As many of you are aware Gary Craig has announced his retirement from the EFT community that he helped to craft and create. Gary’s full announcement can be found on the EFT blog. For those of you who don’t know Gary, he is the one who crafted EFT out of his experience with Thought Field Therapy and other modalities.

In one of the advanced Emotional Freedom Techniques(EFT)/tapping classes I teach one full class is devoted to lessons we can learn from great change work professionals. Gary is one of the people I feature in the class. In that vain here are two lessons that can be learned from Gary’s work and two lessons that can be learned for Gary’s announced retirement.

1) Often The Best Solution Is The Simplest Solution
Evolving Thought Field Therapy/Thought Field Therapy(TFT) is an amazing tool set. It is very powerful in clearing both physical and emotional issues. For each issue it constructs a very specific tapping pattern to clear the issue. As powerful as this is, it takes a very skilled professional to be able to come up with that tapping pattern. Gary was trained in TFT, he recognized how powerful the tool was, and wonder if there was a way to make it simpler so it could be placed in the hands of the public at large. The outcome was EFT. EFT is elegant in its simplicity. I have taught the basics of EFT on the back of a napkin in a busy bar in less than five minutes.

We as people, at least I do, love complexity. We feel the more complicated the solution better the solution must be. The creation of EFT shows us that sometimes a simpler solution will accomplish as much as a more complicated one. Because of this model I ask myself, “Is there a simpler way to do the exact same thing?” before I take the first step.

2) Power of Generosity
As you read the many comments on the EFT web site under Gary’s announcement the word that appears over and over again is generous. Gary is a very generous man with his time and his talents. He provided his ideas and training very cheaply. Many of the resources were offered for free so that many could have access to the amazing tool that EFT is. Because of his generosity the community that built up around him responded in the same way.

His newsletter that was published every three or four days contained 3 new articles from practitioners from around the world sharing their insight while using EFT. It would be very easy for practitioners to keep their knowledge to themselves or to only share the information with their own readership. Instead they choose to share their knowledge with the community at larger hoping others could learn and grow from their insight.

The cynic might argue the reason people shared their knowledge on Gary’s site was because the traffic was so great hoping to use the exposure to build their own practice. This might be true for some, but it was not for all. When I would read an article I really like I would track the author down to see if they had other articles they had written or if they had their own newsletter I could subscribe to. Many times these articles were not written by practitioners, but by people who used EFT in their own lives and they wanted to share in hopes it would help others.

Gary’s generosity to the tapping community created a tapping community that was very generous in turn, not just with Gary, but with each other. I am blessed to have many new friends because of the community that wouldn’t have existed without Gary’s generosity.

3) You Must Take Care Of Yourself
Gary writes:

Finally, my physicians tell me that I have had a heart attack. I am unaware of when this happened and have no symptoms. Nonetheless, the tests show clearly that part of my heart has died. Accordingly, it is sheer idiocy for me to continue with the pressures of running EFT. To do so, is to risk another heart attack, stroke, etc. No thanks.

I can only image the struggle Gary went through as he made this choice. The number of profound healings that Gary has witnessed first hand and the countless notes he has received is mind-boggling. Walking away from something that he has cared some much about and given so much energy and time to in the last 15 years must be heart wrenching.

I don’t know if I could do this.

This is something I preach to my clients all the time and something Gary is living out in this choice: We must take care of ourselves before we can take care of others. If we are not safe and/or healthy then we are in no position to care for others. Often we feel selfish in making this choice, but we do others little good if we are sick. Our health is paramount to us being able to help others. Gary should be applauded for his courage in making this choice.

4) Physical Being A Metaphor For The Emotional
I experience everything in two ways. First, just on a normal level as human seeing how my surrounding and current stimulus affects me. Second, I experience things as a practitioner. I am asking myself questions about why are thing happening the way they are. As a practitioner I was struck by the following:

Also, as should be apparent to most of our seasoned readers, some EFT’ers have been hyping their products in ways that tend to erode the spiritual essence of the EFT movement. This has resulted in some behind-the-scenes disagreements, deceit and other negative experiences. At the core, I prefer peace to pugilism and wish to distance myself from these unnecessary “fame and fortune” energies. As you will see below, I’m leaving for higher ground.

…

Nonetheless, the tests show clearly that part of my heart has died.

I have some insight into what Gary is eluding to in this part of his note. I don’t know Gary personally (other than a few professional email back and forth), but do have a sense at how hard some of these situations were for him. It was a moment in which something he had created had grown well beyond himself and people were making choice that Gary himself would not make. In Gary’s mind these weren’t just practical choice of implementation of a protocol, but they were choices of ethics and virtue. It was very obvious in one of Gary’s blog posts that this was a heart-breaking situation for him.

It is amazing the way our emotions and physical body can mirror and match one-another.

He Will Be Missed
Gary’s presents in the tapping and change work communities are going to be missed. Even if you have never met or heard of Gary Craig but have learned something on this web site then your life (in ways unknown) has been touched by his work and generosity. I would not be doing this work today if it was not for Gary Craig.