Part 1
Comments from Gary Craig:
"Hi Everyone,
Study this one well. Ryan Kurczak has developed many useful ways to successfully perform EFT remotely. This is sometimes called intentional or surrogate tapping and is the fascinating process of mentally doing EFT for another's benefit. Serious EFT students will find this 4 part series riveting."
Dear Gary,
First let me say since learning EFT I have nearly stopped practicing the techniques I'd learned earlier in my healing career, such as Reiki, CranioSacral Therapy and massage. I had never seen such rapid improvements in physical and mental health until I began implementing EFT as an adjunct to my other services. EFT quickly became my prime healing tool.
A few months after taking an EFT level 1 class I decided to try out the DVD courses and began to devour the knowledge presented in them, which greatly increased my delivery of the technique and success rates. After watching the "Steps Towards Becoming the Ultimate Therapist" DVDs I became enamored with the idea of applying EFT intentionally without tapping or making any outward movement.
The ability to facilitate healing from a distance was not a new concept to me, yet try as I might I just couldn't get the hang of how to do EFT without the physical movements of tapping either on myself or the client. After persistent experimentation I discovered a three stage process that allowed me to be able to practice EFT effectively, using only imagination and intention. The sessions recorded below illustrate the process for anyone looking for a spring board to develop their own intentional EFT abilities.
Note: I had been practicing EFT every day with clients for about two months when I realized that the exact moment they took a deep breath or showed some outward sign of relief, I too felt a subtle surge of relaxation in my body. It dawned on me that by tapping with them throughout the session, I was in a sense tapping for them too. It was almost like I was resonating with their energy system and so could feel when that energy system released a negative emotion. This realization is what I based my first steps to being able to practice EFT intentionally.
Step 1: Physical Surrogate Tapping
(other steps will be covered in future installments to this series)
The first helpful step I took on my way to practicing intentional EFT was learning and practicing surrogate tapping. Here is the method that worked for me.
Jack had called me one evening because of some weakness and pain in his knee. Jack is very athletic and a martial arts teacher. The pain in his knee would not allow him to squat very low in his stance, which from what I understand is essential in the martial arts. He knew all about EFT and practiced it often. When he called for help I asked him why he didn't try EFT on it himself. He said he had, coming at it from multiple angles, and could not make any improvement. So he wanted my thoughts on how to properly deliver EFT.
Jack is a friend of mine and an open minded guy, so I asked if I could experiment with him. He agreed. I asked him for the intensity of pain on a 1-10 scale. He told me it was between a 6 and a 7 when he attempted to move into his stance. Then, I asked him to hold on a moment. Jack was still on the line, although I put the phone down. I closed my eyes and imagined that Jack was sitting across from me, as in one of my normal EFT sessions, and I began the Basic Recipe. I rubbed the sore spot and mentally repeated, "Even though I have this painful weakness in my knee I deeply and completely accept myself." With my eyes closed I kept rubbing my own sore spot and mentally saw the imagined Jack rubbing the sore spot and repeating the same phrase. Then I went through the rest of the Basic Recipe in this way. I would tap a point and mentally say, "this knee pain". Then I would imagine him tapping the same point in the same way.
The process took less than a minute. When I was finished I picked up the phone and said, "How does your knee feel now?" There was a pause, and then he chuckled and said, "It is now a three." Then he asked, "What did you do?" I told him I'd explain when we finished. So I told him to hold on again. I once more put the phone down and went through the same process. This time I skipped the sore spot and used the reminder phrase, "This remaining pain." Thirty seconds later I picked up the phone again and said, "How about now?" He replied, "The pain is mostly gone. It is probably a one on the scale. Let me try to get in my stance and see what happens."
Jack then said, "When I get in my stance the pain goes back up to a five, and there is a stiffness that won't let me go any lower." I asked him to stay in his stance as low as he could without causing too much discomfort so that he could be aware subtly of what the knee felt like while in the stance. I then set the phone down again and repeated the previous procedure. I changed the setup phrase to, "Even though this position causes my knee pain, I deeply and completely accept myself." The reminder phrase I used was, "This positional knee pain." After I went through the Basic Recipe on myself while imagining him doing it do right across from me, I picked up the phone and said, "How does your knee feel?" He said it felt looser and was not hurting at the moment. So he told me to hold on as he lowered his stance. Jack then said that he could almost get as low as he would like in his stance, but there was some residual tightness at the level of a 2-3 on the intensity scale.
It occurred to me that maybe there was some fear of injury by getting lower in his stance. As a massage therapist I typically see tightness as a result of some part of the body protecting itself from injury. Without mentioning this I asked if he could stay in the stance at the 2-3 level he previously reported for about 30 seconds. He said he could. For the final time I set the phone down and repeated the entire Basic Recipe. The phrase I used this time was, "Even though I'm afraid I will injure myself if I go any lower in my stance, I deeply and completely accept myself." The reminder phrase I used was, "This fear of injury." At some point in the middle of this third run through I got a sense of my body relaxing and I took a deep breath. When I picked up the phone and asked how he felt at the moment, he immediately responded that during the thirty seconds I was not on the phone with him, he felt his body relax and his stance natural lower, pain free.
Happy with the results I explained to him what I was doing each time I put the phone down. He was very encouraging about the process and advised me to keep it up. Since that time I've done many surrogate sessions with him, and each time the process has become more elegant, effective and efficient.
Practicing the Basic Recipe, in its entirety on myself, while imagining the person I was working with doing the same thing allowed me to see that the power of my imagination could actually create results. After about two other successful surrogate tapping sessions in the manner described above, I then began pushing my limits and cut out the tapping on myself completely. This process, which effectively resolved anger over a problematic coworker, will be described in my next installment.