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.
Many people are introduced to Tapping with expectations of experiencing the “one-minute wonder” that put Gary Craig and the first EFT practitioners on the Energy Psychology map. It is an unfortunate expectation, since some of EFT’s most valuable results manifest without fanfare and over a relatively long period of time. The yearning for instant change is often true for the young and eager students who come to the protocol wanting to transform their lives in fifteen minutes, or even an hour, without the deep reflection that contributes to our collective store of wisdom.
As a long-time EFT beneficiary and seasoned practitioner, I have experienced the odd one-minute-wonder shift as well as the more subtle, long-term effects of using EFT. I liken the latter to falling in love with an old friend where appreciation grows through daily conversations and shared experiences enjoyed over years. One day the friend is not a friend any more, but our Beloved. When this happens, our surprise and delight feel boundless. Tapping faithfully for days, months, and years yields a similarly subtle transformation. Once we begin a daily tapping commitment for our health and well being, we find it’s benefits have accumulated without our notice. Some time after beginning our Tapping routine when we tune into our overall sense of ourselves we discover, much to our pleasure, a remarkable centredness, authenticity, and peace we have in the past discovered in others we believed to be wiser and more experienced than ourselves.
Because of my personal and professional experiences with EFT, I encourage beginning clients to leave their expectations of one-minute wonders at the door. Tapping works directly on the energy system governed by our meridians, and so the body’s subtle energies are always part of the Tapping process. We may not yet be ready to leave a physical condition or an emotional experience behind because we haven’t yet had the conversation with the part of the body or the aspect of the past that is speaking eloquently of what it is we are invited to honour with our attention.
Trusting the body to be a significant partner in the Tapping process always catalyzes our sessions. This is because the body is the keeper of our personal, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual secrets – what psychologists call our unconscious. When we tap in the general vicinity of meridian points, we are engaging in vitally important and nourishing conversations with the body’s visible and invisible manifestations. As with any wisdom practice, we may not learn the specific resolutions manifested by our Tapping sessions for some time, but we can trust that our loving attention during our sessions is adding to our store of peace and well being because that is what all wisdom practices – from all forms of Meditation to Qi Gong to Tapping to Yoga – do.
This is why it is important to come to our Tapping sessions, whatever their apparent results, with great reverence. Most of us know Yoda from the Star Wars saga, the eternally wise Grand Master of the Jedi Order who knows and teaches what is most vital and authentic to his Jedi students. It is no exaggeration to liken the body, our personal collection of miraculous parts and wholes, to a similar Grand Master. Our flesh holds what we are not yet ready to embrace in our conscious lives; its genius is to engage us in growth – often without our conscious knowledge – through physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual experiences. Sometimes we call these experiences pain, sometimes, obsessive thoughts, sometimes heartache, and sometimes insight or revelation of the highest order. It is through the body’s wisdom and impeccable timing that these experiences present themselves for dialogue.
Tapping over time helps us to become more authentic by nourishing our deepest understanding of who we are. Lights don’t necessarily flash and horns don’t necessarily blare as we move daily into more peace-filled and loving ways of being. Because a Tapping session’s consequences can be both subtle and astonishing, it is good practice to leave our expectations at the door to more effectively allow our body’s wisdom to direct each session.
Until next week
Jane
Jane Buchan, MA, AAMET Advanced Practitioner, jane@winterblooms.net, 802-533-9277