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Emotional Freedom Technique, commonly known as EFT tapping, or just tapping, is a powerful tool to get past psychological blocks. That said, it should not be confused with tap dancing. I made this mistake early in my career when an audience member came up to me afterward and told me that she kept expecting me to start tap dancing.
EFT is referred to as tapping because the tapping motion of two fingers stimulates high concentrations of nerve endings, or acupressure points. This sends a soothing signal via your nervous system to the amygdala (pronounced uh-MIG-duh-la). The amygdala region of the brain is associated with processing emotions. It is often referred to as the “smoke detector” of your body because it is like an alarm system that alerts you to threats, real or perceived.
If your smoke detector goes off, it turns on your stress response, sending a cascade of stress hormones through your body. You may be experiencing a lot of this with the world events happening right now. It also turns off non-essential functions such as reducing blood flow to higher brain centres responsible for problem solving. This happens because your body is going into the fight, flight or freeze mode.
This system works fantastic except for two little glitches that have a massive negative impact on your life. One is that this smoke detector cannot tell the difference if there is actual smoke or if you are just thinking about smoke. Explained another way, it cannot tell the difference between feelings of future worry or past regret and real current problems.
The second problem is that 98% to 99% of the time, you are unaware that this is even happening because it is happening subconsciously. You are aware of your stress response kicking in if it occurs acutely, like if an angry dog runs at you or you narrowly escape a car accident. It is difficult to miss the racing heart, sweaty palms and shallow breathing. However, a chronic stress response is not so obvious. It can show up in health, financial or relationship issues.
It showed up for me in my health, finances and my relationship with myself in a big way. Six years ago, I was extremely sick, overweight, struggling with my income, and I was depressed. After extensive testing with a medical specialist, he told me he did not know what was wrong with me, and nothing more could be done. After going home and feeling hopeless, I got my poop in a group and found EFT tapping. How I discovered tapping is another story for another time.
Within three months of starting tapping, I was feeling more energetic, lost the excess weight, knew how to quiet my relentless inner critic and began the journey to becoming a now internationally certified advanced EFT tapping and certified matrix reimprinting practitioner. Matrix reimprinting is an advanced technique of tapping. I have a thriving private practice and have had the privilege of helping hundreds of others transform their lives. So much so that I regularly get texts and emails that make me cry with gratitude and joy.
Why is this information critical to you? Because learning and implementing EFT tapping is a game changer and often works when nothing else will. Knowing that it has worked for myself and others will give you hope that it can work for you, too.
If you are a heart-centred entrepreneur or corporate professional who wants to break through to your next level of success, I would love to connect with you. The most impactful thing you and others can do in times of crisis is to manage your stress well.
Anyone wishing to explore EFT tapping can visit www.sherrylukey.com for a free consultation.
This column was submitted as part of BWB Wednesdays.
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