Bette Davis said it best: Old Age is not for sissies. As if Alzheimer’s , diabetes, and cancer were not three of the worst specters of elderhood, it turns out aging human beings lose confidence in their abilities to perform tasks they are actually good at. This last aging challenge deserves time and attention, because a lack of confidence can limit our joy in life. Once we’re aware of confidence erosion, however, we can reframe this issue as an invitation to explore how negative beliefs may be impacting our view of who we are and what we can do.
Category: Beliefs
Discovering Wisdom After A Fall – Part One
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.
Nothing can unsettle us like a bad fall. Whether we fall because of carelessness, weather conditions, or the sudden giving out of a body part, falling grabs our attention and suggests we develop a relationship with the circumstances sooner rather than later. As with fear, ignoring the emotions surrounding a sudden fall ensures they will persist. Tapping for the pain, shock, and beliefs that follow a fall helps us to tune into our body’s wisdom as it teaches us how to relate to ourselves in more loving and positive ways.
Voicelessness and Sexual Assault
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.
Last week, in the post on sexual assault’s afterlife, I touched on my grandmother’s vocal response to the event along with my own inability to make a sound during the assault. It is easy to assume a four-year-old child is unable to confront a sexual predator, but this is not always the case. Some children scream, cry, and fight physically, while others, like me, manifest sudden voicelessness and physical paralysis. This is the manifestation of the Freeze aspect of the the Fight, Flight, or Freeze Stress Response. During sudden trauma, we sometimes fight, we sometimes take flight, and, as happened to me, we sometimes freeze. Daily tapping, along with healthy sleep habits, eating habits, thinking habits, physical movement habits, meditation habits, and social habits, can build resilience into our lives that helps the Stress Response do the work it is meant to do – protect us from actual danger.
Making Sacred Promises
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.
Finding the sacred in promises we make to ourselves and others is an art. We all know about the other kind of promises, those tossed off in the moment that we feel all right about breaking. “Six? Sure, I promise I’ll be there.” And in the moment, we mean it; we really do want to honour our promise to arrive when we say we will, because we want to show respect to those with whom we have relationships. But made in the moment, these ordinary promises can be broken by poor planning and lack of foresight. Then we tell ourselves, “Oh, I have a meeting at five I forgot about when I made those arrangements. They’ll understand.” And, most often, “they” do, especially when we send up a warning flag such as, “I’m running late. Please start without me. I’ll explain when I get there.” The kind of promise that becomes sacred doesn’t start out that way. We might initially consider the idea of losing excess weight for our health’s sake, or the idea of quitting smoking at the stroke of midnight, or the idea of exercising faithfully lightly. We can learn to turn these considerations into sacred promises that improve our lives through the time and attention we give to them.
Holidays – Part One – Finding your Inner Pagan
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website only and is in no way meant to replace experience with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.
Holidays. For some people, this time of year is filled with the joy of anticipated reunions and the evolution of family and community traditions. For others, the official onset of the winter season heightens fear, loneliness, and lack of connection to our fellow human beings. We in the west have created the perfect conditions for situational depression through our emphasis on material gifts, an emphasis that eclipses the intangible joys the season brings. Finding our way into the spiritual heart of the Winter Solstice is challenging but it can be done, even as we feel ourselves slipping into despair over human excesses.
Continue reading Holidays – Part One – Finding your Inner Pagan
Tapping and Ferguson, Missouri
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website only and is in no way meant to replace experience with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.
Michael Brown, a young man headed for college this fall, is dead. The police officer who shot him is caught up in the controversy that follows black-white violence. Public opinion regarding what happened is divided along predictable lines: police have the right to protect themselves from criminals; young African American men have the right to walk our streets without being targeted as criminals. We grieve for Michael Brown and his family, for Darren Wilson and his family, and for the town of Ferguson as the most recent expression of the systemic violence that is manifesting in our communities. We grieve and we tap as we look deep into our own hearts regarding the assumptions we make about others and our personal safety.
Developing Trust in the Face of PTSD – Introduction
Disclaimer: PTSD is not something anyone without training should face alone. This blog contains descriptions that may trigger anxiety or fear, especially in PTSD sufferers. If you suffer from PTSD and have learned tapping from your EFT Practitioner, counselor, or therapist, please tap while you are reading the following post; if you are unfamiliar with tapping, please postpone reading this blog until you have engaged a counselor, EFT Practitioner, or certified/licensed therapist who uses this technique. Winter Blooms is an educational website only and is in no way meant to replace a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner near you, visit the AAMET website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for support in transforming your PTSD experiences.
Many of us, despite feeling happy and in control most of the time, may be unexpectedly blindsided by past events that flood us with fear, terror, rage, and/or despair. The sun may be shining, the people we love may be safe and happy, and our work may require no more of us than our current skill sets support, and yet a sound, a scent, a scene, a taste, or a touch has the power to catapult us into a dark, isolating world even our closest companions cannot understand. When the past becomes the present research proves that tapping can help us to resolve what has come to be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) more quickly than other coaching methods or indeed psychological therapies.
Continue reading Developing Trust in the Face of PTSD – Introduction
Death Part Two: Awash in Love
When my mother died in April of 2006, I had already discovered tapping. In fact, it was because I knew she was dying that I sought out EFT Master Betty Moore-Hafter. Although everything was right about my mother’s death, I felt I needed support to allow my mother to die without my needs interfering with her process. I chose Betty, not because of EFT which I hadn’t yet heard of, but because she was both a hypnosis and age regression therapist. I was curious to see if her approach would help me to resolve the last few energetic ties to a medical trauma my mother and I shared when she was thirty and I was two. This surprise EFT session was magical – gentle and loving – and I left Betty’s office feeling this challenging early event had been transformed. I have tapped ever since. One of the earliest consequences of that session was an ability to be fully present to what my mother needed. On my own, I could tune into my own need to celebrate her life in my own unique way. Somehow, without writing about it directly, I wanted to express the essence of my mother’s approach to living in and leaving the world. Awash in Love is that essence.
Tapping to “Live Until We Die”
Recently a good friend loaned me her copy of Two Old Women written by Velma Wallis. The book’s subtitle says it all: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage, and Survival. Briefly, it is about elders of the Gwich’in Band, one of “eleven distinct Athabaskan groups . . . found in the western interior of the state along the Yukon, Porcupine, and Tanana rivers.” Sometimes, a story from a different culture can best hold up a mirror to our own cultural practices regarding aging. So it is with Two Old Women.
New Year New Habits – Part Two: Saplings
In tree life, once a seedling makes it past the vulnerable newborn stage, it is called a sapling. In human life, we call this period of time childhood and adolescence. Our new habits enter a similar period, often marked by the adolescent cockiness that suggests we can eat some fudge if we’re transforming an eating habit, or smoke a cigarette if we’re transforming into non-smokers, without consequence. It’s a dicey period because it comes with very heady energies. In actual adolescence, we often believe we can do just about anything, never mind the battle scars our friends and family members often point to as they advise us to be cautious. As adolescents, we don’t take advice readily, perhaps because we feel so empowered by the physical evidence of growing strength. So it is with our habits.