What IF? By Karen
St.Clair, AAMET EFT Practitioner
Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen in our homes, taking up space until the next headache or knee pain comes along. Doesn’t every household have shelves full of pain killers, always at the ready? Gotta have it!
W Pause…deep breath. What if we tuned into our bodies more often and realized
most of the aches and pains that we rush to medicate are usually caused by our emotions.
What if we turned to our Emotional Toolbox to ease the
chronic pain brought on by stress and anxiety? What if we possessed a universal tool that could work on
everything from physical pain to PTSD? You might say, “No way! That’s impossible; one technique
couldn’t possibly work on every emotion. What if I’m feeling like a failure because I can’t lose weight? What if my knee pain just won’t go away? What if I’m scared of thunder and lightning? What if the thought of speaking up in a meeting terrifies me? What if I’m feeling over-the-top guilty because I can’t stand my step-mother?”
I would say, “Have you heard of EFT (Emotional Freedom
Technique) or Tapping?” The technique of Tapping began in 1980, with a psychologist
by the name of Roger Callahan, and a patient with an extreme phobia of water. Mary’s fear of water controlled her life and kept her from daily activities. Dr. Callahan and Mary had been work- ing on this problem together for over a year. Finally, Mary worked up the courage to sit within sight of the pool at Dr. Callahan’s house. Even doing this caused Mary extreme distress. Her fear of being near the water caused Mary stomach pains – a common “gut reaction.”
18 Essential Living Maine ~ July/August 2017
hat if we could eliminate pain without running to the medicine cabinet or the pharmacy at the first twinge? What if we didn’t have to store those large bottles of
Dr. Callahan had recently been studying traditional Chinese medicine and learning about meridians. Remembering that there was an acupuncture point for the stomach meridian on the cheekbone, he asked her to tap there, thinking it might cure her stomach pains.
Mary tapped her cheekbone as directed, and this little action
changed medicinal history! The response seemed miraculous, to both Mary and Dr. Callahan. Her stomach pains disappeared. But even more amazingly, her phobia of water also disappeared.
EFT Tapping has come a long way since 1980 and has become
known in my practice as “The Universal Tool” because it’s true; it does work on everything.
The starting point with Tapping is to identify how we feel. We need to tune in to our emotions and recognize how we’re feeling about the actual physical or emotional issue.
We forget that our body, mind and spirit are one. You can’t feel an emotion without a physical reaction and you can’t have a physical reaction without feeling an emotion.
My client, Dina, experienced how Tapping integrates our
natural self-healing abilities by releasing the emotional trauma that was triggered at her recent dentist appointment.
Dina went to her dentist to have the first half of a crown
procedure, where the dentist had to drill away most of the tooth enamel and then fit a temporary crown on the tooth. Lots of drilling! After the Novocain wore off, Dina found herself with a screaming toothache, but not in the crowned tooth. In agony, she called me the next day to ask if I thought Tapping could relieve the intense pain.
I asked her how she felt about having the pain and what the dentist appointment had been like.
Dina said, “Well, I guess the procedure went ok, but in ad-
dition to having this debilitating toothache, I’m really angry that while I was sitting there tipped back in the dentist chair with the
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