Awakening to Your Inner Wisdom
with EFT and Imagery

EFT and Your Inner Wisdom
There are many ways to awaken to that inner wisdom that resides within all of us. Tapping is one, a powerful one with specific advantages.
Often, when people are trying to access their inner wisdom, their intuitive sense of what is, they run into trouble with the critical, negative ego mind. This is the part of you that is skeptical. It is also the part that doubts and fears and hurts, and as such, can get in the way of listening to the voice of wisdom. Tapping, and the other energy psychology approaches bypass this ego mind. The beauty of EFT is you don’t even have to believe in it for it to work. Your ego mind can protest all it wants--“I don’t believe this can work. This is ridiculous. Standing on your head would be just as effective.”—and still the tapping will work! EFT reaches a deeper level of being, where the ego mind does not tread—the basic energy level of your being. Your body knows what it needs to heal from emotional and physical problems, and EFT is one way to “tap” into that wisdom. As we explore EFT further in future newsletter issues, this will become clearer. First let’s focus on how EFT is done.

It’s like baking a cake, Gary Craig has said about the EFT process. The basic ingredients have to be added in a certain order. You need some sort of sugar to bake a cake, and you must put that sugar in before you put the cake in the oven. Like baking, EFT follows a recipe. Fortunately, it is much easier to do EFT than to bake a cake. If you follow the directions you will be okay.

In this newsletter we will briefly review the basic recipe, but remember this is just a brief introduction, just to give you an idea what’s involved. In order to really learn the techniques you will need more the detailed instructions available from the websites, videos and books listed in the resource section of my website (www.marionbilich.com).

Rating your Distress Level – The SUDS rating
Before you begin, you need to rate the level of your distress. For example, if you are angry, how angry are you? We use a scale often used in psychology and medicine, the “Subjective Level of Distress Scale,” the (SUDS) level. The scale runs from 0 to 10, zero being neutral, no emotional charge or disturbance, and 10 being the highest level of intensity of disturbance you can imagine. Using anger as an example again, you might rate how angry you feel at the present moment on that 0 to 10 scale. Zero means you feel no anger at all, and 10 is the deepest rage you could feel.

The Setup
The next part of EFT involves what is known as the “setup,” in which you prepare your energy system so that the energy is oriented correctly. Sometimes the energy system is disrupted in a way that will block the balancing effect of the tapping. This is known as a polarity reversal. It’s like trying to use a flashlight with the batteries installed backward. Nothing you do will get it to work properly until the batteries are installed correctly. To do the setup:

1. Find the “sore spot” on your chest. You must locate the dip in the center of your collarbone, then go about three inches further down and three inches to the left or the right. Feel for an area that is slightly sore or sensitive to the touch. If you want you can use the “karate chop” spot instead. For some people this spot is easier to find. This point is located on the fleshy part of the outside of the hand, the part of the hand you would use to do a karate chop.

2. While firmly rubbing the sore spot (or tapping the karate chop spot with the fingers of the other hand) you repeat out loud a sentence that takes the form of “Even though I have this ____________, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.” The phrase is repeated 3 times. Examples of the setup phrase include:

“Even though I have this anger at my mother, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
“Even though I am anxious about my upcoming medical test, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
“Even though I crave those chocolates, and I know I’m not hungry, I deeply and completely accept myself.”

The Tapping Sequence
1. Using two fingers from either hand, you tap firmly on the various EFT acupuncture points. An illustration of the seven basic points is given below. As you tap, you repeat out loud a reminder phrase (to keep the energy of the issue in your mind). Using the examples from above, you might repeat, “that anger at my mother” or “that upcoming medical test,” or “those chocolates.”

(You might notice when you are training further in EFT that a longer sequence of tapping is sometimes given. My experience is that most often the brief tapping protocol (seven points) is all that is needed)

2. Once you’ve gone through one round of tapping, stop for a moment and turn inward. Notice how you are feeling in your body. Any body sensations you are aware of? Any thoughts or feelings, or memories?

3. Now, rate your distress level (SUDS) again on that 0-10 scale. You might find the level has dropped significantly, or it might still be the same. You might even find the level has gone up a bit. There are explanations and remedies for each of the scenarios, which you will learn when you study EFT. For now, let’s say your SUDS level dropped from an 8 to a 6 after the first round of tapping. You now go on to the second round….

4. This second round of tapping is similar to the first, but with a slight twist. Instead of saying “Even though I have this ________” you say, “Even though I still have some of this ________.” And your reminder phrase will be some variation of “this remaining _______.” Again, you will learn the reasons for this change in wording when you study EFT.

5. Basically, you keep doing rounds of tapping until your SUDS level is down to a 0. That means whatever you were working on—your anger, your fear, a bad memory—has lost its emotional charge.

That’s all there is to it. One round of EFT can take a minute or so. Same for subsequent rounds. There you have it. A powerful tool that can be used anywhere and takes minutes to apply. It is also easy to learn, and like any new skill, the more you use it, the more effective you are in applying it.

So how can you learn to use EFT?

Through websites- The resource section on my website, www.marionbilich.com lists EFT websites. Most helpful is Gary Craig’s www.emofree.com. Gary is the originator of EFT. He offers many free articles and tutorials, as well as a free training manual. To really learn the techniques, I recommend his training video or CD--$60 for the basic EFT course. Other training videos and CDs offer advanced techniques. Do a google search on EFT. Find the latest information on the techniques. The Association for Meridian Therapies has a good tutorial you can download for free if you have Powerpoint on your computer.

Read – In my resource section I list two excellent books on EFT. For those of you who are more scientific minded, and want to assure themselves there is at least some empirical evidence of the effectiveness of EFT before you learn it, I suggest looking at the results of a study just published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology (Wells, et al. September 2003 Vol 59(9) 943-966.) The study looked at the effectiveness of EFT in reducing phobias of small animals, and the authors concluded that a single session treatment with EFT produced valid behavioral and subjective effects.

Practice- Practice on yourself whenever possible, and, when you feel ready, practice on your friends and family. They might find it strange at first, but when they see results, their attitude may change dramatically. Not only will you get better with practice, but as you see positive results in yourself and others your appreciation of the power of these techniques will grow.

See an EFT Practitioner – Gary Craig’s website lists certified practitioners of EFT. You might consider working with one for a few sessions until you feel confident in your ability to use the techniques. Some EFT practitioners offer workshops and training institutes as well.

Remember the more you learn, the better you will get at using these techniques, but, as Gary Craig points out, even beginners can have a noticeable improvement or complete cessation of the problem 50% of the time.