My appreciation for the gift of EFT is enormous. I've been using it in my practice for about 4 years mostly over the phone and on myself, and I've yet to see a condition that it cannot relieve.
While relief of pain and suffering and even major increases in peace and happiness are pretty much a given, I notice that many clients including myself seem to have an almost bottomless number of issues and an infinite number of ways to make themselves miserable --- no matter how many core issues are dealt with over how many lifetimes using all my EFT and NLP skills and everything else I know.
Many of us are deeply attached if not addicted to our story and while we don't want to hurt that much and are willing to tap for the painful bits we don't know how to give up the story.
More and more I notice it's not what was done to me that creates the distortions but what I did to them and myself. Even if they did 99% to me it's the 1% I did that is so often the key to real healing.
There's treating the symptom, curing the condition, and healing the person. All three can be done.
Byron Katie's inquiry process TheWork.com is a nice gift. It is really just four questions and some turnarounds. I have found the simplest methods are usually the most powerful - very workable as long as you don't just do it as a "head" thing but take the questions inside and let the answers find you. It lends itself nicely to EFT as you can do both processes at the same time.
The Work
Take any painful incident/table leg/major tree in the forest and after cleaning out all the emotional aspects, beliefs, spiritual attachments, sins etc., ask:
What was the lie that you became attached to at that time?
Muscle testing can show that there is always one if not more of these. Be specific and get the essence of the lie. Put it up against the four questions and the turnarounds and the context will shift to a much deeper level:
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it's true?
How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
Who would you be without the thought?
Turn it around, then find at least three genuine, specific examples of how the turnaround is true in your life.
Some examples that I've found:
He should have respected me.
I'm not getting what I need from them.
I need my partner to have fun so I don't feel guilty.
I have to modify and be what others want me to be.
I don't love you.
I have to sacrifice myself for others cause they can't do it themselves.
I want revenge on them till they tell the truth.
People should tell the truth.
I need to hide from God now.
There's an infinite number of these. This is our religion and story and can become our identity. Our perceptions feed us back the distorted projections that prove these concepts to be true until we wake up and question them. Explains why people usually grow so slowly in consciousness. An endless feedback loop.
It helps to be specific I find in the languaging of the concepts. Get the essence not just the appearance.
After exploring the truth of the statements with the four questions and what they've done to your life through believing and living them, the turnarounds open up a rich vein:
'I'm not getting what I need from them' could turn around to 'They're not getting what they need from me' or 'I'm not getting what I need from me so I'll get it from them.'
Finding genuine, specific examples of where that's true will give you more stuff to tap on and release a lot of guilt.
On the side of the hand (KarateChop): Even though I closed my heart and was cold and withdrawn to _____________ when they ___________ (use specifics), I deeply and completely accept myself. Then do a round or two on the standard points.
Side of the hand (Karate Chop): Even though I told myself I didn't deserve _____________ (be specific) but they should give it to me anyway, I deeply and completely accept myself. Do as many rounds as needed.
These can look like NLP reframes at first, but they're actually quite different: "People should tell the truth" can go to "People shouldn't tell the truth." We know that turnaround is true on this planet because they don't... not until they do. So let me stop fighting with reality and live the turnaround, "I should tell the truth," then I can stop needing and demanding it from them. And then there's peace. And someone living and teaching it by what they have become.
Side of the hand (Karate Chop): Even though I've been believing that people should tell the truth at all times despite their conditioning and fears, I can now begin to understand and forgive them for being human.
Even though I've been labouring under the delusion that this is a celestial realm without any challenges and learning opportunities, I can now begin to make friends with reality.
Even though they should tell the truth, it's perfectly OK for me to tell the odd fib and I have all the justifications to prove it...
As I'm in a hurry to be free I've grown impatient with endless tapping on the current bother. The Personal Peace Procedure gave me great relief and left me wanting to go deeper. To go deeper, a clearly defined context that contains dysfuntionality, and the willingness to address it seems to be needed.
One useful strategy I've been working with is to muscle test the level of energy in each chakra and whether it is reversed. Then take the issues that calibrate low and test for specific incidents involving that chakra. You can find when, where, who, what with muscle testing to tune in to it and collapse the distortions with EFT and inquiry.
I've noticed that the really significant and distorting incidents are mostly out of awareness and unconscious. Hardly surprising. I don't know any other way to locate them except with muscle testing.
Some other examples of clearly defined contexts: Joie de vivre [joy of living] elan vital, the inner child, adult, or parent. Or what is the level of consciousness in relation to sexuality, money and resources, work.
Any arena of life that is distressed can be addressed as long as I am to some degree separate from and thus conscious of the distress.
A caveat is that if you haven't cleared it in yourself you won't be able to clear it in another. You won't even see it and it will muscle test as being not applicable. Clearing it in yourself involves first becoming conscious that there even is an issue.Then your intention can begin to collapse the wave function of that potentiality to an actuality that you can then come to grips with in yourself and another.
Consciousness has it's intrinsic integrity.
Manfred Luck
Australia
www.radicaltruth.com.au
Originally published on March 29, 2011.
Jane Forrest says
This has been most helpful to me. I am working with a client who moans repeatedly about someone not recognising all she did for them. It goes round in circles but always ends up with her not been recognised for everything she did for them. She is obsessed with the person, and now I’ve read this, I realise that I may have been holding something similar too because I can’t help her to clear hers. Brilliant. Will clear NOW.
Many thanks.
Jane