EFT and weight loss.  EFT and feeling better about your body no matter what size you are.  Loving your body no matter what shape you are in.  This blog will cover ideas, tips and suggestions for clearing your blocks to finding your ideal weight all the while loving the body you are in.  I will also walk the journey with you as I tap out my blocks to success with my weight.

I was always a thin child, teen and young adult.  I never had to think about my weight, what I ate or how much.  But after my 3rd pregnancy, I didn't lose the weight the way I had with my other two children.  I was puzzled but too busy with raising my children to focus on it.  I knew I was avoiding too.  I was stressed out with the daily ups and downs of loving and raising small children, maintaining my home and my relationship with my husband.  As I got older I began to worry about the weight I'd gained and suspected that my overeating was emotional and yet had no tools for dealing with these feelings of boredom, fear and lack of love for my aging body and myself in general.

I have had my own full-time private practice in Energy Medicine and Energy Psychology since 2003 and the stressors of self employment further added to my emotional load and my waistline.  I am now 45 lbs overweight. 

And yet at the same time I was finding myself attracting clients into my practice who wanted to work on the same issues I had with food.  (It's funny how the Universe takes care of us) And some of their stories were far more challenging than my own.  By tapping with them and exploring and unfolding their issues with food, body image, not loving themselves and the needs food was meeting for them helped me to explore my own and Borrow Benefits.  My clients' honesty helped unfold my own healing.

I began to realize that I used food for many discomforts and I have begun to tap on these as they emerge.  I have found it helpful to forgive myself for allowing my weight to get this high.  I have found it challenging to admit how food serves me.  I have also remembered many difficult moments in my young adulthood where I received unwanted attention from others due to my shapely body.  Some people were quite bold in their attentions and being a lifelong introvert, this is something EFT continues to help me with.  I remenber the discomfort of having to say no to unwanted attention from older and younger men in my teens and early 20's.  I remember how unprepared I felt for this challenge and how much I judged myself for not meeting their needs.  EFT has been wonderful for helping me trace back to those memories and dissolve the discomfort so that the charge is gone.  I had to tap on the fear that I might attract too much attention again or that people will make comments about my body that I might still not know how to deal with.

I have also found tapping on cravings extremely successful and I find it helps to have a vivid imagination, tap while salivating, and crinkle the bag of whatever you are craving while tapping.  This is something I do in my Tap Yourself Slim Retreat and we are always giddy to find how much we don't want our "problem treat" after we tap.

I have even tapped on the bits of my body I don't love while looking at myself in a full length mirror naked.  It takes courage to admit all those old beliefs you picked up about older members of your family and their bodies when you were young, to remember all the times you judged those bodies and how yours has become one of them.  I encourage you to remember back to how you may have judged you mother or father's bodies and tap on what you didn't like about them.

As I continue to tap although I have not lost any weight, I have so far noticed a big change in my relationship with food. I need it less.  I feel empowered over food instead of powerless.  I pay more attention to when and how much I am eating and I have much more forgiveness and love for myself when I slip.  I am using a combinaiton of Energy Medicine and EFT and suspect that things are changing on many levels within my subconscious.  And eventually I trust that the weight will begin to drop as my aspects each become neutralized.  I will continue to add to this blog as my journey unfolds over the next few months.

Blessings to all

Susan

Over the past year I have discovered a new love for my body and although I have not lost weight, I respect and love all parts of me.  I have also discovered that what might be going on with me and my weight is a very old and primitive physiological response called the Fight or Flight Response.  I also suspect that it has really been running my overeating. 

When we perceive danger in our environment, we have an involuntary and unconscious response similar to the response our body makes when we touch a hot frypan.  Our arm jumps back automatically to prevent a serious burn.  It's the same with perceived danger.  If we think our lives are being threatened our sympathetic nervous system kicks into gear, our breathing increases and our heart pumps faster providing lots of oxygen to our muscles, our blood pressure goes up, our muscles tense, our pupils dilate and adrenalin, nor-epinephrin and epinephrin surge throughout our bodies.  And all of this happens in seconds because it is hardwired into our brainstem and is a very old and primitive response to danger. 

I believe this Fight or Flight response is the main reason our species is still on the planet.  We know how to save our lives if needed and we don't even have to think about it at the conscious level.

What I am noticing in my private practice, is that many of my clients are hurried, worried and hyper-charged these days.  In our culture we move very fast.  There are lots of deadlines and time constraints and many people need us.  We have electronic equipment right in our homes, sometimes even in our bedrooms that demand our constant attention. 

I've noticed that my clients can be in their Fight or Flight on a daily basis especially if those they love are depending on them.

So I have begun to learn about and speak to groups about our Fight or Flight Response and I find it very helpful to have a basic understanding of this inner mechanism when tapping with clients.  I often find that even just thinking about working on a problem can throw people into their survival mode.  So I often begin a session tapping a few rounds on all the ways our bodies react to stress to bring my client out of their Fight or Flight.  

Another physiological response which occurs is that our blood glucose levels increase to provide energy for a fight or to run and yet in the modern world we rarely need to fight or run.  This energy sits in our bodies and perhaps turns into excess weight.  Perhaps that common "tire round the middle" which is my main problem is actually my body storing energy for it's very survival.

So with this in mind, I am spending time daily, tapping on my stress levels and being more observant of how I feel inside numerous times throughout my day.  I have noticed that I am more conscious of my stress and if I tap right then, in the moment, I am slowly reducing my anxiety load and allowing my body to let go, relax and come out of my Fight or Flight.  The interesting thing is that with the technique of using your body cues and symptoms (eg. breathing fast and shallow) that I don't even have to know why I'm in Fight or Flight.  I just have to tap it away and follow my body.

Of course, as I tap, my subconscious provides me with memories or hints as to what is really going on and I do my best to honour that information by including it in my next round of tapping and this in course reduces my stress level further.

I'm hopeful that 10 minutes of daily tapping will go a long way to reducing the need to hold that extra glucose in my body and therefore allow my body to reduce it's stores of extra weight.

I'll keep you posted.

Any thoughts?

Sept. 17, 2011

As I've been tapping lately, I've noticed that an anxiety is emerging that feels very familiar and old.  When I get hungry or anticipate getting hungry there is a tension in my body, a fear that "there may not be anything left"
Now don't get me wrong.  We didn't go without food when I was young but I do remember there hardly ever being treats when I was quite young and if there were, they were gone quickly because they were special.  As I was thinking about tapping the other day, even before tapping, up comes this old energy and I recognized that I was hungry. 
As well, hunger is not a feeling I've allowed much since I have had children.  I think that when I was chasing three little kids around and nursing I couldn't allow my blood sugar to get low or I'd run out of energy and become short-tempered with the children.  So I learned early in motherhood to make sure I keep grazing and not allow myself to get to the hunger stage.  As well, I remember that old feeling of "what if it's all gone when i come back? I'd better have it now while it's here".
I spent some time tapping on that anxious feeling, focusing on it until it subsided.  It felt good to let it go and I'm watching carefully for any residue that I've missed.  I believe we have a processing speed when clearing these old energies and it can take many sessions to completely remove a longstanding,, ingrained feelling that has been serving us.  I get the sense that the next aspect is to tap on a lack of worthiness for the "treats" in life.   Is my body craving sugar or the treats in life we all deserve but which a part of me doesn't feel able to manifest for myself?  And is there a part of me that believes there is a lilmit to those treats? Tap, tap tap!