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.
Sometimes just turning on the computer in the morning can feel like an ambush. People shot at parades, terrorist plots, childish sniping among our politicians, and stock market fluctuations can make us feel vulnerable and even trigger our Fight, Flight, or Freeze response to events that happened yesterday or a week before, events over which we have absolutely no control. Tapping daily helps to regulate responses to asynchronous media and real time situations that might otherwise lead to hyper-vigilant behaviours, those stress responses that exhaust the immune system and make us more susceptible to serious conditions such as heart disease and anxiety, conditions that are debilitating enough to lead to serious physical and emotional distress. Tapping on our specific fears helps us to return to centre and supports clarity and creativity when resolving personal and professional challenges. And, because we share our energy field with everyone we meet, our centred calmness helps others to cultivate more clarity and creativity as well.
Tapping Before We Rise to Meet the Day
Tapping for calmness and clarity works so quickly it can feel like an answered prayer. Lying in bed, in silence, and tapping through the points as we think of our responsibilities – and especially about those concerns we have for loved ones and work situations – shifts our focus from what might go wrong to our personal resourcefulness in meeting all demands. Feelings of helplessness cause the throat to close when events appear to require Herculean strength we do not possess. Resourcefulness manifests as the still small voice assuring us we can skillfully handle what comes up and find the support we need when a problem requires more resources than we can offer in the moment. Spending five minutes tapping in silence before we get out of bed creates a aura of calm that surrounds us throughout the day.
Daily Maintenance
Often we work in atmospheres where the majority of our colleagues are stressed and unhappy because of physical, emotional, economic, or spiritual crises. Meditation research has already proven that daily meditation practitioners increase peaceful attitudes and behaviours in their surroundings simply by being present. Recent double-blind studies on the wide ranging positive effects of daily EFT practice is showing a similar effect. To read a about EFT efficacy, visit http://www.theeftcentre.com/research.html and http://www.thrivingnow.com/summary-of-eft-research/ or conduct your own investigation into scholarly research. When something unexpected throws a work team off or disrupts a family’s sense of peace, tapping in the moment, privately or with others in the group, creates the space to respond with the wise and compassionate approaches that restore equilibrium.
A Personal Example of Maintenance Tapping
All of us on the other side of fifty have no doubt heard over-the-hill jokes, as if older adults are somehow failing when they mature out of the adult stage of life so idolized by our media-driven popular culture. Most of us have learned to demonstrate kindness and patience in the face of this form of ignorance, but once in a while someone will let fly with an unexpected zinger that makes the heart race. So it was for me recently when I saw A Walk in the Woods, a film loosely based on Bill Bryson’s late-nineties travel memoir, starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte, both septuagenarians.
The film itself made me laugh, mostly because I saw it in a theatre filled with many other older adults whose laughter was infectious and whose good will about the film’s obvious flaws was evident in the conversations we had afterward. Still, the ageism in the film stayed with me. It came in the form of adolescent jokes about being over the hill, jokes made by young people relating to the men as they made their walk as well as by the men themselves.
The film’s casual misogyny bothered me more. For example, the main character’s wife is written as a surrogate Mom cautioning against the dangers of such a journey. She is reduced to the caricature of the infantilizing mother, a one-dimensional, nay-saying spouse meant to act as a foil to the main character who expresses the supposedly irresponsible desire to find himself on a physically demanding adventure. I was also troubled by the totally gratuitous appearance of a couple of potential sexual conquests, as if men always have to prove they can get “it” up, especially when they’re older, a belief exhausting to both men and women. Most particularly, I was troubled by a conversation between the men about long-ago girlfriends they reduced to body parts and/or sexual availability as they climbed their way through a portion of the magnificent trail.
Because my feelings of disquiet persisted after I saw the film, I checked for online reviews to see if others were similarly troubled. One self-identified feminist reviewer was also bothered by the portrayal of women in the film and I was relieved to read her review. However, the majority of the reviews I read were written by younger men who held the predictable ageist views of popular culture. Watching a couple of old guys walking the Appalachian trail is bound to provoke feelings of insecurity in a culture that sees old age as weakness rather than true maturity. Many of these reviewers made comments about Nick Nolte’s charmingly gravely voice and wrinkled face and Redford’s rugged good looks “despite” his age, their superficial, often slick viewpoints inspiring several tapping rounds. My disappointment didn’t last long. After all, I thought as my perspective shifted and I returned to centre, these younger men are the voices of the dominant culture, and our dominant culture is truly afraid of aging.
After my tapping session, I felt gratitude for all the people in their sixties, seventies, eighties, and beyond who understand how indispensable the natural world is to human well being, Mr. Redford among them. I recalled all the older people I’ve seen here in Vermont who hike regularly, without any cameras rolling, and who do what they can to protect their places on earth from the world’s rapaciously extractive economies. I was also grateful for the experiences of older adults I’ve read about, Helen and Scott Nearing, Jane Goodall, and “Granny” Doris Haddock among them, who prove growing into true maturity can be an exciting activist’s adventure, maybe not one for sissies, but an adventure nonetheless. Their way of being in the world – alive to life’s joys and responsibilities until the very end – is what I’ve signed up for. Daily tapping is able to keep me clear about this. I hope this simple practice helps you maintain clarity about your values as well.
Until next week
Jane
Jane Buchan, MA, AAMET Advanced Practitioner, jane@winterblooms.net, 802-533-9277
Jane is a Learning Coach specializing in neutralizing cultural age, gender, and race constructs to support learners of every age. To engage her coaching services, please contact Jane by phone (802) 533-9277 or email, jane@winterblooms.net. Be sure to put Coaching Query in the subject line.