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This month the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi for their separate efforts to increase educational opportunities for children. While Kailash Satyarthi is a veteran social-justice worker in India, Malala Yousafzai is relatively new to the advocacy scene. At seventeen Malala is the youngest Nobel Laureate, remarkable in itself, but far more remarkable since she was shot by terrorists at twelve for the crime of not only attending school but also advocating for other girls to have this right. In her physical recovery and her writing debut, I Am Malala, this young woman reveals a tenacity of purpose and vision that is inspirational for everyone. Tapping while holding this young woman’s image and work in our consciousness adds power to this inspiration and fuel to our own commitments.
While tapping through all the points using a phrase such as “the courage of Malala” is an effective anchoring technique to support our personal store of courage, tapping specifically on the third-eye point slightly above the eyebrows in the centre of the forehead is an even more potent practice. Donna Eden, mother of Eden Energy Medicine (EEM), encourages her students to train themselves in their receptivity to joy by tapping on this third-eye point whenever something wonderful happens to them and to others. At the end of her trainings, when she invites her teachers to come to the stage to be honoured for their work during the various teaching sessions, you see each teacher tapping this point while students express their great appreciation. Witnessing this crowd of energy practitioners beaming their delight while tapping the third-eye point sends out an energy that gives credence to EEM’s mission to “raise the vibration of the planet one person at a time.”
I found myself tapping my third eye as I read about Malala Yousafzai’s commitment to work for girl’s education throughout Pakistan where terrorists shoot people for such defiance. An educated population of young people is a “thinking heart” population, that is, a population engaged in the betterment of themselves and others through the free exchange of ideas that change negative world views into positive bastions of hope. Holding the world view that women are less than, no matter our country, limits the human resourcefulness we must collectively build to address the challenges of perennial war, poverty, and climate change. Women and girls as much as men and boys have a vested interest in creating a world that demonstrates sustainable, ecologically sound systems to support human evolution while honouring our absolute dependence on and support for other species and our shared air, water, and land resources.
Here in the United States, the most recent front of our peculiarly western war on women may be seen in the gaming world. Both Brianna Wu, a video game developer, and media critic Anita Sarkeesian, have been calling for more diversity and an end to violence against women in video games. Both have received death threats. While video gaming is one of the most flagrant expressions of violence against women, the hyper-sexualized expectations imposed on girls and women is found in our every-day world of advertising, clothing styles, television and film roles, and educational and religious institutions.
Tapping on the joy we feel at the improbable comeback of a brutally attacked twelve-year-old girl who has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy work and who now moves throughout the world as a mature seventeen-year-old woman is cause for global celebration. We all have the opportunity to follow Malala Yousafzai’s example to speak out for the right to education for all children, education that ensures knowledge coupled with compassion, critical thinking skills, and diverse opportunities to participate in our evolving world. This kind of education contributes to our general store of optimism, and we need our optimism – along with courage like Malala Yousafzai’s – to speak out against the dehumanizing limitations imposed on girls and women and boys and men throughout the world. May we all have a week of empowered, joyful tapping.
Until next week
Jane
Jane Buchan, MA, AAMET Advanced Practitioner, jane@winterblooms.net, 802-533-9277