by Naomi Janzen, Certified EFT Trainer
A couple of days ago, a trainee emailed me a really great question: “How do you feel when you run sessions for others and you are tapping on yourself to direct the person but you are also stating their problems back to them?
“On an energetic level, how do you think this affects us as healers? Do you have techniques to teach us how to not let the affirmations for them affect us, or how to not take it on? This is my main concern from a spiritual point of view.”
ANSWER: First of all, I LOVE this question!
From a psychological perspective, the practitioner is self-regulating during the session, just by tapping on themselves. I hear things on a daily basis that would traumatize me if I were just listening without tapping to the horrifying things people have endured, often as children, in their lives.
I spoke to a group of psychologists about EFT and asked them how many of them were carrying secondary trauma from things they’d been told in client sessions and they all put up their hands and sort of guffawed and shared knowing looks among themselves–it goes with the territory.
“Not with tapping,” I said. It’s like tapping keeps what I hear from sticking to me in any way. When the session is over, it’s over. I can remember what I have heard and I feel sympathy for the person’s ordeal, but it is not my ordeal and I am not carrying an emotional charge.
Once, I read a case study written by a practitioner talking about her work with a Gulf War medic. I didn’t think to tap while reading and I was so affected by what I read that I couldn’t sleep that night. It was only when I sat down to clear the shaky, anxious feeling I’d been carrying around for the past 24 hours that I realized it went back to reading that case study. Only then was I able to clear it with a self-work session. I made a mental note never to read a case study without at least being ready to tap if need be.
From a spiritual perspective, it’s Love. You are holding the space for a wounded heart/energy system to process an experience of fear, anger, sadness, guilt, or any other painful emotion so it can be transformed by Presence. Tapping brings both the practitioner and client into the Now, which is the only place the Light can ever enter us. There is a heart resonance between both people, an intention set by the practitioner to facilitate the highest and best outcome for the client to be delivered through the session by the client’s higher power. This template can be applied to any spiritual belief system just by changing the terminology.
Again, as with the psychological perspective, the practitioner tapping along allows the practitioner to remain present for the client without being pulled into their own reaction, which would shift the focus onto them and away from the client. Which is why practitioners must keep up with their self-work, so that they can remain present and calm and focused on the client, no matter what they are helping the client release. It’s a profound act of selflessness and collaboration.
Where two or more are gathered…
