Tapping Q & A with Gene Monterastelli - Get the most out of tapping and EFT

Yawn!

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Sometimes when I’m tapping I yawn a lot. Why do I yawn during tapping, and is it a good or bad thing?


photo by Daniel James

Fear not! Yawning is good news.

There are a number of common physical reactions to tapping, such as feeling:

  • Light and free
  • Very relaxed
  • Sleepy
  • Energized

or releasing:

  • Long signs
  • Yawning

When we are doing tapping, especially around an emotional issue, I have found yawning means a great deal of energy is being moved. So when I see lots of yawning, I know progress is being made.

It is important to pay attention to your body. Lots of yawning also mean your body has less energy than when you started. If you feel very tired, it’s best to tap more later.

ALSO, if you are feeling drowsy after a tapping session you shouldn’t drive or do anything that requires intense concentration until your energy level is up again.

Remember, if your body is feeling pain or responding in a way that is not comfortable, stop tapping and consult a medical professional.

It Hurts!

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When I tap, some of the spots are very sensitive, even to the point of hurting a little. It doesn’t happen all the time, and it’s not always the same spot. Should I be worried?

It’s a common experience for some (or all) of the tapping points to be a little sensitive. Remember we are tapping on the ends of energy channels, so they are going to be a little tender by nature.

Chiropractors and reflexologist report that tenderness and pain can be a sign that you have found a place that is definitely in need of work.
REMEMBER, when you are doing Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) you are taking total responsibility for your body. I’m not a big fan of pain. When I encounter tapping points that are too painful, I won’t tap them. Instead I use one of two options.

The first option is “Touch and Breath” (TAB). In this method you lightly touch the tapping point and take a deep breath or two. This is avery effective alternative to tapping. Some practitioners I know only teach TAB because they have found their clients are less self-conscious and it’s as effective as tapping.

The second option is to close your eyes and imagine you’re tapping on the point. The body responds and changes in response to our thoughts. Think of the last time you did some sort of relaxation meditation. Just by thinking relaxing thoughts you were able to calm down and release tension from your body.

It is very simple to do.

Say (or think) “This pain in my neck” and imagine you are tapping the eyebrow point.

“This pain in my neck” and imagine you are tapping the side of the eye.

[How to use these tapping phrases]

Tapping by just thinking about points does take some practice. It helps to watch yourself tap in a mirror; it builds the mental picture of you tapping. Initially it may not be as effective as tapping, but it can be very powerful.

There are also two other advantages to tapping in your mind. First, you can do it in public and nobody will notice. (Clients have reported it does look a little odd to start tapping in the middle of a staff meeting.) Second, you can move from tapping point to tapping point much quicker. As fast as you can move to the next point in your mind, you are tapping on the next point.

Fear of Fear

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I have a really big emotional issue I need to deal with, but I’m afraid. In the past when I tried to work on the issue it was too painful, and I’m afraid to even think about the issue now. Is there some way I can get over my fear of the emotions that might come up?

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
-Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933)

I’ve noticed an interesting trend in my practice. Recently, a number of clients have come in for a session and have spent the first twenty minutes talking about the newly painted office, the weather, and just about anything else to stall for time.

A perfect example would be “Jane,” a client whom I had worked with for a number of months. She contacted me after her mother had been raped. She postponed the appointment two times before she finally made it in.

Once she was in my office she was anything but focused on the task at hand. Finally after 15 minutes I asked her, “Do you want to do this or not?”

She said she didn’t know. She explained, “I know this is going to be very emotional, and the feelings are so raw. I don’t want to go into
that pain.”

I thanked her for her honesty. Then I asked her to show me with her hands how big all the emotions are.

[Note: With my hypnosis background I am a huge fan of using imagery and visualization to find information about issues. The subconscious is a very powerful creative tool that is willing to give us information in lot of ways. I personally love watching clients come up with imagery that even surprises themselves.]

I specifically asked her to show me how big all of the emotions were (the emotions she felt about the situation and the emotions she felt about dealing with the situation). I know from experience that the more specific we get, the better Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is going to work, but in this case I didn’t think there was going to be any way that Jane was going to be able to separate the various emotions out.

She responded to my question by outlining something about the size of a egg-shaped beach ball. And so we started tapping:

This is such a scary time…My heart is broken…I know this has hurt me…I am afraid to dive into to these emotions because it’s going to hurt…It’s easier to just not think about this and bury it…But I know I need to heal…I need to move on…I have used EFT in the past and it has worked for other things…I know it will work for this…I have worked with Gene in the past, and he won’t allow me to be harmed…I trust the process. [How to use these tapping phrases]

I then asked her how much of the total emotion was left. She held her hands to the size of a softball. We then proceeded to work on the
emotions surrounding the reason she had come in.

There are a few thoughts I took away from this experience (and a number of similar experiences):

1) Often times the biggest hurdle to healing is our willingness to take the step towards healing. Something in ourselves prevents us from seeking the help we need because we expect it to be painful.

Now, when I am working with someone who is dealing with a particularly emotional issue, I will first check to see if we need to clean up any emotional aspects about facing the problem, we can do that before we starting the work on the core issues they are seeking help for.

2) In the case documented it appears that more than 70% of the issue was just the fear of dealing with the issues. I don’t know if this is the case. It is very possible that we were also cleaning up aspects of the main issue while we were dealing with the fear of dealing with the issue. But it is very clear that the way that we interpret the event can be as powerful, if not more powerful, than the event itself.

I have seen instances where clients can’t seem to remember traumatic events from the past after they have cleaned up the emotional response. It is as if 70% of the memory is their emotional response to the memory.

I don’t know what to say! (part 1)

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When I was working with the person who taught me EFT, it worked great. Now that I’m working on my own, I don’t know what phrases to use. Do you have any suggestions?

This is a very common question. Remember, the words are simply intended to help us pull whatever we are working on into the thought field. Often clients get worked up because they feel like they are going to use the wrong words.

Remember there is no penalty for getting it “wrong”. The worst outcome with Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is wasting 90 seconds of your life. Be easy about the words. Trust your intuition. What matters is your focus on the problem, not the words.

Over the next few weeks, I will address this with a number of suggestions on what to do when you can’t think of what to say.

Here is my first…
“Christi,” an EFT phone client, was having a very hard time getting out of bed in the morning to go to the gym. We had been doing a lot of work about all the “penalties” for going to gym:

Everyone will see she is so out of shape … She doesn’t like the way she looks in exercise clothing … She is so out of shape it’s hopeless … She will fail again.

We were making great progress around these issues, but it was still a great struggle for her to get out of bed in the morning.

I had read an article from the “EFT Insights Newsletter” on Future Tapping for dealing with things we fear for the future, the thought being if we make statements about what we would like to have happen, all of the issues that prevent this from happening will arise, even if we don’t name them or even know what they are (much like the Hero Technique). I thought future tapping might work for Christi.

So I had Christi rate the truth of the statement, “I am going to jump out of bed tomorrow morning, energetically, and ready to go to the
gym.” She rated this as a 4 on a scale of 0 to 10. So we tapped…

I am going to climb into bed and be relaxed….My body is going to peacefully and naturally drift to sleep….I am going to get a good night’s sleep….The sleep will be restful….I will wake up energized and ready for the day….I am going to be ready to go to the gym….I am going have a great workout….I am going to be happy with my progress….I’m going to leave the gym full of energy for the rest of the day. [How to use these tapping phrases]

We then tested the truth of the statement, “I am going to jump out of bed tomorrow morning, energetically, and ready to go to the gym.” It had become an 8 out of 10. I then asked what part of the statement didn’t feel true. We dealt with whatever residual issues there were (which I can’t remember right now). Christi has reported back that this has made it easier to get up in the morning to go to the gym. In fact, it was so effective, she now uses the technique to set up her whole day.

I have found this is a great technique for EFT beginners to use by themselves. Many of my clients don’t feel like they know what they are supposed to say or what to focus on when they are tapping on their own. All they need to do is state exactly what they want. The protocol is very simple:

  1. State what you would like to see happen in the future. (e.g., I am going to spring out of bed tomorrow. I am going to be calm when I confront my boss. I am going to be at peace when I visit my mother in the hospital.)
  2. Rate how true you think the statement is.
  3. Keep tapping and state how everything is going to unfold in a perfect world.
  4. Re-rate the original statement. If it is not fully true, repeat the process.

Making Tapping and EFT Routine

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I love EFT, but find it hard to remember to use it. Do you have any suggestions to help me remember to use EFT regularly?
I find it very funny. When friends, family and clients are sharing with me something that has happened in the past week, when I ask, “Did you tap on it?,” inevitably they respond, “I always forget.”

Initially, in my practice, I found that very few clients were doing the homework we had agreed upon. As I started to investigate this, generally the response was as simple as, “I forgot.” In response to this, I started to give homework AND assign the time they should be doing the homework (e.g., sitting in the car before walking in to work, right before bed, while taking a morning walk).

Basically, without saying this, we were creating an Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) routine. Here is an example of a routine for one of my clients, “Jane”.

Jane works for an agency that places and supports children in the foster care system, an emotionally trying job. It is stressful too because they are trying to do so much with limited resources. Jane was taking quite a bit of anxiety home from work.

The routine we created was very simple. Each day before she left work she would stop in the restroom, go into one of the stalls, and do EFT for five to ten minutes. She would address any emotions she had at that moment, as well as take a quick review of the day to see if there was anything she needed to clean up. Then, symbolically, she would flush the toilet to show her self that she had gotten rid of all the stress she was carrying around.

We very intentionally chose her workplace as the place she was going to do the work. Her concern was that she was bringing the emotion from work home with her. We very easily could have had her wait until she got home before she did EFT.

There are two problems with this. First, by waiting until she got home she was still bringing the emotion home (which is what we were trying to fix). Second, it was very easy to get distracted when she got home. There was the dog to take care of, her husband to greet and spend time with, and dinner to fix. It would be very easy to get distracted with all that was happening at home and not get to the EFT work she needed to do.

By having her do the EFT at her workplace both of these problems were resolved. First, doing the EFT at work, all of the emotion associated with the job was staying at work. Second, by making it part of her exit routine from the office there was no way she was going to get distracted from doing EFT. It simply became one more step to getting out the door, like turning off her computer, packing her bag, and turning the voice mail on.

4 Steps to Tapping and Doing EFT Everyday

1) Do it at the same time everyday.
There will be occasions when we need to do EFT right away, but most things can be dealt with at a designated time. Look at how well we brush our teeth. Every night before we go to bed, the last thing we all do is brush our teeth. I know I don’t think why I’m brushing, it’s just part of the routine. It’s much easier to do any sort of maintenance for our health when it’s done at a regular time. This is true for brushing our teeth, going to the gym, or doing EFT.

2) Do it in the same place every time.
Now this might not be possible, but I have found it very helpful to have a consistent location. I do all of my prayer, meditation, and EFT in a special chair, which I use the chair only for these activities. The moment I start moving toward that chair, I immediately start to feel relaxed because my body, mind, and spirit know what’s coming.

You don’t have to have a special place where you only do EFT, but by having a consistent location (in bed, the kitchen table, the porch swing) you’re more likely to do it.

Also, it is important to pick a place where you won’t be distracted. In the living room while the kids are watching TV might not be the best choice.

3) Have a game plan when you sit down.
Mine looks something like this. First, I scan my body for any aches and pains and work on them first.

Second, I review my day to see what residual emotions are kicking around.

Third, I think about what’s happening tomorrow. I see if I’m worried about what is to come and then do one round of future tapping. 

Fourth, I do work on whatever pressing issue there is in my life (e.g., a new job, relationship with someone). This is some area of my life that needs work, but isn’t going to happen in just one session.

Finally, I do a round of thanks-giving tapping.

This routine might be too involved for you, but having a game plan assures that you make good use of your time.
Also, this is not set in stone. If I find there is something else I need to do with my time, I can do it, but it’s a good starting point.

4) Don’t get too ambitious when creating a routine.
When you create your routine, start small. The quickest way to stop doing a routine is to simply avoid doing a routine that’s too complex. When you are first creating your routine, make it as simple as just working on your aches and pains, in bed, right before you fall asleep. After you’ve done this for a week or two, add another component to your routine.

Why Do I Sometimes Get Sad Or Agitated After A Session?

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This is not something I have experienced often, but from time to time it happens. Here is how Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) Master Lindsay Kenny responds to this question on her web site:

It’s not uncommon for people to experience a negative reaction after (or during) an EFT session, especially if you are tapping for yourself. Feelings such as anger, anxiety, uneasiness, sadness, or even a temporary worsening of the issue(s) might emerge. They are not side effects of EFT, nor is there anything wrong with you. There are several possible causes for these odd-feeling emotions you may experience during or after tapping. Here are some of them:

1) You may be regretting previous choices you’ve made in life (or things that have happened to you). Or you may be saddened when reminded of the “opportunities wasted” in your life due to your issue. These regrets or feelings are often suppressed until EFT is introduced and things become stirred up. It’s natural to think, then, that EFT has caused these “new” feelings, when in fact EFT has simply reminded you of something you have suppressed that needs to be dealt with. Remember EFT’s Discovery Statement is “The cause of ALL negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system”. Left untreated, those energy blockages (manifested as negative emotions) can lead to a plethora of physical ailments.

2) While in the process of clearing major traumas or issues with EFT some people become anxious or fearful sensing the possibility of living life with a different set of rules. Being free from past baggage might mean risking rejection rather than living inside a “bubble of protection” provided by the previous challenges. For instance, those who have been victimized may have often blamed others for their crummy life or bad choices. Once EFT starts lifting the curtain of pain, blame, shame and resentment, they realize that they don’t really know how to live a life of accountability. They might feel like a fish-out-of-water as they begin to see life from a completely different perspective.

We often have two parts of us that battle for dominance. The old, familiar part feels out-of-sorts or fearful because it doesn’t know how to conduct itself in a different paradigm…with a new identity. Being accountable, responsible and optimistic can be frightening if you’ve never or seldom experienced those sensations. Yet the “other” part of you may yearn for that freedom and peace of mind. It could be this dichotomy that causes the discomfort during or after tapping.

3) Another cause for anxiety or fear during or after tapping is that there may be a payoff for keeping your issues. Some people are financially compensated for a disability, while others may get emotional support with attention, sympathy or special favors as a result of their issues. When these payoffs are threatened by using EFT, a part of you may be reluctant to change or to give up these payoffs. Similarly the grief over losing a loved one, the pain from being traumatized or victimized, or the memory of a horrific incident can grow into an “excuse” for your life not working. The realization that you may no longer have this excuse might be overwhelming.

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that you would consciously choose to be incapacitated, or stay ill, or continue to live in pain or to remain traumatized. However, a part of you may be very protective of these secondary benefits and therefore be reluctant to let them go, triggering the anger, sadness or anxiety after an EFT session.

4) A part of you may be sad (or even sick to your stomach) when you strive to leave the old identity behind. Sometimes there’s a reluctance to do say goodbye for reasons that vary among different people. Just as people stay in bad marriages or keep a clunky care because it’s at least familiar, we sometimes want to stay with what we perceive as a safe place, habit or personality. To change what’s become so familiar is disconcerting to some, while exhilarating and uplifting for others.

5) The most likely cause, however, for feeling unsettled after doing EFT is that you simply haven’t reached the core issue yet. Sometimes getting close to a painful memory causes us to back off. Perhaps you’ve peeled the first layer of the onion and the layer underneath is “stinging your eyes.” You may be only partially into your issues and are stirring things up before completion. My friend and workshop co-facilitator, Zoe Walton says this about core issues:

“If you don’t know what your Core Issue is when you start a session and you proceed to tap on the various aspects you do know about, you may end a session without finding the actual cause of your problem — the Core Issue. For example, you may be tapping on an uncomfortable emotion or body sensation that is happening at the moment, such as rage or tightness in the throat. But you would only be addressing a symptom, not the main cause. Underneath that rage, a deeper Core Issue, such as “he never really loved me” or “my mother abandoned me” still needs to be addressed for full resolution.

When the Core Issue is not dealt with, it is like chopping off the green weeds in a lawn but never getting to their roots. Also there might be many Core Issues around a particular issue and one session only dealt with one of the Core Issues, leaving more work to do. Confusion, “foggy-headedness”, anxiety, headaches, anger, or sadness often means that you’re simply not done with the problem or haven’t found the all-important core issue.

It is often hard to discover Core Issues on your own. It is sometimes hard for us to see our own problems clearly, just as a dentist would have a hard time giving himself (or herself) a root canal. That is where a good practitioner can help.

6) There’s still another possibility for post-tapping problems. It’s highly likely that you are working on issues far too complex for you to handle alone. EFT is magical and extremely effective in the right hands. Beginners should generally stay with simple, rather than complex issues. Serious trauma issues, abuse, depression and other complex topics usually need the perspective of an accomplished practitioner. Sometimes people get frustrated that EFT isn’t working for them, when in fact it’s just that they’re not experienced enough to deal with their own issues.

Look at it this way — if you experience negative stirrings after a session it’s actually a good sign that EFT is in fact starting to work. Your body or emotions are reacting because you’ve scratched the surface of something that needs to be dealt with.

So if you get stuck, don’t stop! Find some help to work through your issues. Check Gary’s practitioner listings on this site for a competent practitioner to assist you and don’t give up on yourself or on EFT!

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