By Dawson Church, EFT TRN-3
The following are the benefits of EFT’s Constricted Breathing Technique (CB):
– CB can aid in identifying emotional issues. Stored emotional issues often prevent deep or full breathing, so paying attention to breathing can lead the way to the stored issue.
– CB can provide evidence of EFT’s effectiveness and thus contribute to its recognition as a valid therapeutic method. Constricted breathing exists in most people, and experiencing breathing improvement with EFT is a revelation to many, including cynics and skeptics.
3 Steps of the EFT Constricted Breathing Technique:
1. Take two or three breaths, inhaling as deeply as you can (or if you are guiding a client, ask the client to do so). Breathe slowly and avoid hyperventilating.
You are doing this to expand your lungs so that any subsequent breathing improvement after the EFT rounds cannot be dismissed as normal expansion of your lungs.
2. After expanding your lungs to your capacity, inhale deeply again. This time rate your breath’s deepness on a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 is the farthest you think your lungs are capable of expanding.
People generally rate their breathing depth from 3 to 9. A few people give themselves a rating of 10 (they are usually wrong); after EFT, they rate their breathing at 12 to 15.
3. Next, tap a few tapping rounds of EFT, using Setup phrases such as:
“Even though I have constricted breathing, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
or
“Even though I can only fill my lungs to a 7, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
While tapping, ask yourself questions like:
A. What does my constricted breathing remind me of?
B. When in my past did I feel constricted or smothered?
C. If I have an emotional reason for my constricted breathing, what might it be?
Frequently, people’s answers to such questions provide big clues about emotional issues of which they may not have been aware before EFT.
Between each tapping round, inhale deeply and rate your SUD level of Intensity number from 0-10 breathing depth again. Nearly all people who do this experience improvement in the depth of their breathing.
