CreativeEFT

Published in the Rising Sun EFT Group Newsletter 12-17-09

I was speechless when I received the announcement of Gary Craig’s retirement a few days ago. This is truly earthshaking news for the EFT community. I’m sure we are all sending healing energy to Gary for the best recovery from his heart attack. Perhaps we can all tap healing energy towards him, as we know that surrogate tapping is powerful.

If anyone deserves all the rest, freedom and ease of retirement, it is Gary Craig. The immensity of the gift of EFT that he has given the world can never be acknowledged and appreciated enough. He has worked tirelessly on behalf of EFT for so long. During this time, we have been blessed with Gary’s gift of such an amazing wealth of free or low-cost EFT resources. For me, the DVDs and the website, especially the article archives on the website, have been like the backbone of EFT and I will miss them greatly. It is a huge loss that these resources will also be coming to a close. Many are suggesting that the article archive be maintained in some form, so I hope that will be considered.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Gary and would like to share with you my favorite story about him. I first met Gary in 2001 at a workshop he did in Flagstaff, Arizona. This is one of the workshops that is on the second DVD set, and it was a marvelous experience. At that time, there were about 180 of us in attendance and, being a little shy, I was of course lost in the crowd. But soon thereafter, Gary put out an invitation — he wanted to find 12-15 people to come out to his home at The Sea Ranch, CA, and spend a week training in EFT with him. I was on the phone with him in seconds! Thus, my dear friend Carolyn Lewis and I ended up in that small group training.

So my first real connection with Gary was this experience of his incredible generosity. I was so blown away, I was pinching myself, was it a dream? All we had to do was get there and pay for lodging in the several vacation houses he rented for the event, and he would give us a week of his time. Wow.

As plans were made, it appeared that we would have the option of doing our own cooking. My friend and I prefer vegetarian, so I found myself asking Gary Craig if there was anywhere we’d be able to get tofu! He didn’t know and of course that was fine. On the day we arrived, Gary met us and took Carolyn and me to the house where we would be staying. There was a beautiful bouquet of rhododendron on the table, picked from Gary’s own yard. The refrigerator was already stocked with supplies — including tofu! I will never forget that. How sweet and thoughtful. Gary Craig, who is really not a tofu kind of guy, had gone out of his way to make sure we had our tofu.

It has been quite a ride, as Gary said in his announcement. None of us knew in 2001 that EFT would grow to what it is today. This growth is a wonderful thing and, at the same time, it has presented huge challenges. I wish to honor Gary Craig and thank him from the bottom of my heart. While I am sad to reach the end of this era, I respect his decision to step down and wish him all good things in his well-deserved retirement. We must all do our best to be good stewards of EFT and carry it into the future with integrity, skill and love. I will always acknowledge where I come from as an EFT practitioner and will always appreciate Gary Craig.

Originally published in the Rising Sun EFT Newsletter, Nov. 19, 2009

Inner Theater is a visual approach with EFT that has been developing in
my work in collaboration with Jade Barbee. One of the things that
has come out of our Inner Theater approach is a renewed awareness
of the value of staying very present and responding moment-by-moment
in an EFT session. For the client, this is an experience of being listened to
very deeply, and that alone is healing. For the one guiding the tapping,
it helps us to really trust the healing process that is unfolding and not to
miss any healing opportunities.

A simple technique that Jade & I call “the language of invitation”
is so effective that I now use it in almost every session. Here’s an
example.

Recently a man was tuning in to the look of annoyance on his
mother’s face whenever he, as a child, needed something. We
started tapping the Karate Chop spot:

“Even though I see my mother’s face… and she looks so annoyed…
and that makes me feel___ (what?)” (you simply leave a blank to be
filled in).

He said, “That makes me feel like I’m a bother to her, a pest.”

“And even though I feel like a pest, a bother and___ (what else?)”

He filled in, “Like my needs aren’t important, only her needs
matter, mine don’t… and she wishes she could brush me off like a
fly.”

“And even though she wants to brush me off like a fly, and that
makes me feel_______ (what?)”

“Ashamed. Embarrassed. Like I wish I could disappear.”

“Even though I see her annoyed expression and I have all those
feelings about it, I love and accept my young self… and it’s time
to bring some healing to this.”

You then tap the points for all the feelings that have come up,
“feeling like a pest, my needs aren’t important, feeling
embarrassed and ashamed,” etc. While going through the points,
you can use the invitation technique again:
“Ashamed… embarrassed… and ____ (what else?)”

This simple invitation to fill in the blanks allows us to pay
attention to many nuances that might have been missed. The
subconscious only has to be invited and it will bring up more
and more of what needs healing. Making the invitations while
tapping works especially well. As we’re opening the energy
system with tapping, we’re connecting very directly with the
feelings that have been held in the body and literally tapping
into the body’s healing wisdom.
For more on the Inner Theater approach, please visit www.innertheater.net

Originally published in the Rising Sun EFT Newsletter 10-18-09.

In two recent sessions, I was privileged to work with adults who still needed some healing for the loss of a parent in early childhood. In both cases, we used an Inner Theater approach (engaging the imagination) to create a safe place within, and then we went back in time to find the little girl or little boy they had been.

So much of this healing work was about presence and witnessing and being with the child. Bits and pieces came, such as the confusion and fear around the open coffin, the weirdness of being told, “just go out and play” or “don’t touch the flowers,” and the way no one really talked to the child about what had happened. In this part of the sessions, I found that the phrase, “It’s time to bring healing to this” really helped with the tapping.

“Even though I don’t understand… and I’m really scared…. it’s time to bring healing to this…”

“Even though I feel so confused… what does all this mean?…. it’s time to bring healing to this…”

“Even though no one’s paying attention to me… no one knows how lost and scared I feel… it’s time to bring healing to this.”

As we got further, feelings of loss and grief began to emerge. Especially in past generations, people haven’t realized that children have the full range of human emotions. It wasn’t recognized that even young children go through a grief process — children often got no support or help with grieving. So when we reach back in time to bring in healing, there will be grieving to do that couldn’t be done at the time.

What was most healing here was for the adult self to simply be with the child self and acknowledge the child’s feelings. In this case, the EFT phrase that helped the most was one I learned from my friend Jade Barbee: “I can let these feelings safely flow.”

“Even though there is so much sadness, I can let these feelings safely flow….”

“Even though I miss ______ so much, I can let these feelings safely flow…”

“Even though my heart is broken, that’s just how I feel… I can let this feeling flow…”

“Even though I could just cry and cry, I can let these feelings safely flow… it’s all for healing now.”

Grieving cannot be short-cut or short-changed. It is a process and in order to move through grief, we do need to let feelings flow. In these cases, it was moving to see how the adult self could reach out to the child self and give him or her what was needed — listening, presence, support and permission to feel. In both cases, we brought the child into the inner safe place. As we continued tapping, and the feelings did flow, there was a great sense of relief that the child was not alone anymore and that the loss could finally be expressed and have a chance to heal.

Very beautifully, in both cases, the parent who had died appeared in the safe place to join the adult and child parts and reassure them. An inner reconnection took place that felt very healing. I actually didn’t suggest this — it happened spontaneously. And since what happens in the inner world is very real on the feeling level, these reconnections brought a new sense of completion and peace. I held these sessions with care and I feel honored to have been a part of these very tender healing journeys.