By Bev Nerenberg, Certified EFT Practitioner
I am a patient of an integrative medicine practice. I met with the CEO to see if he’d be interested in my teaching the staff EFT. They have guest speakers monthly for their training and development and he thought EFT would be valuable and well received.
We set it up for an 8 a.m. presentation. A few minutes after I started, I began to feel very warm, my throat was closing up, and I was experiencing a lot of anxiety, which I felt in my chest. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. I have done presentations to hundreds of people in groups, so it wasn’t that I had any apprehension about public speaking.
I took a sip of water, felt no better, and did the only thing I knew to do:
I told the group of 40+ staff members, “I don’t exactly know what’s happening to me now, but I am going to tap!”
I didn’t do the EFT Basic Recipe Setup Statement, but I simply started tapping the top of my head and down through the points. As I hadn’t explained anything at all about EFT before the possible “anxiety attack” came on, I took the opportunity to tell them that I was using my fingertips to tap on acupressure points, which would break up blockages in my energy system and allow the energy to flow and bring balance to my system.
I felt immediate relief from the stress I was experiencing. Before I finished one round, I felt completely better–calmer and cooler. I proceeded to explain to the group that, if I had to give it a label, I would call what had happened to me an anxiety attack. I imagined that’s what such an attack would feel like.
Later in the presentation, I wanted to demonstrate the use of EFT for an emotional issue, but no one volunteered. So I used what had happened to me as an example.
I began with the EFT Setup Statements:
Even though I feel my throat closing up and I am feeling panicky, I totally and completely accept myself.
Even though I feel the anxiety in my chest, I accept myself and how I feel.
As I tapped through the points, I said things like:
This anxiety in my chestӬ,
It feels very tight,
It looks like a tight red springӬ,
It seems to be yelling FEAR,
ӬMy throat feels like it is closing upӬ,
And that is a scary feeling,
ӬI also feel the heat rising to my faceӬ,
My face feels all flushed,
I’m afraid I’ll pass out.
I demonstrated how I would have done a couple of complete EFT tapping rounds had it not cleared up so quickly while it was actually happening to me at the beginning of the presentation.
Having them witness me calming down so quickly in real-time was certainly a very effective demonstration for all of us!
We are now discussing my doing EFT mini-workshops for the integrative medicine patients and the community.
