Field Therapy (or TFT). This was formulated by psychologist Dr Roger Callahan.
Around 1980 Dr Callahan was working with a client who had an intense phobia about water. He had been working with her for about 18 months and she was managing her fear (and could approach water) but the fear was still there. Her improvement was minimal.
One day she came to see him with a stomach ache. He had been learning about Traditional Chinese Medicine (and acupuncture) and wondered what would happen if he tapped on the end point of the Stomach meridian.
(A brief intro to meridians)
Meridians are central to Chinese Medicine. They are pathways in the body, which energy flows along. Meridian are usually associated with an organ, so there are meridians for Stomach, Spleen, Gall Bladder, Liver and others.
Suddenly the woman jumped up and announced “it’s gone!”
Dr Callahan thought she meant the stomach ache… so was surprised and horrified when she ran out of the room and down towards his pool. He ran after her and she called back “Don’t worry, Doctor, I know I can’t swim”. Her fear of water was gone… never to return. But notice that her common sense didn’t disappear with it!
So Dr Callahan started working with the meridians and developed tapping protocols for many emotional conditions. His system required a therapist to diagnose the nature of the emotional problem and apply an exact sequence of tapping points, which was different for each problem.
Then along came Gary Craig… a Stanford trained Engineer and Personal Coach.
He learnt the TFT (thought field therapy) system and was impressed by it’s capabilities. But he felt it should be available to everybody… without having to see a therapist every time. So he surmised that if you repeatedly went through all of the tapping points that were used in TFT… regardless of the problem… it would still work.
He developed the EFT algorithm which uses the same points for everything.
His system became phenomenally successful… and has been in use since the early 1990’s” UNQUOTE
It’s fascinating stuff. But more importantly… it works. There have now been many adaptations of Gary Craig’s original sequence… but all seem to work in their own mysterious way!
Hi Jean,
I have done an EFT session before and Deb is a big a believer in it. Something certainly happens with the reprogramming of the brain through the process. I think that like most alternative treatments, you need to do a number of sessions and give it time to work. But surely it is better than taking a pill. Good on you for writing about it. As always I truly enjoy your blog and the time for that coffee is upon us. I will email you in the other world to set up a date!!! Keep up the beautiful work.
Kindest regards,
Andrew
Thanks Andrew… I’ll look forward to that
I believe the secret to success with EFT is to isolate the “precise” issue in the set-up statement. Nailing the emotion that goes hand in glove with the issue or problem is probably the trickiest part… that’s why the [spider guy] treats his patients in the Snake and Spider Enclosure at Currumbin Sanctuary. It sounds unorthodox… but clearly it works! By the end of the hour he has his patients patting the taranchulas! (((chuckles)))
Yes, Jean, “mysterious” is the word for it, and yet there’s so much that’s mysterious in the animal kingdom, like how birds know to migrate. The human mind-body connection is truly miraculous. I think hypnotism has got a bad rap because of the charlatans and showmen — they make it fascinating but contaminate the utility of it. It sounds like EFT is successful and particularly useful because the application of it is relatively easy to grasp. Self-hypnosis is incredibly powerful (I’ve undergone what normally would be painful dental work using it) – really just another form of the meditation that you mention – but it covers a lot of ground. It’s rather like learning to bake as opposed to being able to make a pie. (Or am I completely off base?)
Not at all John. Hypnosis has been an entirely successful treatment. Though I think when people are particularly stressed hynosis may be more difficult. Just as it is difficult to meditate when stressed or upset. Not sure… my experience of it is limited but you would know.
Conversely EFT actually works best when the patient is stressed (or in the emotion). That’s why the spider man takes his patients to the Snake/spider enclosure for treatment… to induce the fear in order to reduce it.
Establishing the precise* problem and then really getting into the “feeling of it” seems to work best. Easy as falling off a log for we creatives with over active imaginations (grin)… probably not so easy for anyone who has a hard time imagining stuff or putting themselves mentally into the picture. From what I can gather though… people are seeing vast improvements using EFT and astounding stories prevail.
Re the animal kingdom. I believe humans are losing touch with their natural instinct. Whether it is a genetic thing… (adaption – use it or lose it)… or whether it’s conditioning. Humans may be street smart these days… but they’d never cut it in the jungle! LOL
Have been watching a flock of pelicans sail up and down the waterfront where I walk each day. They amaze me how they stay in perfect unison. They even sleep in neat groups with their heads all tilted the same way. It’s fascinating.
Last week one was out on it’s own unable to hold it’s head up out of the water. It was truly a pitiful sight… obviously suffering and probably dying… yet cast out by the others. (In this way humans are probably not much different) Nature can be cruel.