Transform Your Emotions with Energy Tapping (EFT)

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Free video presentation… see below!

If you want to target the root cause of fears, beliefs, and blocks, Inner Tapping can help. And it is a potent way to unfreeze old traumas still stuck in your energy system.

What is Inner Tapping? It is a technique that guides you back to the original memories and events that created a given mindset. It then releases the “frozen” aspects in the primitive brain and the body-mind. It’s sort of “surrogate tapping for your younger self.” By tapping on the younger you who experienced the event and offering compassion and understanding, new resources become available, and we find ourselves empowered and more free.

If you’re tired of hearing your mother’s nagging voice in your head, or your father’s disapproval every time you start a project, this can be your magic eraser. If part of you is terrified of public speaking because you subconsciously fear the laughter of your kindergarten classmates, and you would like to find relief from that tension, this is the fastest and most thorough way we know of to achieve that.

We invite you to watch the video…  If you cannot watch the video due to a slow internet connection, here is a PDF Document of the presentation and MP3 Audio File.

If you are interested in how the brain stores trauma so you can change the way you live your life, we recommend our free companion video: Trauma and the Primitive Brain.

Links in the presentation:
- Introduction to Energy Tapping (EFT)
- Grounding Exercises
- Trauma and the Primitive Brain Video
- Thriving Now Team – Group Coaching Program

Links to other resources:
- Dr. Robert Scaer
- Karl Dawson, Matrix Reimprinting
- Our Matrix Reimprinting Interview with Karl Dawson
- Shirley Jean Schmidt

Cathy and Rick’s skillful and tender use of Inner Tapping – tapping on one’s frozen, younger parts – is helping me find my way back to me, scene by scene, big T trauma by little t trauma. With their help, I’ve been picking up, warming and breathing new life into misplaced pieces of Paula. Seems those little rebels, who had been blocking me in areas of abundance and creative expression, had been crying out to be heard and healed. — Paula Graham

By Cathy

When we start getting through the surface issues and start facing the core of our limiting beliefs, we can sometimes run into bedrock. We may have a limiting belief that we built most of our life around. Shifting it seems IMPOSSIBLE. It may feel like our life and identity would collapse if we lost it, yet it may block the most important desires our heart holds.

If we don’t shift it, we may feel robotic and dull… like all the vitality has been pulled from our lives. But we often don’t know what to do or how to feel different about it. The belief can feel like it’s rooted in the core of the earth, with no hope of ever moving it.

Friends and family may say “Don’t feel that way,” but we do. When all else fails, Tap!

Karate Chop: Even though I don’t know how to let this go, I’m open to accepting myself anyway.

Even though this is rooted in bedrock, and I have no idea how to let this go, I turn this over to the Universe and ask for help.

Even though letting go of this feels like it might break me, I ask for guidance and new doorways to go through.

Top of the Head: How can I let this go?
Eyebrow: It feels like it holds my world together.
Side of the Eye: I have no idea where to go from here.
Under the Eye: I’ve gone down to bedrock.
Under the Nose: There’s no place left to dig.
Chin: I ask for help.
Collarbone: I want to change this.
Under the Arm: It just doesn’t seem possible.

Top of the Head: Maybe I can go on as I am.
Eyebrow: At this moment that seems so heavy and sad.
Side of the Eye: Perhaps there are solutions I haven’t seen.
Under the Eye: I ask for clarity now.
Under the Nose: I have this locked in place.
Chin: I feel like I lose either way.
Collarbone: Maybe there’s an unexpected alternative.
Under the Arm: I just wish I knew what it was.

Top of the Head: This belief has been in place for decades.
Eyebrow: I’ve built my life around it.
Side of the Eye: How can I shift it?
Under the Eye: Without destroying my world!
Under the Nose: How can I not…
Chin: It blocks my deepest desires.
Collarbone: I have no idea what to do.
Under the Arm: I turn it over to Source.
Top of the Head: And ask for a loving solution.

Take a deep breath.

Sometimes that solution may be acceptance and a new perspective that allows an even better solution. Sometimes we may get an insight that helps us shift the belief surprisingly easily. At times the pain we feel in that stuck place… can inspire us to take action that we would be too scared to otherwise. As our friend Dave Rourke says, “Never give up before the miracle.”

Getting a fresh perspective can sometime help this shift along. Rick has a way of offering powerful reframes that can transform blocks into “ah-ha” moments! He has taken clients from sobbing to laughing with a few words, leaving them with a new view of life and a delightful connection with themselves. He offers private sessions and you can find lots more of his humor and wisdom as part of our Group Coaching Program. You deserve to feel better… Join Today!

From Abraham-Hicks -

At the heart of every condition is a vibrational pattern—a rather minor tweaking of vibrational patterning (sort of like the hub of a wheel) can affect tremendously out there on the peripheral of this big wheel… A little bit of tweaking on the emotion can make big differences in the way the physical manifestation occurs.

       —San Antonio, TX on Saturday, January 29th, 2005

Be easy about this. Be playful about it. Don’t work so hard at it. Let your dominant intent to be to feel good, and if you don’t feel good, then let your dominant intent be to feel relief. Feel your way through it. If you think your way through it, you can get off on all kinds of tangents. If you feel your way through it, you can come quickly to your Core Energy, and when you do that only good can then flow to you.

       —Rye, NY on Sunday, October 12th, 1997

Whatever you’re thinking about is literally like planning a future event. When you’re worrying, you are planning. When you are appreciating, you are planning… What are you planning?

       —Silver Spring, MD on Saturday, April 19th, 1997

There is the potential for relief (feeling better) indefinitely. In other words, we do not know of any ending point to the amount of clarity, and adventure, and joy, and Well-Being—it is an unlimited thing.

       —Asheville, NC on Sunday, October 24th, 2004

There is no condition that you cannot modify into something more, any more than there is any painting that you can paint and not like and just paint over it again. There are many limiting thoughts in the human environment that make it feel like it is not so, as you have these incurable illnesses, or these unchangeable conditions. But we say, they are only “unchangeable” because you believe that they are.

       —San Antonio, TX on Saturday, April 21st, 2001

Do you have to think specific positive thoughts about your body in order for your body to be the way you want it to be? No. But you have to not think the specific negative thoughts. If you could never again think about your body and, instead, just think pleasant thoughts — your body would reclaim its place of Well-being.

       —Orlando, FL on Sunday, January 10th, 1999

Find something to feel good about and get out of the way, and allow the cells to receive what they’ve been asking for. That is the key to healing.

       —Orlando, FL on Saturday, January 22nd, 2005

There isn’t anything anybody wants that is for any other reason than that they think they would feel better in having it.

       —Seattle, WA on Saturday, July 3rd, 1999

There are no choices that are really a detour that will take you far from where you’re wanting to be — because your Inner Being is always guiding you to the next, and the next, and the next. So don’t be concerned that you may make a fatal choice, because there aren’t any of those. You are always finding your balance. It’s a never ending process.

       —Albany, NY on Saturday, May 22nd, 1999

Illness or pain is just an extension of negative emotion. When you are no longer feeling any resistance to it, it’s a non-issue. San Rafael, CA — 8/3/02

       —San Rafael, CA on Saturday, August 3rd, 2002

When you talk about what you want and why you want it, there’s usually less resistance within you than when you talk about whathat you want and how you’re going to get it. When you pose questions you don’t have answers for, like how, where, when, who, it sets up a contradictory vibration that slows everything down.

       —San Antonio, TX on Saturday, January 29th, 2005

Worrying is using your imagination to create something you don’t want.

       —Asheville, NC on Saturday, September 5th, 1998

Enlightenment means literally aligning to the Energy of my Source. And genius is only about focusing. Law of Attraction takes care of everything else. Physical humans often want to make enlightenment about finding some process and moving through the process that has been pre-described. But true enlightenment is moving to the rhythm of the internal inspiration that is coming in response to the individual desire. Enlightenment is about allowing my connection to the Source that is me for the fulfillment of the things that I have individually defined here in my time/space reality. That’s as good as it gets!

       —Boulder, CO on Saturday, June 7th, 2003

Wellness that is being allowed, or the wellness that is being denied, is all about the mindset, the mood, the attitude, the practiced thoughts. There is not one exception, in any human or beast; because, you can patch them up again and again, and they will just find another way of reverting back to the natural rhythm of their mind. Treating the body really is about treating the mind.

       —Philadelphia, PA on Monday, May 13th, 2002 02

You will always, almost always, most of you, choose negative emotion over no emotion. Because emotion indicates desire. It’s exciting!

       —Silver Springs, MD on Sunday, April 11th, 1999999

When the desire is born, right away you start counting yourselves a failure, because you’ve got this desire that hasn’t been satisfied. Know that you never get it done! And since you never get it done, it’s time to stop being unhappy about what’s undone, because most of it is undone! You are an eternal being. Most of it is undone. Instead of taking score about what’s been achieved — we want you to start feeling anticipation about what is still to arrive…

       —Spokane, WA on Wednesday, July 7th, 1999 99

Forever, physical humans are saying, “give me the truth, give me the truth.” And we say, there are all kinds of truths. Choose the truths that serve you. Now, there are a lot of people that would feel great discomfort with that. But the thing that we want you to hear about it is: there is a truth of cancer, and there is a truth of wellness. Which truth serves you? You can activate either of them within you, and make it your truth. Truths are created; they aren’t static. They aren’t conditions that exist that then it is your obligation to identify and catalog. You are the creator of your truths–and what you are living is your truth.

       —Kansas City, MO on Saturday, June 1st, 2002 02

There is no state of physical decline or damage that you could not recover from–none–not any, if you knew it… If you wanted it and knew that you could. And that’s those miracles that they talk about every day. They’re not miracles at all, they are the natural order of things. But because they are rare, people think they are miraculous. They’re not. That’s the way it is supposed to be. You’re supposed to thrive.

       —San Diego, CA on Saturday, February 23rd, 2002

One who is mostly an observer thrives in good times but suffers in bad times because what he is observing is already vibrating, and as he observes it, he includes it in his vibrational countenance. As he includes it, the Universe accepts that as his point of attraction and gives him more of it. So the better it gets the better it gets. Or the worse it gets the worse it gets. While one who is a visionary thrives in all times.

       —Portland, OR on Tuesday, June 10th, 1997

You can be fully satisfied with where you are, understanding that you’re eternally evolving. When you get into that place of feeling appreciation of where you are and of who you are, and appreciation of what you are, and you accept that you are a never-ending, always unfolding Being, then you can stand in that delicate balance of being optimistic about what is to come, without being unhappy about where you stand. Find a way of eagerly anticipating future changes, while at the same time you are in love and satisfied with who, what, where and how you be.

       —Atlanta, GA on Saturday, November 4th, 2000

If you get a diagnosis that is not what you want to hear, the tendency is to say, “Oh, My God! How did I get so far away from something I want so much?” And we say, it isn’t big like that at all — it’s just a series of little things. It is the, “I could choose this thought which feels good, or this thought which doesn’t feel so good. But I’ve developed a pattern for what doesn’t feel good. And so, it is the daily dose of not being in the receiving mode that keeps me not in the receiving mode.” And that’s all that it is!

       —San Rafael, CA on Saturday, March 24th, 2001

You will never reach the place where you will not need to be diligent about your choice of thought. Because you live in a world that is determined to show you every pocket of despair. So you must diligently choose. But it gets easier and easier and easier to do so. Right now, it may feel to you like those moments of Connection are the rare ones. There will be a time when those moments of Connection will feel so normal that it will shock you when you get into a place of disconnection.

       —San Antonio, TX on Saturday, November 24th, 2001

A happy life is just a string of happy moments. But most people don’t allow the happy moment, because they’re so busy trying to get a happy life.

       —Sacramento, CA on Saturday, March 15th, 2003

Don’t get lost in the diagnosis, the medicine, or in the statistics about what somebody else did about it. If you don’t feel good, it’s because you’re not thinking in a way that allows the Energy to flow. You could just get really, really mad at someone you love and make every muscle in your body stiff. And you would ask, “Why does my body feel this way?” And we say, because you’ve had a Vibrational tug-of-war going on… Stop looking for anything other than your mental and emotional state of being as answers to why you feel how you feel in your body. It is all Vibrational—no exception! And when you get that, then it doesn’t matter what diagnosis has been given to you—it doesn’t matter—it’s temporary.

       —Orlando, FL on Friday, December 20th, 2002

When you, as a physician, help someone to accept Well-being enough that they allow the Well-being, whether they allow it in this physical body or whether they have to release this physical body to allow it, it’s still the same thing. In other words, they can allow the wellness into this body, or they can allow the wellness by leaving this body. But allowing the wellness is what you are assisting them in doing. Focus upon the Well-being, and see them opening and receiving it here, or opening and receiving it from Non-Physical. But focus upon the Well-being. And as you focus upon the Well-being, what we’ve noticed is, if you can get someone’s attention and you can convince them that Well-being is the order of the day–there is no illness that will not leave them in the moment that they finally get that.

       —North Los Angeles, CA on Saturday, March 2nd, 2002

You could stand here sick with ten illnesses today, and tomorrow have no evidence of any of them. Your body has the ability to replenish itself that fast. But most of you do not have the ability to change your thoughts that fast. So the amount of time that it takes between sickness and wellness is only the amount of time that it takes for me to figure out how to let it in — for me to figure out how to feel good, when I’m looking at something that makes me feel bad

       —Atlanta, GA on Saturday, November 4th, 2000

Start taking pleasure from your inner reality. Most people are approaching this backwards. Most people are saying, “Okay, I want that, and I am not fulfilled until I get that manifestation.” The reason for that promise of manifestation out there, to begin with, is that it gives you the reason to play the game in the inner reality. It is your imagination, it is the feeling of Energy flowing through you that is life.

       —Kansas City, KS on Sunday, September 27th, 1998 

The main event has never been the manifestation; the main event has always been the way you feel moment by moment, because that’s what life is.

       —Syracuse, NY on Thursday, October 17th, 1996

Any malady in your physical body was a lot longer in coming than it takes to release it.

       —Napa, CA on Thursday, February 27th, 1997

You can be fully satisfied with where you are, understanding that you’re eternally evolving. When you get into that place of feeling appreciation of where you are and of who you are, and appreciation of what you are, and you accept that you are a never-ending, always unfolding Being, then you can stand in that delicate balance of being optimistic about what is to come, without being unhappy about where you stand.. Find a way of eagerly anticipating future changes, while at the same time you are in love and satisfied with who, what, where and how you be.

       —Atlanta, GA on Saturday, November 4th, 2000

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By focusing your energy and being open to the flow of information, you might be surprised at the wisdom you receive and the relief your body feels. If you want a deeper connection to your body and some direction about where to go next on your healing journey, we’ll show you exercises and techniques to tune into your body.

This is the outline for the call What Does Your Pain Want To Say?, which is a part of our Body Vitality Workshop as we focus on Body Safety with co-hosts Rick Wilkes and Cathy Vartuli.

Intentions: We’re going to discuss tuning into the body and getting specific information from a particular sensation or aspect of your body, and then we’ll spend the rest of the call tapping on specific examples from those of you who want to dig a bit further, who want a deeper connection to your body and some direction about where to go next on your healing journey.

Disclaimer: Reconnecting with your body is wonderful. But it may bring up a lot of emotions at first. Remember to be responsible for your own safety. If too much is coming up, feel free to get off the call. Do some tapping, or whatever self-calming techniques you use. Get some one-on-one help if you need it. Grounding techniques posted on Thrivingnow.com may be helpful as well. http://www.thrivingnow.com/grounding-exercises/

Pain is a signal that something is out of whack. It is generally related to your body communicating:

1) There is something physically wrong… get help or stop what you’re doing (take your hand off that hot stove!).

2) There is something emotionally wrong, that you need to address in a current situation. (Giving into my boss’s demands is giving me a pain in my neck. Maybe I need to stand up for myself or figure out why I keep backing down).

3) There is old trauma that your body is trying to draw your attention to. (A chunk of tension and memory from when Jimmy pushed me off the swing and told me I was selfish is stored in my hip. Until I release it, my hip is going to flare up anytime I’m reminded of this incident. And it might just hurt all the time if my body knows I need to release it to go with my flow.)

With old traumas, if there is a physical and emotional component, both may have to be addressed before the hurt goes away. Going with the example of Jimmy, if we hurt our leg when we fell, we may have to tap on the physical hurt our body sustained and also the emotions around him pushing us, him hurting us, and him calling us selfish.

As we’ve discussed in other calls, the body will keep escalating the signals until we pay attention… just like a small child will first whisper, then tell, then yell, then shriek for what it needs. If we get rid of the pain, using drugs or other means, without understanding the cause, our bodies are still dealing with the underlying energies. “Getting rid of the pain without addressing the deeper cause would be like shutting off a fire alarm while the fire’s still going.”

What about the books out there that tell you their interpretation of the symbolic meaning of pain in specific areas of the body?
- A couple I’ve used are: Louise Hay “Heal Your Body”
and “Feelings Buried Alive Never Die” by Karol Truman
- They can be helpful and bring interesting insights. I often use them along with Body Yes and No to see if they resonate. Many of them were compiled by talking to a lot of people with pain in a particular location and seeing what came up the most, what seemed to be the emotional cause for the majority. It is hard for them to be comprehensive and to cover every aspect.
- And at times they are completely NOT applicable to your emotions, energy, and guidance.
- Your body will communicate how it wants to. It hasn’t read those books!

We are focusing on pain, but this technique can be used for red splotches on your skin, excess weight around your belly, a queasy stomach, anything your body could use to signal to you and get your attention.

Let’s start with a SMALL pain or discomfort, just to practice. Close your eyes (if it’s safe to do so) and take a slow deep breath. Let your awareness go within. Ask your body to bring to your attention a low intensity issue. Don’t push it. Just be present with your body for a moment, and let it come to your awareness.

- If you can touch the location of the discomfort without causing more, place your fingertips on the point. If you can’t reach that spot, just focus your attention on it.
- Ask, “what do you want to tell me?”
- Be quiet a moment and let any emotions or thoughts flow. Realize that your body may whisper at first, since it may not be used to being heard. Imagine you are listening to a scared child tell you what frightened it. Demands and shoving won’t help. Quiet, patience and calm will. It may also show you a picture, or give you a feeling that reminds you of something.

- Next, ask it, “what do you need?” and see if you get an answer.
- If you got answers, great! Thank your body for communicating. If you can, give your body what it asked for or do some tapping on the emotions around it.
- If you didn’t get clarity, it’s ok. Your body may be in shock that you are actually listening to it! You may have “practiced” tuning it out for so long, you don’t remember how to hear it. The good news is, that with a little practice, the skill will come back. You may also be scared to tune in, especially if you’re afraid of what your body will say or want.
- Even though I am really resistant to listening to my body, and I don’t want to hear what it has to say, I am still a good person.

What do you do if you can’t do what your body wants, right now, (or ever)?
Make a commitment to meet the need later.
Imagine doing it as clearly as possible.
Negotiate! Offer choices that are a YES for you. BABY Steps!
Tap on the frustrations and limitations.

Before we move to a more intense issue, remember, you can step up to it gradually. Do some tapping on “ET I have this big pain, and I think it has some overwhelming emotions, I am still a good person and I can take baby steps”.

Get help with the really big stuff. If you get the sense that the issues may be too intense to do without support, find a tapping buddy, get a coach, or get on a team call for help.

If you can, notice if your primitive brain kicks into overdrive. Sometimes being in intense pain can trigger feelings of flight or flight or freeze. This makes sense. If an actual tiger were chewing on your leg, kicking or running make lots of sense. When we’re dealing with old pains, this same primitive brain mechanisms can interfere with the process… “ET I’m scared, I am safe now”?

Research has shown that anxiety increases sensitivity to pain. And most of us know that feeling pain can make us anxious. So we have a feedback loop that isn’t helpful. EFT can calm and break the cycle and reduce the emotions around the pain.

Let’s practice on a spot that feels good or at least neutral. Touch a part of you that feels good. Listen to the positive. Be with it and enjoy. Thank your body.

If you are overwhelmed by information or painful sensations, ask that part of your body, “What emotion are you holding?” This can help narrow it down a bit for you. You can also practice body YES and NO by asking, “Is this current or something from my past”. (Just be ok if it says YES to both. We tend to store like experiences in ways that have them resonate together.)

If you are tuning into the pain on your own, remember that you can tap on the physical sensation at first- that will generally bring clarity and understanding. “ET I have this shooting pain in my right wrist, I am a good person, everything will be ok, and I am open to understanding what it wants to say.” (Remember to be specific about the pain location and sensation.)

If you noticed something that surprised you…

You can also tap and breathe at each point, while being present with the body part. Just lightly tap each point while taking a deep breath in and out. Do a round like this, while being aware of the sensation you want information about. Notice any thoughts or emotions you feel.

Let’s go to specific examples now. Even if you’re not called on, tap along and borrow benefits…

Team members can discuss the recording and ask question in the private Body Vitality Forum.

These calls are part of the Body Vitality Workshop that we’re holding as part of the Thriving Now Team. (All calls are recorded so you can listen and tap along later if you cannot attend.)

The detailed outline for our first call on Body YES and Body NO: Learning to Listen to the Body’s Intuitive, Intelligent Guidance can be found here:

http://www.thrivingnow.com/body-yes-and-body-no/

The second call covered The Vibrational Scale: A Guide to Understand and Improving Your Vibrational Trend. A detailed 6-level Vibrational Scale (an evolution of the one proposed by Abraham-Hicks) can be found along with the call outline on the Thriving Now website at:

http://www.thrivingnow.com/moving-up-the-vibrational-scale/

Our intention with the Body Vitality Workshop is to help you…

- develop an amazing relationship with your body…
- help it feel surprisingly safe, calm, and confident…
- listen to and follow its intuitive guidance…
- consciously direct its vibrational trend towards total well-being…
- and delight in the pleasures of food, movement, and touch in healthy and balanced ways.

It doesn’t matter if you’re over-, under- or at your perfect weight, hate the pains in your back, think you don’t have enough muscles, feel clumsy, or your nose is funny….

We’ll focus on developing practical body guidance, feeling safe in your body, appreciating and accepting where you are (as hard as that can be sometimes), and removing blocks to moving forward towards a more powerful, healthy, vital body. We’ll have specific calls on eating for the body’s needs… and for its pleasure! We’ll also use EFT to bring relief to pain and suffering… and bring more fluid movement to your body from your head to your toes.

In the members-only forum we’ll have ongoing discussions on each of these topics… as well as mutual support and encouragement to guide this process.

If you would like to participate in this workshop and bring increased vitality and power to your body, become a team member.

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I was skimming the book You Can’t Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought the other day and read about the addictive nature of excitement vs. the pleasing nature of enjoyment. While I sometimes feel we stretch the definition of “addiction” to mean any habitual behavior with negative consequences, it is worth looking at the difference between what most of us seek (excitement) and the more peaceful form of pleasure that comes with enjoyment.

Winning!
To win, to succeed, is a peak experience. Winning feels really good. You’re at the top. The rush we get with the Big Win is accompanied by a flood of adrenaline and other powerful biochemicals that literally feel great! These chemicals such as endorphins deaden all pain—physical and emotional. Yet, if you look at the cycles of win-lose, succeed-fail, and try-try-again, we get a sense that peak experiences are naturally followed by down time. The body-mind isn’t geared towards maintaining the energy of the peak for very long. 

In human evolution, such a drive for the win helped us beat all odds to kill the mammoth, kill the tiger, kill the buffalo, and kill the enemy. Today, the hunt is often different. It is kill the competition, win the contract, make the millions, and win respect. I have no doubt that this innate drive has much to do with how far and fast we’ve advanced technologically and for our generally improved standard of living. The upside is considerable enough (and interesting enough) that we’ve weaved this Winning Attitude into the very fabric of our culture and our DNA.

If you love the kill, if you love the win, and if you feel no strain from being constantly striving towards your next victory… well, you’re rare. Many of my clients are physically and emotionally exhausted from this ongoing battle to prove themselves. Even ones who have made millions, have a couple of nice houses, nice cars, the whole package do not feel like they are thriving.

Excitement is a Burst… Followed By Recovery
Excitement is a part of life. It is a burst, a flash, a reminder of how good we can feel. But have you noticed that not even orgasms last? We get a Big Burst of energy… followed by a refractory period to recover. Even the most multi-orgasmic woman will scream, “ENOUGH!!!” after a surprisingly short number of minutes at the peak of pleasure. It’s well known that most men fall asleep after a single orgasm. If an orgasm lasted for 45 minutes straight, a man would feel such physical pain that he’d be begging to be put out of his misery.

I’ve used sexual pleasure as an example here because the transformation of pleasure into misery does not take very long. I believe the energies that drive us to succeed (and mate indiscriminantly or excessively… even if just in the imaginary world of pornography) are close cousins with the energies of fear. Again, picture the successful person who shortly after the WIN ends up depressed. “Is that all there is?” Imagine the lottery winner who spends spends spends for the thrill of spending, and still feels unfulfilled. “Is that all there is?” Imagine the couple caught up in the heat of new passion, having sex 5-6 times a day, and asking weeks later when the fire dies down, “Is that all there is?”

Is That All There Is?
If you are needing peak experiences to feel good, YES, you have a problem. You can’t hold onto the feeling. The internal chemistry and focus needed just are not available for extended periods of time. Drive drive drive yourself to win at anything, and the ensuing refractory (rest) period that follows may be deeply unsettling to you. Depression is common. And when another win (bigger, of course) does not follow soon… despair and hopelessness can set in. And if not those, an underlying angst that life just isn’t feeling as exciting as you’d like it to be.

Shifting Your Intention to Feeling Good
The peak experience is AWESOME! AMAZING! UNBELIEVABLE!  The place of thriving is… feeling good, feeling grateful, feeling appreciation, feeling connected, feeling peaceful, feeling confident, feeling full of joy. These are entirely different vibrations from the peak experience! And these emotions fill us. They leave us satisfied and energized.

It starts with changing your intention. Do you need to feel AWESOME AMAZING UNBELIEVABLE? Do you need to be THE BEST? PERFECT? ACCLAIMED? Or… SAVE THE WORLD!?! If so, you have a core belief that this is what it takes for you to be happy. And no matter HOW amazing life is on any measure, if this is your driving intention, you will have all the strains that go with the constant battle to be the champion, the gladiator… or die trying.

Been there, done that? I have, too. And what I’ve decided is to start by intending to feel good. Rather than seeking excitement for thrill’s sake, I am allowing myself to enjoy what shows up, making the best of it, and putting my heart’s intention behind allowing myself to expand in joy.

Joy is the little girl skipping down the sidewalk singing her song. Joy is noticing the little girl skipping and singing and finding her pleasing.

Joy is holding hands with a friend and appreciating the physical warmth and exchange of appreciative glances.

Joy is feeling gratitude and saying, “Yes, thank you Universe. Send me more.”

If this feels boring, or not juicy enough for you… chances are you have a strong habitual preference (addiction?) to excitement. And chances are that when you don’t have the excitement, you become really hard on yourself. Because… self-hate is cousin to excitement. It drives us… for a time… with the same mix of chemicals. This is a significant and challenging energetic habit to shift.

EFT to Shift to Joy
EFT can help here. First, identify your beliefs about excitement and success. Use them in EFT setup statements. Here are some examples:

Even though I need excitement to be happy, I am open to feeling surprisingly good right here, right now.
Even though I need to be successful, or what good am I?, I have decided to feel good just as I am right now.
Even though I love excitement, I am open to feeling joyful every moment of every day.

You can also start making a gratitude list: a simple list of what you find pleasing each day. If you are needing the big win or juicy excitement, as you make your gratitude list, a series of “Yes, buts” will arise. “Yes, I’m grateful for the $1000 in my bank account, but I really need $1,000,000!” As you notice these, use EFT on them.

Even though I don’t have a million dollars, I choose to feel surprisingly grateful with the $1000 I do have!

This is the kind of energy shift that feels foreign and unnatural at the start. Gratitude is a pleasing vibration… it just isn’t ecstatic. Appreciating the beauty of another being is delicious… it just isn’t orgasmic. Until you experience long-term fulfillment, until you can relax into feeling joy-filled for hours at a time, this shift can be perceived as a loss. Like something is missing. Again, use EFT on those feelings, especially where you feel them in your body right before you engage in any other addictive behaviors.

You might also consider coaching. Coaching can help you get clear on your intentions, clean up the mixed vibrations you are sending out to the Universe, and help you allow yourself to feel good. If this appeals to you, I encourage you to become a Thriving Now Team Member.

Thriving… Peace, Joy, Love, Laughter
Humans are amazing beings. We are capable of such a wide range of emotions and experiences. It is true that culturally we celebrate the gold medals and the heroic efforts. If you can watch those and feel peaceful appreciation, your energy is tuned in a way that you can thrive. If you can participate in lovely co-creations, enjoying every step of the journey, and looking forward to continued bliss… you are tuned into Source Energy in a way that will guide and nourish you for a lifetime. Thriving is in the NOW, the present moment. It is in all the richness you can absorb from your everyday, every breath experience. And I know that what you formerly considered the “peak experience” or the Big Win will pale in comparison to being aware in every cell of your being how connected and loved you truly are.

“Selfishly seek joy, because your joy is the greatest gift you can give to anyone. Unless you are in your joy, you have nothing to give anyway.”
www.Abraham-Hicks.com

Listen (07:00) or Download MP3

Can an illness make us feel safe? Growing up, when I wasn’t prepared for a test at school, I would get a stomach ache. It would buy me some time. It would give me another day home. It was an “excused absence.” No one questioned. No one poked or prodded. No thermometer had to read high. “My stomach hurts too much to go to school.” And I stayed home.  Have you ever done something like that? Were my childhood stomach aches real? Yes. They hurt or made me feel nauseated. I mean, I couldn’t LIE about feeling sick without feeling sick to my stomach! Ooops.  In energy medicine this kind of dynamic represents the “upside” of being sick. We ask the question, “What is the benefit of being sick right now?”  “But there isn’t any!! I really want to be well.”  Ok, I agree with you. I’ve really wanted to be well when I’ve been sick, too. But I also really liked getting my back rubbed for hours and hours every day when I had chronic tension headaches. I didn’t want to lose those. And there were times when I had ulcerative colitis that it gave me a convenient excuse not to do something, or to be late with something, or to do what I wanted rather than what someone else wanted. And there were other reasons, too. Hmmmm…  In psychological terms they call these secondary gains. And you can explore what they might be by just asking yourself the questions:

How am I using this sickness for my benefit?  How is being sick making me feel safer than I would feel if I were totally well right now?

The answers may surprise you.  This isn’t about guilt. It is about awareness. With awareness we can take those energies to EFT and shift them. We can teach our energy system to feel SAFE—even when there is a “test” today—and not need a stomach ache or worse to follow our inner guidance.  I knew what I was doing when I was a child. I knew I was working the system. The system included a Mom that easily gave in when I was sick. (Thank you, Mom; I didn’t need to get really, really ill.) She’d write a note. She’d give me the time and space I needed. Then I would go back to school and do really well.  As adults there are systems, too. Companies have sick days—use them or lose them! Sickness is the cultural excuse not to be with people you don’t want to be with, not to do the things you “have to do” but don’t WANT to do. Sickness is insured. Heck, if it gets bad enough, you can even go on long term disability and the government or an insurance company will pay you.  As an emotional freedom coach, what I address are the energies of sickness contrasted with the energies of total well-being. What I find in my life and in the life of every client with a chronic condition is that there are hidden ways that the sickness is shielding, protecting, and helping avoid a situation that is even WORSE as far as the primitive brain is concerned. When that is uncovered with some detective work, acknowledged, and soothed with EFT, we’ve returned to the road to optimal health.  Do these same energy dynamics affect your financial success? Absolutely!  How can you know? Ask the question, “Do I ever use excuses to feel safe?”  Example: You hate working at the office. You get sick. Office accommodates your need to stay home. You like working from home better. It feels safer. You avoid people you don’t like. You get more time off. If your work isn’t always up to par, you can apologize and say you’ve been struggling with the illness (rather than saying you were unmotivated, uninspired, uninterested, and undisciplined… “truths” that would be more likely to get you FIRED…).  As ugly and depleting as it is to be sick, the prospect of going back to the office and losing the safety of the excuses is WORSE. Not logically worse… but emotionally worse. Less safe.  And your primitive brain can easily keep you just sick enough to keep you safe.  This may not ring true for you. If it doesn’t, this dynamic may not be at work at all in your energy system.  But if you’re feeling uneasy, if this is striking a bit close to home… here’s what I’d recommend:  1) Listen and tap along with the EFT session: NO! You Can’t Make Me! 2) Write down answers to the questions I’ve posed above.  3) Think of specific examples from as early as you can remember where you’ve used sickness or powerful excuses in order to avoid pain or gain pleasure (even if it feels logically absurd; let your intuition bring up the events without judging yourself). Use these specific examples with EFT.  If you’d like to get a jumpstart on cleaning up these energies so you can truly feel in your body, “YES! YES!! No More Excuses!”, consider becoming a Thriving Now Team Member.

Listen (47:25) or Download MP3

Use the player controls above or download the MP3 of the recording of the show with Carol Look discussing “Raising Your Vibration with EFT” with Rick Wilkes of ThrivingNow.com.  Some of the questions we address: – What does it mean to “raise your vibration?” – How does vibration affect health? – How do we know whether we are vibrating towards health or towards disease? – What are some of the external influences on our vibration? – Does our inner world affect our vibration even more than the external? – Can we change the way we are vibrating?  – How can EFT be used to shift our inner vibration? – If someone is in physical or emotional pain, how can EFT be used to transform that pain by raising the vibration? – How important is focused INTENTION in self-managing ones vibrational health? – What does a thriving life feel like, vibrationally?

“Make up your mind that nothing is more important than how I feel now, because now is everything. Now is the whole enchilada. Now is the power of me. Now, now, now, now, now… You might as well start somewhere, and it might as well be now. Why not start improving your life now, now, now?” —Abraham-Hicks

Most suffering is amplified when we have regrets and guilts about the past, or feel hopeless about the future. Even in the midst of chronic illness, the NOW is often filled with some pretty good stuff.

I worked with a 9-year-old boy who has been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. As I touched and soothed his body through massage therapy and energy work, we talked about how much of his body was working really, really well. His muscles in his arms. His brain. His Heart. Even though he woke this morning and had a “bad time” on the toilet, the parts of his body working well vastly outshines (from my perspective) that which is still coming back into balance.

And in the present moment, in the NOW, we can touch and be touched. We can laugh. We can learn. We can focus on thoughts that feel good. We can dream. And we can be fully present with simple pleasures like being with someone we care about—even if that “being with” is a spiritual presence and not in strictly physical form.

God is always found in the Now. If we wait until we’re rich enough, well enough, strong enough, or worthy enough, we’ll never feel that connection. That connection is God’s PRESENT, a gift from All That Is to the leading-edge co-creator that is YOU. It’s yours, right NOW. So you can really experience the joy of THRIVING… NOW.

Listen (07:56) or Download MP3

So often when we set life goals or make New Year’s resolutions, they are either around Big Things We Want or Big Things We Must FIX. If you are the rare type of person who can WANT something and feel delicious expectation and hope all along the way to achieving it, such goal setting can indeed put into motion all that is required to make those dreams a reality.  Yet for many, the journey from “where I am now” to “where I really want to be” can seem… overwhelming… too far off to hope for… even depressingly unreachable. What I want to tell you is that such emotion doesn’t mean you can’t get there! It only means you have a strong desire, which is the first step.  The next step is for you to take an emotional journey where you starting caring more about how you feel than about what is happening. You start moving up the vibrational scale from feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, or even depressed to a place where what you want feels like it’s the next logical step.  Along the way, the emotional pain you feel is your inner guidance system letting you know that your current mental and emotional focus is not yet compatible with who you want to BE, what you want to DO, and all you want to HAVE. We can use that perfect inner guidance system to take you step-by-emotional-step at your unique pace.  This is the energetic, vibrational approach to “achieving our goals.” And it requires choosing a FOCUS that is in alignment with all we want in our lives. And that FOCUS, simply stated, is: 

Such a committed focus on feeling good above all else will have a profound impact on your well-being. First, this focus brings greater awareness to our habitual thoughts and core beliefs. For example, we know that repetitively entertaining a thought that makes us feel bad is counter to feeling good. The negative thought is as incompatible with you and with your well-being as… drinking diesel fuel for an energy boost! You are not designed to run on thought energy that feels terrible to you! What I teach Thriving Now Team Members is how to “soften” habitual language of self-criticism and judgment and reach for a thought that brings even just a little relief. That bit of relief, which EFT makes tremendously easier, is a sign from your emotional guidance system that we’re on the right track. And when you KNOW, from your day-to-day experience, that you can soften the negative thoughts and feelings that crop up, you develop calm confidence that you can take any situation and maintain emotional equilibrium… and even make the best of it.  The focus on feeling good also helps us to discover physical, mental, emotional, financial, and spiritual practices that improve our energy. Some common life-enhancing practices are meditation, prayer, mindfulness, dreaming/visualizing, massage, movement/dance, play, laughter, journaling, and appreciation/gratitude. The list is endless! If given two choices, the one that feels better (even slightly) to you and your heart than the alternative is a positive sign from your emotional guidance system that you have chosen the best fork in the road and are on the right path.  As you move along the emotional journey step-by-step, certain emotions may feel surprisingly good to you. For example, from a place of depression and disempowerment, anger and even thoughts of revenge and hate can feel like relief. Good!! In a state of anger, we have energy moving, and it is far easier when energy is moving to reach thoughts that feel even better than anger… like overwhelm and frustration. (Going up the vibrational scale like this takes practice and is a perfect topic for our coaching work together.) Of course, once you spend some time with the life-giving energy of anger, it will stop feeling very good to you. Anger is still a low vibration. Your Inner Being always yearns for an even better feeling. At this point, you have a choice again: to go back into depression and guilt/shame because it is “bad” to feel “angry,” or Choose to Feel Good by reaching for a little bit of relief from the anger… even if that means feeling only “optimistically pessimistic.” Keep choosing a thought and feeling that brings just a bit of relief, and you will be well on your way to eventually experiencing peace, joy, and even Bliss.  You may not know “how to feel good,” yet. That’s fine! This is a skill that can be learned by anyone. The core gifts of an inner emotional guidance system and your own personal connection to the Source of Well-Being are already yours. How to misuse these gifts to feel BAD is, strangely, more socially acceptable in our culture than to use them to feel GOOD. Aren’t we supposed to feel anxiety, stress, guilt, shame, and worse???  Well, if you are ready and willing to buck the trend… if you’re ready to use your God-given gifts to really start thriving… Then decide. Write down with a clear intention: I Choose to Feel Good! and join us on this emotional journey. We’re going to have a GREAT time!

Listen (45:30) or Download MP3

Dr. Carol Look interviewed emotional freedom coach Rick Wilkes of Thriving Now on VoiceAmerica Radio on October 17, 2005. The subject was The Energy for Optimal Health. Listen to the show using the audio controls above, or click the MP3 link to download the recording to listen on your portable MP3 player.

Key points from the interview:

Starting at 00:00

• Thoughts create palpable disruptions in the body
• Trauma and stress are stored in the body, too
• Physioemotional pain
• The thoughts that change pain into suffering
• Can we use the energy of pain to help transform our health?
• Remembering means to re-create it in our body, in the emotions, biochemistry, hormones, and nervous system
• We can use either an emotion or a physical sensation as a doorway into the energy system
• Combining EFT with massage makes the process easier for both the client and the practitioners
• The proof of EFT for me was using it for myself and feeling the self-soothing… and having it last

Starting at 11:45

• Physical resistance: How resistance shows up when we go to a healthcare practitioners, and until that resistance is released, deep healing seldom occurs and interventions that could otherwise be helpful can have a painful effect
• Western science sometimes rules out all the “known causes” while the person still feels pain. That is the time to ask, “Is there an emotion there?”
• Emotional components of the pain can stick around causing physical distress to “remind us” until we heal at the core level
• When we try to aggressively treat symptoms without addressing the resistant core energies, there can be a painful rebound effect
• EFT can be nicely combined with other approaches including western medicine, naturopathy, acupuncture, massage, chiropractic, meditation, prayer… you name it… to bring deeper relief.
• There is no real separation between physical and emotional pain
• The journey to financial abundance goes through all the issues of health and wellness, too
• Youth has a vibration… even at 70+!
• Features of Thriving Now include a wealth of articles and audios so people can get a sense of whether EFT is right for them personally and whether Rick is the right emotional freedom coach, along with a cost effect EFT Coaching program call the Thriving Now Team.
• EFT is honest

Starting at 23:20

• Pain thresholds: how loudly does your body need to scream at you before you will listen?
• EFT can help us gain permission
• Ignoring the pain signals from our body has significant repercussions
• When we drive ourselves all day long, sometimes a single night’s sleep is not enough—and the body will take the rest it needs… one way or another… even in the form of disease.
• Olivia: “I can’t really slow down right now”
• EFT coaches act as a mirror, helping us to see the doorways into our energy system more clearly
• Not everyone will experience quick success; not everyone’s journey to optimal health is as quick as a trip to the nearest 7-Eleven. And that is okay!
• If you are MAD at your body…
• EFT can help to take the edge off

Starting at 35:43

• Transforming Pain: Pain comes with the energy to move us out of our comfort zones
• Dark night of the soul
• Pain gave me permission to meditate and change my lifestyle
• If you feel tense in your body and your emotions are discordant, EFT can be used on all those different aspects
• Worry and fear flood the body with chemicals that cause disease
• Go from fight/flight/freeze with EFT to rest & digest
• From FEAR to SAFETY to Calm and Confident… no matter what!
• Not staying “down” for so long…
• Differences between the mechanics and art of EFT
• EFT makes us more resilient
• EFT as the primary tool for emotional self-care

Listen (09:39) or Download MP3

The unseen, inner intelligence that keeps our heart beating is the same intelligence that can restore our health—even if that restoration will take a miracle. But this is not an intelligence that can be forced. It defies our attempts to “fix” and cut corners. In the years that I’ve observed the healing process in myself and in others, I’ve noticed that true healing appears to be a process of allowing.

When we’ve reached a state of readiness to “do what needs to be done,” we often feel impatient. We want to feel good; we really do! But the distance between where we are and where we want to be seems long… too long. We’re sometimes not sure we still have the energy to do it.  I’ve been there. It’s both a great place to be and the worst place to be. It’s great because we feel flashes of hope. It is the worst because we still have all the doubts, fears, frustrations, and self-criticism. And we don’t want to fail again. Yet, even with all those fears, it’s an important milestone when we reach the threshhold where we are ready to take effective, persistent action. And one of those actions is to learn the art of allowing.

If you listen to your body, you can learn to notice how really, truly good it can feel… even while you still carry the “label” of your dis-ease. For example, after a session of EFT you might feel peace for three whole minutes! If you have not felt inner peace for many years, three minutes of peace is a BIG DEAL! It should be celebrated! Poems written about it. Family and friends should throw you a party!

Allow yourself to enjoy feeling good! But the feeling will pass. And the habits of thought and mental focus that got you into a desperate place will return and cause pain again. That’s okay! You are learning. You are building emotional resilience. And if you can allow yourself the time to learn the skills of emotional self-management, and let go of your need for immediate, total relief, you will find that the road back to optimal health can be one of the most memorable and inspirational times in your life.

But how do you manage the “down times?” The healing process is not linear, straight to heaven. There will be emotional high and low cycles. (Some people whose cycles are particularly intense might even be labeled “bi-polar.”) As an energy coach, labels don’t mean much to me, and ups and downs are a natural part of life. I work to focus your attention on using EFT on emotions that feel bad, and help you use positive choices and appreciation to focus on allowing YOU to feel GOOD. You deserve to feel GOOD!

I encourage clients to allow the healing process to unfold, according to the pace of their own inner intelligence. I get a lot of resistance to this idea, with good reason. By the time most folks find EFT and or consider using an emotional freedom coach, they have been struggling for a long time. I hear a lot of people say things like, “I am at the end of my rope!” I say, “Well, stop trying to climb the rope! If climbing the rope to the top of the mountain has been too hard, try something easier—like EFT, meditation, prayer, and walking for pleasure. Let go, and relax into well-being. Allow well-being to flow into you and through you once again.”  “No! I can’t wait that long! I demand to know the shortcut!” If that is your feeling, consider this story I wrote years ago during a time when I started feeling impatient with myself:

Early one morning a young boy set off on a trip to see his grandmother who lived ten miles away. The road he walked was well worn from 200 years of travel.  A few miles into his journey he came to a point where the road took a wide detour. The young boy could see his destination only a short distance away, across a beautiful meadow with flowers and tall green grass.  The boy thought how stupid it was that so many people walked miles out of their way rather than just cut across the meadow. He was too smart for that!  He set off at a run. “Oh, this is much better!” he thought… right before he tripped and slammed to the ground. The beautiful ground cover was made up of sticky vines covered with thorns. They tore at his hands as he struggled to free his legs. An hour later, exhausted and bloodied, he sat on an old log to catch his breath.  Just as he started to relax, the first bee stung him. Within moments, he had been stung a hundred times. He ran screaming, and escaped the angry swarm.  He came to a small pond with the most inviting blue water he had ever seen. It smelled lovely, too. He drank deep, only to convulse in pain as his body rejected the poisonous liquid.  Many hours later, he found himself slogging through waist deep mud. The flowing green grass that had looked so inviting on the other side of the meadow hid a swamp so putrid and foul that he longed for the smell of a fresh skunk to ease the pain in his nostrils.  As night fell, the boy finally emerged from the “beautiful” meadow and walked the short distance along the road to his grandmother’s house. She met him at the door looking quite worried.  When she saw his condition, she smiled and said, “Ah! I see you took the shortcut.”

Wanting to feel hope again in the midst of their impatience, clients often ask how long I think the process will take for them. I answer honestly, “A lifetime and beyond.” We are never done. That said, in a few EFT sessions, you can learn how to soothe yourself and even release and heal some old wounds. You can learn to experience the sensations of peace and hope again, even if just for a few moments at a stretch.

Keep it up, and a year or two down the road, you will surprise yourself with how far you’ve come. And as you learn to allow, as you learn to let go and let your inner guidance lead the way back to health, you will realize that you are thriving… even if all the pain isn’t gone… yet!

I’ve been on my conscious healing journey for over 15 years. It has lead me to wonderful people who have become my teachers and lifelong friends. I have no doubt that the process can be faster and less painful for you if you employ EFT (which I did not have until a few years ago). We can now address specific distressing memories in hours with EFT… instead of years of talk therapy or waiting a lifetime to see if it’s true that “time heals all wounds.” EFT certainly makes the journey easier! We can even combine EFT with joyful practices of exercise, massage and bodywork, meditation, prayer, singing, dancing, breathing, visualization, yoga… anything!… to allow us to connect even more strongly with the Source of All Well-Being. It is that Divine Source that restores our body, mind, and spirit to miraculous strength and vibrant health once again. We just need to allow it in. You deserve to feel GOOD! You deserve to feel GOD! And you will.