I recently received a newsletter from my friend & fellow EFTer Paul Zelizer in which he talked about the great value of supportive relationships. Paul is great at creating connections through social media, etc. As Paul was working on his new website, he already had a web of professional connections so that all the support, skills and help he needed just flowed. This rang a bell for me because of something that we just went through in our family. While my husband and I were still on vacation, our 22-year-old daughter had a car accident. Thank goodness, both she and the other driver were uninjured. But we weren’t there to help her, and it was amazing to see the web of connection that smoothed the way. The mechanic we’ve worked with for years arranged for the towing, etc., “Don’t worry about a thing, I’ll take care of it all.” The insurance we’ve had for years took our daughter under their wing and helped with all the paperwork and a rental car. When it was clear that the car was totaled and a new (used) car had to be found, our mechanic found one for us that day — and my husband knew the owner! Another professional connection. The owner was so supportive — “This happened to my daughter too!” — and even gave us a good deal! Within just a few days, everything was done and all was well.

I’ve thought a lot about how valuable those professional relationships were at that moment. People we’ve done business with for years were really there for us. There was a web of connection and support already in place. It’s the relationships and trust that we build over time that make all the difference.

By the way, Paul’s newsletters are always thoughtful and I get a lot out of them. Find out more at www.paulzelizer.com. I appreciate Paul’s integrity and authenticity and value his work. He has helped me quite a lot with my own business.

formerly published in the Rising Sun EFT Newsletter, July 2009

This personal EFT story of mine is a good example of 1) an inner theater session showing the value of the visual approach and 2) a sensitive inner child session showing that even a baby has the full range of human emotion. What I love the most about this session is the amazing healing image that comes at the end. My subconscious did something my conscious mind never could have figured out, and it completely transformed the issue.

Some weeks ago, I shared that I’ve had issues with sleep most of my life and that EFT had not seemed to touch this. I had started using Jade Barbee’s EFT 3 process before bed and finally something was making a difference. (Jade’s free EFT 3 e-book is available at www.emotionalengine.com -in downloads). I’ve had an intuition for a long time that my sleep difficulties are rooted in infancy. During my first 9 months of life, I had severe colic and cried a great deal, was in pain every time I was fed, and never slept long stretches. So I was tapping for the “baby in pain” with the EFT 3 process — and this was improving my sleep. A clue!

So then I did a full session on this issue, with Jade’s guidance. I wanted to go into the Inner Theater (visual approach) and so I began by imagining my healing place. For me, this is a place in the woods with a pond, some deer and a blue heron. When asked to get in touch with the problem, I found, under the roots of a tree, a treasure chest that held this whole issue. I felt like there was an immense amount of sadness in that chest, so I saw myself holding the chest as we tapped for “this sadness.” I began to get flashes of my mother holding a crying baby and she was crying too. I started to feel my mother’s sadness that, despite her best efforts, she couldn’t relieve this baby’s pain. Many tears as I tuned into her feelings of inadequacy:

“Even though she feels like it must be her fault… she’s not a good enough mother… it’s time to bring some healing to this.”

“this sadness… feeling inadequate… thinking it’s her fault… ”

I’ve heard stories about how my parents held and “bounced” me so much in a certain kitchen chair that they wore out a place on the kitchen floor! In the session, I was overwhelmed with the realization of how hard it all was for them. Hours of rocking and bouncing this crying baby. But they did that rather than leaving her to cry alone. I was moved with how much they had really showed up for me.

“Even though nothing seems to work… and the baby is still crying… it’s not your fault!… you’re doing an amazing job… you’re not leaving her alone… ”

“it’s not your fault… you’re doing an amazing job…”

I felt like I needed to go back in time and give my parents a medal! My baby self too. No one had slept much those first 9 months — it was hard for us all.

As I tuned in to the baby self, I had much emotion come up. I felt like the baby had tried desperately to help her mother feel better. She wanted to be a good baby and make it easier for her mother… but the crying kept getting in the way. Lots of tears and lots of tapping.

“Even though I really want to be a good baby… but the crying is in the way… I hate this crying! but I can’t make it stop… it’s time for healing now…”

I felt a lot of sadness for how much we had both felt like failures and how this had hurt the mother-baby bond.

By now, I was really in touch with the scene from the past and that damn crying that just wouldn’t stop! I said, “I need to get the crying out of the picture. That’s what’s in the way.”

Jade guided me then to give it form, give it an image, as we do in inner theater work. I felt the crying energy swoop over to the side of the scene and become birds, loud squawking birds, a whole flock of them in a tree, deafening. Then as this took further shape, I realized that the birds were all baby birds, a hundred of them in a big nest, with their mouths open, screaming for food. We kept tapping for the image:

“all these baby birds… needing to be fed… open mouths, screaming, squawking…”

Suddenly, I saw all the mother and father birds arriving and they did what many birds do to feed their babies — they brought up partially digested food from their crop. (I have a strong image of this in my mind because I have a lovebird who feeds my fingernails this way!– the fingernails are like baby bird beaks for him and trigger that instinctive response. It’s very sweet.)

This was amazing! Perfectly digestible food had so been what was needed. We tapped:

“Even though the baby birds were crying… now they’re getting perfectly digestible food… that will never make their tummies hurt… they can be fed and it won’t hurt…”

I saw the baby birds all calming down and settling into sleep. All those little round heads nestled together. Suddenly they seemed like the cells of my body, and I knew that this healing was reaching the cellular level.

“Even though nothing worked back then… now there is perfectly digestible food… hunger satisfied, no pain, back to sleep… all the cells of my body receiving this nourishment…”

I was feeling amazing. All the sadness was gone and I felt a tingling all through my body, great relief, as if a huge burden had lifted.

In the inner theater, I then went into the scene to give medals all around! Mother, father and baby all got medals for doing such a good job under such challenging circumstances. In a celebratory mood, I imagined us opening some champagne… and baby even got a sip! As I said, “her system is so healed now, she can digest anything!”

The result of that session has been — sleep! A truly vast improvement in my sleep. I can hardly believe it. When I wake up in the wee hours, I can usually just picture the baby birds getting fed and settling back down… and before I know it, I’m back asleep. This is truly amazing since in the past it could take me hours to get back to sleep and often the 4 am awakening was the end of the night’s sleep for me. I am now getting 7 and 8 hours of sleep on a regular basis for the first time in decades. It feels great!

I’d like to thank Jade Barbee for that amazing session. We’ve developed this Inner Theater work as a collaboration, learning from our session trades. But this time I was totally on the receiving end for life-changing benefits. Being listened to so deeply and guided so sensitively is healing in itself. And my subconscious was given the opportunity to create a profound healing resolution I never could have achieved consciously. I can feel that this is real, deep, and cellular-level. Something has shifted profoundly, as if past and present have healed in a way that allows my system to truly find rest.

I recommend Jade’s phone sessions to anyone who truly wants transformational healing.

Sweet dreams to all!

originally published in the Rising Sun EFT Group newsletter, 5-31-09

I’m a big fan of using creative language with EFT. My colleague and good friend Jade Barbee has put together a free e-book called EFT-3, and I think it is inspired. He presents EFT as a three-part process of 1) Acknowledge (Set-Up part one) 2) Accept (Set-Up part two) and 3) Allow (Sequence – tapping for “this ___feeling”). What I love about the EFT-3 e-book is that each of these has a full page of suggested tapping phrases — as you fill in the blanks for your issue, the language becomes very powerful.

A PERSONAL STORY – USING EFT 3 FOR MY SLEEP ISSUE

I’ve had problems with sleep all my life. And, yes, I’ve done tons of EFT on this, but that has been a frustrating experience. It is the one thing that, in the past, EFT wouldn’t touch for me. Even working with other practitioners, I never got any permanent improvement with this issue.

Because I often wake up around 4-5 am, around my birth time, I’ve wondered if the sleep disturbances are connected with my birth and possibly my first 8 months of life, during which I had a lot of colic and did not sleep well as a baby (poor parents). I happened to talk with my father recently about this and he told me about rocking and bouncing this little “baby in pain.” As he said, the colic must have been severely painful, like the worst gas pains. It’s so sad to think about, a little baby in pain and nothing that seemed to help (hmmm, sounds like me and sleep!)

So this was on my mind when I started experimenting with Jade Barbee’s EFT-3. I decided to go through the process before bed, tapping for “can’t sleep” and “this baby in pain.” Here are some of the sequences based on Jade’s e-book:

1) Acknowledge

Even though this feeling of “can’t sleep” makes me see “this baby in pain” and reminds me of “those difficult beginnings” and makes me feel “sad”…

Even though I carry this feeling of “can’t sleep” in “my belly”…

2) Accept

I want to make peace with where I am and who I am right now. This is how a part of me feels and I honor this part of me.

I want to transform this “baby in pain feeling” into deep trust and confidence and inner peace.

3) Allow – This ___ Feeling (tapping the points)

This “can’t sleep” feeling….

This “baby in pain” scene in front of me…

I want to fully express this and release this; it’s been exhausting.

All this old feeling of “can’t sleep” which reminds me of “the baby in pain”… that was then and this is now! I can release that old strategy!

There’s a wise part of me that knows… “I survived… I can sleep now, free of pain.”

The phrases above are just a sample, there is much more. I tapped through each page, adapting all of Jade’s language to my issue. One time through the three pages of EFT-3 before bed. And I had an amazingly good night! I did wake up, but I easily went back to sleep.

In the past week, the nights I’ve used EFT-3 before bed have all been nights of good sleep — amazing. One night I slept through, unheard of for me. Several nights, I didn’t do the process and they weren’t as good. So I’m going to make this my routine. What a godsend.

I’m wondering why this process is serving me better than directly working on the issue, which of course I have done (including sessions on the baby core issue.) It’s possible that this wonderful and comprehensive language is reaching the subconscious in a way that is deeply soothing. Tapping through all these phrases may be snagging some things on deep levels and bringing in those reassuring messages in ways that nothing else has. It’s been a fascinating experiment and truly gratifying to get results on such a tough and persistent problem.

I recommend that you pick up a copy of EFT-3 and print out the 8 pages. Especially keep the 3-page process nearby. There’s some great language to glean here for working with clients or yourself. And try the whole thing as a process on some issue. In ways the conscious mind doesn’t have to understand, this may reach deep aspects and roots and bring in healing and shift things powerfully .

Jade is offering this great resource for free. You’ll find the free EFT-3 e-book here:

www.emotionalengine.com

Thank you, Jade, for this great contribution to the tapping world.

On our recent trip to Tucson, Arizona to visit our daughter, my husband bought me a beautiful little wall hanging. It has a picture of the extraordinary Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and the words, “The soul thinks in images.”

I love this idea. It has been my experience that whenever we can allow ourselves to think in images, we are indeed closer to the soul level, or the deeper wise mind. One image can embody so much, and when our own images transform and change, things really shift within us.

The Inner Theater work with EFT that I’ve been developing with my friend and colleague Jade Barbee is exciting precisely because it brings EFT into that realm of imagery and inner life. I’ve been amazed at how easy it actually is to go there in an EFT session. And once you’re there, things unfold.

I was working with a woman who is seeking to follow her dreams, make some changes and move in a new direction that would be more authentic for her. But she has felt very blocked. We had talked about the situation and had done a little tapping when she suddenly told me that she was going to have to leave the session much earlier than planned. We only had 18 minutes left! I asked her if she would be willing to close her eyes and do some work through the imagination so that we could get the most out of the little time we had. I guided her into an inner healing room, a “room of possibilities,” we called it. Just being there brought tears.

Tapping: Even though there’s a lot of emotion about this, I can be with my feelings and just let them flow… even though this brings up deep emotion… it’s okay to feel this…

She didn’t know what the emotion was about. She said the room was still empty. I suggested that something might appear in the room, images, an object or symbol, something that was connected with those feelings.

Tapping: Even though nothing’s here yet, I’m open to seeing whatever I need to see…

Confused images came… .. then there was a tree… then her grandfather’s face… “Any feelings?”….. “Yes… missing them.” So we tapped for “this tree… my grandfather’s face… missing them” and as we tapped, other images from childhood arose, the places, the people… and feelings. I tapped to acknowledge the importance of what was arising, based on what I knew about her. This is someone who grew up in another country, a different culture and language, but had left that behind. “Even though I’ve moved on… my past is deep within me… these places, these people… my roots… missing them…”

I wondered out loud if this was connected with her desired new direction. I wondered if the child that she had been might hold the keys to her authenticity. She liked those thoughts, so I just tapped the points, “This deeper level of who I am … rooted in the past… who I was… that girl in that country… that culture… connecting with this part of me… ” This brought a wave of deep emotion and tears, which we tapped for.

Even though there’s so much deep feeling here, that’s okay… I can feel this now…

We had to end, but something so significant had happened. She felt like a channel into her deeper self had opened. She acknowledged that she had walked away from that past and had left it behind. But to be whole and authentic and move forward into more wholeness, she needed to reclaim that part of herself. Whatever that would mean. And she was open to that possibiiity.

Wow. I’d begun recording only when she’d found her healing room and gotten established there. I noticed that the actual work in the healing room had only been 12 minutes! And yet she had had a profound healing breakthrough.

I keep thinking about the tree and wondering if it was symbolic of those deep roots in her, as well as being a real tree. This is the power of imagery. An image can have many layers of meaning. I also think this story illustrates the new language that is emerging. It’s a language of allowing. “Even though….. I can be with this… that’s how I feel… I can let these feelings flow, etc.” This is now coming into all my sessions, language which helps us stay right in the moment, acknowledging and supporting in such a gentle way whatever is unfolding.
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For a free teleclass about Inner Theater and EFT and more resources, visit
www.creativeeft.com/Inner_Theater_Resource_Page.php