I have had pretty amazing EFT sessions recently which really boosted my spirits (hopefully, not ego).

One was a session with an older female whom i will call Mdm P, which was transferred to me by another colleague and whom another ex-colleague has seen before i.e. a tough case. She had a serious case of panic/anxiety disorder and has been into IMH before. My colleague who had 2 sessions with her said he has tried everything with her. This was the colleague who is rather anti-EFT, so i thought to myself, everything but EFT.

She was this sweet, gentle lady with eyes filled with pain. She told me that she is afraid of everything, even me. In that instant, i suddenly felt a surge of fear. On hindsight, i wonder if i was experiencing a glimpse of her inner state.

Because she was so soft-spoken and reticent, i found it very easy to do EFT with her. She started off describing herself being tied in a big spiderweb (i love clients who uses analogies cos it means i can do creative visualisation with them), and in her heart, was this black denseness that she was afraid to go near. I found myself incorporating the going through the layers technique from The Journey process, and she turned out to be extremely responsive. She was able to focus on the feeling, simply observing it and allowing her breath to take her deeper until she gets to the very core, and noting what new emotions or thoughts arise. I added some variations to this technique from The Journey, including continual tapping on the client so that as the client is experiencing another layer of emotions, there is a gd chance of clearing a whole lot of it at the same time. She had a rather gd emotional vocabulary, and was able to tell me what she was going through.

We came to a point, after passing through feelings of despair, hopelessness, desolation, etc, where she said, i hope i can overcome this illness. I got her to tap on her fear of not being able to overcome this illness, and she went onto having thoughts of nowhere to run, it’s a dead end.

The difference btw EFT and other therapies like CBT for e.g., is that in EFT, the client’s beliefs aren’t challenged and refuted, at least not the way i use EFT most of the time (even when Gary challenges the client, he does it very gently and often with humour). Instead, i honour all the client’s feelings and thoughts and merely take them as an indicator of the blockages. If anything, i even encourage more negativity to arise by suggesting possible obstacles that may be hidden deep away in the client’s mind, where all the deepest fears are stored. Only by facing the darkness, can we then transmute it into light.

In the past, i wld have been very tempted to “give hope” by telling the client there IS a way out. Today, with EFT, i can stay with the client’s worldview and tolerate that absolute hopelessness they see, cos i now know that paradoxically, this is what leads to an inner shift for the client.

The client said she has met a wall, and in desperation, she cried, isn’t there anyone who could open the door for me? I even had her tap for nobody opening the door for me. After that, i asked her besides the wall, what else is there. She said there was me. A long pause, while i was deciding how to proceed. Then she said, the Bodhisattvas were very far away. That was the first clue that i could incorporate spiritual elements into the session. It turns out that she used to be Buddhist, and is now confused as she is being visited by a Christian evangelical group.

These days i minimise giving my own input as much as my own ego allows (in the end, it’s our own ego that makes us think we need to teach others something they already know deep within them, isn’t it). At this moment, i couldn’t help but tell her, as we were tapping for her confusion, that Jesus is also a Bodhisattva himself (a realisation that came to me few years ago and gave me goosebumps of joy!), and probably “upstairs”, they are all having a cup of tea together. The latter is a description i borrowed from Hwee San and which always makes me smile.

She was still confused, and given her condition, it’s prob expected so i didn’t force her. This was not a Gary-style EFT session where i would be asking for SUDS or staying with an issue until it is completely resolved. I didn’t even want to ask her about the emotions she was going through, cos that might mean going into long-winded storytelling, which may take away time from tapping, plus i felt she was not ready to do deeper work, and i decided to tap all over the place with her taking me wherever she needs to go.

At one point, i keenly felt the presence of divine beings as there was an unmistakable warmth on the right side of my arms and the room felt bright. Sometime later, i asked her if she could feel the presence of the Bodhisattvas. In her pause, i could sense her hesistation, but she said she also felt it was very bright (with her eyes closed). She told me she used to chant om mani padme hung, and a celebratory buzzer rang into my mind. We chanted a few rounds of om mani padme hung together with me continuing to tap for her. WIth our voices blended into one, the room seemed filled with a beautiful healing energy.

Later, she said, almost in a way of wondering aloud, if i was sent by the Bodhisattvas to help her. I told her, maybe. Minutes later, in my head, i wished i told her instead, i work for them! Haha…

To keep this entry from becoming a thesis, here are a few more things we did in the session. She spontaneously wanted to chant the repentance verse for me, and later she said it was karma that she was in this state. I told her to do meritorious deeds like do dana (donation), chant, meditate, prostrate, eat vegetarian, etc and dedicate merits to her karmic debtors. I had her visualise light coming from the Bodhisattvas and entering her entire body. By the end of the session, the dark denseness was gone. Borrowing an idea that i got from a recent session with a Christian, i had her do a prayer for herself to the Bodhisattvas while i tapped on her Karate Chop point (nowadays i do tapping for everything!).

It was a 2 hr session and i don’t know exactly how much i did with her, cos i never got much info from her at all. It was almost pure therapy throughout, and since we had divine help, i have a feeling that it was very healing for her, though we have prob much to do still.

Sometimes i wonder if i shld start taping such sessions to show to my colleagues or ED. At least they know what i’m doing, and i’m sure they would not disapprove. Maybe it would even widen their horizons on how therapy could be like, cos i know for sure that what i’m doing is pretty unconventional in a mainstream setting (albeit nothing out of the ordinary in an alternative setting).

Talk about unconventional, i had another breakthrough today. First of all, my thanks to the universe for yet another work day arranged through divine timing. For some reason i wasn’t really in the mood for 2 of the 3 clients i was sup to meet, and they didn’t come. The ones that did were these parents who were referred by their son’s sch counsellor, who happened to be a participant of my 2nd run of EFT Level I. Synchronistically, their son was being seen by a hypnotherapist who joined my 1st run of EFT Level I.

This guy, F, came along to today’s session and i believe he genuinely wants to help this teenage boy and his family (not sure if he might have other motives though).

To cut a long story short, the boy isn’t here and was in danger of losing himself among his gangster friends, propelled by his frustration of being condemned by his teachers and the principal. Thank gdness the parents seem understanding and gentle. In fact, F told me the father was prepared to get trained in hypnotherapy just to help his son. Lucky boy!

I could hear the parents’ frustration about the sch system and again, in the past, i could have been feeling helpless and lost about hearing complaints that i cannot help with. Today, i was able to truly listen to them without any preconceived notions, and to my own surprise, i responded in a way i felt was both compassionate and helpful. I told them that the current situation is such that all 3 parties – the sch, parents and the boy – see one another as enemies, and as long as this continues, the outcome wouldn’t be good. My 1st point was that, if we cannot rely the school to help us, then we have to focus our efforts on helping the boy, and not waste them by dwelling in the frustration towards the sch. My 2nd point was that the parents need to change their perception towards the sch, as challenging as it may be, since it’s the only option the boy has and they have to make do with the best they could.

Without the anxiety i used to have about offending the parents, i found myself speaking clearly, firmly and kindly, and they agreed with me. Yay… i feel that this is a mini milestone for me.

Initially, i was doubtful about F’s presence, even though he said the parents were ok for him to be ard. Then, during session, inspiration striked. It happens that F’s name and the boy’s name sounds the same, though with different spelling, and maybe that gave me a clue for surrogate tapping, since the boy wasn’t ard and the parents didn’t appear as though they had major issues to work on. Plus, there would be a significant meeting on the following Mon, and the boy’s response was crucial to whether he would stay in sch or not.

It was gd that F was ard, because the parents trusted him and of cos, he was more than happy to validate EFT and surrogate tapping with his non-verbals. Perhaps if he wasn’t there, i might be more hesitant to bring up surrogate tapping, esp to 1st-time clients and who have not heard of EFT.

Well, the parents have not heard anything like it, but i guess they were desperate enough to try everything so they consented to it. The gd thing was F had gd rapport with the boy and i believed he would be the ideal surrogate person for him.

We tapped for his anger about being the only one picked on for tucking out his shirt. With parents’ consent, i used vulgarities like those f*king teachers and bl*dy angry, and while tapping, i really felt anger and frustration, which i’m not sure is due to the energy of those words, or i also linked up to the boy in some way. We also tapped on his needing to please his friends, in particular, a girl that F had a visual image of, which his parents confirmed the identity of. Given the time limitation, we only had time to tap on the Mon meeting, where F felt having tightness in chest which was related to fear of disappointing his parents and not being able to make it in school. During this particular set of tapping, i consciously chose some phrases that would remind the parents that their son was trying his best, and no matter what, he would be loved by his parents anyway. Sometimes, it’s easy for us to focus only on the bad and forget the bottomline? I also added affirmation for the boy to remember his own strengths, even if other pple don’t, and since he has succeeded before, he is capable of doing it again. After this, i checked in with F and he said the tightness was gone, and in his mind, was the image of Mt Fuji.

I was like, huh? What’s that sup to mean? They reminded me that for his PSLE, they treated the boy to a trip to Japan for his gd results, as promised. To me, this was a sign that the boy remembered his past accomplishments, and wld be motivated to do so once again.

During debrief, the parents said again, that it’s bizarre, but what was most bizarre was that F volunteered to draw the outline of the girl’s head. She had a unique china doll hairstyle, and her parents confirmed that’s how the girl looked like. Yet, F has never seen this girl or had this girl described to him before. Later after the session, i found from F that he meditates regularly, which would explain the extremely accurate impressions he got during the session. So hopefully the session worked after all.

Well, i felt gd abt the session, and the fact that F was pretty psychic (which he didn’t know… this was a first for him as well!) and could come up with that impression of the girl was a real bonus, which i believe was pretty convincing for the parents. I got pretty gd feedback on the form from them so i guess the session was gd for them too.

Another first for me… doing surrogate tapping with BOTH parents and an outsider playing the surrogate! Wow… work is sure full of surprises these days, and i’m loving it!

Btw, my EFT Affirmation Cards are in demand! So far i have given away 1 to a friend who has really been supporting me by volunteering for my EFT workshops, amongst other things, and she loves it. I have also sold 5 decks so far, and would need to create a few more in time for the upcoming Level II workshop on 24 anf 31 Aug.

I’m still considering my friend’s suggestion, backed up by Mr Gua Gua, that i promote these cards to Gary and get some form of endorsement. Since now i know that there are other pple who think it’s a gd idea, i’m less hesitant abt it, but now it’s a question of how, since Gary seems rather uncontactable except through the phone, and i have no idea how to promote this to him even if i could contact him.

Hmm… let’s see if the universe is able to help in this aspect. In the meantime, i’m going to manifest for gd quality professional printing, and once again, synchronistically i have this friend that i just got to know a few weeks back who happens to be the boss of a printing company. She would be giving me the quotation soon, and hopefully it wld be a gd one.

Things are certainly moving along… i have also just very recently decided to start writing a little book abt my journey with EFT, and will be collaborating with my homeopathy friend to conduct a Sept workshop on EFT for allergies. Many exciting things up ahead… i just need to find the time to follow through with all my plans!