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