For Practitioners

The Origins of Issues

8th June 2018 by Christine Sutton

Phoenix Notes 2:

In the early days of EFT there was very little knowledge about how it worked. All that Gary Craig and other practitioners had was empirical evidence which supported the fact that EFT really did work and could help people struggling with an extremely wide range of issues.

Thankfully there is now ample evidence from credible scientific studies which supports the fact that EFT can be extremely effective if applied correctly and consistently. It is this growing body of scientific research that will take EFT closer to mainstream acceptance. Some of the research deals with the possible ways that EFT might interact with the emotional processing and cognitive centres of the brain, with physical systems of the body and even with the expression of DNA/RNA. It is great to have this evidence and these ideas under development but it does not fundamentally change the EFT process or what EFT practitioners actually “do”.

Gary Craig`s Foundation or Discovery statement about EFT was:
“The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body`s energy system”.

Many people have a problem with the concept of the existence of “the body`s energy system” and that has been one of the major sources of scepticism about EFT and indeed all of the energy based modalities. However, from a practical point of view the statement has validity.

We can represent the origin and development of most, if not all, issues in this spectrum:

Most people now accept that unresolved traumatic events can be at the root of mental-emotional issues and that the manifestation of those issues is often delayed in time.

Most people now accept that mental-emotional conflicts, held long enough and not resolved, can eventually generate changes in the function of the cells, organs and systems of the physical body.

That just leaves the step labelled “disruption of normal energy flow”. This is the theoretical bridge between the traumatic event(s) and the mental-emotional manifestation. It is interesting that some of the research studies show that EFT (using tapping on meridian points as well as verbal processing) is more effective and the effects are longer lasting than techniques which do not work with the energy system.

In EFT practice we are always working somewhere along the spectrum.

Physical symptoms can often provide easy entry points which lead to access to the emotional-mental levels of an issue.
Sometimes the current emotional-mental state is an obvious entry point.
Sometimes the client already knows what the trauma is and is ready to work with it so we can begin there.

By tapping and asking the right questions practitioners can help the client to move along the spectrum in either direction and come up with something that is relevant. If we tap on enough relevant “somethings” (aspects) the problem will begin to unravel and resolve, often more easily than the client expected.

Whether you believe in it or not, whatever that “energy system” is, working with it intentionally seems to make a huge difference to how a person feels!
Don’t let the sceptics distract you!
Happy Tapping!

References:
Research Papers: https://eftinternational.org/discover-eft-tapping/eft-science-research/

A Clean Channel for Reiki Practice

8th June 2018 by Christine Sutton

Phoenix Notes 1

The aim of giving Reiki to self or to other people is to act as a channel for the Universal Energy (the Rei-Ki).

To give Reiki effectively that channel has to be “clean”– the practitioner`s thoughts, emotions and ego-based intentions need to be kept out of the experience as far as possible so that energy can flow freely from the higher levels of being (Higher Self level), like water flowing freely through a hosepipe.

If the practitioner`s channel is cluttered by a jumble of mental and emotional clutter it is as if a “kink” has been put into the hosepipe. It is no accident that the initials of “Mental” and “Emotional” are “ME”, i.e. all ego based concerns.

If the channel is “kinked” by the presence of mental-emotional clutter then the energy channelled will be restricted in both frequency and strength. The practitioner will not receive as much energy as it flows through them to the client. The quality of their experience will be reduced and they will not receive the normal “recharge” of self that happens when channelling for other people.

The person receiving the Reiki may be aware of the reduced flow and quality of the energy received, but they will still take what they need – it is not a conscious choice. With the practitioner no longer connecting with unlimited energy it is as if they have been unplugged from mains electric. However they still transmit whatever is required by the recipient so there is potential for the practitioner to begin to transmit their own essential reserve of energy. It is as if they are now running on batteries. If this continues the result will be an energy drain for the practitioner – they will feel tired and depleted by the end of the session rather than energised and peaceful.

The solution is clear – take time to identify and clear whatever mental-emotional clutter is impeding the energetic flow. This can be done immediately before beginning a Reiki session as part of the normal preparation for channelling (Hatsurei-Ho) as well as ongoing longer term self-work with Reiki to clear any issues that may be present.

That is why the key to good Reiki practice is continuing self-work. At Level 1 of training it is the major focus so that the Reiki can come cleanly through the practitioner and not be drawn from them. This sets a really good foundation for the higher levels of practice which come later….

How was your EFT Session Today?

6th February 2018 by Philip Davis

It is interesting that in a typical working week, working with several clients, old and new, an EFT practitioner will see a range of reactions.

Some clients may be delighted with the session they experience and feel refreshed, rejuvenated and ready to take action on their issues. This is great, everyone feels good!

Some clients may feel fairly neutral about their session – “it was ok, but nothing spectacular”. Not quite so good on either side!

Some clients may feel disappointed by the session and doubtful whether they are on the right path. Definitely not a great feeling for anyone!

You, the therapist, are hopefully the same, delivering work with the same skill set to the same standard in all cases. So where does the difference in effect come from?

Is it my fault?

If the session has not gone well it might be easy to blame yourself, as the facilitator, and assume that you did something wrong. This might then affect your performance with other clients if you are doubting and second guessing yourself.

If you recognise this feeling in yourself then remember to do your own work and clear those feelings. “Get yourself out of the Way” and “Be unattached to the outcome” may be clichés but they also happen to be true.

Is it their fault?

It might also be easy to blame the client and say “they were having a bad day” or “they just were not in the right headspace today” or even “they are sabotaging themselves”.
This then might affect your perception of that client and how you work with them again.

The assumption, if you are allocating blame to anyone, is that something was “wrong” with the session. What if nothing was wrong with the session?
If you have done your best to meet the client where they are on that day and have worked with whatever they brought to the session in good faith and using good technique then maybe whatever happened was perfect on that occasion?

The healing pathway is never a straight line upwards. In any therapeutic process there are likely to be times when progress is rapid and also sticking points where apparent progress slows or even stalls for a while, often as deeper levels of an issue begin to emerge.

As old patterns or events are re-membered (i.e. brought back into mind and physical reality) their attached belief systems, resistances and associated Writing from the Walls are also activated. Your client has entered a “Wobble”. This is typically an uncomfortable state in which emotions and physical symptoms tend to be in flux and may be volatile, but they are also very workable at this time.

In the “Wobble” state it might be easy to think that things are going backwards and there is no point continuing with the sessions. However, if a client understands that a wobble is a temporary state, just part of the healing process, and is supported and willing to work through it then resolution usually follows. Whatever has come up for attention has been released and a new, stable plateau is attained.

The stability will last a while, time variable, but eventually the next “wobble” will be experienced and hopefully worked through, leading to the next plateau and so on. I have found that long term clients respond very well to this concept and are able to relax into the EFT process better once they understand what is happening. It can also be reassuring for EFT practitioners to understand the stepwise progression their clients will experience and manage expectations accordingly.

Overall progress with long term, committed clients is upwards but that may not be obvious until the client is able to look back from a calm and stable plateau and evaluate and acknowledge what has changed.

Within a single session you and the client together may have done more than either of you can actually know!

So, how was your EFT session today?

Christine Sutton

Phoenix EFT Therapies and Training

06/12/17

Pain Management Article

30th December 2017 by Philip Davis

A Solid Approach to Pain Management

Article published on Gary Craig Website.

Hi Gary,

I am an EFT practitioner who has been practicing for some years here in England. I would like to tell your readers about a case where I removed someone's shoulder pain with EFT. This is not an outstanding case in the EFT greater scheme of things as I am sure that many of your readers achieve such results with great regularity.

However, it once again underlines the fact that you can get to all kind of dis-eases by attacking the emotional roots and also it shows that when you are using EFT on a physical issue such as pain, seeing how fast the 0-10 intensity drops when using EFT on the pain issue alone, gives you a clue as to the way to proceed.

The lady in question was attending one of our seminars and complained of a pain on her right shoulder blade. She had had the pain for 18 months, and said the 0-10 intensity for the pain was about an 8 or 9.

So we did the straight-forward "Basic Recipe" type setup tapping on the KC point and saying "Even though I have this pain in my right shoulder blade... etc." and then tapped saying "Shoulder pain" (Note: The shortcut tapping sequence was used throughout)

Pain went to a 7.

I asked her to give the pain a colour. She said it was a black pain. I also asked her to be more specific about where the pain was. She described it as being under her shoulder blade and towards the bottom.

So we tapped on "Even though I have this black pain underneath the bottom of my right shoulder blade... etc." and then tapped on "This black pain underneath the bottom of my right shoulder blade"

GC COMMENT: Note how Philip gets very specific with the wording. This is usually helpful, especially when the pain doesn't resolve very quickly with EFT.

PHILIP CONTINUES: Pain went to a 6 or maybe 6 and a half.

GC COMMENT: Even the "more specific try" didn't work in this case. This is a clue that there may be emotional drivers involved.

PHILIP CONTINUES: At this point, I saw that we were not going to remove this pain quickly. I was sure that with persistence, we could have done it, but I wanted to be more elegant than that. The fact that the pain was only reducing by one point on each round told me that this issue had to be tackled in a different way. In my experience, it is also a strong indicator that the emotional problems causing the pain were most likely near the surface.

So, I said to her "IF there was an emotional cause for this pain, what would it be?" She replied "I have no idea" So I said "I know you have no idea what the emotional cause might be for this pain, but if you DID know, what would it be?" (I love this way of turning things around, sometimes it can pay big dividends) But this time, she looked blank again and said "No idea"

GC COMMENT: As you will see below, Philip asks her to bring ANY event to mind. As you will see, this was quite effective. Another way to go about is to ask the client to make up a SPECIFIC EVENT. I have found this very effective. Incidentally, the made up memory is not altogether made up. It comes from within the person and thus typically has many useful elements within it. Sometimes the made up issue is better than a real one.

PHILIP CONTINUES: So I asked her to think of ANY emotional event in her life. (I find that when the client is tuned into a problem, the chances are that they will guess at the right one) She said "Sending my mother into a home"

At this point I saw that there were tears in her eyes. I guessed she was at a 9 or 10 on that issue. So I tapped her without saying anything FOR 3 or 4 rounds of the shortcut sequence, to reduce the distress. This worked well and she was ready to continue. So I did one of Gary's Long rambling setups. Space or my memory doesn't permit me to say everything here that I included but I introduced the idea that the guilt she was feeling had manifested as pain in her shoulder blade.

We then tapped on...

"Guilt over sending my mother in to a home"
"Guilt"
"Guilt in my shoulder blade"
"Mother guilt in my shoulder blade"

Her intensity level over the guilt went straight down to a zero. She said "Actually, she does quite enjoy it there." Which made everyone laugh.

Her pain in the shoulder blade also went down to a zero at the same time, and she has been pain free ever since - 6 weeks now!

As I say, its not an outstanding case in EFT terms, but it shows how with a little ingenuity and by allowing the client to direct you, you can achieve some wonderful results by attacking the emotional roots of physical problems.

Philip Davis

Height Phobia Article

30th December 2017 by Christine Sutton

A Height Phobia with an unusual cause.

A published Article by Christine Sutton.

Hi Gary,

This was an interesting case I dealt with recently where there was an unusual issue behind a height phobia. The use of freeform EFT with the rambling set-ups to identify the relevant issues and aspects made this fairly easy to collapse.

Kay (name changed) came to me for relief of a height phobia which was becoming very intrusive in her life as it was preventing her from flying, going into any high building or crossing bridges. She seemed very anxious and nervy about trying EFT and about life in general.

We did 2 preliminary rounds of basic EFT on feeling nervous about doing EFT which settled her and also introduced her to the procedure. Initial conversation showed that she had no conscious memory of a triggering event e.g. a fall or being stuck in a high place. This was not likely to be a simple phobia!

I asked how she felt if she thought about being in a high place such as the top of a tall building. She answered that she did not know, and when invited to guess at what her response might be she again said that she did not know i.e. did not want to go there at all. However, as she answered she shuddered and her hands started shaking so we did 2 or 3 rounds on "Even though I've got this jittery, shaky feeling just by talking about high places........" The 0-10 intensity moved down from 9-7.

This was some improvement but not much so I focused in and asked her for a specific time when she had felt like this before. She went straight to a memory of driving in Italy up a mountain road with a rock face on one side of the car and a sheer drop on the other. She had to keep going as she was the only driver present but was sweating and shivering as she drove and could only look straight ahead at the road. By the time she reached the hotel at the top she was so distressed that she fell over and could not get up without help. As she told the story her real time reaction increased to 10 - she really was shivering and shaking.

We tapped 4 rounds on different aspects - "this shivery shaking", "this hot and sweaty feeling", "this panic", "fear of that road". When asked for her intensity on each she said that perhaps it had gone down from 10-9. I felt she was humouring me - a clue in itself as it gave insight into her personality. Then she added spontaneously "I feel so ashamed of myself, acting like a silly child!" Another clue! We tapped for the shame aspect and reduced it to 0 in 2 rounds.

I asked her to tell me the story of the drive again and she went to an intensity of 8. Not much improvement, so I used a rambling type set-up, throwing in several phrases which were relevant. The one which caught her attention was "I feel so unsupported" and we then reduced this from 8-4 in 2 rounds. At last we were making progress!

I asked when else she had felt unsupported and she went straight to an incident when she had got into trouble at school and her mother had said that she must deal with it herself as she was a big girl now (she was 8). 10+ on this. We tapped on "My mother wouldn't help me..." then reframed to "perhaps she was busy that day, perhaps she wasn't very well but she still loved me" and reduced the intensity to 5.

I asked "Did she love you?" Kay answered "Oh yes! She put me on a pedestal!" The penny dropped for me then, and we tapped a long rambler including "Mom loved me so much she put me on a pedestal...it was very high and I was afraid of letting her down and falling off it....( Kay's eyes went very round and she said "Oh!" as the penny dropped for her too)...I accept and love myself and I forgive myself for trying to live up to impossible expectations all my life from Mom and everyone else including myself".

The intensity dropped to 0 within 3 rounds. As a test I asked her to recreate the drive up the mountain road in great detail in imagination - no reaction. I asked her to imagine stopping the car and getting out - no reaction. Then I asked her to imagine walking to the edge of the road to look over the drop. This pushed her back up to 5 which we tapped down until she could look and comment what a beautiful view it was.

I gave her a visualisation of an eagle flying in the clear air in front of her and asked "Do you want to be free like the eagle? " "Oh yes!" she said with some tears. So we did another rambler including the phrases "....clear air around me, no one expecting anything I can't give, I can breathe here, I choose to release all expectations and just be myself because I do so many things so well...I choose to forgive my mother for putting me up on that impossible pedestal....I choose to forgive myself for anything I have done to contribute to this....Now I choose to let all of this go forever...I choose to be free of fear... I choose to fly free like the eagle....." She has some tears and released some huge sighs as we processed different parts of all of this.

I tested her in imagination on as many aspects as possible and got no reaction except feelings of peace and joy.

As I write this Kay is on holiday in France and will be testing out her reactions on a real mountain road. I think she will be fine unless other new aspects arise.

Chris Sutton

Followup: Apparently, no new aspects arose because she drove up that real mountain road and was free of her previous problems. However, she has not tested air travel or being in high buildings. Perhaps other aspects will show up for EFT to handle.

Restless Leg Article

30th December 2017 by Philip Davis

Restless Leg Syndrome and EFT.

Article written by Philip Davis.

I was at a conference recently and at the end of the first day, a number of the delegates were at a local bar eating a meal, etc. One of the delegates, “C”, suddenly started rubbing her legs, and walking around stamping her feet, rather like she had cramp in her legs.

I asked what was wrong, and was surprised to hear that it was something called “Restless Leg Syndrome” (or RLS). I had never heard of this, so I asked her about it and she said it was a neurological thing that happens to people and there was no known cure for it. She (like many other sufferers of the problem) contracted it soon after giving birth to her son, 20 years ago.

Subsequently, I researched this on the Internet and found it was called Ekboms Syndrome. The symptoms of which are:

· A strong urge to move your legs which you may not be able to resist. The need to move is often accompanied by uncomfortable sensations. Some words used to describe these sensations include: creeping, itching, pulling, creepy-crawly, tugging or gnawing.
· Symptoms start or become worse when you are resting. The longer you are resting, the greater the chance the symptoms will occur and the more severe they are likely to be.
· Symptoms get better when you move your legs. The relief can be complete or only partial but generally starts very soon after starting an activity. Relief persists as long as the motor activity continues.
· Symptoms are worse in the evening especially when you are lying down. Activities that bother you at night do not bother you during the day.

“C” said that she was often kept awake by this problem, she couldn’t settle because all her leg muscles are going in and out of mild spasms. " It's horrible” she said. Sometimes she has to walk around her bedroom for hours. If she was tired, or if she had drunk any alcohol, it tended to make it a lot worse. But, she said “there is nothing that can be done, I just have to put up with it.”

The EFT practitioner inside me immediately rose to this “nothing can be done” challenge and so I suggested we might try some EFT on this. After some discussion about EFT, she was agreeable, and so we started tapping.

She estimated that the 0-10 intensity level was about an 8. So we tapped on…

“Even though I have these restless legs....” Then we tapped the shortcut sequence, including the Top of Head point saying “Restless Legs”

After, she said that maybe it had improved slightly, but they were still jittery. So, we tapped on “Even though I have jittery legs I deeply and completely love and accept myself and I choose to let my legs stay calm and relaxed.” Again she said that it was improved, but not gone.

I asked her about the causes of the problem, and she said that she had read it was a probably a bad connection in the brain, a short-circuit or something like that. Ok, I thought…. If it’s a problem in the brain, maybe a bit of Brain Balancing in the form of the 9 Gamut sequence will help? So we did the 9 Gamut sequence just once through.

The problem immediately disappeared. The intensity went to ZERO. “C” was amazed. She kept on looking at her legs, fully expecting it to return. But it never did that whole evening much to her delight.

There was also no recurrence that night or over the next few days, even though there were times when she would have expected it to happen (when she was tired late at night, for example).

I don’t use the 9 Gamut sequence a lot in my work as a practitioner, usually. It is rare that it makes a major difference like this when I do add it back in. So it just goes to show that my neglected friend the 9 Gamut does have its uses now and then!

I followed up two weeks later to discover that the RLS had returned. Albeit at a much reduced level. Over the 2 weeks, ‘C’ said that she would normally expect to have around 10 full blown attacks of RLS, but she had only experienced it only 3 times, and at a much reduced intensity. She said “it was a very mild version of it, a kind of warning, not the full blown thing”

So, we arranged to meet again and I started chasing the emotional drivers behind the problem. These were rapidly identified as being her home situation with her husband and children. So, we tapped on all the issues surrounding that.

“Even though my husband takes me for granted…”

“Even though my kids don’t appreciate me… “

And so on.

What seemed to really hit the mark was tapping on “Even though my legs want me to run away from home…” so we tapped on some variations of that “Even though I would like to leave this situation, I know its not possible and I accept the messages my legs are telling me but now I choose to allow my legs to be at peace… “ and so on with a whole long rambling set-up.

During the session, I also taught her the basic recipe and the shortcut version.

Over the next 2 weeks, she reported that she rarely gets the problem now, but when it does start, it is always when she feels that she should be doing something, but cant for some reason. For example, when she has lots of computer work to do, but cannot because one of her children are using the computer, or, when she thinks about all the things that need doing, but duty demands she has to go out for the day.

Whenever this happens, she simply taps the RLS symptoms away herself using a couple of shortcut rounds.

All in all, she is delighted that the symptoms she has been suffering for the last 20 years have all but vanished, and I am honoured that I (and EFT) have helped her remove the symptoms of this “incurable” problem.

Philip Davis.