But for some people attending a regular day-long workshop or training can be a bit of a challenge because they:

• are at work when most trainings happen.
• have limited free time because they are carers or parents of young children.
• don’t like group settings and prefer to learn one to one

Personal EFT Training is a new service for people who want to learn EFT but are not able to attend standard EFT trainings or would prefer personalised instruction.

It’s for you if you want to learn:

• a simple, effective self help technique
• only what is relevant to you
• at a time that suits you.
• have personalised guidance that you wouldn’t get on a regular course

This personal mini-training is based on the standard EFT Level 1 training but it is broken up into four one-hour sessions.

1. Introduction to EFT. In this first session you will learn the basic tapping patterns and how to use a simple process to unpack everyday problems so that you work with them using EFT.
2. Neutralising Bad Memories. In this session you will learn two simple techniques for taking care of the emotional residue of unpleasant memories. It’s a chance to learn how to clean up the past.
3. Working With Anxiety And Physical Issues: How to use EFT to make it easier to cope with challenging parts of life and use EFT for physical issues such as pain.
4. Tailor Made For You: The final session is all about you and what you need to know. It is devoted to showing you EFT techniques and approaches that are specific to the kinds of problems and challenges that you have.

The time between each session gives you a chance to practice what you have learnt and bring any questions for the next session.

There are two types of Personal EFT Training:

• 4 x 1 hour sessions (about a week apart)
• 1 x 3 hour session + follow up 1 hour personalised session about a week later.

Each session costs £35, a total of £140 for the course (less than the full cost of my Level 1 training).

A full manual and training materials are provided

The mini-trainings can be for 1 or 2 people at a time, so if you learn with a friend or partner you can complete the training for just £70 each.

These session will either be at The Jesmond Therapy Centre in Newcastle or at The Bodywork Centre in Hexham.

If you want to take the full Practical Wellbeing EFT Level 1 training in a group setting after this Personal EFT Training you can do that for just £30.

For more information or to book a Personal EFT Training call Andy on 0754 700 9116 or email andy@practicalwellbeing.co.uk

Important: The Personal EFT Training is intended to instruct you in the use of EFT for mild to moderate issues, it is not a substitute for therapy nor will it qualify you to use EFT with others.

Maybe it’s articles in Cosmo, pop psychology books or diluted Freudian-ism that gives people the idea that if they understand the problem well enough it will change.

I think that is a dangerous misunderstanding, but it’s not a new one.

More than 2,500 years ago the Buddha addressed the same confusion with this teaching story.

In a battle a man is hit with a poisoned arrow. The doctor is called and arrives ready to take out the arrow before the poison can spread and kill the man.
The doctor is just about to pull out the arrow when the man stops him and asks:

“What wood is this arrow made of?”

The doctor tells him “What!? I have got to get this arrow out of you before you die.”

The man replies: “Not until I know more about this arrow and the man who shot me.”

“What kind of feathers are at the end of this arrow?”

The doctor says “What are you talking about? I must remove this arrow or you will die.”

“Not until I understand fully what has happened to me”, says the man.

The conversation continues in the same vein as the man asks more questions in an effort to understand the problem.

“What bird did they come from?”

“What kind of poison is on the arrow tip?”

“Who made the arrow?”

“Which blacksmith made the point?”

“How tall was the man who shot the arrow?”

“Who are his family?”

“What tribe does he belong to?”

By this time the poison is in much too deep and the man dies.

Have you ever spent days trying to understand something, coming to profound conclusions about a problem, and yet, it remains, just as big and bad as ever it was.

Wouldn’t it be better to try to pull out the problem arrow and leave the understanding of it until after you are well?

But, how? Don’t you need to understand the problem to fix it?

There are (at least) two kinds of understanding: what something means and what to do to change it.

The wounded man was focused on the story of what the arrow meant, the doctor was focused on what to do about it.

The wounded man’s story was interesting in a philosophical, passing the time of day, kind of way, but it changed nothing.

The doctor’s interest was practical; focused on solving the problem so the man can be saved.

If you had a problem which kind of understanding would you find most useful?

The part that resonates most with me is:

You can use your mind to change your brain to change your mind for the better.

That’s very good news for anyone who thinks their mental world is stuck and will always be stuck in the same way (it’s also a pretty good definition of therapy).

The video was hosted by Greater Good – The Science Of A Meaningful Life which is well worth a visit.

Shortly after posting this, Steve Wells and Helen Walker (bless their hearts) emailed to let me know I had got it wrong (as usual by not reading the small print).

The EFT research does meet the standards of the APA but it has not yet recognised as evidence based by the APA – a big difference.

So I’ll strike out the bits that aren’t yet true and leave the post up as a reminder to me: post in haste, repent at leisure.

Sorry about that

One of the difficulties of getting EFT into mainstream organisations (such as the NHS here in the UK) is that opponents or doubters say that it is not evidenced based.

Many people in many places have been doing the hard work of researching the effects of EFT for various problems, all this work is paying off.

The American Psychological Association wrote in its journal Review of General Psychology:

“A literature search identified 50 peer-reviewed papers that report or investigate clinical outcomes following the tapping of acupuncture points to address psychological issues. The 17 randomized controlled trials in this sample were critically evaluated for design quality, leading to the conclusion that they consistently demonstrated positive statistical results that far exceed chance and showed moderate to large effect sizes after relatively few treatment sessions. Criteria for evidence-based treatments proposed by Division 12 of the American Psychological Association were also applied and found to be met for a number of conditions, including PTSD.”

This is great new for EFT and for the people it can help.

It’s also great news for the hardy folk in the NHS who want to add EFT to their therapeutic toolkit (although I imagine it will take a while)

You can find out more about the EFT research method at EFTUniverse.com

If we are lucky we can grow up to become physicists, philosophers, saints or sages.

Unfortunately for us we learn the important lessons in life, who we are and what life is all about, at a time when we are least capable of making sense of it.

The conclusions we come to can bless us or blight us.

The Downside Of Evolution

We are evolved beings, we have survived and thrived against all the odds through our long evolutionary journey.

We have large brains and it takes us a long time for them to mature. Our faculties of judgement don’t fully mature until we are in our early twenties. So we have very long childhoods to give us time to upload our cultural software.

Throughout this process we are dependent on our caregivers for survival and learning life’s lessons, but we don’t get to choose which lessons we learn.

Over our long history we needed to survive many dangers, so many of our learning abilities are oriented towards survival, we needed to be able to find food, shelter, a mate, be part of a tribe and to avoid being eaten by predators.

As a child we are dependent on our caregivers for our physical survival and to learn all the skills so we can be part of the tribe and carry the whole process on. What we learnt was critical to our survival and that of our tribe, conditions were tough and learning how to be safe and survive was the most important thing.

Since we came down from the trees millions of years ago these requirements have dominated human life. Only recently with the advent of civilisation, settled life, farming, has life got more social – more complicated.

Children Are At A Disadvantage

As children learning life’s lessons we have a number of disadvantages:

We are dependent: we depend on our caregivers for everything, as babies we are helpless we get what we are given. As children we are dependent on our caregivers for our physical and social needs. We need their physical support and approval to grow into adulthood.

We are suggestible: as children we are hugely suggestible, soaking up everything like a sponge is an effective way to learn. Thus our abilities and understanding balloon once this process starts. Unfortunately we take in everything without discrimination. What ever experiences and learnings are available are sucked up, regardless of their quality.

We don’t have much experience: as children we don’t have much experience of life, we look to our caregivers for explanations and the informed view about how the world works. We don’t have good ways of testing the reality of the things we are learning for ourselves so we have take our caregivers word for it.

We learn many things in our childhood: what a cow is, that horses eat grass, that cars go brmm, brmm, who made the world, where Africa is and so on.

We also learn:

Values: what’s important (to us and our family and tribe)

Responses: our responses to events. If your dad raises his fist then you are going to cower in fear. If your mum screams when she sees a mouse then that is the appropriate response to mice.

Beliefs about the world: What causes things to happen and what things mean. If you do badly at school mummy will be disappointed. If I win the race dad will be proud of me.

Beliefs about your self: I am a good boy, I am not good enough, there is something wrong with me,

Personal rules: What is expected of me. How I can earn approval or avoid disapproval. What is appropriate behaviour.

The configuration of these values, responses, beliefs and rules will be a uniquely individual mix depending on your upbringing and circumstances.

If you are lucky you will learn a supportive and encouraging mix which lets you thrive and prosper.

If you are not so fortunate you may collect a mixed bag of encouragement and discouragement, permissions and denials.

If you are very unfortunate you may learn a poisonous set lessons that blight your life.

Some ideas are hard to change

A lot of our factual understanding of the world is updated as we go through life. We learn that the sun doesn’t go round the earth as it first appears, that there is no Santa – we usually find ways to update these understandings.

Unfortunately the important stuff – who we are and the way the world works – isn’t so easily updated.

Learnt so early and so well, it becomes the fabric of our world, unquestioned and unchanged. Patterns learnt in childhood can persist through our entire lives.

Fortunately they are not set in stone. What was learnt can be un-learnt and re-learnt from a more informed perspective.

The history of psychotherapy from Freud onwards has been various attempts to help people transcend their original learning.

If you find yourself thinking – I’m not good enough, there is something wrong with me, I am a bad person. Consider for a moment or two that this is something that you learnt. No matter how convincing these thoughts are to you, you were not born with them. It is something you picked up along the way, from people who were living out their own learnt patterns.

They can be changed and that’s what therapy is all about.

To find out more about who I work with and the kind of therapy I do click here.

A few weeks ago we recorded a conversation about the training and how we approached advanced EFT.  Listen in to find out how we could help you take your EFT skills to the next level.

Part 1 – We talk about what attendees can look forward to in this training and how we will be co-training.

Part 2 – In the second part of this conversation about the EFT Level 3 Martine and I discuss handling trauma and the inner critic.

Part 3 – In the third part of our conversation about the upcoming EFT Level 3 in Harrogate, Martine and I discuss EFT and parts work and finding and working with limiting beliefs.

Part 4 – The final part of our conversation about the EFT Level 3 training, including the where, when and how much.

I hope you enjoy the conversation and find it useful.

They learn the techniques from a book or a workshop and enjoy the step by step approach, instructions and support, but when EFT would be really useful to them they are stumped.

They don’t know where to start or what to do.

What you need is a problem solving strategy rather than yet another tapping technique. You need a way of thinking about problems so that you can apply the EFT you already know to get the best results from your tapping.

If you know how to approach problems then you stand a much better chance of success.

This month’s EFT Café is a departure from the normal presentation of a technique for dealing with a specific problem. It is a distillation of some of the strategies that I have used to approach tricky situations, problems and stuck states in my everyday life.

It is all about how to think about problems, then take action to resolve them using EFT.

In addition to the presentation, there will also be an opportunity to practice some of these strategies on your own issues, so that when the time comes you will know what to do.

If you are a Level 2 Practitioner of EFT then the EFT Café qualifies as 2 hours of CPD

The EFT Café meets on Wednesday May 11th, at St Oswald’s Hospice Teaching Centre, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne from 7pm to 9pm. It costs just £10.

The EFT Level 1+ is a two-day training showing you how to use of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to give you a simple and versatile way of making a difference in your emotional life.

Do you often feel anxious or stressed?
Sometimes anxiety or other negative emotions can really interfere with your life stopping you from doing the kinds of things you’d really like to. After this course you’ll have a simple method for substantially reducing the negative emotions in your life and giving you much more freedom

Are you a hostage to the past?
Are you haunted by the past, bothered by old unpleasant memories. When you finish this course you’ll be able to neutralise old unhelpful memories and break free of the past.

Do you suffer from physical symptoms or pain?
Sometimes physical symptoms, especially pain, can make life quite unpleasant. At the end of this course you will have a way of relieving symptoms and feeling comfortably relaxed.

Having trouble giving up things that are bad for you?
Chocolate, cigarettes, nail-biting and other compulsive habits can be very frustrating, sometimes willpower alone is just not enough. After this course you will have a way to reduce or even eliminate those compulsions so that you may not need any willpower to make those changes.

This training is split into 2 parts:

1. The Training Day: This day covers the AAMET Level 1 Syllabus as a full introduction to EFT.
2. The Practice Day: The following Saturday is a practice day where you have the chance to develop your skills and experience practicing with others. This practice day is also open to holders of EFT Level 1 or 2 certificates.

To find out more about the course click here

Where, When and How Much?

10am to 5pm on June 9th & 16th, 2012 at St Oswald’s Hospice Teaching Centre, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The first four people to apply will receive a special price of just £95 for the two days.

Thereafter the Early Bird fee will be £125 until May 26th, then the full fee of £145 will apply

Anyone with an existing AAMET EFT Level 1 certificate can attend this course as a refresher for just £30

Click here to book.

You’re smart enough not to be looking for a magical “get cured quick” scheme where one application of a secret tapping routine will transform your life forever.

Just as it takes some time and effort to lose weight or exercise regularly, you understand that it takes some work to make positive changes in your life.

You want the benefits of a less-stress life and you are ready to do the work.

You know how to tap, you just need some straight forward ways of weaving EFT into your daily life.

Introducing The Tapping Habit

I designed the Tapping Habit for people like you based on my experience of integrating EFT into my daily life.

It will give you:

• A step by step approach to successfully using EFT in daily life
• Simple strategies that help guide your tapping practice
• Different ways to tackle problems so that you can make continuous progress

The Tapping Habit is a FREE 10 week e-class showing you how to make the most out of tapping in everyday life. Every week a new lesson will be delivered to your email inbox.

“I wanted to let you know how much I’m enjoying, and benefiting from, the e-course. I have bought a small notepad, entitled it ‘Mosquitoes’! and am tapping every day, but the good thing is, I’ve started to use the different techniques too”.
- Lisa Burnage

Sign up to The Tapping Habit or find out more here

IMPORTANT: This email course offers no ridiculous promises, miracle cures, instant life transformations or breakthroughs, but it does contain straightforward and sensible suggestions that will help you make big changes over time (and it is FREE!)

To order your copy visit the Stehen Sie sich nicht länger im Weg at Lulu.com

Many thanks to Romy for all her hard work.