Eft and physical issues

mind is subtle body and body is solid mind. they are not two.
physical issues due to accident can have lots of emotions behind it right at the time of the event ( embarrasment, feeling stupid, frustration, anger etc etc) Look a bit deeper there is a world in there. I had a client with arm unable to move more than a few degrees. The core issue was embarrasment as the accident had occured on a busy station in London! Unless all those issues go the mind is not happy and keeps the body that way too.
For surgery issues on top of my head could be-unable to relax to allow body to heal, doubt about getting better, Too much trust in what doctors diagnose, Resistence to get better for reasons of attention, love, sympathy etc etc, too much involvement in form of worry, fear etc if it will get better... Then there are more issues which you can only know better by working with them.
In case of an accidents, instant tapping does not have to have any words at all as they are so tuned in already. Just tap tap tap for 15- 20minutes. I often find It completely sorts it there and then.

Star, the accident itself is the tappable issue - the movie technique is often very useful.

When we have an accident, often things slow down, we go into shock - our entire system stops for a moment. And the subconscious doesn't know about time, so there's often a part of the system "stuck" in in the same place, playing over the accident again and again. Once the accident itself is released, this allows the system to understand that one has survived, the danger is over and the accident is in the past, that lets the system relax enough for the body to heal.

EFT is *Emotional* Freedom Techniques. Remember the discovery statement? The cause of all negative emotion is a disruption in the energy field. What else is pain but manifested negative emotion?

Fx

OOH (light bulb goes on !) I get it now,the emotional stuff going on during/after the incident gets locked in with the pain and so contributes to the physical, by removing this negateve emotional energy you set the body up to heal as it knows how to under the right circumstances.

I can strongly recommend a book called 'emotional anatomy', I forget the author. Its striking illustrations are particularly hard to forget. It explains how our entire sense of self is tied up with our growing awareness of our body, early in life our physical body is our entire world, and as our awareness expands outwards we learn about the world through the behaviour of our physical body. This shapes our entire inner representation of the universe.

On another tack, Osteopaths call the musculoskeletal system 'the graveyard of the emotions'. When an event causes a change in the physical body, it is always connected in the nervous system with an experience - it has to be.

When emotion is resolved often the body will change. And during manual therapy, and even yoga, people sometimes experience great emotion as the physical imprints are encountered, the memory connected with it surfaces too. It is not unusual for manual therapy to involve tears, laughter etc. The patient should always feel able to express this, and not try to hold back out of embarrassment, or the emotion can be buried deeper.

Conversly, when we treat people with insomnia, mood problems etc (which may be incidental to their main area of concern), often the result will be worsening physical symptoms before resolution. It's not unusual for somebody to sleep better but suffer temporary headaches, neck stiffness etc. (see Hering's Law of cure). This is why it's so important not to jump on every new symptom but to interpret the situation and allow the body to sort things out.

Of course the emotional component is not always negative, a fall can be deeply upsetting, or can be joyous (eg during play, sport etc), no matter, the injury or imprint (milder than injury) is still real, and may still be troublesome, the release of emotion in treatment may still be quite a surprise to the patient.

Lastly, Thomas Myers' 'anatomy trains' has a picture of a man's posture changing on being startled - the anterior muscular chain shortens reflexively to protect vulnerable structures, leading to a hunched, shortened shape. How many people carry such emotional postures all their lives. This does not just use energy, but the changes in the neck in a startle posture influence the blood supply of the brain, fluid mechanics, neurological regulation of tissue, distribution of resources etc, the health of the head is changed.

OOH (light bulb goes on !) I get it now,the emotional stuff going on during/after the incident gets locked in with the pain and so contributes to the physical, by removing this negateve emotional energy you set the body up to heal as it knows how to under the right circumstances.

Nearly. The emotional stuff from the accident and/or the aftermath *causes* the pain. Release the cause and the pain disappears. In fact, while you're doing the session, you can use the level of pain to measure how far you've got.

I'm always surprised how quickly pain - even chronic pain that's been a constant companion for years - disappears with a few rounds of EFT.

Fx

Stanley Keleman is the author, kvpd.

Those are some interesting recommendations you've made - thanks.

Fx

Kvdp and Coerdelian thanks for all that wonderful information,so much appreciated,its all making more sense to me now,I think I was not understanding physical pain with the emotion,I was looking at it on its own.
Kvdp what you say is so interesting,when my brother was killed in an accident within a very short time my mother's whole skeletal system changed,she was stooped and her whole body seemed to close in ,similar symptoms to arthrites,she carried this to her grave unfortunately.

Hi again Fiona
I'd say the relationships go in every direction, pain is not just generated in the emotions (I hope I haven't paraphrased that too awfully), but the two can go together.

Physiologically, pain signals are ascending in the spinal cord constantly, and to an extent are suppressed from above by descending signals, this is true. Without that suppression we would feel extreme pain all the time, it is said. The suppression in turn is modulated by higher function, including emotional state etc.

Nevertheless, the ascending signals of pain are real, they are our most primal awareness that something is wrong in the physical world, they supply practical instructions about what to avoid or what to do. They reach awareness for a practical reason to do with survival.

It has become very trendy in modern medicine to look for head therapies in dealing with pain, especially chronic pain. However, I call this an admission of defeat about understanding the causes of pain. It's a very dangerous road to go down when thinking that it's the pain that must be wrong, therefore the body must be fine. Who knows where we'll end up then?

Cause is a huge subject, and tackling the modulatory processes or mental impressions alone is not enough. In both physical disease and mental disease the body is huge.

On a practical point, though, all of this does mean that it doesn't matter where we start breaking vicious cycles. It's very 'tai chi' to treat the body when the mind is in trouble, and vice versa. But really we should make inroads to the patient's condition anywhere we can, it's all part of one big pattern.

Kvdp - I knew you would object to the idea that the pain goes so easily when the emotional charge is dealt with ...

Generally, when people come to an energy practitioner they've tried everything else. An energy practitioner is not a first point of call, like an osteopath might be, but last. They've tried everything, been told by the doc that there's nothing they can do, they've had physio, massage, pain killers, various forms of alternative therapy and they're pretty much at their wits' end.

If any physical approach was likely to work, it would have done so already by the time they get to an energy practitioner.

Energy medicine - any kind of energy medicine - doesn't exactly ignore the physical, but approaches on the basis that the problem is with energy and the body will follow when the energy system is balanced, harmonised and flowing properly.

Pain, from that approach, is an indication of where an emotional charge is being stored, which may or may not result in a mechanical problem. If the emotional charge is removed, it is not just the pain that is released, but the mechanical problem also, since the energy disruption can no longer interfere on the physical plane.

Sounds flakey?

Someone came to see me who had had a terrible accident resulting in chronic back pain, for *years*. After one session, that person is pain free and has full movement in their back as if the accident never happened.

That person is one of many - there are so many of these pain related EFT stories on the website.

I do understand that your concern is that when pain relief is found there is nothing to warn of further damage. The truth is that the damage is pretty much gone, too. Full movement restored.

FX

No, it doesn't sound flakey, my involvement with alternatives began with homoeopathy, and went on from there. It took a long time to find osteopathy, another 15 years to find practitioners using it to its actual potential. A lot has changed in our field since the Flexner Report.

I have to challenge this on several fronts:

Function relates directly to structure, as far as I'm concerned it's a law of the universe. When structure changes, function does, when function changes, structure adapts in turn. It was a flower-formula lady who opened my eyes to this. That does not mean we can find a mechanical switch for every problem.

At college the ramifications are alluded to, but sadly, the medical brain-washing is so strong in us all that most don't really see. Even now most manual therapists in all fields regard themselves as specialists in physical conditions. The rest can't help chopping the body into a series of medical definitions, anyway, so usually end up forming the same conclusion. Sad to me, but most wouldn't even recognise this as a flaw. So I would say that many therapists (not just osteopaths) don't do 'what it says on the tin' to begin with.

I too have seen stubborn cases that do not respond, sometimes another therapy is indeed what is needed. Months of work stripping away layers, I have recently seen a patient from confirmed ovarian cysts to no cysts, yet still in pain. Only after bringing in another therapist does the next shift take place, only to reveal another major structural pattern beneath. The therapy may be different but we must all sing off the same song-sheet, otherwise patient is caught in a revolving door.

Hanneman said that if the problem is caused by a bone out of place (figuratively), at best homoeopathy can only palliate. So aspects can improve by demanding function change its position relative to structure. But then when we tackle other aspects, everything is now compromise, so the next part becomes much harder until we can no longer help this way.

These are conceptual points. But we do see the effects in practice; when you treat somebody who has been to every therapy and their symptoms have been palliated time and again, when you try to sort out the mess, nothing happens. They only respond to more and more palliation, until finally nothing works.

When you treat palliatively, you suppress, the problem goes deeper. According to Hering, physical then goes to mental and eventually emotional. So yes, physical palliation - especailly failed physical palliation - will eventually create a need for emotional therapy, which may also be used palliatively by the unaware. Hence the vision of the therapist is everything, the therapy is nothing.

But we do see mental and emotional problems shift into the physical realm on the way to resolution. Often person goes from cloud of misery to clearly defined problem - it's still a problem, but awareness is the giant leap that changes the direction. It's the same whether this is back pain or depression - clarity first, then recovery; and on the way, events. A year later we find they are a different person, not when they leave our clinic.

We also see plenty of quick fixes out there in all fields, for example, the muscles and joints feel better but the patient develops a more serious disease. If a therapy appears too good to be true it probably is - that 'resolved' stress and strain, physical or emotional, can only resolve by going somewhere else, if it isn't seen leaving the body it's still there. Again it's largely conceptual, but if the back feels better and a year from now it's depression, or appendicitis, who's to know it was our therapy that created it?

If, on the other hand the patient doesn't get better and moves on, this could be a better outcome. Meanwhile the therapist can blame the patient "it's wear-and-tear mate, can't cure that", and the patient can blame the therapist; "it didn't work because the problem's emotionally based" (it is now).

When you treat palliatively, you suppress, the problem goes deeper. According to Hering, physical then goes to mental and eventually emotional. So yes, physical palliation will eventually create a need for emotional palliation, if palliation is what it is. Hence the vision of the therapist is everything, the therapy is nothing.

I do see where the mis communication is. We do not treat palliatively. We treat the energy system of the body. My favourite is the before and after x-rays, indicating that this weird tapping thing (EFT), nowhere near the site of the pain/injury, seems to have had a physical effect. But of course the attitude of the medics is that they must have got the xrays mixed up. Lol!
And the xrays that the radiologists scratch their heads over because they look like a break and not a break both at the same time

Hanneman's homeopathics, you're right, are energy medicine. However, they are taking an energy from outside the body and putting it in the body. When we use energy medicine, we are treating the energy system that create the body ... and we are far more than just physical.

But we do see mental and emotional problems shift into the physical realm on the way to resolution. Often person goes from cloud of misery to clearly defined problem - it's still a problem, but awareness is the giant leap that changes the direction. It's the same whether this is back pain or depression - clarity first, then recovery. A year later we find they are a different person, not when they leave our clinic.

I'm sure you do see emotional problems released ... and I'm glad for it. But a really good EFT-er will see a different person leave them to the one who arrived.

We also see plenty of quick fixes out there in all fields, for example, the muscles and joints feel better but the patient develops a more serious disease. If a therapy appears too good to be true it probably is - that 'resolved' stress and strain, physical or emotional, can only resolve by going somewhere else, if it isn't seen leaving the body it's still there. Again it's largely conceptual, but if the back feels better and a year from now it's depression, or appendicitis, who's to know it was our therapy that created it?

I do understand you find all this difficult to believe. When we do a session with someone, we check very carefully that whatever the issue is is all gone, even going so far as to test it as much as possible in real life. A phobia is very easy to test - one just produces a spider or whatever. If there is anything left, it will immediately show itself and can be dealt with until the client is happy to have the spider crawling on them. Laughing, even, because it tickles.

As to the physical, you know we've had this conversation before in a different thread. I will send a client off to the doc to ensure things are going as they should. Not being trained to diagnose, this is the only way I can check. Docs are generally pretty surprised that people they have given up on are suddenly back with nothing wrong with them.

If, on the other hand the patient doesn't get better and moves on, this could be a better outcome. Meanwhile the therapist can blame the patient "it's wear-and-tear mate, can't cure that", and the patient can blame the therapist; "it didn't work because the problem's emotionally based" (it is now).

Personally, I give a money back guarantee - if I can't help them with EFT, I give them their money back. Haven't had to so far.

In your post you also talked about how having been treated with so many different therapies can create more obstacles to healing than there were to begin with. This is, to my mind, simply a question of their energy system being jammed. If I make no progress with a couple of rounds of tapping, then that is generally what the problem is and when we find out what level the energy is jammed on, release that, then we can make progress - generally very fast progress.

Fx

Hi

I agree with many of the points that kvdp has made so far. So i won't repeat.

I wish to add that it is very easy to pull out of the hat examples of miracle healing, but the reality for most is that healing is a long process. It's like reading a book on many of the holistic therapies out there. The books always talks about the miraculous case studies. Never do they discuss the non-responders, what could of been done, or referrals to. Doesn't sale books, does it now?

Over the years of practice, I would definately say that much of the pain and discomfort clients have has a mental/emotional component. But since a more physical intervention can release so much emotion in a client, I think it's still a valid treatment. As kvdp says form creates function, and I belief that's same with our mental and emotional wellbeing.

Pain, whether it's physical, psychological and spiritual, is a wake up call that something isn't right. Recently I treated a colleague who had tension in the upper left shoulder & upper back. The massage didn't get rid of the pain. She went to the doctor and discovered that she had breast cancer. She had the op and has made a good recovery. Mustn't forget dietary changes, herbs, acupuncture, Qigong etc.

Best Wishes

RP

Appreciate your point, RP ... but I recommend you try EFT before dismissing it as you have.

I've been a Reiki practitioner for 14 years and have seen a lot of clients. But this weird tapping thing? It works very quickly and I've never had a failure.

Of course, I'm very good at it 😀

Fx

Sorry Fiona, I didn't mean to start an argument, but really, you've evaded most of my points by referring to narrow parameters and limited outcome measures.

I too could make any joint in the body function better objectively for a limited time in pretty much any patient, and if I take few enough measurements I could always claim a result.

I admit this is hard to counter with conceptual points: it's impossible to prove that the tornado in Texas was a result of a butterfly in Rio, but you can model the link mathematically and show that the relationship is valid in principle. What it also shows is that context is everything and there is always a before and after.

That's not to say that I have any problem whatosever with any therapy, but I stand by my view that any 'therapy' can be used palliatively, hence time and again I repeat we should emphasise the therapist's qualities, not the letters after his name.

Sorry Fiona, I didn't mean to start an argument, but really, you've evaded most of my points by referring to narrow parameters and limited outcome measures. (my apologies for earlier wording)

I'm not sure what you mean, Kvdp - I'm an energy worker and that's what I tend to talk about.

Are you saying you don't believe it lasts? I assure you it does - I do follow up after years, sometimes.

I too could make any joint in the body function better objectively for a limited time in pretty much any patient, and if I take few enough measurements I could always claim a result. That's not a challenge.

Oh, you're right. Things like Diabetes, cancer, dyslexia, chronic pain ... these things are a challenge. And measurable.

I admit this is hard to counter with conceptual points: it's impossible to prove that the tornado in Texas was a result of a butterfly in Rio, but you can model the link mathematically and show that the relationship is valid in principle. What it also shows is that context is everything and there is always a before and after.

I generally give chaos theory a miss - too much math.

That's not to say that I have any problem whatosever with any therapy, but I stand by my view that any 'therapy' can be used palliatively, hence time and again I repeat we should emphasise the therapist's qualities, not the letters after his name.

Oh, I think you're right.

The problem - if it is such a thing - with EFT is that the results are so astonishing that people don't believe it. We call it the Apex problem.

Fx

Absolutely Kvpd, all therapies can be palliative, as well as potentially curative (oh that wasn't very PC of me using the c word, lol).

Yes Fiona I have done a short course on EFT, but like one of the tutors said to us, "This was originally designed for safe help and wasn't intended orginally to be stand alone therapy". Wasn't my thing, too mechanic and procedural for my liking. Anycase I practice with acupressure techniques for years and it often amazes me the psychological shift that occurs, yet the client didn't come for that and I didn't consciously choose to work at that level (who knows what goes on at another level). But that's simple ol' Pixie. I'm not on a mission (apart from Qigong - but I don't hark on about it).

NLP, crystals, hot stones, bowen I'm not bothered with either. As a very wise (and very drunk at the time) friend said to me once, "When it comes to therapies and medicine, people choose whoever or whatever floats their boat." She is absolutely right!

So EFTers, NLPers, Bowen 'we walk out of the room for a coffee break and come back again later' therapists, osteopaths, acupuncturists, flakey reiki masters, masseurs & massuses, stand up as we have nothing to lose apart from our reputations!! (RP being cheeky again 😉

Best Wishes

RP

Hi RP
you manage to say more than I can with fewer words! There is an aspect to this that we haven't covered, which is that no lesion exists in the body in isolation. By lesion I mean any obstacle to function. It may involve a specific identifyable anomaly, but always involves a whole pattern extending throughout ones being - it has to.

When we hold tension, emotional, physical, have a blockage to health anywhere, the body has to orbit around it, respond to it, adapt to its presence, work harder. It arise out of something, and its presence creates changes, patterns, habits, toxicity.

When a problem is removed, those patterns, and the toxic legacy must also be resolved.

Luckily, by reducing a lesion, the energy used maintaining it and coping with it becomes available for the clean-up.

Healing processes - the elimination of toxicity, and the adaptation to the new, better, state, the reduction of adaptations to the old state - in time involve the breakdown of old patterns and even tissue, the formation of new patterns and tissue. There is an ongoing process that continues after treatment. How could there not be? Moreover our patient is now vulnerable again to what it was that started the lesion to begin with - and sooner or later will have to deal with another layer.

These ongoing processes create speed-wobbles and new demands of all kinds. Until that happens the problem is not resolved, the patient is in a new state while functioning in the old state.

Worse, is if our patient feels a new lease of life early in the process, and uses this release to live life to the full, instead of what it is for, which is recuperation, they haven't learned their lesson, just found the means to go further into the hole.

Or if our patient feels poorly during these changes, and suppresses the symptoms - stops the fever which is a boost to immune clear-up and the precursor to change, takes antibiotics for the 'stomach bug' as the body tries to expell waste; takes lem-sip so he can keep going to work; now finds his boss intolerable but goes to anger management so that he doesn't take it on on his wife.

What we want is for them to have an almighty flu, a flaming row with the boss, move to another town, reject old toxic habits: not be impervious to stimulus, but respond freely and safely in the face of stimulus - surely this is what we mean by emotional freedom?

Not life to carry on unchanged but divorced from the effects of it. How can that possibly be right? As said if we believe it is the symptom that is wrong then we're stuffed.

It's a shame chaos theory isn't on the med-school curriculum because like it or not we're dealing with complex systems expressing nonlinearity. Single cause-effect relationships do not exist in the human body.

This is what I meant by 'events'. The healing can only possibly have begun by the time the patient leaves our clinic, and there is plenty of opportunity for us to see him in a few years with something far worse unless our intention goes beyond now you feel it/now you don't.

Oh gosh, post fest while I was typing! Let me see...

NLP, crystals, hot stones, bowen I'm not bothered with either. As a very wise (and very drunk at the time) friend said to me once, "When it comes to therapies and medicine, people choose whoever or whatever floats their boat."

Yes, but not what really pushes it out to sea.;)

Hi kvpd

Yes I agree. A lesion &/or a blockage is there for reason and does have can have a whole body effect. It's like having toothache and going to the dentist only to discover later that from a Chinese medicine point of view it was a Stomach Fire problem causing that ache. Or as for 'events' as you put it, having acupuncture to relieve pain of a rotten tooth, which may work pain free for 3 months, and then getting a heart attack originating from a oral bacterial infection due to that pathological tooth.

Best Wishes

RP

What does push it out to sea? It's like DNA, it's just 'code'. But who or what decides which code and why?

What does push it out to sea? It's like DNA, it's just 'code'. But who or what decides which code and why?

Well first and foremost we have to deal with the toxic state, and that's another huge subject in itself.

Using another analogy besides the boat, most patients expect us to make them a comfortable bed on a crumbling ledge halfway up a mountain. Most are too shocked if we start leading them back to the valley, we must at least begin preparing them for the journey.

Yes of course, that's the skill of the therapist to act as a guide, but the journey is the clients responsability ultimately.

I do understand your logic, my father is a nature cure fanatic. It's only later in life I understood it for myself.

Cheers

RP

What an enlightening and profound debate, thank you guys, this thread is a fascinating read!

Masha

Ditto Masha B!

This has been an interesting read for me. I was attracted to the thread because I was introduced to EFT for the first time last weekend and am quite intrigued. I'm seeing a client at the moment who has always suffered from eczema but has underlying stress/emotional issues. Is this the sort of thing EFT could help - and how?

EFT is great for this kind of issue, Supersub - you can find many articles and some pointers at the [url]EFT Universe site[/url]. Just do a search for "asthma".

You can download a manual there, too, to get you started.

Fx

!Predictably I'm going to chime in with my tuppence worth!

Whether a therapy can help depends not on the name of the problem, the type of problem, or its manifestations: it depends on the obstacles to recovery, and whether the therapist can help deal with those.

Hope that makes sense;)