Archive for the ‘EFT’ Category

Where have all the toys gone…

Have you ever thought of tapping for the toys you lost, the toys that were taken away from you, or the toys you never got when you were a child?
The beloved teddy bear you forgot in a train, the doll house that was given away because you were “too old”, the dazzling red fire truck you never found under the Christmas tree…

As grown-ups, we tend to take these things not too seriously, but the little girl(boy) inside of us could still be deeply hurt.

So do remember, and tap on the feelings of loss, grief, anger, sadness, or whatever is coming up. The time for healing this is now.

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How to overcome a barrier

Make yourself comfortable. Close your eyes and go into deep relaxation.

When you are ready, imagine a golden castle somewhere in the distance. This dazzling, glowing building is your vision, your goal, or your heartfelt wish, and just looking at it fills you with serenity and anticipation. Now start walking towards this castle - it is your burning desire to reach and enter it as soon as possible.

But there is a barrier, an obstacle.
What does it look like? Is it a wall, a fence, or something else? You may not see anything but suddenly feel an invisible resistance, like
an energy field or an electronic grid.

When you have identified the obstacle, start working with it in a symbolic way. For example; if it is a wall, imagine getting a piece of heavy equipment in to tear the wall down. If it is a field of energy, try to pierce it with a word, a song, or some electronic device that switches it off. Do what comes to mind, however weird it might seem.

In addition, you can tap (do EFT) on the obstacle itself, your emotions about it, and the body sensations that are coming up.

Work with this until you get the distinct feeling that you have overcome the obstruction.

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Let me ask you this…

If your mother were a tree, what kind of tree would it be? In what condition?

If your father were a tree, what kind of tree would it be? In what condition?

In case something unsettling comes up, you can tap on the images and emotions, or you can engage your imagination directly and do whatever you feel needs to be done.

Oh, by the way, what kind of tree are you?

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How to rewrite heirloom stories

Every culture has its ghastly stories, tales, nursery rhymes, etc that get mindlessly handed down through the generations. Imagine the negative imotional impact!

In Germany, it’s the old children’s book “Struwwelpeter”(Shaggy Peter) that is jammed with cruel stories demonstrating what happens to children who don’t obey.

In the English culture, I have problems with this:

Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.

I heard that song for the first time when I came to the US in the early nineties, and it always disturbed me greatly. The carelessness of the parents!

So I changed the story: The mother put the cradle up in the tree (on a low branch) to protect the child from animals. The baby feels great up there, swaying in a gentle breeze, looking up into the blue sky. At the first stronger blow of the wind, the mother takes the cradle with the baby inside a house, rocks it in her arms and feeds it. The father comes in, and they look with great joy and pride at the baby. The baby feels safe, loved, and cared for.

Then I tested my emotional reaction to the song, and it was only mildly disgusted, not personal anymore. I still don’t like the song, so I rewrote the last two lines:

When the wind goes too strong,
Mother will come, get baby and all.

Of course, you can plug EFT into this process. If you do, ask yourself:
Why are my negative feelings so strong about this particular story?
What is the most intense part of the story? Why?
What does it remind me of?
Is this a pattern I encountered in my childhood?
What specific memories are coming up?
And off you go…

So, what’s your story?

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What to do with fear

During the journey in a physical body, everybody will encounter fear. It is a basic human experience and nobody can skip this part. Interesting “stuff” might distract us from acknowledging it for a long time, but as soon as we enter the woods, there it is. Jumping in our face, or sneaking up on us from behind – whatever does the trick.

What can we do about it?

One piece of advice we inevitably receive, especially in clever books, goes something like this: Fear is no good, so don´t feel it (end of advice).
Unfortunately this doesn´t help a bit. Even if we agree wholeheartedly with the reasons for skipping fear - and they are very, very good – it won´t keep us from experiencing such a primal emotion. As evolution’s time-honored power tool in the battle for survival, fear overrides our will anytime.

A more valuable response to this question is: face it. This works well with a real, concrete fear that can be dealt with by doing something. For example: mounting a horse again after a fall, speaking in public, or confronting a bully. We know what to do, although it might take a long time to muster the courage to act on that knowledge.
By the way, the heroes we admire so much for their courage in life-threatening situations, like rescue workers, tell us: Don’t wait until your fear is gone, because you might hang around until it is too late. Do what you have to do in spite of your fear, with your fear. Or, to take it even one step further: Use your fear as fuel for your actions.

But what about fear that cannot be defined as a single problem or challenge, the kind of fear that overwhelms us repeatedly, a life-sapping anxiety that cannot be mastered in a single, brave action? What about the fear of illness, of abandonment, of poverty, of failure, or of death?

The first option is to use EFT to get to the roots, to follow the trail backwards to the specific circumstances that frightened us to death when we were children. This is very effective, and I do it all the time on myself and with clients.

However, I came to appreciate another approach that can be used in addition to tapping:

Fear is situated in our emotional body, it resides in our low heart. It usually comes in waves, wearing us down one wave at a time. If we stay on this level, we most likely will not win. The solution is to remember: to remember that we are more than our physical and our emotional body, that we are Soul, that our essence is eternal.
As Soul we have other options than being the victim of our fears.

We can go places.

So, every time a wave of fear is trying to wash over you, go somewhere by shifting your attention to something else. It may be something quite trivial, but over time, you establish a trigger that will work quite well. For example: Every time you sense fear or anxiety creeping up, think immediately of your beloved pet, a serene landscape, an uplifting song, something like that. Do this over and over again, until the shifting becomes an automatic response.

One possibility is to shift to your heart.
Your high heart,
your true heart,
your spiritual heart.
This is the place where you no longer identify entirely with your fear because you, as Soul, can be the detached witness to the volatile emotions of your lower self. Do this over and over again until the shifting becomes an automatic response.

That is spirituality in action.

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