
I've mentioned previously about the app called The Tapping Solution that is FREE to download. There are several FREE meditations to utilize once you sign up. If you are sold on the concept, you can purchase a monthly subscription for $11.99 or a reduced rate yearly fee. I have not gotten to that point yet as I am in route of a thorough investigation first. Then I will consider full purchase.
My first few meditations have centered on, "Releasing Anxiety". Anxiety seems to play a crucial role in pain tolerance. If I am stressed and out-of-sorts, I can bet that pain will soon follow. I've decided to use this first meditation daily in the morning to set my sights on greener, calmer pastures. It's working. My anxiety level has plummeted to a "2" on the scale that I must assess pre and post meditative. I'm going to keep that up each day.
Yesterday afternoon, I felt like perusing the FREE meditations and came upon "Quiet My Racing Mind." Well, there's one that I experience throughout the day. Anytime a new task is embarked upon, I can feel my mind begin to race. Add a few more "normal" routines in there and my body begins to border on high alert. I am still uncertain as to why this happens, but once I begin my day, it is a never-ending barrage of "Gosh, more to do, I just can't handle this!"
So I decided to take the plunge. As I began to relax into the mediation I felt the rapid-fire thought process begin to slow. And then Nick said something interesting, "You racing mind is your body's protection mechanism so that negativity can't take hold and hurt you." That hit the spot! I am always concerned that I will not do things correctly, or I'll find myself off guard and blindsided. I speculated that my mind was against me previously because I was unable to quiet it most days. Then I'd get angry! "Why, Mind, are you doing this to me all the time?" I'd lament. I had never thought of it as a protection process, that my mind did have my back!
Little thoughts like this change you're view of thinking. It changes how you internalize your daily flow of life. And, it can make a big difference for those of us who suffer from chronic pain by quieting that central nervous system that causes pain.
So, at this point taking in all this amazing information, you may be asking, "How long has then been around? Why haven't I heard of this before?" It began in 1980, with a psychologist by the name of Roger Callahan, and a patient with an extreme phobia towards water. Mary’s fear of water controlled her life and kept her from performing many otherwise normal daily activities. She was unable to take her children to the beach, and found it impossible to drive near the ocean. She grew fearful when it rained, and could not even stand the sight of water on TV. She even had vivid nightmares involving water.
Dr. Callahan and Mary had been working on this problem together for over a year. Finally, Mary worked up the courage to sit within sight of the pool at Dr. Callahan’s house. Even doing this caused Mary extreme distress, and though she found ways to cope with the intense fear and emotional pain, she had not yet overcome her phobia.
Her fear of being near the water caused Mary to have stomach pains – a common “gut reaction.” Dr. Callahan had recently been studying traditional Chinese medicine, which included learning about the meridians and how they worked. Suddenly he had an inspiration. Remembering that there was an acupuncture point for the stomach meridian on the cheekbone, he asked her to tap there, thinking it might help with her stomach pains.
Mary tapped her cheekbone as directed, and this little action changed medicinal history! The response seemed miraculous, to both Mary and Dr. Callahan. Her stomach pains disappeared. But even more amazingly, her fear of water disappeared too! She ran down to the pool and began splashing herself with water, rejoicing in her newfound freedom from her phobia.
Based on this discovery, Dr. Callahan began a series of investigations to develop and refine this technique, which he termed “Thought Field Therapy.” It was fairly complex, and required a trained practitioner to use specific algorithms and techniques to determine which meridian points to stimulate to obtain the desired results.
Gary Craig, an engineer in California, trained under Dr. Callahan’s tutelage in the 1990’s, learning the procedures for TFT. As time passed, he began to improve the process by creating a simpler tapping sequence that could be easily learned and repeated, even by the patient him/herself.
The result was the development of a new type of therapy that Gary named EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques). But perhaps even more importantly, he created a community around EFT, allowing the technique to be learned, applied, and shared freely. Because of this, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world have used Tapping to resolve emotional problems and physical conditions.