Issues

The 4 A`s of Healing

20th August 2019 by Christine Sutton

Phoenix Notes 7

For EFT and other modalities as well no matter what the issue the healing process always goes through 4 key stages, the 4 A`s of Healing. Recognising where you or a client might be in that process at any point in time can help to bring structure and order to a complex system and some reassurance that progress is being made.

1. Acknowledgement: “Even though I have this problem……..”

The first stage is to actually admit that there is a problem, whether it is a physical, emotional or a complex mix of factors. There must be an acknowledgement that somewhere, something is out of alignment in that person’s life.

This can be very hard to do for some people. It is frequently much easier to push the problem down and try to ignore it or divert attention away from it rather than admit that something needs to change. If we ignore or push problems down below the surface they become blockages at an energetic level and they will eventually surface in another form if consistently ignored. The only thing they will not do is go away!

A therapist’s function at this stage is to listen and encourage the acknowledgement with no censure or judgement, simply holding the space for the problem to be stated.

If you cannot acknowledge that you have a problem then you have no chance of healing it!

2. Acceptance: “……I deeply and completely accept myself”

Once the problem has been acknowledged, the next stage is to accept that although the person is not happy with the problem it is actually OK to be where they are right now in terms of spiritual, emotional or physical health.
This is not just a passive acceptance or a giving up on it, but the beginning of an active contemplation of how life could be better. It may also be a peaceful acceptance that even though things are bad right now there may be a purpose to whatever has happened. Sometimes the purpose is simply to show the person that all is not well and that something needs to change.

A therapist`s function here is to help the person to recognise and frame the issue appropriately and to support the Acceptance by identifying and dealing with any resistances which show up at this stage.

Think of the Acceptance as just a starting point –this is where you draw a line in the sand and say “That is enough! Where can I go from here?”

3. Awareness:

This next stage involves developing awareness of what lies at the root of the problem which means taking a good, hard look at everything in that person’s life and working out how and why the present situation has developed.

This is where a therapist can use gentle, open questions to begin exploration of the issue(s), begin to work with the more accessible levels and then gradually work towards the core events and their consequences. Usually, somewhere in this stage, cognitive shifts begin for the client – they begin to see how they got to where they currently are.

The answers always lie within and every person always has all of the resources already within or accessible to them to begin their own healing process. A therapist`s function at this stage is to ask the questions to help the awareness to open up and for the inner resource states to be identified.

Remember that just as the problem was created from within so is the solution.
We are all In-cure-able!

4. Action:

The final stage is for the person to begin to take action on what has been learned – to work out what changes need to be made and implement them. The changes can be anything from huge or minor life-style changes to inner conflict resolution, releasing traumas and then reaching a state of forgiveness.

At this stage a therapist`s function is not to offer advice and ready-made solutions from their own experience or perspective but to ask the questions that lead the client to their own solutions. If they cannot own the solution they will not implement it! This is where EFT can act as a coaching tool.

All self-healing is about change.
If nothing changes then nothing changes!
Quite often this is the hardest stage of all.

Most people are open to working out how they reached their current position but the changes needed to step out of that “Un-comfort Zone” and into another, better one can seem daunting. At this stage the reasons for staying put may outweigh the reasons to change and the work focuses on identifying those reasons, finding what is underpinning them and resolving them.

It may take a while, but sooner or later, with careful work a choice will be made – to either stay put for a while longer, but now with more awareness, or to make the critical change needed. 100% commitment is needed to bring the power of intent into action to create a new reality. If there are still doubts then the choice has not yet, in truth, been made and more time is needed.

That critical change can be scary; it can be exhilarating; it can be emotionally hard; it can be physically difficult, but once committed to, 100%, it will happen.

It is a wonderful thing to witness a client, now empowered, take steps into a new and better future and begin to explore the possibilities of their new Comfort Zone.

En-joy!

Past, Present, Future

11th June 2018 by Christine Sutton

Phoenix Notes 3:

We live in a 3-dimensional world. We are free to move in all three dimensions at will provided that we can find ways to get past any laws of nature that might restrict that movement.

Time is sometimes spoken of as the 4^th Dimension and it seems to flow in one direction only:

We frequently say things like “You can`t turn the clock back” acknowledging the natural law. However the truth is that we are just as free to move in Time as in the other three dimensions. Whenever we engage in a memory or imagine a possible future we have effectively escaped the linear time flow. We are else-when (another time) for as long as we choose to remain then. It feels very real.

Most of us are addicted to re-running old memories (good or bad) or imagining futures (good or bad). We frequently spend a significant proportion of our waking lives remembering or projecting forwards in time. This altered state of consciousness is so completely natural that mostly we are not aware of it. In fact we are rarely fully present in the “Now” which is just a hinge point between past and future. It has no time of its own.

It has been estimated that many people spend as much as 65% of their time in the past and as much as 20% in the future leaving just 15% of attention and energy for the Now.

Some of the “future” time may be spent usefully on the pleasurable imagining and planning that is necessary to bring our greatest dreams into reality, but mostly it is wasted on fear, worry and anxiety about things that have not yet, and may never, come to pass. Those emotions never make anything come out better, they just make us feel bad and drain our energy.

Some of the “past” time may be spent on pleasurable reruns of old memories, or on spotting the useful elements from past events, but mostly it is wasted on regrets, guilt, shame, sadness, anger and endless “What ifs?” about events that happened years ago. Those concerns cannot change the past. The past remains as it was….unless we choose to update our perceptions.

This is part of the work that is done with techniques such as EFT, Matrix ReImprinting and other forms of inner child or shadow work. We can handle those past events and neutralise the emotions, belief and behavioral systems generated from them which are causing problems now. Often a new understanding and a more loving and forgiving perception comes into awareness. Sometimes we can go a step further and overwrite what is left of the memory with a better option which is then accessed preferentially.

Memory and the reality we perceive are very fluid and very adaptable. As we edit and neutralise old memories we change our perception and the current emotional “feel” of what happened. Maybe we can change the past, or at least our current perception of it! A change in how we feel “Now” affects our choices as we begin to create the next part of reality, our future.

If we use some of these techniques mentioned above we have the chance to let go of those emotional anchors that are still linking us to the past and then we can begin to create our future from a fresher, cleaner state of mind. How would our futures be if we could imagine and intend them into being from a happy and loving perspective instead of from an anxious, guilt or fear-filled one?

How might the effect of such a different future for just one person affect those around them?
What if we could become part of a solution instead of part of a problem?
What if a ripple of change could begin for everyone?
What if it is already in motion?

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/