I want to briefly mention three tips from tai chi (taiji) which I believe will help EFT to work (even) better. If you've studied (taiji) or experienced acupuncture treatment for any length of time, you will be aware of these tips. It's worth bearing them in mind when you "tap".
1. When the tip of the tongue touches the ridge behind the front teeth, the "du" and "ren" channels connect together to form the basis of the "microcosmic circuit" or "lesser heavenly cycle". This is has a health-enhancing and calming effect on the mind and body.
2. Never cross the legs while performing EFT. If lying down, separate the feet slightly and lie with the legs straight. If sitting, rest both feet flat on the floor with knees slightly separated. Use a low seat of suitable height that the thighs can be parallel to the ground. Hold the back naturally balanced, upright and comfortable.
3. Breathe through the nose wherever possible. If this is difficult, try "collarbone breathing" as described in the EFT manual. Among other things, "collarbone breathing" regulates the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood, which often helps to clear a blocked nose.
More tips will be posted periodically. Please subscribe to this blog to receive updates.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Tai Chi, Self-Defense, EFT and the Conquest of Fear
In martial arts circles there is a continuing debate as to the the effectiveness of tai chi (taiji or taijiquan) as a means of self-defence. EFT is primarily recognized as a self-development technique rooted in the Traditional Chinese Medicine tradition but combining insights drawn from Western psychology and other disciplines. When someone like me starts talking about bringing these activities together it's easy to anticipate a knee-jerk reaction from those members of the tai chi community whose focus is primarily martial. They typically consign all discussions of tai chi as a technique for self-development to the dustbin marked "New Age".
EFT is certainly a relatively recent development of acupuncture theory, but it is arguable that most tai chi taught in the West is already quite different from the tai chi practiced at the beginning of the 20th Century and earlier. Some say that the tai chi that reaches us here in the West is a much watered-down version of traditional tai chi. While it is true without doubt that some recent modifications of tai chi have done little to improve, and a lot to undermine it's effectiveness both as a tool for preventative health care and as a method of self-protection, there is also an evolutionary aspect to be recognized. There are important cultural and psychological differences between East and West which need to be understood if practices like tai chi and acupuncture are to yield their maximum benefit to students and "end-users" in the West.
Unravelling the maze of arguments which surround these subjects is a complex business and not within the scope of a single article. In this post I'll attempt simply to make a start. I hope that interested readers will contribute by adding comments below.
There are a number of important points to consider both from the tai chi and from the EFT point of view, when we discuss the benefits of combining the two in some way.
Tai chi and self-protection - what does it mean?
Self-protection or self-defense is a big subject, only a small part of which really concerns actual combat skills. I'm convinced that the reason that I've never had to use tai chi combat techniques in anger in nearly 30 years of study is because if you cultivate the appropriate energy and frame of mind, you can neutralize the majority of potential confrontations before they escalate to the point of physical violence. This entails a degree of self-knowledge and self-discipline which needs time and practice to cultivate.
When faced with the threat of real physical aggression, the un-trained reaction is one of stark fear. The "adrenalin dump" feels very different from the soft, open calmness a tai chi player feels during and after practice. While years of tai chi practice may help to offset the most debilitating effects of the adrenalin dump, rapid, shallow breathing and increased heart-rate, tunnel-vision, dry mouth, wobbly legs and a sudden and potentially overwhelming need to evacuate the bowels, it is unrealistic to expect to achieve the super-cool state of the kung-fu movie hero, based as he/she is on ancient Far Eastern warrior ideals such as "Mount Tai could fall into the sea but his complexion will not change".
Handled correctly, the physiological effects of the adrenalin dump are a crucial ingredient of our fight-or-flight response. Martial training must address the issue of the adrenalin dump effect of physical confrontation. Years of martial training have deserted many a long-standing martial artist who faced real violent confrontation for the first time outside the dojo or martial arts studio.
On the other hand, to what extent might an individual's drive to train in combat sports and fighting systems be a symptom of underlying irrational fear? And if those who over-indulge in martial and combat training to the exclusion of a balanced life fail to recognize and overcome pathological fear, to what extent do they become a potential danger to themselves and to society at large? I believe there is a tricky balance to be struck here, and an elusive paradox to embrace.
At the very beginning of my own martial arts training I perceived my teacher as a man whose fearlessness and power I envied and coveted. By the time I moved on from his school after more than 5 years, I perceived him as a rather tragic figure whose life was dominated by fear, who could not have normal relationships with any sense of human equality, who trusted no-one and who had no real interest in life outside of his "art". It all seemed a bitterly sad waste of life's opportunities, and another 5 years passed before I was able to fully take possession of my practice without the feeling of being tainted by my teacher's false thinking. Of course, with the help EFT this could have been achieved quite a lot sooner, but that was 1990 and EFT was in it's infancy.
EFT gives us the opportunity to study, and to become familiar with our fearful habits of thought and behaviour, and actually to dissolve and replace them with more resourceful thoughts and behaviours. It should be present in the arsenal of every serious student of martial arts who takes on the challenge of eliminating automatic emotions and behaviour. Seen in this light, EFT can play a crucial role in the traditional civilizing influence of true martial arts practice.
It's not my intention to try to teach or even to describe the techniques of EFT here. No-one is better qualified to do that than Gary Craig himself, and the good news is, it doesn't have to cost you a penny. The free EFT manual available at http://www.emofree.com contains everything you need to do this important work on yourself and free yourself from the tyranny of negative emotions and habits.
Remember, you don't need to buy anything. There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there trying to profit from EFT, but everything you really need is in the basic downloadable PDF. Don't be fooled by fancy sales pitches. The link you need is http://www.emofree.com/
.
EFT is certainly a relatively recent development of acupuncture theory, but it is arguable that most tai chi taught in the West is already quite different from the tai chi practiced at the beginning of the 20th Century and earlier. Some say that the tai chi that reaches us here in the West is a much watered-down version of traditional tai chi. While it is true without doubt that some recent modifications of tai chi have done little to improve, and a lot to undermine it's effectiveness both as a tool for preventative health care and as a method of self-protection, there is also an evolutionary aspect to be recognized. There are important cultural and psychological differences between East and West which need to be understood if practices like tai chi and acupuncture are to yield their maximum benefit to students and "end-users" in the West.
Unravelling the maze of arguments which surround these subjects is a complex business and not within the scope of a single article. In this post I'll attempt simply to make a start. I hope that interested readers will contribute by adding comments below.
There are a number of important points to consider both from the tai chi and from the EFT point of view, when we discuss the benefits of combining the two in some way.
Tai chi and self-protection - what does it mean?
Self-protection or self-defense is a big subject, only a small part of which really concerns actual combat skills. I'm convinced that the reason that I've never had to use tai chi combat techniques in anger in nearly 30 years of study is because if you cultivate the appropriate energy and frame of mind, you can neutralize the majority of potential confrontations before they escalate to the point of physical violence. This entails a degree of self-knowledge and self-discipline which needs time and practice to cultivate.
When faced with the threat of real physical aggression, the un-trained reaction is one of stark fear. The "adrenalin dump" feels very different from the soft, open calmness a tai chi player feels during and after practice. While years of tai chi practice may help to offset the most debilitating effects of the adrenalin dump, rapid, shallow breathing and increased heart-rate, tunnel-vision, dry mouth, wobbly legs and a sudden and potentially overwhelming need to evacuate the bowels, it is unrealistic to expect to achieve the super-cool state of the kung-fu movie hero, based as he/she is on ancient Far Eastern warrior ideals such as "Mount Tai could fall into the sea but his complexion will not change".
Handled correctly, the physiological effects of the adrenalin dump are a crucial ingredient of our fight-or-flight response. Martial training must address the issue of the adrenalin dump effect of physical confrontation. Years of martial training have deserted many a long-standing martial artist who faced real violent confrontation for the first time outside the dojo or martial arts studio.
On the other hand, to what extent might an individual's drive to train in combat sports and fighting systems be a symptom of underlying irrational fear? And if those who over-indulge in martial and combat training to the exclusion of a balanced life fail to recognize and overcome pathological fear, to what extent do they become a potential danger to themselves and to society at large? I believe there is a tricky balance to be struck here, and an elusive paradox to embrace.
At the very beginning of my own martial arts training I perceived my teacher as a man whose fearlessness and power I envied and coveted. By the time I moved on from his school after more than 5 years, I perceived him as a rather tragic figure whose life was dominated by fear, who could not have normal relationships with any sense of human equality, who trusted no-one and who had no real interest in life outside of his "art". It all seemed a bitterly sad waste of life's opportunities, and another 5 years passed before I was able to fully take possession of my practice without the feeling of being tainted by my teacher's false thinking. Of course, with the help EFT this could have been achieved quite a lot sooner, but that was 1990 and EFT was in it's infancy.
EFT gives us the opportunity to study, and to become familiar with our fearful habits of thought and behaviour, and actually to dissolve and replace them with more resourceful thoughts and behaviours. It should be present in the arsenal of every serious student of martial arts who takes on the challenge of eliminating automatic emotions and behaviour. Seen in this light, EFT can play a crucial role in the traditional civilizing influence of true martial arts practice.
It's not my intention to try to teach or even to describe the techniques of EFT here. No-one is better qualified to do that than Gary Craig himself, and the good news is, it doesn't have to cost you a penny. The free EFT manual available at http://www.emofree.com contains everything you need to do this important work on yourself and free yourself from the tyranny of negative emotions and habits.
Remember, you don't need to buy anything. There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there trying to profit from EFT, but everything you really need is in the basic downloadable PDF. Don't be fooled by fancy sales pitches. The link you need is http://www.emofree.com/
.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Tai chi and EFT - why do both?
This article is written primarily for people with at least some experience of Tai Chi (taiji) practice, and some familiarity with the effects of acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine. What I'm offering here is an entirely subjective report of my own experience, and should not be understood as authoritative medical advice.
Tai Chi and EFT - the background to my discovery
I've been practicing tai chi (or taiji) since 1980 with excellent long-term health and anti-aging effects. I've also benefited from the healing power of acupuncture treatment over an even longer period. Since moving abroad and unable to find a suitable English-speaking acupuncturist, I recently took up EFT, the Emotional Freedom Technique popularized by Gary Craig. I was encouraged by it's firm foundation in acupuncture principles, and especially by the fact that you can do it on yourself.
EFT corrects disturbances in the energy system.
Working directly with the chi (qi) to heal emotional and physical complaints is the domain of chi-kung (qigong), but the dangers of incorrect or unsupervised chi-kung practice are well-documented.
I've found the results from EFT for treating such complaints to be promising right from the start, but I'm now convinced that combining EFT directly with tai chi is an even more powerful and yet safe way of balancing and strengthening the flow of energy along all of the major acupuncture meridians.
EFT seems to be an entirely beneficial practice with no negative side-effects, and tai chi is widely acknowledged as being a safer and more balanced practice than many of the individual therapeutic chi-kung (qigong) forms. EFT heals by restoring the natural energy state whereas some chi-kung, like chemical medicine can be poisonous when applied inappropriately.
The practice of even a brief selection of tai chi movements immediately after applying EFT seems to have the effect of consolidating and deepening the effect of the treatment.
Combining tai chi and EFT has given me the strongest sensation of my own energy, chi (or qi) that I've experienced to date, even compared with some potent chi kung forms. If you've learned some tai chi, even just a little, and you've ever needed to be convinced of the existence of and power of your chi, there can be no safer or more effective way to access it than this. Try it for yourself.
How I discovered the winning combination
I woke early, troubled by a family crisis which I felt powerless to resolve. I couldn't get back to sleep. My usual solution for sleeplessness is to listen to a particular 'deep sleep' binaural beat audio track which works 9 times out of 10 but in this case, because I knew well the cause of my insomnia I decided to try EFT.
I've learned that an excellent time to do EFT is when you're having a very strong incidence of the feeling or condition you're trying to treat, because it's easy to tune into and accurately target the energy disruption. Not wanting to wake my family, I went off to the small kitchen of the apartment where we were staying and ran through the technique.
The moment I'd finished, I felt a strong tingling sensation in my hands and arms. This is something I normally associate with practising tai chi (taji) or chi-kung (Qigong), and the association was so strong that I decided to practice a tai chi form right away.
There wasn't enough room to practice the tai chi form in the usual way, so I limited myself to running through the sequence on one spot with both feet rooted to the ground throughout.
As any tai chi practitioner knows, playing the form this way, it's necessary to pay special attention to weight-transference and how the movements are conducted through the whole body from the ground upward, otherwise it becomes a meaningless waving about of the arms. This is a method I've used many times before, but this time, the sensation of energy both kinetic and bioelectromagnetic surging through the body was the most profound I've ever experienced.
Results
I followed up the form with another run through the EFT sequence. The result? The intensity of my target emotional state was effectively reduced to zero, and all of this in under 12 minutes.
After this I spontaneously entered a profoundly peaceful meditative state with a very strong sense of chi circulating in the 'microcosmic orbit' (that is up the spinal column, over the top of the head and down the frontal centre-line of the body to the perineum).
I was so deeply impressed by the effect of combining EFT with tai chi that I have now established this as my first activity every day. I feel that it's well worth getting up 15-20 minutes earlier to experience the astonishing transformation of mood, feeling, energy-level and well-being.
Tai Chi and EFT - the background to my discovery
I've been practicing tai chi (or taiji) since 1980 with excellent long-term health and anti-aging effects. I've also benefited from the healing power of acupuncture treatment over an even longer period. Since moving abroad and unable to find a suitable English-speaking acupuncturist, I recently took up EFT, the Emotional Freedom Technique popularized by Gary Craig. I was encouraged by it's firm foundation in acupuncture principles, and especially by the fact that you can do it on yourself.
EFT corrects disturbances in the energy system.
Working directly with the chi (qi) to heal emotional and physical complaints is the domain of chi-kung (qigong), but the dangers of incorrect or unsupervised chi-kung practice are well-documented.
I've found the results from EFT for treating such complaints to be promising right from the start, but I'm now convinced that combining EFT directly with tai chi is an even more powerful and yet safe way of balancing and strengthening the flow of energy along all of the major acupuncture meridians.
EFT seems to be an entirely beneficial practice with no negative side-effects, and tai chi is widely acknowledged as being a safer and more balanced practice than many of the individual therapeutic chi-kung (qigong) forms. EFT heals by restoring the natural energy state whereas some chi-kung, like chemical medicine can be poisonous when applied inappropriately.
The practice of even a brief selection of tai chi movements immediately after applying EFT seems to have the effect of consolidating and deepening the effect of the treatment.
Combining tai chi and EFT has given me the strongest sensation of my own energy, chi (or qi) that I've experienced to date, even compared with some potent chi kung forms. If you've learned some tai chi, even just a little, and you've ever needed to be convinced of the existence of and power of your chi, there can be no safer or more effective way to access it than this. Try it for yourself.
How I discovered the winning combination
I woke early, troubled by a family crisis which I felt powerless to resolve. I couldn't get back to sleep. My usual solution for sleeplessness is to listen to a particular 'deep sleep' binaural beat audio track which works 9 times out of 10 but in this case, because I knew well the cause of my insomnia I decided to try EFT.
I've learned that an excellent time to do EFT is when you're having a very strong incidence of the feeling or condition you're trying to treat, because it's easy to tune into and accurately target the energy disruption. Not wanting to wake my family, I went off to the small kitchen of the apartment where we were staying and ran through the technique.
The moment I'd finished, I felt a strong tingling sensation in my hands and arms. This is something I normally associate with practising tai chi (taji) or chi-kung (Qigong), and the association was so strong that I decided to practice a tai chi form right away.
There wasn't enough room to practice the tai chi form in the usual way, so I limited myself to running through the sequence on one spot with both feet rooted to the ground throughout.
As any tai chi practitioner knows, playing the form this way, it's necessary to pay special attention to weight-transference and how the movements are conducted through the whole body from the ground upward, otherwise it becomes a meaningless waving about of the arms. This is a method I've used many times before, but this time, the sensation of energy both kinetic and bioelectromagnetic surging through the body was the most profound I've ever experienced.
Results
I followed up the form with another run through the EFT sequence. The result? The intensity of my target emotional state was effectively reduced to zero, and all of this in under 12 minutes.
After this I spontaneously entered a profoundly peaceful meditative state with a very strong sense of chi circulating in the 'microcosmic orbit' (that is up the spinal column, over the top of the head and down the frontal centre-line of the body to the perineum).
I was so deeply impressed by the effect of combining EFT with tai chi that I have now established this as my first activity every day. I feel that it's well worth getting up 15-20 minutes earlier to experience the astonishing transformation of mood, feeling, energy-level and well-being.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Tai chi and EFT - the perfect combination
Tai chi and EFT mesh together wonderfully. Whether you're a seasoned tai chi player trying EFT for the first time, an EFT enthusiast looking to extend the benefits of a balanced and harmonious energy system or a complete beginner looking to incorporate health-giving, strength-building, healing and self-protective practices into your life that just work.
Tai chi (I'm using the Wade Giles romanization instead of the Pinyin "taiji" because it's more familiar to most of my readers) is a lot of things to a lot of people, but regardless of the emphasis of their particular school or style, most practitioners would agree that tai chi benefits your energy - your chi - by helping it to flow smoothly without blockages throughout the entire body.
Anyone who has read about the Emotional Freedom Technique popularized by Gary Craig and others knows that EFT also addresses the energy system. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is a way you can eliminate disturbances to your energy circulation by a deceptively simple series of meridian tappings, rubbings, hummings and eye_rollings. The idea is that any emotional trauma and associated negative thinking pattern will have a corresponding blockage or reversal of energy flow in the system of energy meridians that permeates your body.
What does this mean in practice? Imagine a small child who is learning to draw. She is playing in the way that children play, happily expanding her awareness of the possibilities that her environment offers her by handling tools, in this case a pencil and paper.
She is happily making marks on the paper in front of her when she has the idea to extend her operations to the nearby wall-paper. Suddenly her experiment is interrupted by a furious parent. The parent proceeds to show the child the 'proper' way to draw and we can imagine how the event might unfold if the parent is particularly stressed on this occasion and out of touch with the needs of the child.
Unfortunately, a simple incident like this can contribute to a lasting blockage around the business of handling pencils, and this in turn can hinder the potential of the individual to develop activities associated with drawing and writing.
The feeling the child experienced when her 'wrong-doing' was discovered corresponds with a disturbance in the flow of chi.
That feeling and it's corresponding disturbance are triggered to produce a built-in reaction to situations involving pencils and paper.
On one occasion when I was teaching a tai chi class in West London, I noticed one of my students, a middle-aged woman, overcome with frustration as she attempted to perform one of the basic tai chi movements. In that instant I saw a sharp division in the woman's personality; She was the scolding parent of her own inner child. She was angry with herself for being stupid and clumsy not being able to do tai chi properly, and she wasn't going to let herself off the hook.
The cruelty with which she was handling herself was tangible in the quiet class and I felt compelled to intervene. I asked her to imagine that she witnessed two people in front of her. One was trying to learn something and the other was mercilessly criticizing and judging in a way which was clearly distressing and counter-productive. I asked her if she would feel moved to intervene and say "Hey, leave her alone! Give her a chance!" She agreed with me. I told her to intervene on her own behalf whenever she felt impatient with herself.
I've no idea if it helped her. The term came to an end and she didn't return. This was a long time ago. Recently I witnessed a young teenage tai chi student of mine being unduly severe with herself and I told her the story. We then ran through the basic EFT sequence together focusing on her perfectionist tendency. I asked her to do this at the beginning of every tai chi practice session. The effect on her energy, and on her sense of the purpose of learning tai chi was immediately evident. I know that her tai chi practice will benefit and that it will in turn be more beneficial for her.
How much more help I could have been to my tai chi students back in the 80's and 90's if I'd only known then what I know now about EFT.
Tai chi, hsing-i and bagua master Hung I Hsiang (1925-93) demonstrating his accupuncture technique and going on to explain something of tai chi principles for a BBC documentary shot in Taiwan in the early 1980s
While I was visiting Beijing in 2002 I studied Chen-style tai chi, which I found very challenging after 20-years of Yang-style practice.
I love this video of a 10-yr old performing Chen-style tai chi in Mainland China.
I gained a great deal of value from my experience with Chen-style tai chi, but as a non-athletic type of person already in my mid-fifties, I have gravitated back to the more modest movements of the form I began to study in 1980. These are the movements which will undoubtedly help me to grow old gracefully, and keep me away from the osteopath's office (as much as I like my wonderful osteopath!).
Tai chi (I'm using the Wade Giles romanization instead of the Pinyin "taiji" because it's more familiar to most of my readers) is a lot of things to a lot of people, but regardless of the emphasis of their particular school or style, most practitioners would agree that tai chi benefits your energy - your chi - by helping it to flow smoothly without blockages throughout the entire body.
Anyone who has read about the Emotional Freedom Technique popularized by Gary Craig and others knows that EFT also addresses the energy system. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is a way you can eliminate disturbances to your energy circulation by a deceptively simple series of meridian tappings, rubbings, hummings and eye_rollings. The idea is that any emotional trauma and associated negative thinking pattern will have a corresponding blockage or reversal of energy flow in the system of energy meridians that permeates your body.
What does this mean in practice? Imagine a small child who is learning to draw. She is playing in the way that children play, happily expanding her awareness of the possibilities that her environment offers her by handling tools, in this case a pencil and paper.
She is happily making marks on the paper in front of her when she has the idea to extend her operations to the nearby wall-paper. Suddenly her experiment is interrupted by a furious parent. The parent proceeds to show the child the 'proper' way to draw and we can imagine how the event might unfold if the parent is particularly stressed on this occasion and out of touch with the needs of the child.
Unfortunately, a simple incident like this can contribute to a lasting blockage around the business of handling pencils, and this in turn can hinder the potential of the individual to develop activities associated with drawing and writing.
The feeling the child experienced when her 'wrong-doing' was discovered corresponds with a disturbance in the flow of chi.
That feeling and it's corresponding disturbance are triggered to produce a built-in reaction to situations involving pencils and paper.
On one occasion when I was teaching a tai chi class in West London, I noticed one of my students, a middle-aged woman, overcome with frustration as she attempted to perform one of the basic tai chi movements. In that instant I saw a sharp division in the woman's personality; She was the scolding parent of her own inner child. She was angry with herself for being stupid and clumsy not being able to do tai chi properly, and she wasn't going to let herself off the hook.
The cruelty with which she was handling herself was tangible in the quiet class and I felt compelled to intervene. I asked her to imagine that she witnessed two people in front of her. One was trying to learn something and the other was mercilessly criticizing and judging in a way which was clearly distressing and counter-productive. I asked her if she would feel moved to intervene and say "Hey, leave her alone! Give her a chance!" She agreed with me. I told her to intervene on her own behalf whenever she felt impatient with herself.
I've no idea if it helped her. The term came to an end and she didn't return. This was a long time ago. Recently I witnessed a young teenage tai chi student of mine being unduly severe with herself and I told her the story. We then ran through the basic EFT sequence together focusing on her perfectionist tendency. I asked her to do this at the beginning of every tai chi practice session. The effect on her energy, and on her sense of the purpose of learning tai chi was immediately evident. I know that her tai chi practice will benefit and that it will in turn be more beneficial for her.
How much more help I could have been to my tai chi students back in the 80's and 90's if I'd only known then what I know now about EFT.
If you're a parent and I've touched a raw nerve about being impatient with young children, don't worry, it's not too late. Damage that can be unwittingly inflicted on vulnerable youngsters can be healed quite quickly by a parent who is committed to the principles of EFT and tai chi, overcoming the hard and the fixed with the soft and the pliable.
You may still have some doubts about whether EFT really works. It's reassuring to know that belief is not an essential component ...
Tai chi, hsing-i and bagua master Hung I Hsiang (1925-93) demonstrating his accupuncture technique and going on to explain something of tai chi principles for a BBC documentary shot in Taiwan in the early 1980s
While I was visiting Beijing in 2002 I studied Chen-style tai chi, which I found very challenging after 20-years of Yang-style practice.
I love this video of a 10-yr old performing Chen-style tai chi in Mainland China.
I gained a great deal of value from my experience with Chen-style tai chi, but as a non-athletic type of person already in my mid-fifties, I have gravitated back to the more modest movements of the form I began to study in 1980. These are the movements which will undoubtedly help me to grow old gracefully, and keep me away from the osteopath's office (as much as I like my wonderful osteopath!).
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