Taps

I have an acquaintance that I see in yoga quite frequently. A few years ago, she was raving about how she lost weight by using EFT. EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping. Sure, tapping on my head and in my arm pit is going to help me lose weight.  I thought she was nuts, but hey if it worked for her, great. She told me about the book she read, and the websites I could check it out for myself.

 

Fast forward a few years, when I had an opportunity to explore EFT further at AT Vitality, I decided to explore it a little further. I was still quite skeptical, but was willing to give it a whirl. I was not convinced that tapping on certain body parts was going to solve any of my problems, but what did I have to lose? I met with Teresa and figured I would give it a whirl. I wanted to work on losing weight, since I was going to do something, let’s go big or go home. I know I have an issue with emotional eating, so
I thought it would be an area that I could either tell something was shifting or not. My relationship with food goes way back, and I count among my close personal friends Little Debbie as well as Ben & Jerry. It was going to take more than tapping on my head to change my mind.

 

Teresa and I visited for a little bit about the process and what I was hoping to achieve. She thought being a size 2 was a bit lofty of a goal, but we could start to make progress. After identifying what my main issue was for the session, I had to determine how intense it was on a scale of 0-10, with 0 being no problem and 10 being the worst.

 

From there, we developed a set up statement. This is was the hardest part for me, to be completely honest. With your set up statement, you need to acknowledge the problem (in my case, stuffing my feelings with food) and to state that you accept yourself despite it. I was lying through my teeth when I said I supported myself in spite of my issue.

 There is a specific sequence in which you tap

You tap the karate chop point on the side of your hand, saying the  set up statement

Then it’s the

Top of the head

Eyebrow

Side of eye

Under eye

Under the nose, above the lip

Chin

Collar bone

Arm pit

As you tap these different points, you use a reminder phrase, which is restating your issue. I felt really weird tapping, and I won’t lie that was a big struggle for me, especially sitting across from someone.

After you go through this a few times, you check back about the intensity.  We did this a few times, and then I got a reiki session (which was phenomenal). I got to go home with my EFT recipe and practice on my own and then meet back in a few weeks.

As I tapped on my own, I began to notice a bunch of emotions and memories being dredged up from the muck & mire. Many of them were situations that caused me to run to the refrigerator.  Even though it was decades later, I never dealt with those issues. I did cry a lot over the  tapping. My husband thought I was more crazy than usual, but was glad that I was working through it all. It was hard confronting all that pain and all that garbage that I had been holding onto for years, but in the end it was worth it.

It’s been almost six months now since I started tapping, and I am proud to say I have not drowned my sorrows in junk. I’ve been working on alternatives and working through the issue rather than suppressing it. Being skeptical in nature, I didn’t think that this would work for me, but I was pleasantly surprised at how effective EFT is.