Tapping, EFT & TFT
You may find it hard to believe that tapping with your fingers on various parts of your body can have any real effect on physical or emotional problems. Take it from me – it works! Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) was derived from Thought Field Therapy (TFT), invented by American psychologist Roger Callahan. It is a needle-free version of acupuncture based on new discoveries regarding the connection between your body’s subtle energies, your emotions, and your health. Tests have shown that EFT can be successful in treating countless ailments covering a range of emotional, health and performance issues.
Meditation
Meditation is known to create feelings of peace and harmony in the body and mind and is used to encourage emotional and spiritual growth. It has also been shown to aid concentration, productivity, creativity and even benefit your personal relationships. Meditation can also have an incredible effect on your sleep and cut the time taken to fall asleep drastically.
You can watch this video to help you with meditation:
Diaphragmatic Breathing
Do your meditation with diaphragmatic breathing to dramatically enhance the
benefits. Or just practice diaphragmatic on its own as a stunningly effective relaxation
technique.
The technique is explained here by doctors of the Cleveland Clinic:
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/diaphragmatic-breathing
Also watch these YouTube Videos:
The Body Scan
Do a ‘body scan’. Starting at the top of your head, gently allow your mind to focus on each part of your body. Feel the tension, which is there, and allow it to release. Go through the body, not moving quickly from head to feet, but slowly by relaxing your forehead, your eyebrows, your eye-sockets, your scalp, chin, upper lip, lower lip, jawbone, etc.
Not only is this deeply relaxing, but it is also boring! The combination of boredom and relaxation will often mean that you will be asleep before you have got half way down your body.
The Sedona Method
This technique can be extremely helpful for stress and anxiousness, but also for depression, anger, guilt, sleeplessness, and even physical symptoms such as back pain.
What do you do with uncomfortable emotions? You fight it? You run away? Fight or flight is the classic response. But what if the thing our are afraid of is anxiety itself? If you choose to fight it head on, you just make it persist even longer. The battle itself draws attention to the fact that you are fighting an enemy; reinforcing the idea keeps the anxiety in place. But if you choose to run away you are showing just how much you fear it, and it comes back to torment you, again and again.
There is another option: we are going to work on neutralising the fear. How do you neutralise anything? You bring in its opposite. The opposite of running from fear, or fighting fear, is welcoming – if you could really welcome fear, you would literally no longer be afraid of it and it would evaporate.
Become the Breath
Most meditation techniques – such as mindfulness meditation - teach us to watch the breath. This means focussing the mind on the physical sensations of breathing. But there is a problem with this method of meditation; because the mind focuses on the breath, it still involves a separation of body and mind and the breath remains somehow distinct form ‘you’. I would like you to try something different. Try shifting your focus from watching the breath to being the breath.
Allow your sense of ‘I’, your awareness almost to merge with the breath. This may sound a little strange, but it is really very easy. If you find this difficult you can help by saying silently to yourself, I am the breath, I am the breath. You should find this instantly very relaxing and you may even feel as if your body and mind are melting into each other or have become indistinguishable.
Now you need to do this with some kind of emotional discomfort, for example anxiety. Bring up an anxiety-inducing thought. As the fear arises do not fight it, allow it to be there, really feel it. Then move one step further, allow it to be there. Welcome it. This is very similar to the Sedona Method, where you welcome the uncomfortable emotion. But now we go even further. You need to be the fear. Slide your awareness into the fear, become one with it. If you like, say to yourself I am the fear, I am the fear.
See how the fear transmutes! See how it dissolves! See how it is neutralised! And isn’t this the most relaxing thing you have ever done? The fear transforms and becomes revealed as for what it really is – a phantom, a nothing. Just as the fear of a darkened room is neutralised by the clarity offered by turning on the light, so clarity is offered by looking head on at the fear. Allow it to neutralise without running, fighting, avoiding or changing the subject, but looking head on at that fear and welcoming it
in.
Feel your fear, allow it, welcome it, BE it.
Feel your thoughts, allow them, welcome them, BE them.
Feel your feelings, allow them, welcome them, BE them.
Anything you can truly welcome can hold no fear for you.
You cannot fear something if you can truly welcome it.
Thus, your fear of whatever emotional discomfort will end up being your best friend. Every fear, every tension gives you another opportunity to relax in a more profound way than ever before. If you can master this tool it will change your life!