Month: August 2019

Ready, Set, Wait a Bit Longer for Unleash Your Primal Power

Unleash Your Primal Power

It has been an exciting week. On Friday I saw the cover design and interior layout for Unleash Your Primal Power: Totem Tapping for Health and Happiness. While a few tweaks will be necessary, the finish line for getting this book “on the shelves” is starting to come into view.

Just the title is enough to make you feel that something is happening. After all, the word UNLEASH gives you the sense that something powerful is about to be set free. Indeed I hope that is true for you. I believe that most, if not all people, have an inner wisdom or spirit, that if we just allowed it to flow freely or be “unleashed,” would guide and improve our lives.

Unleash Your Primal Power combines the technique – tapping, with animal characteristics to form an easily learned technology for lasting personal change. The book will guide you through multiple examples, using different animal characteristics, to help you get started.

Try this exercise:

  1. What is the first animal you would like to visit at the zoo if you could just walk straight to it?
  2. Name at least 3 characteristics of that animal that you admire or enjoy.
  3. How similar are you to that animal?
  4. In your daily life do you exhibit those 3 characteristics above? Do you behave somewhat different, or opposite of those 3 characteristics?
  5. How would it help you to be more like the animal?
  6. What situations do you see yourself in that, if you behaved or thought more like that animal, you would benefit?
  7. Have there been specific times when you behaved the opposite?
  8. Was there a specific time when you “learned” that having those characterstics was unsafe?
  9. Is it still unsafe?
  10. Imagine yourself exhibiting the characteristics of the animal. How does it feel?

I hope you wrote down your answers. Now, start tapping using the questions and answers above. Change tapping spots as you are guided by your intuition. When you are done, be sure to write down any thoughts or feelings that you had.

Need to learn more about tapping? Click here.

Tapping In My Own Life

I was recently asked how I use tapping in my own life. I was hesitant to answer this one because it is a bit embarrassing (tap, tap, tap). My confession is that sometimes I don’t. I was concerned that my readers would think I was a fraud. I have heard others talk about this too. It seems incongruent that I would believe in tapping, teach it to others, and then not always use it.

I forget. I know that sounds lame, but even after all of these years I forget about tapping. Jessica Ortner, from the Tapping Solution, has talked about how she doesn’t always remember to use tapping, because emotionally or energetically she isn’t at her current, adult, tapping-expert stage. She is in that upset inner child frame of mind and her inner child doesn’t know tapping. I was so relieved to hear her say that. I get there too.

I use tapping frequently to manage the minor inconveniences and hassles of daily living. Stuck in traffic – I tap. Feel foolish because I dropped or spilled something – I usually tap. Over-the-top angry with someone close to me – I sometimes tap. Upset about a repetitive pattern that extends back to childhood and makes me feel inadequate – I almost never remember to tap right away.

I manage this by having other people in my life that remind me to tap when I am getting that overwhelmed and haven’t started tapping on my own. They bring me back into my adult self so that I can use the tools I’ve honed over the years.

Happy Tapping.

Need to learn more about tapping? Click here.

How Long Does Tapping Take?

How long does tapping take? That question has two different components. First, the question could be how long does tapping take to learn? The second question seems to be how long does it take to bring relief from a problem or challenge? The first question is the easiest so lets start there.

Learning the basics of how to tap takes less than 10 minutes. All you need to do is learn the tapping points (or if you are really in a hurry all you need is to look at a tapping point chart or tap along to a video).

Tapping is one of those skills that gets easier and more effective with practice though. What can sometimes take the longest about tapping is to learn how to get to the heart of the matter that is bothering you. Sometimes we are really resistant (on a subconsious level). That is why I usually recommend that you start, without any of the words that you see people using when they tap, and just experience the relief from the physical tapping first. Then, as you become more comfortable with that part, you can add words to help you “tune in” to whatever is going on.

Distress

The question about how long it takes to get relief is more difficult. How long seems to be a very specific to each individual and problem. That is not to say that problems causing severe distress take longer and minor distress resolves quickly. Some problems have been there longer, and in my practice seem to take longer to resolve. They often involve habitual ways of thinking and responding that have been reinforced by multiple life experiences.

For me that takes more tapping. That said, there can be significant relief within the first round or two of tapping, but there is more work to be done. I’ve managed the overwhelm and pain of physical therapy within a few minutes. Managing the frustration of needing physical therapy because of an injury has taken much longer. That is because of the negative self talk involved.

I have also found that the sooner you start tapping about something that is currently going on, the more quickly it will resolve. Stuck in traffic and frustrated? Tap while you are waiting and the emotional distress melts away. Wait 15 years to tap about something someone said to you in high school and it might take longer.

Happy Tapping.

Need to learn more about tapping? Click here.

Why Tapping?

question mark symbolizing why

This could easily be a very short article. Why Tapping? It works! That really sums it up.

In all fairness, lots of other traditional psychotherapy techniques work too. In my practice I found that tapping (also known as Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT) worked more quickly. It also worked with less pain and distress, and was useful for a wider array of problems. What could take years to improve with traditional therapy improved within weeks or even hours if the person was committed to tapping.

I wasn’t always an enthusiast. I was an active skeptic and resisted the belief that anything that worked that fast for that many different kinds of problems could be legitimate. The results were very hard to dispute. After first using EFT for myself, then with a few different clients that were willing to give it a go, it really became my go-to technique for almost everything and still is.

One of the things I find most interesting is that tapping works for “small issues” that most people don’t even think about addressing until much later. To say it another way, tapping can help someone stop a little problem before it gets to be a bigger problem. An example would be a playground dispute at a preschool. But it works in the other direction too. Tapping can be used to address really BIG problems.

Need to learn more about tapping? Click here.

Back to the Beginning – How I Got Started with Tapping

One of the questions I get asked is how I got started with tapping. After all, I am a traditionally trained psychologist. While that is true, I’m actually not all that traditional. When I had my private practice I used a lot of traditional methods, but I also used some non-traditional interventions such as martial arts to help clients overcome difficulties. I became a Reiki Master and studied Tai Chi and those also were part of my practice. It wasn’t that much of a stretch to get to tapping.

Florida

My tapping journey actually started with a whisp of serendipity. I wanted to get out of town for a conference, there was one in Florida about applied kinesiology (something I had been reading about), so I decided to go. The conference was good, but while I was there I was exposed to tapping, during a break in the action at the conference.

I was intrigued. When a tapping conference was announced in Flagstaff in the coming year I felt compelled to be there. In the meantime I purchased some training CDs from Gary Craig, the founder of the Emotional Freedom Technique, and started to get myself up to speed. Once in Flagstaff everything just seemed to fall into place. I got to see the masters in action.

I used tapping for myself and started teaching it to others in my practice as soon as I got home. Not everyone welcomed the technique. There are a lot of expectations that psychological treatment has to be hard work, so since tapping is so easy, there was a lot of skepticism. Once people tried it, nearly everyone saw results.

I continue to train and study and refine my technique so that change can occur even more quickly and completely. It is definitely my go-to technique for myself and others.

Need to learn more about tapping? Click here.

Ready…Set…Tap

Are you struggling with your weight? I am, and I’m finding it a little hard to accept since I literally wrote a book on losing weight. I was successful for quite a few years but recently have gained some weight. I’m inviting you to join me as I re-start my weight loss/health improvement journey.

This video is the first in what I hope will be a series of very real, very personal, and very successful tapping experiences to get me back on track. As with all good journeys we need a starting point so listen in on my back story and future plan.

Stay tuned. The next video will be on resistence to doing portion control.

Until next time….Happy Tapping

Need to learn more about tapping? Click here.