Overcoming fear, eliminating cravings or losing weight is as simple as a tap on the head!
For many years as a sport scientist, personal trainer, life coach and EFT Practitioner, I have been working with clients who come to me for advice about how they can improve the performance and quality of their bodies; some want help to lose weight and tone up, others need to reduce their blood pressure and the effects of stress, some want to put on muscle and everyone wants to look and feel better. But, invariably I have found that it is never my client’s physical bodies that require improvement in the first instance.
In every client with whom I have ever worked, I have found that there has been some underlying issue (that they were not consciously aware of) that was being reflected in the current state of their body and health. It became evident that when a person is dissatisfied or experiencing dis-ease in some aspect of their life, this dissatisfaction manifests itself through their body.
Effectively, the body is a barometer for life; if something isn’t going well in a certain area of life, it manifests through the body.
Deepak Chopra, the world-renowned natural health guru, explains that most diseases don’t begin in the body, but in the mind and the spirit. Usually, by the time a disease process manifests as a physical ailment, the person has been suffering mentally, emotionally or spiritually for quite a long time. Therefore, the best time to cure a disease is before it has a chance to manifest as a sickness of the body.
The reason that most traditional health and wellbeing programs fail is because they only address the physical aspect of the human being. Most practitioners, therapists and trainers focus almost all their attention on perfecting the physical aspect of their clients by masking or treating symptoms, developing physical fitness and strength or removing or implanting parts of the human body through surgery. In their efforts to provide a quick fix for their clients, they ignore the fact that human beings are more than just a physical body.
We are also profoundly influenced by our thoughts, feelings and emotions to the extent that when our mental, emotional and spiritual elements are working in harmony, the physical aspect of our selves will perform more efficiently and effectively and provide us with greater results than if we had concentrated on our physical aspect alone.
The evidence that this is true was only too apparent to me when working with my clients. I found that when they did address the underlying cause of their dissatisfaction (that is, their dis-ease), their physical bodies responded with a lot less effort and they began to see amazing results in all areas of their lives.
How did they do this?
I want to share with you a revolutionary new way that people all over the world are discovering that is allowing them to overcome fears, eliminate cravings and lose weight – and keep it off forever – and it is as simple as a tap on the head.
EMOTIONAL FREEDOM TECHNIQUES
This revolutionary technique is called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). It has a large following in the US and UK and has already helped thousands of Aussies combat their food addictions, banish their chocolate cravings, and stop overeating (among hundreds of others symptoms.
EFT is a psychological form of acupuncture, but without the needles. Instead, you stimulate energy meridian points on your body by tapping on them with your fingertips while repeating specific statements. The process is easy to memorise and is portable, so you can do it anywhere.
EFT was discovered by Gary Craig in the 1980's and is an amazing process that allows you to discover the underlying issues that have been holding you back. EFT has been known to provide relief from:
- Life-long fears and phobias
- Serious physical ailments
- Illness and injuries
- Body image issues
- Cravings and addictions
- Money and wealth issues
- Relationship issues
- Career and business issues.
The underlying principle of EFT is …
‘The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body's energy system.’
And because our physical pains and diseases are so obviously connected with our emotions, the following statement has also proven to be true...
‘Our unresolved negative emotions are major contributors to most of our physical pains and diseases.’
This common sense approach to EFT draws its power from:
(1) Time-honoured Eastern discoveries that have been around for over 5,000 years; and
(2) Albert Einstein, who told us back in the 1920's that everything (including our body), is composed of energy.
Because the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body's energy system, it makes sense that (when combined with the universal law of attraction) people struggle towards the ideal body or life that they truly want.
For example:
If you have a negative thought, feeling or belief vibrating at a sub-conscious level in your body, you will be attracting this vibration in your external world.
The correct use of EFT will allow you to clear this energetic vibration (that is, the negative thought, feeling or belief) and then replace it with a more positive and powerful vibration, so that you begin to attract the new reality – by performing the behaviours that are in alignment with this new vibration.
HOW DOES EFT WORK?
EFT works by massaging the meridians (by tapping on them with your finger tips) to free up any trapped energy associated with the negative past or projected future trauma or event and is simple to perform:
Step One: Identify a specific issue that you would like to work on.
For the purpose of this article, I will use the issue of "I feel exposed and vulnerable when I lose weight"
… but remember, EFT has been known to work on almost anything, so if you have any issue, feel free to use that instead.
Step Two: Identify on a scale of 0 – 10 how badly you feel about this issue.
Ten is the most discomfort you could possibly feel.
If you can't feel it right now, close your eyes and imagine yourself in the stressful situation or issue in your mind.
Step Three: Create the set-up statement, "Even though I feel exposed and vulnerable when I lose weight, I deeply and completely accept myself anyway".
The purpose of the set-up statement is to bring the issue to your conscious awareness and to say that “Even though I have this issue, I still accept myself anyway”. In other words, I am not my issue.
Step Four: Repeat the set-up statement three times while tapping repeatedly on the Karate Chop (KC) point. (See Tapping Points chart below)
Step Five: Perform one or two rounds of the negative ‘reminder’ statement ("I feel exposed and vulnerable when I lose weight") while tapping on each of the meridian points, starting from the Eye Brow point and going down the body and then finishing on the top of your head (see Tapping Points chart below). When finished, take a deep breath in and out.
Step Six: Re-assess on a scale of 0 – 10 how badly you feel about the original issue.
Ideally you will have reduced your number on the scale, as the emotional charge will have either dissipated or disappeared or you will have triggered a secondary issue.
If you still have some emotional charge around the original issue or you have unearthed another secondary issue (which normally presents itself in the form of another emotion, a belief, a memory of a past event or even a physical symptom), then repeat the above six steps until you feel completely clear of any mental, emotional or physical discomfort.
Step Seven: Repeat the above 6-step EFT process on anything else that may be causing you some dis-ease.
CLIENT CASE STORY
From fear to sugar cravings to obesity and poor self-esteem to having her life back again.
The following is an example from a client, Mary (not her real name), prior to spending 30 minutes with me to rid herself of her (very common symptom) obesity.
"Andrew, I am 47 years old. I grew up as a confident and sociable person. I used to think of myself as a good-looking person. I was always comfortable with my sexuality and never seemed to have problems attracting the opposite sex. At my best, I used to weigh 55 kg and was always very active.
“Approximately 23 years ago things changed drastically. I had just broken up with the love of my life (at least I thought he was at the time, until he cheated on me) and I have not had a proper relationship since. I remember having a short fling immediately after the break up, which I thought would help me to get over the heart break of my so called ‘ideal man’, but that lasted less than three months. Every time we became anything close to intimate, I would freak out and feel like I had to escape and would often hide in my house for days.
“Today I weigh 95 kg and don’t recognize myself in the mirror, as I am carrying that much body fat. Except for work, I very rarely venture out in public because I feel utterly worthless and humiliated with how I look. I am questioning whether I will ever attract an intimate relationship again, although deep down I know I would really love to see if it is possible.
“I have tried hypnotherapy, breathing exercises, physical exercise and dieting, but these have only provided short-term relief before I revert back to my old habits of excessive sleeping and eating far too much junk food (I crave sugar the most as it seems to make me feel better, albeit not for more than half an hour) and I can’t remember the last time I did any exercise. I just don’t feel like I have the energy for it.
“I am getting desperate. I need help and I need it quickly! Can you help?"
I arranged a session with Mary (which was conducted over the telephone) and it involved performing EFT on the following five statements:
First we started tapping on the issue of "Even though I feel absolutely worthless and ashamed of myself walking down the street weighing 95kgs, I deeply and completely accept myself anyway".
Mary originally ranked this issue as ten on the 0 – 10 scale, but after only one round of tapping, the intensity had dropped to four because Mary had realised that it was not the walking down the street that made her feel this way, it was the way she felt when she found out that her ‘ideal man’ had cheated on her.
So we then performed four tapping rounds on the following statement: "Even though I feel betrayed, rejected, humiliated and angry that my partner cheated on me, I deeply and completely accept myself anyway”.
Because this issue was so intense (there was so much suppressed emotion), it required a few more rounds to bring down the emotional charge.
This then led us to the statement: “Even though I feel totally heartbroken by the man I thought I was going to be with forever, I deeply and completely accept myself anyway”.
After only three rounds of tapping on the feeling of deep sadness associated with her heartbreak, Mary’s intensity went from ten to one and she finally came to the realisation that it was because she had not wanted to feel this heartbreak feeling ever again that she had subconsciously been protecting herself from feeling it. She did this by overeating, refraining from exercise and becoming a recluse in her house by sleeping the day away and putting on 40 kg of body fat so she would never attract another man to make her feel this way.
We then tapped on “Even though I am terrified of attracting my ideal man, I deeply and completely accept myself anyway”.
Amazingly Mary also had the realisation that if the man she was dating 23 years ago was truly her ‘ideal man’, he never would have cheated on her.
So we tapped on that statement too. After only half a round, she had no trace of any emotional charge around the underlying belief of “I don’t want to attract my ideal man because he will only break my heart”.
These cognitive shifts are very common when our emotional charge has dissipated to such a low level that we are open and able to see new ways of looking at the same situation.
Or as I like to say, “As our emotion comes down, our intelligence goes up”.
Ultimately, Mary’s case story explains why she was so obese and not attracting any men at all.
Her fear of feeling the feelings of heartbreak, humiliation, worthlessness, etc, was so severe that she was doing anything and everything she possibly could to protect herself from feeling these feelings. The consequence was that she had put on a large amount of body fat as a by product.
I am happy to say that after only one session, Mary joined her local gym, began eating healthy food, had no sugar cravings and is now an active member of her local community. Since we last spoke, she had not yet found her ‘Mr Right’, but is a regular participant on the dating circuit (as she calls it) and is well on her way to losing her excess body weight/fat.
Stories like Mary's are revolutionary because they provide evidence that if people were to spend five minutes a day doing EFT on their negative, limiting or conflicting thoughts, feelings, beliefs, doubts and fears, they would begin to lose weight with ease and therefore eliminate the need for those extra gym sessions and all that excessive (and often obsessive) calorie counting.
Here's to the removal of your fears, cravings and excess body fat forever with EFT!
Andrew McCombe