So many people suffer from pain, either acute or chronic.
When they go to doctors for help, they are given pain medications, which ease the pain for a little while, but the medications are not a cure; they don't get at the cause.
I bet many of you know how much it affects your life, your work and your relationships when you're in pain-you're focusing on the pain and it's hard to focus on anything else.
EFT-Emotional Freedom Techniques I'm a psychotherapist specializing in PTSD and trauma, and I'd always thought the methods I was using were very effective.
When I heard about EFT about four years ago (it's been around for way longer than that), it sounded pretty strange and like another one of those "new agey" things.
Then I bought one of the founder, Gary Craig's, DVD's and I was blown away.
I went through his whole training and started trying it with clients.
I was amazed at how quickly people's trauma was relieved.
And, as a side-effect, often, their physical pain was relieved, too.
EFT is Effective With Physical Pain It turns out that physical pain is one of the things-along with phobias, anxieties of all kinds, PTSD and trauma, weight issues, and addictions-that EFT is very effective with.
The main idea behind EFT is that, whenever something happens that our bodies or minds are stressed by, our energy system is zapped just like a TV when you stick a screwdriver into its works.
Static results.
Static in us results in "negative emotions" and/or physical pain, or any of the things mentioned above.
We use EFT Tapping to balance out the energy system and ease emotional pain or physical pain, whichever appears.
How it works is that I ask the client questions to get attheir experience and then I lead them through literally tapping on a number of energy meridian points-some of the same points that acupuncturists put needles into.
But EFT Tapping is painless! At the same time as we're tapping, we focus verbally on the issue that we're working on.
Case Study: EFT Helped With Physical Pain I had a client a while ago, whom I'll call Agatha (biographical and other details changed to protect her anonymity), who had been in a car accident.
She'd been driving along in the dark and hit a deer.
Her car was seriously damaged.
The car airbag had hit her in the face and she was initially in shock.
She had been suffering from symptoms of whiplash: chronic pain in her neck, back and shoulder blade.
Getting At Emotional Pain withEFTHeals Physical Pain Often, the emotional after-effects of an accident can impair healing physical pain.
Assuming that, I asked Agatha to say what the worst part of the accident was for her.
The first thing she said is that she was angry at herself for driving at night.
As she mentioned this, the pain in her neck increased.
It felt achy and burning and tight.
We did a round of EFT Tapping, focusing on her feeling of anger, and it immediately eased somewhat.
Working on the Accident Re-creates Body and Emotional Symptoms When we're in an accident, our body automatically tries to go into movements that would protect us-defensive movements.
But they are interrupted because everything happens so fast.
So the movements that would happen if there was time, are blocked in mid-action.
That's what creates the pain-we're stuck, and we stay stuck.
This happens with emotions, too-they go by so quickly we don't have a chance to notice them.
But with EFT Tapping, we slow down the process.
When we focus on various parts of the accident that still create an emotional charge, we're allowing the defensive movements and emotions to complete.
EFT Tapping on Shock We tapped on tensing up from the shock of impact, when Agatha's neck and back got whipped around.
Immediately, the pulling in her back and pain in her shoulder blade increased, and, with EFT Tapping, again eased somewhat.
But there was still pain left.
EFT Tapping on the Deer After this came the feeling of guilt that she had killed the deer.
And then sadness at its death.
With only a couple of rounds of EFT, the sadness dissipated and the pain in her neck was way better.
Her shoulder was still somewhat tight, though better.
Expectation of Pain Agatha realized she expected to hurt everyday.
She didn't believe she could get better.
Her right shoulder was still tight.
We did another round of EFT Tapping on this expectation of chronic pain, and it suddenly let go.
At the end of the session, she was entirely pain free!