Last night we tried something we haven't tried before - surrogate tapping. This is EFT tapping on yourself as if you were somebody else. It is an experimental technique that appears to be a little "out there", but the reported results from many users appear to defy the natural scepticism. It is supposed to work on the assumption that we are all energetically connected, and therefore we can affect others' emotional systems by affecting our own. In surrogate tapping you pretend you are the person who has the issue and try to guess what is going on for them and tap for that.

My wife has decided to wean our 2-year old daughter off breastfeeding yesterday and at night, the child cried for about 25 minutes non-stop. I was doing a practice EFT session with another practitioner over Skype and since the crying was distracting because I felt like I needed to go, find out what was going on and to try to calm my daughter down somehow, I asked my practice partner if we could try some surrogate tapping.

Following the procedure described in other tappers' reports, first, we tapped on my own feelings about my daughter crying. Then we tapped as if we were talking to her. And finally, we tapped as if we were her, using the language as close to the child's as we could manage. As we were finishing, the crying in the next room stopped. After the session my wife reported that my daughter cried herself to sleep. She woke up about 2 hours later and started crying again. At first, I tried to comfort her in other ways but she wouldn't stop. Then I put her back in bed, and did about 3 minutes of quiet surrogate tapping on myself. When I finished, my daughter was asleep again and she didn't wake us up for the rest of the night. Of course, the connection is not obvious and there is definitely room for scepticism, but I'm convinced it was the tapping that did the trick.

I'm going to try this tonight and see if the results stay the same. If I experience this working again, I am going to start recommending that other parents try this technique for calming down their children too.

P.S. The second night went even better with about 10 minutes of whimpering before falling asleep (as I did surrogate tapping). When she woke up in the middle of the night, I just quietly tapped for 3 minutes and she was fast asleep.

Have you ever been anxious about going to see a dentist?
And have you ever put off going until the last moment because of it?

You are not alone. According to some studies, over 75% of American adults, and I think the figures are probably similar for most Western nations, well, over 75% of those adults experience some degree of dental fear, that is the fear of going to the dentists. This fear ranges from mild to severe. Out of this number, about 5 to 10% experience dental phobia – they avoid dentists at all costs. Approximately 20% experience enough anxiety to put off dental procedures as long as possible and will go to the dentists only when it’s absolutely necessary.

Some dentists estimate that about 2/3 of dental anxiety cases are caused by a negative experience at a dentist’s office at some point in those people’s lives, and for the other third it is a side effect of other problems, such as substance abuse, post-traumatic stress experienced by war veterans, victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence, and various other anxiety disorders. There may also be other reasons. Whatever the cause is, the health consequences of such avoidance can be high. The avoidance of preventative care can lead not only to tooth decay, dental pain and lost teeth, but also to gum disease that has been linked to stroke, heart disease and diabetes. Basically the consequences are not pretty, and suffering unnecessary pain is not something I like to experience. What about you?

Wouldn’t it be great to have healthy teeth that feel and look fantastic? To have all your own teeth when you are older? To feel  confident and strong when you go to see a dentist and to know you’re taking care of your teeth well?

Well, I too once felt that anxiety and put off going for far too long. For example, had you been there with me on that dark, cold and wintry Russian afternoon in November 1985, you would have been standing in a school corridor next to a nurse’s room that was turned into an impromptu dentist’s office in a short queue comprising 5 or 6 other 11-year-old school boys dressed in their dark navy blue school uniforms. You would have felt the dread creeping up on you, as the queue was getting shorter. Your knees would have felt weak and shaky, as you heard the shrieking sound of the drill behind that thin white door. You would have been absolutely terrified when your name was finally called out and you entered the white barren room to see an unfamiliar male dentist of looking at you and wearing a white lab coat, a white hat, a white surgical mask on his face and a silvery head mirror on his forehead. He might have been a caring man, but he certainly didn’t look it. “Sit on that chair,” said he in a voice devoid of emotion.  I don’t remember if I was given pain killers but I do remember pain.  I will spare you the rest of the details, except one. He had found holes in seven of my teeth! Needless to say, I had to make several unpleasant visits back there in the course of the following couple of weeks. To say I felt emotionally traumatised would be to say nothing. Once all those teeth were fixed, I waited until I was almost 20 to go again. Luckily this time around dentistry got a lot more advanced, and dentists became a lot more sensitive. I have never again had to have an unpleasant experience like I described before, but I had always felt anxiety before every visit – that is, until I discovered EFT tapping.

EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques and it had been developed at the end of the 20th century as a fusion of some of the best Western and Eastern emotional balancing techniques. The West has supplied its cutting-edge psychotherapy tools, while the East provided the knowledge of the subtle energy system of the body that plays a major role in our emotional experiences. EFT uses finger-tapping on some of the energy meridians while focusing on the emotions that we would like to overcome. While it is still considered to be an experimental technique, more and more credence is given to it by mainstream health and psychotherapy practitioners due to an ever-increasing number of academic studies showing its high efficacy in treating anxiety, PTSD, depression and other emotional issues. The journal of American  Psychological Association has recently published an academic overview of 51 peer-reviewed papers on efficacy of EFT and other meridian-tapping techniques. You can find the link to it on our website.

The good news is that EFT is easy to learn and apply for simple issues, even on your own, and you can use it today for overcoming your fear of dentists, calming down your nerves, and possibly even reducing some of the pain you might be feeling as you are waiting for your treatment.

The basic process of EFT consists of several simple steps. To make it easy for you to remember at Emotionally Free we call this basic recipe SISTER. Think of it as your older caring sister who makes it all better. If your sister is not like that, think of a sister that makes you feel good. 

As you have probably guessed, each letter in the word SISTER stands for one step in the EFT procedure.

S stands for Specific. For EFT to work, you have to identify a specific feeling that feels uncomfortable right now and describe it as specifically as you can. For example, you can describe where in your body you are feeling it and what quality it has to it. If it had a shape and colour, what it would look like? If it made a sound, what kind of sound would it make? For example, if you are feeling anxiety, you can describe it as

“this heavy, red, high-pitched anxiety in the pit of my stomach”.

You should also ask yourself what this feeling reminds you of. For example, it might remind you of the dentist’s drill in your mouth, or the way he or she looks at your teeth etc.  If it reminds you of a specific past incident, that is great, because dealing with that past incident can help clear your negative feelings in the present.

Make a short (under 3 minutes) movie of that incident in your mind and pick the very first moment that makes you feel uncomfortable. Identify the specific feeling that you are feeling, for example, that fear in your knees, that anxiety in your chest, or that sinking feeling in your stomach or even the pain in your teeth. Once you’ve identified the emotion in the present  or a related emotion from your past, move to the next step.

I stands for Intensity. On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is no feeling at all, and 10 is out-of-this-world intensity, estimate how intensely you are feeling that emotion or pain that you identified in the last step. It may be 10, or 8 or 6 or whatever you feel it to be.  We need this number to see how well EFT is working, so that we can compare BEFORE and AFTER.

The second S stands for Setup. Setup is another important step of the EFT procedure.  It helps the subconscious reconcile itself with the reality, accept yourself despite anything that you may consider an imperfection and affirm that you are ok the way you are. There is a saying: what you resist, persists. The setup helps remove any subconscious blocks or self-sabotage that you may have in relation to how you want to feel instead of how you’re feeling now.

The setup consists of an acceptance statement and some setup tapping. The acceptance statement sounds something like this: “Even though I have this issue, I deeply and completely accept myself anyway.” So let’s try. While tapping on this point here that we call the Karate Chop point say it out loud, if you are in a place where it is safe to do so,

“Even though I am feeling anxious about this dental appointment, I deeply and completely accept myself anyway.”

You can change ‘anxious’ to whatever feeling you are feeling right now – fearful, uncertain, worried. In fact, use the feeling from step one, for example, “Even though I feel this burning worry in my chest about seeing the dentist, I deeply and completely accept myself anyway.” Or you can say, “Even though I have this pain, I am doing something about it and I’m ok.” Pause this video and repeat this step three times. Do it now… Welcome back!

The next letter in SISTER, T stands for Tapping. This is where you tap on the different meridian points while focusing on your emotion. Let me quickly show you the points to tap. To make it easy, let’s start from the top. You will tap on these points while saying out the emotion that you are feeling. You can tap on either side or both. Use two fingers to make sure you get the points, however, it is a very forgiving process. Here is the list of points to tap, demonstrated in the photos above.

• Top of the head. 
• Eyebrow point – on the inside of the eyebrow. 
• Side of the head – on the outside of the eyebrow. 
• Under the Eye – directly below the pupil on the bone.
• Under the nose – between your nose and upper lip.
• Under the mouth or chin point – between your chin and lower lip.
• Collar bone – follow your collar bone towards the middle of your chest and find where it ends. Then move your fingers a couple of centimetres, or one inch below the bone into the softer fleshy groove there. This is the point to tap. Or you can just use a fist to tap there and you'll get it anyway.
  
• The final point is under the arm – for ladies that is at the level of your bra strap, for men, it’s about the level of your nipple.
• There is a bonus point about 5 cm or about 3 inches below the nipple, but it is rarely used because it is not comfortable for women to use in public. It is immediately below the fold of the breast.
  

Now let’s use a reminder phrase about the emotion or pain we identified in the previous step, while tapping. It should be short and easy to say, like

“This worry in my chest” …

Say it while tapping on all points.

Ok, next we have the E which stands for Evaluate. After completing one or two rounds of tapping that I have just shown you, ask yourself – “What is my emotional intensity about this issue right now on a scale of 0 to 10?” Has it gone down, stayed the same, or gone up? If you are like most people, you will notice that the intensity has gone down. Where is it right now? 5? 3? Another figure? Great! If it has stayed the same or gone up, please check whether you are still focusing on the same emotion and situation. Are you still thinking about the same episode? Has the emotion changed in quality? Do you still feel it in the same part of your body? Please note whatever changed or hasn’t and modify your setup and tapping phrase accordingly. For example, if it has moved from your chest to your stomach, change the setup to “Even though now I feel this worry in my stomach, I deeply and completely accept myself anyway” and your reminder phrase to “This burning worry in my stomach.” If it’s not burning but doing something else now, change the phrase. If it is no longer worry, but anxiety, change it. If it is no longer about that time you went to see Dr Fox as a kid, but about something else, change it.

And finally, the last letter in SISTER is R, which stands for Repeat. Repeat the process from the setup, using your new setup phrase and tapping phrase.  If your intensity has gone down, as it should, but has not cleared completely, say “Even though I still have some of that anxiety, I accept myself anyway.” For the reminder phrase say, “This remaining anxiety” or whatever is right for you.

After you repeated this for all different aspects of the problem, most probably you would have noticed the improvement in how you feel about going to the dentists. If you haven’t, that simply means that you need a little bit of extra guidance from an experienced EFT practitioner who can guide you in uncovering different aspects of the problem and clearing them. It is a good idea to make a booking with an EFT practitioner anyway, because they are trained to be thorough and do the necessary detective work to help you achieve emotional freedom. Thank you for reading this article and (maybe) watching my video on this topic. I hope you enjoyed it and I look forward to assisting you again.

You can connect with me at EmotionallyFree.com.au or through Facebook or Twitter. This was Serguei Levykin helping you be emotionally free!

Every single one of us on this Earth speaks a unique dialect of our own.

Externally, many of us share what appears to be the same languages, such as English, Russian, French, German, Hindi, Mandarin etc. However, the words that sound the same in those external languages have different, unique internal meanings to each of us, creating a vocabulary that is unmistakably our own. Even simple words describing commonplace objects, such as "train", "stone", "sky" mean different things to all of us. For some of us the word "train" evokes an image of a cross-country journey with Mum to visit our loving grandparents, for some it's about that exciting Trans-Siberian adventure with your girlfriend 20 years ago, and for some it brings up a grim image of a train transporting PoWs to a labour camp. Yet for others, it is just a picture in a book. No two subconscious word definitions are exactly the same.

What to speak of when you put together a sentence! Things get even more complicated. The subtle nuances in emphasis, tone of voice, volume, speed and so on, as well as the intent of your words and the context in which they are spoken, both external and internal, make a huge difference to how those words are perceived by your listener, who is a speaker of another internal language.

I saw a fascinating illustration of this today. I study linguistics and languages at university. (I have been enamored with these subjects since the day I pulled my Dad's German dictionary out of the bookshelf when I was about five.) Today in our translation class we were given a simple poem to translate into Spanish. There were ten people there, and when we compared our translations, not a single line was the same. Each person has explained their understanding of the poem line by line and what seemed like an obvious meaning to me was understood completely differently by others. This really brought the reality of different dialects spoken by each of us to the front for me. Whenever you say something to another person, it will always be interpreted into his or her own dialect.

How is this related to emotional freedom? Directly. If as adults we often have trouble comprehending each other, imagine how difficult it can be for children. We were all were children once, right? As a five-year old you didn't know that the day your Dad shouted at you he was feeling really stressed and under pressure at work. Perhaps all he said was that you always always make a mess, and he didn't literally mean always, but the way he said it meant to you that you were not good enough. That boy at school actually liked you and that is why he said you were ugly (one of those strange things boys say to get a girl's attention), but at 12, how were you to know that?

So many of our emotional issues come from not comprehending another person's dialect, and from them not knowing how to speak ours. As time goes by, the situations may be forgotten, but the often disempowering meaning we attach to those communications can stay with us for many years.

To become emotionally free it is important to clear those misinterpretations out of your subconscious, and one of the best tools for doing it is EFT. EFT may not be able to teach us one another's dialect, but it can heal deep emotional wounds caused by apparently harsh words and actions.

If you are ready to start, give us a ring or send us a message today.

Let's be emotionally free.

Oh no! You are reading it! Let me make an educated guess why. It’s the Forbidden Fruit Effect.

You see, the subconscious mind thinks in images, not in words. Words such as “NO”, “NOT”, “DON’T” and “NEVER” do not form strong images in the subconscious. For this reason prohibitions often have the opposite effect.

Let’s do a quick experiment. Form a mental image of the phrase “DO NOT steal!” and note what image you are holding in your mind. Now form a mental image “Behave honourably!” or “Be happy with what you have and can earn honestly!” Have you noticed a difference?

Now form the mental image of “DO NOT kill!” and then of “Live and let live”? What do you see in each picture? Which one makes you feel better?

How did you represent the words “DO NOT”? As a big red cross over your other image? Something else? Regardless of how your did it, that image in the background probably still works as a magnet for your thoughts. This is the reason telling people NOT TO DO something often has the opposite effect.

Whenever you issue an instruction or a command either to yourself or other people, your kids etc condition yourself to state it in the positive for better results.

Feel free to comment about your experience with this.

I've just conducted a mini-audit of my limiting beliefs about financial abundance and was shocked to discover how many I had despite years of working on myself (before I've learnt EFT). These beliefs came from family members, school, mass media, negative interpretation of my own life experiences. Definitely a lot to clear with EFT or other methods! Luckily, once cleared, they won't hamper my progress any more.

If you would like to find out what your beliefs are, complete the following five statements honestly and fully. You don't have to post the answers here, but if you choose to post at least something, I would appreciate it.

1. I can't be wealthy because ___ .
2. I shouldn't make more money because ___ .
3. I don't really want to make more money because ___ .
4. I don't believe I can make more money because ___ , ___ , and ___ .
5. I'm afraid to earn more money because ___ .

(I got this list from EFT Master Carol Look)

Spend at least 15 minutes doing that. Fill in whatever comes up from the depths of your mind, not just what you want to acknowledge consciously, even if you don't like what you get. Like me, at first you might only get one justification or limiting belief per statement, but keep going and get all of those deep-seated limiting beliefs about money. Review your list and add whatever you missed.

Voila! Meet your limiting beliefs that you will need to dispel before you can make financial progress. These are called tail-enders in EFT, because whenever you try to get yourself to make more money, they pop up as "yes, but..." even if you are not consciously aware of them.  They are your real affirmations that your subconscious mind refers to whenever it needs to deal with a money-related matter.

I'm going to use EFT on mine because EFT is one of the most effective methods of dealing with negative beliefs. I have used it for many other limiting beliefs, both mine and other people's, with good success. If you wish, we can try it on yours too, and see for ourselves what change it makes.

Consider it a dare. There is nothing to lose but our limiting beliefs!

Does being emotionally free mean being free from emotion? Does it mean you are indifferent to everything and unfeeling?

That would be pretty terrible. Not being able to love your wife and children, feel excited about a family holiday to Queensland or your team winning at footy, happy about your success at work or great weather, sad about the passing of your pet etc. would make life dull and intolerably boring. Such emotions as grief and sadness are also natural, provided they do not consume your life, and not being able to feel them would deprive us of many valuable lessons.

Luckily, emotional freedom does not mean all these things. Being emotionally free can be defined as being free from limiting and unconstructive emotions that stand in your way of being happy and fulfilled. If getting angry at your spouse or children spoils your relationships, fear of public speaking undermines your career growth, fear of flying does not let you enjoy holidays away from home, unhappy memories make you depressed, I'm sure you would agree that freedom from these emotions would make your life better.

Emotional freedom is closely related to emotional intelligence (more on that later). However, exercising your emotional intelligence may require some effort, while emotional freedom allows you to deal with events and circumstances naturally. The reason is that the first is predominantly the domain of the conscious mind, while the other is ruled more by the subconscious.

The more you use EFT to deal with negative emotions, the more emotionally free you become. With every application you chip away at the emotional baggage, making it lighter. The sooner you start, the happier you will be.