Emotional freedom

Transcript

Welcome to part 6.

Part 6 is all about emotional freedom technique and it’s also called tapping. So we’re going to look at what this is, what is EFT, what is tapping. We’re going to look at how tapping calms the brains fight, flight, freeze and flap response. Or calms the stress response. We’re going to look at how emotional freedom technique releases negative emotional charges within our system. And we’re going to look at how to use this as a tool and technique in our daily lives to support us with our emotional management. And we’re going to look at this, as a tool and technique that we can use within our daily lives to support us with our emotional well-being.

EFT or tapping as it’s also known, was developed back in the early 1960s by Dr. George Goodheart. Dr. George Goodheart realized that by tapping on acupressure points with our fingers, that we could get benefits in the same way that benefits could be achieved from acupuncture or using needles and these acupressure points as well. And then in the mid-1990s Gary Craig came along who was an engineer by trade. And took the process that Dr. George Goodheart had developed and basically pulled it apart and put it back together into a simple framework which is the framework that we’re going to use now. And this is now called tapping by a lot of people and it’s also called emotional freedom technique.

We can achieve outstanding positive results with emotional, mental and physical challenges and difficulties that we have, by using tapping. It’s used in practice with therapists. But it’s also really easy to self-administer. Training in the therapy is recommended to get great results but you can also self-administer this at home really easily.

We tap on particular points in the body which are meridian pathways, these acupressure points to support us within this practice. And really what we’re doing is looking at the negative emotion, that’s associated with the situation and we’re looking to release the charge that’s related to that negative emotion. We’re not looking to get rid of negative emotions, we’re just looking to release the negative charge that we hold in our energy bodies in our energy system in our physical bodies.

EFT is considered an energy psychology modality. We tap on acupressure points and talk at the same time. It’s like emotional acupuncture. EFT or tapping aims to achieve results that last. Negative emotional energy that is stuck within our system holds a negative emotional charge. EFT works to release that charge that’s related to events and challenges that have happened in our lives. It works to calm the brains amygdala gland in the head. It works to calm the brains fight, flight, freeze or flop response. It works to calm the stress response.

As soon as we start to tap we signal to our amygdala gland, we signal that the hormones don’t need to be released in our system to kick in a stress response. Fight, flight, freeze, flop does not need to be activated. And we can calm our system down. Or if it is activated, that there’s no need for it to be there on an ongoing basis. We’re not in a stress response situation. We’re not in an emergency situation and it’s really just to calm that aspect of our system down. To calm that stress response aspect down.

EFT is self-work, so we can do it on ourselves. It’s really empowering for somebody to have this as a tool that you can use anywhere, at any time, to support you with any negative emotional charge that’s going on for you in that moment. It acts as a bridge between bodywork therapy and talking therapy, so it’s great in a lot of regards.

Working with EFT meets the person where they are at in that given moment. We use wording that describes our challenge when we’re working with EFT and the more specific we are the easier it is to to work with this and the faster it’ll work and the more effective it will be for you. I’s really, really important to just be as specific as you can when you’re working on a particular challenge, or a particular area, or a particular issue. By saying the words it lets our biosystem know exactly what we’re working on. It gives the signal to say this is the thing that I’m working on at the moment.

We feel negative emotions when we’re tuned in to negative thoughts or negative circumstances. These negative emotions cause a disruption in our system, in our bodies, in our physical bodies and in our energy system. We look to rate the intensity of the emotion that we’re feeling. We pick an emotion that we’re dealing with, whether it’s fear, anxiety, anger. It’s negative emotions that we’re working with as well. And we look to rate it from 0 to 10. How intense is this where zero is no intensity and 10 is high intensity. And sometimes we need to rate it off the scale, we need to say it’s a hundred or it’s 200 or it’s 11 or whatever it may be. It doesn’t always fit neatly into the box of 0 to 10 but that’s the rough gauge that we try to use. 0 is there’s no charge for us. 10 is, there’s intense charge there to do with this negative emotion, I’m really feeling it intensely.

And then we tap on the wording of the challenge that we’re working on. We bring in the language of the issue that we’re working on. We bring in the language. We name the emotion and we bring in the language around the emotion as well. We tap on that and we just watch as the intensity of it reduces and disappears. And we watch the intensity of it come down to zero. We feel emotions continuously and it’s a totally normal process, it’s a part of our human experience. We need to feel emotion and we need to have our feelings and be able to express our feelings and talk about our feelings to say exactly where we’re at, so we like something we don’t like something. We can’t let other people know exactly what’s going on for us unless we can express and talk about our emotions and talk about our feelings to say yes I like this thing or no I don’t like this thing. They’re a necessary part of our experience. Emotions are a necessary tool that we have to be able to function in this world.

EFT and tapping will never stop us from feeling our emotions. It just supports us, to help us to release the negative charge of an emotion that we’ve been holding on to, that may be stuck in our system. And this can keep us stuck in a past time sometimes as well. EFT supports us to process emotional charges, rather than to hold on to them. Holding on to a negative emotional charge is holding a disruption in our body’s natural healthy state. It’s a disruption to our body’s natural healthy balance.

By releasing these charges to these negative emotions it helps our body to come back into balance. By holding onto fear, by holding onto anxiety, by holding onto worry, overwhelm, all of these negative emotional charges that we can hold in our system. If we hold on to them on a prolonged basis for a prolonged period of time, it’s holding an imbalance really in our system. We need to release those to allow our body to come back into calmness, back into balance and again if we’re holding those in our system and our stress response is fired up, we then have the stress hormones at play. And we don’t want our stress hormones to be at play on a prolonged basis. We’re then leading into chronic stress, which leads to chronic illness, or can lead to chronic illness.

Really what we’re looking to do is, if we have these negative emotional charges in our system, we want to be able to release them, so our body can come back to full wellness and to full balance.

Some tips to be mindful of when we’re working with tapping. We need to make sure we’re hydrated. Our body is made up of 70% water. And we need to ensure that we stay hydrated while we do this work, to our allow our body to release in the best way possible for us. We work with our reaction to a memory of whatever it is we’re working on, as if it’s happening in this moment. For example, if I’m working on ‘fear of getting bitten by a dog’ from an incident that happened to me when I was five years of age. I need to bring that incident into my present moment, as if I was getting bitten by the dog now. And then, to see how intense my fear is, as if it was happening to me right now. That’s where we want to work when we’re working with EFT.

It’s really bringing ourselves, bringing the situation into our present moment. See how strong the intensity is. Ad then we tap from there. At first we can tap on very general events and general issues, but over time we want to get into the specifics. And the more specific you can be and the more accurate you can be with what it is that’s causing the negative charge or negative emotion to be there held in your system, the easier it is and the faster it is to release that.

Sometimes we need to dig a little bit. We need to say when’s the first time that I felt this or when’s the worst time that I felt this. To try and trace back to see where the event is actually coming from that’s related to the emotion that we’re working on as well.

If there’s a situation that you’re tapping on, where you feel that there’s more than one emotion involved, just pick the one that’s the most intense first and work with that first. And then we re-test the intensity of the emotion from zero to ten after each round of tapping and we see where we’re at with our number. If it’s going down. And we keep tapping and we keep going until we get the number down to zero.

And also to note that EFT is not a medical substitute and shouldn’t replace a medical practitioner either.

How does EFT and tapping relate to stress. So when we experience stress, the blood rushes to the amygdala gland in the head. The amygdala, which processes emotions, is triggered and releases cortisol. Stimulation of these acupressure or acupuncture points when we tap on them, signals to the amygdala to deactivate the stress response. Putting negative emotion into words calms the brains emotional centre. We’re just going to look at where these points are now. There’s a number of different points, not that many. We’re just going to use two fingers. It doesn’t matter which side you want to start on. They’re bilateral points so you can just tap on one side.

The first one is just two fingers, just from the top of the nose, up into the eyebrow here and we just tap two points on it. The next point then is out to the side of the eye, just on the corner of the eye socket here and we’re just doing two fingers to tap on the point. Now the point is about the size of the tip of a pencil. If we use two fingers we’re more likely to hit on the point, rather than using one and our finger drifting off the point a little bit. Under the eye then, the centre of the eye, there is a little nudge there, just on the bone of the socket. You can feel a little nub or a little nudge and it’s just tapping on that. And then the midpoint between the lower nose and the upper lip, about six, seven, eight taps each time. And then the dip in our chin here, just from the chin up to the lower lip. And then we have two sore spots here. So if we have our collarbone, we just come down about roughly an inch, two and a half centimetres roughly. And over about maybe four to five centimetres. It’s different on each body. So there’s two soft spots or tender spots there. If you just dig around a little bit, gently. Once you have these spots you’ll find them. It’s about an inch and a half down, about two and half inches over. About two and a half centimetres down about maybe six, seven centimetres over. And it’s just finding those sore spots. And then we tap on those. And then it’s just under our arm, four fingers and it’s just on bra strapline for girls and on nipple line for guys. And then it’s like as if we have a little cap on the top of our head and we just tap around the top part of our head. And then our final point that we’re using, at the start of our set-up statement (and we’ll go through now what that is in a moment). It’s just our fingers on the side of our palm here and we just tap there. So they are the points. They’re quite easy to remember as well. Once you’ve done a couple of rounds of tapping, you’ll most likely have remembered the points easily.

Sometimes the reasons and causes for anxieties and problems can be difficult for some people to reach on their own so sometimes it’s good to work with a practitioner or with a therapist who practices EFT for this as well. Just to bear that in mind. But again, it’s still good to just start by yourself and to give it a try. Or even if you are seeing somebody on a professional basis, that you still try this in between as well. It could be really, really supportive to you.

EFT is suitable for all ages as well. The fact that you can use EFT, anywhere, at any time, by yourself. All it takes is your hands and a couple of minutes and you can support yourself so much in releasing negative charges and releasing the stress response within your body. It’s just such a fantastic tool.

And you really can use it for anything. You can use it in moments of doubt, in moments of fear, for anxiety, for exam stress. If you have to meet a deadline and you’re feeling stressed about it and can’t focus. If you can’t sleep at night, if you’re awake during the night and you know you’re not able to relax, to help you to get to sleep. If there is fear building up in you, anxiety, overwhelm, anything that’s kicking the stress response into play. You know it just helps with absolutely everything.

Just to look at some reactions that can happen with EFT. It’s releasing charges within our systems. There’s lots of different ways that these releases can happen. Some people might yawn a lot. Some people might burp. Some people might feel the emotion that they’re trying to release a little bit stronger. Upset can be there. If there’s grief or sadness or anything like that in the body, obviously tears can come from that emotional release as well. You may feel tired, you may feel very energised. Sometimes you may feel light-headed and that will pass. Overwhelm might come and that might pass. And maybe when you’re tapping on overwhelm, that you all of a sudden feel that overwhelm as it releases through your system and releases out of your system as well. Sometimes those headaches can come in and again they’d release as the charge would release as well. Sometimes somebody might feel worse before they feel better. But there’s always benefits on the other side of doing this as well. It’s really worth trying. It’s really, really worth doing.

And then after EFT, self-care for yourself, is to make sure that you continue to keep hydrated. That if you feel tired and your body is telling you to have a rest. Hopefully you’re in a situation where you can do that for your body. Or your body may feel fully energized.  Just go with whatever way it is for you after you do this as well. And a round of EFT probably takes about two minutes.

So we’re just going to do a practice round of EFT now. It’s really just to think about something that you feel you have anxiety about. And we’ll just do a practice round. If there’s something that you’re feeling anxious or feeling anxiety about. And just name what that is about. And then just ask yourself, what’s it really about. Is it about this heading that you’ve just given it – this name that you’ve just given it. Or is there something underneath that. Is there any detail underneath that, that’s actually the thing that you can pinpoint, that’s causing the anxiety, causing the feeling of anxiousness. And if not, that’s okay. Or if you don’t know what it is, that’s okay. Just to think of something. Just to take a deep breath in all the way down to your toes. And just to think of something that you’re feeling anxious about or you feel anxiety about. Or you have felt anxiety about.

And if it’s something that you’ve felt anxiety about in the past and you’d like to work on it now, whatever the situation is, that it’s related to. Just to bring that situation into the present, as if it was happening now.

And then we’re going to rate the intensity of the emotion. So from zero to ten, how intense is the anxiety for you or the feeling of anxiousness at this point in time. And sometimes it can be, you know, you want to tap on something that hasn’t happened yet. That it’s a perception of something happening and that’s fine too. And really rating the intensity, as if this was in your experience right now.

From zero to ten,  where is that for you. And just record your number on a piece of paper in front of you, in your workbook. And now we’re going to start our tapping.

So our set-up statement is – ‘Even though I feel this anxiety about ___ ‘ (whatever the situation is about). You can say it in your head or say it out loud, .. ‘I deeply and completely accept myself’ and we say that statement three times. If you find it difficult to say ‘I deeply and completely accept myself’ –  just check in with yourself to see do you want to deeply and completely accept yourself?  And if you do, then you can just say ‘I want to deeply and completely accept myself’. ‘Even though I feel this anxiety about ___’ (whatever it’s about).. ‘ I want to deeply and completely accept myself’. Okay so you can add in ‘I want to’ if you prefer as well. We’re just going to start by taking one hand and tapping from four fingers onto the side of the other hand and it doesn’t matter which hand you start with. ‘Even though I feel this anxiety about ____ (whatever it’s about), I deeply and completely accept myself’. We say this three times. ‘Even though I feel this anxiety about _____ (whatever it’s about), ‘I deeply and completely accept myself’. ‘Even though I feel this anxiety about ___ (whatever it’s about), ‘I deeply and completely accept myself’. And we’re just going to use the language then that’s related to whatever it is you’re tapping on. Whatever the situation is that you’re tapping on, just bring that language into this round of tapping as well. Feeling this anxiety. We’re just going to go around the points that we looked at already. Feeling this anxiousness. Feeling this anxiety. Feeling this anxiousness. About ___ . About ____ . And just using the tender spots here. Whatever wording you want to bring in here. Then we’re just going to go to the bra strapline / nipple line. Feeling this anxiousness. All of this anxiety that’s held in my system. All of this anxiety that I’m holding on to. Choosing to release this anxiety. Feeling this anxiety about ____ . Choosing to release this anxiety. Feeling this anxiety about _____ . All of this anxiety that I’m holding in my system. Releasing this anxiety. Choosing to release this anxiety. Feeling this anxiety in my system about ___ . And taking a deep breath in and taking a sip of water, if you have water beside you as well. And making sure when you do this in general practice, that you have a sip of water as well.

If the anxiety is still there and it’s above zero, we’re going to just keep doing rounds of tapping. And then we keep working in this way. We do a few rounds of tapping until we feel that the negative charge has dissipated. That the negative charge has released. Whatever situation, whatever it is that we’re working on.

You can also do this with pain in the body, with discomfort, with tension in the body as well. If you don’t know exactly what it’s related to and you don’t know if there’s an emotion there, you can’t name the emotion. You can just tap on the feeling of the intensity of the pain or the discomfort or whatever it is in your body as well. And it will help to release the charge of that discomfort for you as well.

It’s great to do this on a daily basis. There’s an exercise in part 6 of your workbook. If you’d like to go to part 6 next and just to look at the exercise that you have there, which is to write 10 things down that you can think of that are recent, or in the past of a mixture. Where you feel that you have a negative charge held towards these. And then work on each one, one at a time. And maybe not all in one day. Pick one. And then maybe wait a couple of days and pick another one if they’re big things. If they’re smaller things maybe do them one day after the other.

You can work through the different difficulties and challenges in your life, by using this. And just watch the magic of it. The proof of this is in the results, in the sense that you can you can start off with feeling that you have a really intense charge within your system to do with a negative emotion or a negative situation and that dissipates, that releases as you do these simple rounds of tapping.

An absolutely amazing and fantastic tool to have in your toolkit to support you with your emotional well-being, your mental well-being and your physical well-being as well.

In part six we’ve looked at a few different things within emotional freedom technique which is also called tapping. We looked at how tapping, or emotional freedom technique (EFT) can calm the brains amygdala. Can calm the fight, flight, freeze, flop response. Can calm the stress response down in our systems. We also looked at how tapping can release negative emotional charges in our systems to do with anything in life, any incident, any challenge, any issue that we’ve had. We looked at how EFT is a really easy tool to use to self-administer with ourselves we can use it anywhere, anytime.