Category: <span>EFT</span>

EFT By Puja 0 Comments

8 reasons to join EFT International

 By certifying as a Practitioner and/or Trainer with EFT International, the largest EFT organization, practitioners gain professional recognition and credibility.
  1. Being affiliated with a reputable organization will add to your professional standing and validate your expertise in EFT.
  2. Membership in EFT International provides access to a global network of students, practitioners & trainers .
  3. EFT International upholds high standards and code of ethics for all its members. Joining the organisation demonstrates a commitment to professional integrity, ethical practice, and maintaining the highest level of EFT skills.
  4. Each member has to fulfil the annual requirement of 6 hours of mentoring and 30 hours of CPD which in turn shows that everyone, no matter what their expertise level, is required to continue to update their skills in EFT.
  5. Listing in practitioner directory – Members are listed in the EFT International Practitioner Directory, a verified resource for individuals seeking EFT practitioners. This directory increases visibility and provides a platform for potential clients to find and contact members directly.
  6. Research: The organisation actively promotes research on EFT. Also, members can attend the EFT international research symposium every year.
  7. Recognition as an Accredited and certified EFT Practitioner: Membership in EFT International signifies that practitioners have met the organization’s rigorous requirements for skills training in EFT. This recognition sets them apart as qualified and skilled professionals in the field of Emotional Freedom Techniques.
  8. EFT International Logo and Branding: Members can get access to the EFT International logo which they can use in their marketing materials, websites, and promotional ventures. This adds credibility to their professional status as an EFT Practitioner.
EFT By Puja 0 Comments

Benefits of learning EFT in a workshop

  1. Learning EFT is empowering. It is an excellent stress relief and relaxation technique, not just for yourself but also for your clients. The workshop is designed to facilitate the learning of EFT in a calm and regulated environment.
  2. EFT enables people to take charge of their emotional well-being. It’ll help you tap into your inner resources, build resilience and cultivate emotional and bodily awareness.
  3. EFT helps people identify and transform limiting beliefs that are holding them from reaching their full potential. The techniques that you’ll learn in this workshop will help you break free from these limiting patterns in your life.
  4. EFT is a tool than help in building emotional resilience and increase your capacity to handle stress. It equips participants with skills to navigate life’s challenges, bounce back from setbacks and maintain self-regulation.
  5. When you work on your limiting beliefs, you develop better frustration tolerance due to emotional awareness and self regulation technique, your relationships also improve as you learn to resolve conflicts and foster healthier relationships.
  6. It helps in boosting confidence and self esteem. Participants often report releasing self doubt, overcoming diffidence and developing a positive self regard.
  7. EFT workshop also takes you on a journey of personal growth and self discovery.
This workshop has EFT exercises, practice in pairs, group discussions to deepen the understanding and experience the power of EFT firsthand.
I’m a trainer of trainers with EFT International, the largest EFT organization led by dedicated volunteers who adhere to the highest standards of training in EFT. This workshop can help you not just to bring about positive changes in your life but also in that of others – friends and family.
EFT Physical issues • • • By Puja 0 Comments

Recovery from hysterectomy with EFT

After avoiding hysterectomy for the past couple of years, I finally made up my mind to go through it two months ago.

A little background

For years I managed my painful period with EFT. I had debilitating pain every month which left me bed-ridden affecting every sphere of my life. With the help of EFT, I was able to ease the frustration and angst that this caused, and take 5 days off every month to rest.

I was diagnosed with PCOD (Polycystic Ovarian Disease) at a young age and then with fibroids. Neither of these conditions were deemed serious enough for surgery, hence my doctor never suggested it. However, about 2 years ago, my doctor finally asked me to go for hysterectomy as my health was deteriorating and it was affecting my quality of life.

Last year when my period started getting worse and started coming twice a month, I knew that I had to decide quickly, but I was petrified of undergoing surgery. I wanted to be sure that I had exhausted all the possibilities of healing my uterus, which in my opinion, I had.

Tapping before surgery

In order to prepare myself for surgery I did a lot of self-tapping and a few sessions with tapping buddies.
Some of the aspects were:
“Even though I’m not sure if this surgery is the right choice, ….”
“Even though I’m scared of surgery,…”
“Even though I’m afraid of general anesthesia, ….”

All this helped in going through the numerous tests and checkups calmly. I was in a Zen like state on the day of the surgery.

But things went downhill right before surgery, emotionally.

When the nurses were prepping me for surgery, they messed up the IV and the intense pain along with the unkindness of one nurse broke my resolve. I was crying right before surgery but I kept tapping on my finger points throughout. My surgery went longer than usual due to some minor complication. The two days that I spent in hospital after surgery felt like a punishment! It was my first hospitalization and I was not prepared, and in a lot of pain. I had tapped so much for undergoing surgery but I forgot to address the aftermath of surgery. In my naïveté or wishful thinking that everything would be miraculously okay after surgery, I didn’t factor in the recovery phase as being difficult.

At one point, the pain was so debilitating, that I tapped on:
“Even though it’s so debilitating, and I feel like I might die, I’m surrendering to the pain and this process.”
This helped calm my nerves and I was able to tolerate more pain as the painkillers were not that effective initially. The rest of the stay in the hospital was filled with small mishaps that left me feeling helpless. These small t’s (traumas) added up and I spent the next 2 months tapping on all of it.

 

Struggling with symptoms 

As I struggled with ongoing pain, digestive issues, toothache from hell, and food poisoning, during the two months, I frequently felt hopeless and overwhelmed. My biggest fear was ending up in the hospital again.

Some of the aspects I tapped on were:
“Even though my suffering doesn’t seem to end, …”
“Even though I’m not sure when it’ll end, I want to remind myself that I am recovering in small ways everyday.”
“Even though I feel like I’m being punished, …”(This brought up some childhood hurts and I worked on them)
“Even though I’m so angry at the nurses for how unkind they were, … “( Tapped on the VAKOG of this experience)
“Even though I felt hopeless and helpless during my hospital stay, …”
“Even though it’s been a very challenging journey, I would love to have some compassion for myself.”
“Even though I might end up in the hospital again, and although the chances are slim, if it happens it happens. I choose to now come back to the present moment.”

Following a daily tapping routine

I incorporated some positive statements and cognitive shifts into my daily tapping routine. I would tap every morning on these statements:
“I’m safe at this moment.”
“I’m recovering.”
“My organs that were affected by the surgery are healing.”
“Healing is slow but it’s definitely happening.”
“I’m allowing my body to take its time to heal. My body knows how to heal. I choose to trust my body.”

Overall, the whole process was very stressful and there were multiple small t’s that had to be addressed, but due to the tapping, I was able to find many tiny moments of calm and peace during this time as well. I was able to appreciate the resources I had, and whenever the discomfort lessened I drew and read a lot.

Tapping, a real gift


EFT has been a life saver for me and continues to be helpful as I struggle with ongoing fatigue and stomach issues. A self regulating as well as relaxation tool, EFT’s USP is its adaptability to any situation.

In my opinion, using EFT on a daily basis for self-regulation when you are going through a physical or emotional hardship is the best gift you can give to yourself. While you cannot change the external circumstances, you can certainly heal what you are going through internally and give yourself hope.

I’m glad that EFT gave me the strength to undergo surgery as it’s only after the surgery that we found additional multiple fibroids which went undetected in scans and would have led to complications in future.

 

Anxiety EFT By Puja 0 Comments

Handling Intrusive Thoughts

Intrusive thoughts are repetitive, anxiety provoking, and frustrating. You feel as if you are losing control – you don’t want these thoughts and yet they suddenly come up and bother you, and the more you try to get rid of them the more they persist.

Let's take a look at why the brain produces thoughts.

The brain produces automatic negative thoughts. This is because the brain is wired for survival. When our ancestors were hunter gatherers, they were always on the lookout for threat. For example, their thoughts were something like this, "Is this a poisonous snake?"," Is that a poisonous fruit? Is it edible?", "I hear a rustle, shall I hide or take out my spear?"

Even though we're now living mostly in cities and while the chances of being bitten by a snake or eating a poisonous fruit has drastically reduced unless we’re mind numbingly zoned out, our brain is still very active and produces a myriad of thoughts.

The brain produces ANTS (Automatic Negative Thoughts) and we have a tendency to get hooked on to them. These thoughts are mostly judgements, evaluations and are catastrophic in nature, and not facts. They just get generated endlessly.  These thoughts also get blended with visuals and sounds. So, you may have a visual thought of falling down the stairs as soon you start descending the stairs. It may frighten you, but its purpose is to help you stay cautious. However, when you get hooked on to these thoughts by engaging with them, suppressing them or by paying too much attention to them, it can lead to chronic anxiety and hypervigilance.

Here are some tips to handle negative thoughts that are weird, strange, related to self-harming, harming others, gross or sexual in nature and that come out of nowhere.

  1. Know that these thoughts aren't facts. Tell yourself - these aren't facts.
  2. Do not react to the thoughts. Most people end up questioning their thoughts or themselves. “How can I have these thoughts? They're weird. Ugh! What's wrong with me?” This line of questioning exacerbates the thought and they become intrusive.
  3. Reverse the thought in your head, it'll lose its power as Susan David suggests in the book, Emotional Agility. For example, if you're thinking this continually, “What if I harm myself?”, reverse it. Myself-harm-I-if-What. The brain knows the new thought is gibberish and the thought will lose its power.
  4. Practice calming your mind regularly (Diaphragmatic breathing, tapping, Progressive muscle relaxation etc. can help).
  5. If you're anxious, then the thoughts will be more in quantity. They could be full blown colorful pictures- that float in your head. Hence, calming your body is equally important as the mind and body aren’t separate. What affects one affects the other. Tapping can help a lot in relaxing and calming your body.
  6. Usually, there is a theme underlying these thoughts. For example, some thoughts can be catastrophic in nature, like falling down the stairs or more self-harming like, “What if I cut myself with a knife? ”or evaluative - “What if I’m being judged by these people on the street?” Write down your thoughts and explore it with a psychologist. REBT can be very helpful.
  7. Affirmations can be very helpful too. Repeating or tapping on positive affirmations by Louise Hay, such as the ones given below, can be helpful too.

I calm my thoughts and I am serene. I feel safe to be ME
I lovingly protect myself with thoughts of joy and peace.
My thoughts flow freely and easily. I move through ideas with ease.
I relax and let life flow through me with ease.

Here’s a sample tapping script for intrusive thoughts. Best to make your own script and tap with your own words for tapping to be effective.

For more information on tapping, click here.

On SOH- Even though I have these thoughts that stress me out, I accept myself.

Sequence of Points – I’m afraid of these thoughts

But these thoughts can’t harm me.

I’m scared of these thoughts.

But they’re just thoughts, not facts.

I choose to be calm and focus on my breathing when they come up.

I choose to trust myself that I won't do anything. These thoughts will not convert into action.

I choose to let these thoughts pass/go by themselves.

EFT By Puja 0 Comments

EFT Research (Part 8)

EFT Research (Part 8): Efficacy of Acupoints stimulation vs sham points

This was published in the Energy Psychology journal in 2015. It’s called EFT for stress in students: A Randomized controlled Dismantling Study. This present study had two goals:

  1. To determine whether or not EFT could quickly reduce stress symptoms in college students
  2. To compare the efficacy of the acupoint stimulation to the stimulation of sham points. The comparison was between the acupoints that are used in EFT and sham points which are not acupoints.

56 participants were assigned to either EFT or the sham group and these were university students. And they were assessed for nine common stress symptoms before and after a single 15 to 20 minutes group intervention session. And these sessions were held on the campus in groups of five to ten students. Both these groups – the EFT and the sham group – were given a script containing eight sets of stressful cognitions, centered around the feeling of overwhelm and hopelessness and ending with a positive statement. The EFT group participants stimulated the actual acupoints that are used in Standard EFT, while those in the sham group used the sham points.

The pretest showed no significant difference in the stress symptoms. Post test, which is after the intervention, showed that the EFT group had a symptom reduction by 39.3% and the sham group showed a reduction of 8.1%, which shows that the stimulation of actual points is superior to the stimulation of the sham points. And this demonstrates that acupressure is an active ingredient of the EFT protocol, and it is not placebo.

 

Watch the video here:

EFT By Puja 0 Comments

EFT Research (Part 6)

EFT Research (Part 6): Stress and Anxiety Management for Students and Staff in School Settings

I found an interesting chapter in the book called “Promoting Mind-Body Health in Schools: Interventions for Mental Health Professionals”. The chapter’s name is  “Emotional Freedom Techniques: Stress and Anxiety Management for Students and Staff in School Settings”

EFT is an effective stress and anxiety management technique that can be used for students and school personnel and employees, and even a few sessions of EFT can help students to reduce their anxiety, the fear of failure, increase their performance, self-esteem, and this chapter “examines relevant EFT research and the use of EFT with school-age children and adolescents, and it also discusses the importance of formal training in Emotional Freedom Techniques for school practitioners and ethical considerations.”

I wish that I knew EFT in school because as a student, I remember the enormous pressure. There was academic pressure, this fear of failure, low self-esteem and what not. 

Citation

Gaesser, A. H. (2020). Emotional freedom techniques: Stress and anxiety management for students and staff in school settings. In C. Maykel & M. A. Bray (Eds.), Promoting mind–body health in schools: Interventions for mental health professionals (pp. 283–297). American Psychological Association
Link to the book: https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/4317526
Watch a short video on this: https://youtu.be/OU63UICUZ2s
EFT Trauma By Puja 0 Comments

Is Talk Therapy enough for trauma?

Using only a top down approach in psychotherapy sessions isn’t enough for trauma because:

  • When a person is experiencing flashbacks or even recalling a traumatic event their body can literally feel like it’s in the past. All the stored survival stress is back in the form of body sensations. These body sensations can get unbearable. And just talking about all of this won’t help because it doesn’t relieve the body sensations. Without a somatic approach to help handle the body sensations, the client can feel like they’re drowning in the gut wrenching sensations.

 

  • The body sensations can feel very triggering because the client feels as if they’re reliving the entire traumatic event rather than just talking about it. A cognitive approach to make sense of this doesn’t help until the body feels safer to inhabit, until the client can get a grip on the body sensations. No amount of cognitive processing can make the person understand that it’s in the past. While a cognitive approach can help in observing the body’s sensations, the bottom up approach can help in “recalibrating the nervous system” ( Kolk, 2004, p. 63-64) which is vital to begin with.

 

  • During a traumatic event, the body goes into survival mode and the amygdala, the smoke detector of the brain ( Kolk, 2004), only sees the danger and directs the body to escape the danger via FFF. The frontal cortex, especially the medial Prefrontal Cortex goes offline during trauma. Bessel Van Der Kolk calls it the ‘watchtower’ which helps in making important decisions. The trauma is stored in a non linear, fragmented manner and doesn’t have a coherent narrative. So explaining what happened when it’s mostly the fragmented sights, sounds, smell etc of the traumatic event, is very difficult in a talk therapy session.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy by Pat Ogden, Tapping acupressure points (EFT), Alpha/Theta training, Somatic Experiencing by Peter Levine, Neurofeedback, EMDR, are some of the techniques mentioned in the book, The Body keeps the Score, that are effective in resol

Reference:  van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.

EFT EFT Training • • • • By Puja 0 Comments

Benefits of Practice Sessions in Training

Answering a question that I’m often asked.

How are practise sessions conducted in the EFT training course and how do they help?

1) The practise sessions are not role plays but require students to work with others in the group on real issues. Although smaller issues are taken up, a lot of attendees have told me that it transformed certain areas of their lives.

2) These sessions aren’t recorded and they are held in breakout rooms (online training). In these rooms you can practise the EFT skills that you learn on that day.

©️www.emofreetherapy.com

3) In each class whatever you learn on that day can be practised in these practise sessions. These sessions are usually in dyads or triads. For example, if you’ve learnt the basic recipe and how to be specific, the concept of shifting aspects etc, you’ll be practising that with the participants.

4) The practise sessions in most classes follow the demo. You’ll be shown how to handle a real life problem in a demo session in a step by step manner.

5) With each class you’ll learn a new set of concepts and skills to deliver more effective sessions. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy – unless you know the basics and then the foundational skills, you cannot deliver effective eft sessions or practise EFT skilfully on yourself.

6) You’ll get personalised and compassionate feedback after each practise session by me and/or my experienced student(s).

These practise sessions are best for trying EFT and making mistakes. In real life situations where you work with clients, you won’t get many opportunities to really learn from your mistakes, as your client may not give you a direct feedback. These sessions are also help to assess and understand your strengths and limitations.

EFT limiting beliefs • • • • By Puja 0 Comments

Let yourself shine

Inspired by today’s EFT session

What holds us back? Why do we hold back from shining? Why do we feel we’re unworthy? Why are we uncomfortable with visibility in our respective fields? How does that impact our relationship with money and opportunities that come our way?

Think back to the times when you were told that you should be subdued or that you shouldn’t show off. What about the times you observed that being visible, letting yourself shine and take the spotlight was seen as flashy or something that you shouldn’t do?

In our culture we are taught to be subdued, more so if you are a woman, to hold back, to dim our brightness and to be invisible.

Haven’t we heard these messages from our parents, caregivers, teachers, relatives, media etc while growing up that it’s not okay to be visible? No one tells us we’re unworthy, but these shaming and outdated messages end up making us feel unworthy and undeserving of great things in life.
These cultural messages, these limiting beliefs and non-expansive ideas hold us back.

What if we could let go of these limiting beliefs – these restrictive ideas- that stop us from shining, from realising that just by being born we are truly worthy and invaluable beings?

A lot of my work with clients is on recognising these limiting patterns and ideas, and releasing and transforming them. In order to do so, we dig deeper and take a look at the programming that comes from our childhood, the incidents that shaped these beliefs, and start processing them.

For a garden to flourish you need to take out the weeds. In order to take out the weeds you need to pull them out with the roots, and not just trim them. Similarly, in order to recognise our worthiness, we need to uproot the limiting ideas and let go of old conditioning, and we can do that with EFT.

We’re worthy to shine.
We’re worthy to share our creativity with the world.
We’re worthy to speak up when needed.
We’re worthy to say no
We’re invaluable and infinitely magnificent.

EFT Therapy • • • • • • • • • • • • By Puja 0 Comments

EFT as an assistive approach for MHPs

How can EFT help you in your practise if you are a mental health professional?EFT can be used as an individual as well as an assistive tool to help your clients with emotional and psychosomatic issues.

Here are just a few ways in which EFT can help your clients. I’m highlighting the most common benefits of using EFT with your clients and introducing it into your therapy practise.

1. Clients often get dysregulated while talking about their issues or processing their issues in the sessions. EFT helps in regulating your client’s nervous system during a therapy session. Tapping helps by sending deactivating signals to the limbic brain and that in turn calms the mind and body. Imagine how much more your clients will be able to process, if they were able to get back into a regulated state easily and gently during a session! It also helps them self-regulate in between sessions.

2. Handling difficult persistent negative feelings is easier with EFT. You can creatively combine any modality that you use with EFT to help your clients cope with and manage their difficult feelings, in the session as well as on their own in between sessions.

3. EFT can help in unearthing and transforming limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs keep clients stuck in negative patterns and EFT utulizes a unique method to change these unhelpful beliefs – the unhelpful conclusions the clients have arrived at about themselves, the world and others.

4. Anxiety and stress are two of the most common presenting issues that clients bring to the table in our profession. EFT helps in easing the symptoms of GAD ( Generalized Anxiety Disorder). Clients can also learn the basics of EFT and apply it on themselves while they’re experiencing symptoms of anxiety such as heaviness in chest, increased heart rate, sweating etc. EFT is very effective for social anxiety as well.

5. Most clients have had some form of trauma in their lives. A specific technique in EFT is used for disarming troubling, stressful and traumatic memories and reducing the emotional charge associated with them. This is turn helps in improving their quality of life. There are many emotional and physical consequences of trauma, and working on adverse childhood experiences with EFT has proven to be very beneficial.

6. Goal setting & improving performance is another area where EFT can help either by itself or along with CBT and REBT.

7. Stress management is another area where EFT is very effective. I’ve conducted a lot of stress management classes, and tapping helps in reducing stress rather quickly. Research in EFT shows that tapping can reduce cortisol by approx 43% in a one hour tapping session.

8. EFT can complement the top-down approaches that most mental health professionals practise. EFT is a bottom-up approach which also incorporates cognitive shift and exposure. Since the body component is involved, EFT can help in decreasing body based anxiety and processing stored trauma responses in the body.

9. Talk therapies can sometimes be very overwhelming. I remember being very overwhelmed after a few of my talk therapy sessions. It felt like opening a tap and not closing it before the session ended. EFT can help in closing the tap by the end of each session. It has containment techniques than can effectively lessen the client’s overwhelm by the end of the session.

10. EFT can also help in positively resourcing a client at the start of the session.

EFT is a trauma informed approach and with increasing research backing its effectiveness, it’s time more MHPs considered learning and applying EFT. Since MHPs already have a solid background in psychology, in my opinion, they can master EFT skills easily.