Listening to Your Body and EFT

The Fountain of Youth World Summit with Rick Wilkes, EFT specialist and founder of thrivingnow.com.

KEVIN: You talk about the intuitiveness of the body. A lot of times, I encounter people who don't really know how to recognize that. What are some of the ways that someone can begin to recognize them?

RICK: It's a great question because the body loves to be listened to; it's like having a child who is tugging at your pants and saying, “Listen to me, listen to me, I have something to share with you.” And then if you don't listen to them, it will start squawking you and then if their squawking you doesn't get your attention, they'll start shrieking and if shrieking doesn't work, they'll try hysterical. Here's a very simple line with EFT that we use, if you take any part in your in your body that's feeling a little bit, let's say, less than integrative or a little bit of discomfort, like right now, as I'm walking around, my left knee is just feeling a little bit off.

KEVIN: A-ha.

RICK: OK, and so if I ask my knee, well, what emotion might be there? What emotion might be in my knee? Anticipation is the word that comes to me. So, I would tap. Even though I've got this anticipation in my left knee, I deeply and completely accept my knee anyway, even though I have this anticipation feeling in my knee and it's a little uncomfortable. I deeply and completely accept all of me. Even though I've got this anticipation feeling in my knee, I love and accept of all me, anyway. And then, you just tap the other points. Those were the statements; the type of statements I might use at the karate chop point. All interestingly enough, I've done so much EFT but it's just those 3 statements while I was tapping a karate chop point, my energy system goes, “Yes! Thank you for listening.”

KEVIN: A-ha.

RICK: You talk to one and then the other one is going want to say, “Hey what about me?” This is a way of building body intelligence; paying attention to a physical sensation and asking if there were an emotion there, what might it be?

KEVIN: Huh.

RICK: And guess, right? Some people will have neck pain, chronic neck pain, right? And they've tried everything. They've gone to chiropractors, massage therapists and considered surgery. But they've never asked the question if there were an emotion in that pain or a person in that pain, what might it be? And once you start asking those types of questions of the pain itself, the pain will give you answers that allow you to have door way into that intelligence.

KEVIN: A-ha.

RICK: And you just say, “Even though I've got that SOB in my neck...

KEVIN: Right.

RICK:...I deeply and completely accept all of my feeling; even though I've got this raging anger in my neck, I deeply and completely accept myself.” Do some tapping around that and what you will almost always notice is some relief. Now, if you do around of tapping and suddenly the energy goes spiking way up and you like “Oh, my goodness, what have I done?” What you’ve really done is you've opened the door; that's a good sign. For those of us that are EFT professionals, that's a good sign. It means that this is a core energy that is keeping you from feeling great. And that's when you really stay to keep tapping on it, keep tapping on it, keep tapping on it. Get the help of a professional if you need to, that will help relieve that energy. I have somebody who’s in his 70s. He's a former military man, extremely physical and he fell down the stairs.

KEVIN: Oh.

RICK: And his body healed remarkably quickly except for his shoulder.

KEVIN: OK.

RICK: Now, months later the shoulder's still at 8, 9, or 10. I did some massage therapy, I'd release it and then the pain would come back. And I'd release it and it would feel like it was doing pretty well and the pain would come back. That's a sign that there may be an energetic or emotional recall. And I said, “Well, if there were an emotion in your shoulder, what might it be?” He knew exactly what it was. Anger. What are you angry about? “I'm angry at my body for failing me, this is the first time that it has ever failed.”

KEVIN: (Laughs.) Well look what comes out?

RICK: You know exactly what was going on; we tapped on that. The pain went from an 8 to a 4.

KEVIN: Right.

RICK: And then, and then, I said, “Well is there still anger?” and he said, “No, no, it's not anger.” I said, “Well if there was an emotion there now, what might it be?” Well I knew he fell on the stairs carrying a big chest, OK? Big macho guy.

KEVIN: OK. How old? Seventy?

RICK: Seventy something years old. He's going to be carrying this big chest down the stairs. Physically he was strong enough but he lost his balance.

KEVIN: Yeah.

RICK: OK and what he said was, “I knew when I picked it up that if my wife was in the house, she would have freaked out and made me not do it, and I did it anyway.”

KEVIN: Right.

RICK: And so I said, “What emotion is that?” He said, “Guilt.”

KEVIN: A-ha.

RICK: And we tapped on the guilt and doing the stupid thing and the pain went away and stayed away.

KEVIN: Right.

RICK: So, are we a mix of emotions and physical, physical and emotional? Absolutely. In fact, an emotion is a physical sensation that we got to label on.

KEVIN: OK.

RICK: We're looking at our pain, putting an emotional label on it, even if it's just a guess. Physical pain described at it directly, you know, is it a burning, a kind of a stiffness, whatever it is. Put an emotional label on it and do some tapping on it. Do that 3-5 times a day and you'll notice that this energy exercise is a part of also exercising your physical body is a wonderful combination to bring out the best of your whole system.

KEVIN: A conversation that I have frequently with a couple of my colleagues is whether pain is physical or energetic? And it's a big conversation. A lot of people would say, ”Of course, it's physical,” though it seems to me like you might be either leaning towards the other side or leaning towards the combination of both.

RICK: I call it physio-emotional pain. And if somebody has just experienced the loss of a loved one and they feel like there's a hole in their heart. There's a physical pain right there. Was it caused by someone punching them in the heart or was it caused by an emotion that has happened to them.

KEVIN: Right.

RICK: Now, somebody who is in a car accident, OK? almost 80 years old; she was in a car accident. She went through physical therapy and she still felt a lot of pain in her neck and in her ribs and we tried to do some bodywork and her body seemed to be resisting. There is a physical sensation of the body resisting release and renewal.

KEVIN: For anything?

RICK: Yeah, for anything. If you feel like you’re working against your body, you are. It is time to stop and not try to force it but to listen. And what we did is just ask the question, if there were emotion in your rib cage and in your neck, what might it be? And she said that being blind-sided.

KEVIN: OK.

RICK: She was doing nothing wrong, she was driving along and somebody smashed into the side of her and we did some EFT on it – and what was interesting is that she could feel the release, feel the release, feel the release and then suddenly it spiked way back up. And I said this isn't about the car accident. She said no, it is about thing blind-sided by her ex-husband when he came home one day and he said he was leaving.

KEVIN: Wow!

RICK: Is that logically true? Scientifically provable? I can't scientifically prove that, but what I will tell is that her intuition, her inner intelligence gave us a door – to go through and when we through that door with EFT with love and respect for the body and what it has been through and we did tapping on the natural soothing points on the body, what happened was her body let go of the feeling of being unsafe and being blind-sided, and when she lay back down on the table, her rib cage felt to me 20 years younger. Her neck became fluid, moving like the graceful person that she had been, and to me that’s an example of how specific events and specific energies bind us. They make our faces tighter, they make the tendons in our body less willing to be open and fluid. You think about walking through the world as an open, happy person. Well, if you don't feel safe, you're not going to walk through the world that way, and EFT is a powerful way to help you feel safe no matter what – calm and confident then no matter what. Kevin, we build on a foundation of safety first – helping a person feel safe in their body, exploring their world. We help them expand the comfort zone so that they feel safe and then it’s about how do you want to feel? Do you want to feel calm and powerful? Creative and energized? And we incorporate that into the affirmation that we use – the set up statement in EFT as this is called. Even though I'm not feeling totally confident right now because blank, I'm open to feeling surprisingly calm and powerful in my body. We know the power of affirmations. People have talked about it a lot, but an affirmation usually has what's called the tail-ender, a yes spot.

KEVIN: OK.

RICK: It's like if I look at myself in the mirror and say, “I have the body and mind of a 27-year-old.” There would be some aspect of me that looks and says, “Well not exactly.”

KEVIN: Yeah, yeah.

RICK: And to be like somebody that has 50 pounds to lose looking in the mirror and say, “I am thin and attractive.” .

KEVIN: Right, but, 50 pounds overweight.

RICK: So with EFT what were doing is saying, “Even though I'm 50 pounds overweight, I'm open to feeling surprisingly attractive and good looking.”

KEVIN: Yeah.

RICK: Surprisingly flexible and energized anyway. This is the high art of EFT. They're taking the physical limitations that they have, the limiting beliefs that they carried, letting them go and enjoying having a vitality that is of someone 20, 30, 40, 50 years younger. There is no reason to let an old person move into your body but if you have just a kind of collected a whole bunch of old people thoughts, old people beliefs, EFT is a great way to release those. I call it thriving in the now, you’re really in a place where every moment you’re feeling the vibration and the emotion and gratitude, appreciation and expectation that your life is unfolding in a beautiful way.