AGENDA
EFT Professional 2 Day Practice Intensive
Best Practices for Virtual Workshops
Record Trainer Observations after each workshop.
This document can be given as a handout.
The focus of this workshop is on practice and allowing participants to demonstrate the skills they’ve acquired since the 4 Day Professional Skills Training. Lectures are kept to a minimum. The primary content will be:
- Demonstrations by the trainers
- Exercises done in pairs or larger groups
- Explanations, questions, and feedback from participants
- Practicing skills useful in discrete segments of a session (e.g., building rapport, meeting objections, navigating resistance to change) using role-playing and structured exercises
- The art of delivery and developing professional skill in specified topics
- Self-evaluating strengths, weaknesses, and techniques needing further work
Trainer tracks time. Trainer spends no more than 1 hour a day on lecture. The other 5 hours are experiential, with role-plays, demos, and feedback.
Fun!
Play full out!
- Audio and video. Keep video on all the way through.
- Use your real first and last name in your Zoom account.
- Silence all your devices and notifications on your computer.
- Position your camera eye level or above with lighting in front of you (not behind you), so the other participants can see your face and your eyes are looking into the camera.
Whole Group: Practice this now.
Break Timing — How to Use Breaks
- If you have to leave for a moment, no need to announce it.
- Join 30 minutes early each day. We’ll chat and this also serves as an audio and video test.
- Mute audio and turn camera off during breaks but don’t leave the meeting or close the Zoom app.
- Attendance at the entire event is required.
- Prepare your meals and snacks in advance each day.
- Read Aspects handout during break.
- Read Tables and Legs during break.
Punctuality
Emotional Assistants (EAs)
Give your partner your entire attention.
Occasionally, your trainer will drop in on your Zoom breakout room with their audio and video turned off. Maintain 100% focus on the other participants and ignore the trainer.
Confidentiality. In virtual environments, anyone can record, so be wise about referring to people in the group. The group sessions are being recorded. However, your breakout room sessions are not recorded. Observe confidentiality there.
Small Groups of 2, 3, 4, or 6: Role-plays, discussion of a technique, and after-practice sessions, a minute of feedback from the client or observer.
- We asked participants to bring a list of personal issues to the workshop, but our primary focus is playing roles, not personal work.
- We’ll recreate breakout rooms, so sometimes you’ll be with the same person; at other times, you’ll be with another partner. Pair mentees with mentors whenever possible.
Larger Groups: Individuals share insights and experiences from roles they’ve played.
Each person has alternating opportunities to play the role of client, practitioner, and observer. Observations by experienced Emotional Assistants are particularly valuable.
After demonstrations or descriptions of practice problems, ask the group questions such as:
What techniques did the practitioner use?
Why do you think the practitioner used that particular technique?
What alternative techniques might be used at various points in the session?
Did the session take an unexpected turn?
Was there a point where a client had a disconfirming experience?
What choice points did you face as a coach?
Did you observe physiological shifts?
What cognitive shifts occurred?
Trainer debriefs group on the session they just observed.
When participants borrow benefits, they share their experiences in small groups and occasionally with the entire group.
For the role-plays that aren’t used, the trainer can ask participants to describe how they’d approach that situation.
Demonstrations: Demonstration clients are identified by the trainer. Trainer leads them through one or more demos. Emotional Assistants or co-trainers are best practice clients, since they are more likely to stick to role-plays and less likely to get triggered and need a long personal session.
In-Person Circles Variant 1: Trainer has the two people to her left start the role-play and assume the roles of client and coach. At a natural break, 2 to 5 minutes in, she pauses the session and gets and provides quick feedback. Then she has the client turn to his left and become coach for the next person in the circle, picking up the session where they left off.
In-Person Circle Variant 2: As above, but trainer leaves the same person in the role of client and asks another participant to take over as coach. Each person in the circle has the role of coach for a couple of minutes.
Review: Why We Tap
Why do we practice EFT? To counter our old conditioning. To release our old story. To let go of whatever holds us back from our full potential. To sneak up and dissolve dysfunctional core beliefs.
We can sneak up on all the beliefs that hold our old story in place. Astrology, genetics, heredity, habits, all the old limitations. Learning from the neocortex to the basal ganglia.
Review: Identifying Issues
Small Groups: Each person has been asked to bring a list of 5 personal events to work on during this workshop. If new ones occur to you during the workshop, add them to the list. We will work on one or more on the second day.
Trainer Role-Plays with Emotional Assistants (EAs)
Trainer Role-Play 1: Establishing Rapport
Role-play first 5 minutes of a session:
An 18-year-old high school dropout, now a waitress, coming in with complaints of free-floating anxiety with no identified cause.
Trainer Role-Play 2: Meeting Objections to Energy Therapy
Brief role-play meeting the objections of a 45-year-old mechanical engineer, coming in with complaints of depression—a left-brain man who is skeptical about energy therapies.
Trainer Role-Play 3: Resistance to Change
Brief role-play of working with a 78-year-old Vietnam War veteran with ongoing PTSD.
Review: Aspects
Handout: Aspects pages in the manual. Review during the break. This takes less than 5 minutes, so add 5 minutes to the break.
Small Groups: Explain to your partners what aspects are and how you find them. Each person in the group gets a turn. Give an example of a visual aspect, a verbal aspect, and a taste aspect. From any story you like—one you make up, one of yours, a client’s.
Review: Crafting Powerful Setups and Reminders
Structure of the Setup Statement.
Trainer demo with an EA. EA tells a story; the trainer creates Setups and Reminders.
Feedback in Chat. What were some of the Setups and Reminder Phrases and why do you think the trainer chose those?
Review: Sneaking Up and Sneaking Away
Describe the two techniques. Have participants use these two techniques throughout the workshop in case a practice client gets triggered. No need to demo, because this is one of our first demos below.
Review: Tables, Legs, and Aspects
Review on Day 1. Okay to demo on EA on Day 1 (see below), but hold off having participants do exercise till Day 2 because it’s too triggering for Day 1.
Handout: The 5 pages from the manual as a PDF. Read during meal break.
No need for a demo because it’s one of the first demos below.
Use the Tables Legs worksheet from EFT Universe site or from Certification program.
Participant Role-Plays
Role-Play 4: Sneaking Away
Client 1: Five minutes before the session ends, a 24-year-old medic has an abreaction.
Client 2: A client has finally been getting in touch with long-repressed fears, and at the end of the session, her SUD score is 10 out of 10.
Pairs: Practice Sneaking Away.
Role-Play 5: What Makes Clients Feel Heard?
Role-play with an EA. Can be combined with Role-Play 1 above. Or use a client example below.
Client 1: A client who speaks rapidly, dominates the conversation, and hops from one topic to the other. You try to slow her down, unsuccessfully at first, then match her pace, then she begins to relax.
Client 2: A shy teenager who rarely speaks up and you are unsure whether or not she has been traumatized in the past.
Role-Play 6: Aspects
Whole Group after Break: Trainer or EA tells a story of an annoying event, while participants tag aspects in chat.
Role-Play 7: Identifying Psychological Reversal
Role-play with EA.
Post in chat: What are some of the signs of psychological reversal?
Client 1: A 12-year-old boy diagnosed with ADHD who squirms, walks around your office, and does not respond to what you say.
Client 2: A 75-year-old male veteran for whom all previous PTSD treatments have failed.
Client 3: A successful entrepreneur, feeling blocked in approaching investors to raise capital to grow her business, says she has no childhood memories. You have to decide. Do you work on: The capital? The body sensations associated with approaching investors? Symbols in body? An event? An earlier memory? A made-up memory? Share the rationale for your choice with your group.
Feedback. You can interrupt the role-play several times in order to ask participants what techniques they might do at that juncture. Then put people into breakout rooms of 4. Have them share 1 of these methods and why they might choose it.
Role-Play 8: Additional Reversal Corrections
Whole Group: Practice Cross Crawl, Cook’s Hookup, Sore Spot.
Role-Play 9: Indications for Using the 9 Gamut
Pairs: Practice big circles. Use the Clock Technique if necessary.
Reminder of Indications (from page 321 of EFT Manual 4th Edition):
- Disturbing emotions that can’t be linked to a specific event.
- Traumatic incidents that occurred very early in a person’s life, before memory formation began (age 5 and earlier).
- When there are a great many similar traumatic events, such as frequent childhood beatings, many battlefield memories.
- Womb trauma. Stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline cross the placental barrier; a child may be “learning” stress at the level of molecular conditioning even before birth.
- Core beliefs (such as “I’m not lovable” or “The world is not a safe place”) that cannot easily be linked to specific events.
- Persistent behaviors for which a basis in actual events cannot be found, such as procrastination, lateness, irrational fear and irritation, disproportionate anger, and similar patterns.
- When the available time frame for a session is limited.
- Clients whose SUD level is not going down using EFT’s shortcut Basic Recipe.
Role-Play 10: Identifying Tables and Legs
With an EA client, the trainer does the “5 Legs in 5 Minutes” exercise from the 4 Day Professional Skills Training, while participants fill in the Tables and Legs diagram. See above for description and links.
Do this exercise with an EA rather than a participant to reduce triggering. Let participants know we will pick a manageable leg from our own lives to work on with a partner tomorrow.
Whole Group: Sneak away if some participants are triggered by exercise. Also see next role-play.
Role-Play 11: Group Sneaking Away
Trainer taps with the whole group on general statements to bring down SUD scores after the Tables and Legs exercise, because focusing on 5 legs will have triggered many participants. With a group of under 10, you can ask participants to each say a Sneaking Away phrase, one by one.
Larger Groups: You’re leading a group. You want to sneak away from everyone’s triggering. Lead your group in tapping and saying a few words useful in reassuring other group members. Each person says one reassuring Sneaking Away statement.
Role-Play 12: Sneaking Up
Client 1: A 28-year-old female athlete receiving sports coaching who becomes flooded and unable to speak or tap.
Client 2: A young male university professor with whom you’re doing career coaching unexpectedly and suddenly has flashbacks of multiple incidents of childhood abuse.
Client 3: You’re working with a 28-year-old mother of 2 whose husband recently committed suicide and who is wracked with guilt about not saving him.
Client 4: Though a session has been successful, a veteran’s SUD levels are still high at the end of the session.
Client 5: A musician, 32, says he has no childhood memories before the age of 12.
Pairs: Practice with partner. After, partner gives 1-minute feedback—what worked best, what didn’t work.
Role-Play 13: When PTSD Emerges
Role-play with an EA.
Client 1: A 25-year-old actress with performance anxiety. In the middle of the session, she has a flashback and it becomes apparent that she likely has PTSD. What might you do? Ask each of the mentors to share.
Client 1: An autistic 7-year-old boy who is silent and unresponsive to what you say and does not tap along with you.
Role-Play 14: Alternate Points
Explain when you use Alternate Points.
Whole Group: Follow along with alternate points.
For Chat Before Workshop
Aha moments from Day 1.
Ask participants for their SUD levels on issues they wrote in their journals the day before. Notice any that have gone up or down and discuss why.
Day 2 Announcements
Reminders. Water. Breaks. Time.
Start the day by asking participants for their SUD levels on issues they tapped on the day before. Notice any that have gone up or down and discuss why.
Role-plays but also working on one of our table legs. A full session with another participant.
Optional virtual meal tables today.
At the end of the day, we’ll review where we are in our practice—where we’re strong, where we need to boost our skills.
We’ll also consider: Which of the 48 Clinical EFT Techniques do you need more practice in?
Role-Play 15: Practicing Chasing the Pain & the Color of Pain
Client 1: An obese retired female teacher with chronic sciatic pain and insomnia.
Client 2: A cancer patient whose doctor says his widespread but intermittent pain is “of unknown etiology.”
Client 3: An 18-year-old athlete whose championship career is threatened by her multiple injuries accompanied by pain.
Pairs: Each person identifies an actual pain they have. Get SUD. Tap continuously. Use 9 Gamut at least once. Practice Sneaking Away at the end. Get SUD again. 10-minute session for 1 person only. After, client gives 1-minute feedback—what worked best, what didn’t work.
Role-Play 16: When SUDs Remain High
Demo with someone whose SUD stayed high after the previous exercises. The rest of the group continues with Borrowing Benefits by checking in on their SUD for the same issue before the demo.
Role-Play 17: The Issue of Self-Love
Client 1: You’re working with a famous actress. You identify a childhood event in which her sister hit her with a tennis racket. You craft a Setup Statement, but when you ask her to say “I accept myself,” she bursts into tears. She doesn’t accept herself.
Post in chat: What other phrases can you use?
Role-Play 18: Goal Setting
Client 1: A video conferencing session with a young ambitious manager who has had a successful series of 3 sessions with you as she seeks new career directions.
Client 2: In hospice with an elderly chemotherapy patient who is bewildered, inarticulate, and frightened of death. End of session, you’re goal setting with him.
Small Groups: What are appropriate goals? Each person presents one, groups of 4, 2 minutes each.
Whole Group: What was the most unusual goal anyone came up with in your group?
Role-Play 19: Techniques for Handling Flooding
Client 1: A new client, a 48-year-old banker, who during her first tapping session breaks down and is unable to either speak or tap.
Client 2: A 55-year-old male engineer who unexpectedly bursts into tears during a session you’re doing in front of a group.
Pairs: One person plays coach, the other plays the silent flooded client. After, client gives 1-minute feedback—what worked best, what didn’t work.
Role-Play 20: Making Up Events
During role-play: Use 9 Gamut, Sneak Away, Feedback on what really worked.
Client 1: A policewoman says she had a “pretty good” white-picket-fence childhood but has no specific memories before the age of 12. Ask her where she was born, where she went to elementary school, a bad thing that might have happened there.
Client 2: An actress says she had a nightmare childhood and has always blocked it from memory. She can feel a sense of distress in her body, but try as you might, you can’t turn the interoceptive feeling into an event. So you have her make up events.
Pairs: The other person now plays client. Feedback from client after session.
Post instructions in chat:
Coach: Start by finding the title of an Adult Event. Then ask about a similar childhood event.
Client: Say you remember no childhood events
Coach: Ask client to make up an event.
Client: Make one up, must be fictitious.
Role-Play 21: Exploring Low SUD Scores
Client 1: You know from a client’s history that she was abused as a child and is currently in an abusive relationship, but she optimistically reports SUD levels of 4 at the maximum for all events past and present.
Client 2: A session is going well with the client’s SUD scores going to a 2 by the middle of the session, but then they stall and remain at a 1 or 2 till the end of the session.
Whole Group: Practice Floor to Ceiling Eye Roll.
Role-Play 22: Eliminating Maladaptive Beliefs and Installing New Cognitions
Client 1: Phone session with a 37-year-old fibromyalgia patient trapped in hopelessness and despair over her condition and physical limitations.
Client 2: A successful 44-year-old writer working on his third book. He has developed writer’s block and has a looming deadline for completing the manuscript for which he has received a large advance.
Small Groups: There are many possible ways of working with the writer. What are some of the options? Make a list in your breakout room with your partner. The deadline? The body sensations associated with writer’s block? An event? An earlier memory? His fears? Psychological reversal? What changed between the previous book and this one? Imagine holding the completed manuscript? Secondary Gain? What was happening when you got blocked? Which direction would you go first? Share the rationale for your choice with your group.
Role-Play 23: Practicing Tearless Trauma
Client 1: A 45-year-old head of psychiatry for a major hospital who has had lots of psychotherapy but has a terrifying childhood incident she has never disclosed.
Client 2: A twenty-something Native Hawaiian man who is triggered by, and has many examples of, multigenerational racial discrimination.
Small Groups: Each person identifies (a) once thing you might consider doing differently before the session, and (b) what the client might be concerned about leading up to the session.
Role-Play 24: Identifying Hidden Aspects
Client 1: A female professional client, 35, with a single incident trauma for which SUD is not dropping, despite tapping on every known element of the event.
Client 2: A 68-year-old Vietnam veteran who has begun having recurring nightmares.
Client 3: A 36-year-old female EFT practitioner who has made no progress on a key childhood event.
Client 4: Work with one of your own recent adult events (leg) with a low SUD score. Find obscure aspects.
Whole Group: Trainer or an EA describes one of their personal recent events. Participants drop possible aspects in chat.
Role-Play 25: Dissociation and Disparities between SUD and Event
Engagement: What are some signs that a client might be dissociating?
Going positive. No body sensations. Disparity in SUD. The thousand-yard stare.
Post others in chat. Flat voice. Rationalization. Super-reasonableness. Not remembering. No facial expression. Jargon. Euphemisms like “passed away” for death. Anger as a way of defending. Changing the subject. Minimalizing. Getting lots of therapy.
Client 1: A 44-year-old woman who shows no emotion and tells you her previous therapist told her she dissociates from her feelings.
Client 2: A 39-year-old artist whose father beat him many times. There is a huge disparity between the severity of the events and the SUD scores he reports. He says it was “not too bad” and gives you a SUD score of 3. What could I do? Slow down. Pick the worst. Or the first. Explore all aspects. Have him tune into his body.
Client 3: A 33-year-old healer who has come for help getting over a terrible divorce. She has a hard time keeping her feelings under control. You sense she could burst into tears at any moment. Yet the highest SUD she reports is 3.
Role-Play 26: The Resistant Client
Client 1: A 40-year-old client who declares that no previous therapy has helped him and he has low expectations from EFT.
Client 2: A very cooperative 37-year-old client who has been coming to you for more than 10 sessions. She goes along with your every suggestion and her SUD levels drop quickly. But they’re back up to 10 the following session.
Client 3: A 36-year-old veteran who does not give you feedback and remains silent when you ask him questions. What techniques might you use?
Engagement: Breakout rooms of 4.
What Would Make You a Better Practitioner?
Final module of workshop.
Candidates self-evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.
Journaling and sharing with partner.
Which of the 48 Clinical EFT Techniques do you need more practice in? Review 16, 18, 20, 32, 34, 40, 42.
Engagement: 3 minutes each, 4 people, 12 minutes total. Breakout rooms.
What are your 5 greatest strengths as a practitioner? Could be:
- Building rapport at the start of a session
- Great skill at the Movie Technique
- A wide variety of other therapeutic tools
- Clear boundaries
- Identifying hidden aspects
Engagement: 3 minutes each, 4 people, 12 minutes total. Breakout rooms.
What are your biggest challenges, what do you need to work on most? Could be:
- Overwhelm in your life so you aren’t always present with clients
- Bringing sessions to an elegant close
- Having your own issues triggered by your clients to the point of distraction
- Talking too much, trying to educate your client instead of letting them have their process
Engagement: 3 minutes each, 4 people, 12 minutes total. Breakout rooms.
What concrete steps will you take to address those challenges? Share these with your partner. 5 minutes.
Engagement: 3 minutes each, 4 people, 12 minutes total. Breakout rooms.
What is your highest vision for your future as a practitioner in the next 5 years? Share with your partner. 5 minutes each. Borrow each other’s dreams.
Appreciations: Thank the EAs and Mentors. Thank each other for being present. What a wonderful group of people!
We’re part of a community. How you can be involved:
- Share EFT tapping with others.
- Volunteer for Veterans Stress Solution.
- Make sure people around you know about MyStressSolution.com and the Stress Solution app.
- Tap with family members, share your successes, and recommend they use the Stress Solution app for practitioner sessions and the Tapping Solution app for self-help.
- Buy $10 books.
- Gift the courses, e.g., insomnia, anxiety, trauma. They’ve helped over 10,000 people.
- Recommend certification to others.
- Work on yourself continuously.
- Donate: NIIH. Capacitar.
Unmute and give thanks!
Optional Content
Tapping’s Secret Ingredient: Why EFT Facilitates Memory Reconsolidation (and thus Deep Emotional Change) More Readily Than Any Other Known Technique – Based on David Feinstein’s Lecture and PowerPoint from Healing Words and Module 15 of the 4 Day Professional Skills Training.
How Traumatic Events Change the Game in the Language You Use When Tapping—Dawson’s talk and cases from the Healing Words Workshop and the Psych Trauma Monograph.
Video Case History 1: Haiti—Amelie
Video Case History 2: Jessica Buchanan
