Last week, during a supervision meeting, a discussion that arose was about which of the many ways of using EFT is the most effective. Standard EFT as created by EFT founder, Gary Craig, is in the format of repeating a setup statement 3 times while tapping on the side of the hand. The setup statement is in the following format:
The negative statement might be:
- I’m so angry at her
- I’ll never forgive him for what he did
- I have a headache
- I’m desperate for a cigarette
- I was in that terrible car accident
- I’m not good enough
Traditionally the positive statement is “I deeply and completely accept myself” but others include:
- I choose to … (eg be gentle with myself) – Choices Method by Pat Carrington
- I soothe and comfort myself (phrase coined by EFT trainer Sejual Shah)
- I accept myself
- I’m OK
- I’m here
Gary Craig used the analogy of a table held up by several legs. The table top represents the issue such as “I’m not good enough” and the table legs represent the specific events in which the negative belief (“I’m not good enough”) is created or confirmed. Tapping on some of the table legs is enough to destabilise that table and causing it to fall ie by releasing negative feelings about a few of the memories is enough to dissolve the negative belief.
Gary Craig worked with several Vietnam veterans who suffered from PTSD. One of these sessions a vet said he had over 100 intrusive memories (table legs) causing him to suffer from insomnia and nightmares every night (the issue – the table top). Together they released the a handful of intrusive memories and he was then able to sleep at night. Here is a video about some of the amazing results that have been done with war veterans.
So by identifying and tapping negative memories from the past can help create emotional freedom in the present and future.
It does however require one to tap on negative statements which some people who follow the ideas of the Law of Attraction worry that stating the negative will bring more netavitivey into their lives. For more discussion on this, check my blog called Does EFT conflict with the Law of Attraction?
There is concern that simply tapping on the positive is like putting a plaster over a wound rather than cleaning the wound out first. In my opinion if there is fear that tapping on the negative can cause more negativity, that can cause resistance which is an issue on top of an original issue and if the person is up for it, I would suggest tapping on:
“Even though I don’t want to tap on negative statements because I might attract more of that into my life, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.”.
Brad Yates’s approach is to include a few negative statements at the beginning and then really go for the positive statements throughout the tapping points. In the setup statements, he often starts the positive ending to the statement with “I choose…” eg “I choose to love and accept myself”.
In Positive EFT as created by Silvia Hartmann, one of the ways to use it is to focus on a quality that you want to feel more of such as love/ joy/ bliss. Although there is more it it than this, a quick summary is to put your hands on your heart centre, breath in the quality 3 times while naming the quality. To amplify the feeling, ask yourself, what that quality looks like, feels like and what would you be doing if you had lots of that quality. Then tap through the Heart and Soul EFT points while focussing on the quality.
So during supervision morning, some of the participants wanted to know which was the best and most effective ways of using EFT. Is it really possible to resolve issues at root cause while focussing on the positive? Each method has produced incredible results.
I remember in a lecture I attended with Silvia Hartmann, she said that there are some cases with so many traumatic memories that it would take a lifetime to identify them all and release them so she facilitates clients to use Positive EFT with fantastic results. In my opinion Positive EFT raises the positive or love vibrations so that negative feelings or situations will have little or no impact on the person’s wellbeing.
The way I see it is that it is possible to view life as a journey through various types of terrain – rivers with rapids to negotiate, walking for miles across hot and dry deserts, climbing steep mountains, crossing flower meadows in the Spring.
Some people get stuck in every rapid, fall down steep mountains and miss the flowers in the meadows because they are still thinking about the steep mountain and looking ahead in case there is another one. Other people seem to find a powerful boat to steer them across the rapids, a cable car to take them up the mountains and notice every butterfly, bird and flower in the meadow.
The way I see it is that with standard EFT, particularly when combining it with tools such as Matrix Reimprinting, we can actually change the terrain of the past and choose easier routes in the future. When focussing on the positive with EFT, the terrain doesn’t seem to change but we can alter the way we traverse the land and we find we have resources that we hadn’t noticed before.
A few years ago I experienced a powerful session in which I had a beautiful image which made me realise that I could choose which path I took in life. I saw the landscape of the life journey and where I had come from with all its ups and downs. Very high above this I saw a some large blue marbles suspended in the air which I named the Blue Marble Path. If I find myself in a challenging situation or rocky part of my journey, I simply remind myself of the Blue Marble Path and make a conscious choice to take that route instead. I am not looking at the reasons and causes of what happened, I am simply choosing another way.
In reality I use a whole combination of ways of using EFT with my clients, using the most appropriate technique in the moment. I love them all and feel they all have their uses.
I would love to hear your opinion on which form of EFT works for you.
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