Borrowing Benefits Series - Part 6: Guidelines for Borrowing Benefits workshops

This is the final installment of the Borrowing Benefits series and contains the detailed handout I used at a recent Borrowing Benefits workshop.  It not only provides useful guidelines for maximizing benefits but it also outlines some of my own delivery techniques, beliefs and presuppositions.

You may wish to print it out or adjust it for use as a handout in your own workshops.

Hugs, Gary

What is Borrowing Benefits?

It is a feature of EFT whereby members of an audience choose bothersome SPECIFIC EVENTS from their own pasts and obtain relief by tapping along with another person. That other person can be either on stage or on a video and can have an entirely different issue than the audience members. Nonetheless, the audience members use the same words and tap on the same points as the person on stage or on the video.

While this phenomenon is still in the experimental stage, it is believed that the audience members draw their own parallels from the on-stage persons issue and thus obtain similar relief as if they were tapping directly on their own issue.

Advantages of Borrowing Benefits

1. Entire audiences can achieve quality relief during one EFT session. There appears to be no limit to the audience size. It can be hundreds or thousands or millions. Care must be taken with large groups for the small percentage that are so emotionally frail that they should not attempt ANY healing procedure without the presence of a skilled professional.

2. If the session on stage or video is in-depth and of high quality, most audience members will benefit to a greater degree than doing EFT on themselves or with an inexperienced EFT practitioner.

3. Many audience members will experience relief in a relatively painless way because they are ostensibly tapping for someone elses issue out there instead of dwelling directly on their own difficult circumstances.

4. Many times the entire issue for an audience member is completely resolved. When there are pieces left over, a qualified EFT practitioner can finish it up with one-on-one sessions.

5. EFT practitioners can speed up complex cases by giving the clients videos to take home and practice Borrowing Benefits between sessions.

6. Some audience members may tune into otherwise buried emotional issues during Borrowing Benefits. When this happens a great deal of time is saved because it hastens the process of finding a core issue.

Disadvantages of Borrowing Benefits

1. In some cases Borrowing Benefits may not be as thorough as one-on-one sessions. The gap can be filled by a qualified EFT practitioner.

2. A small percentage of audience members may tune into some unexpected intensity and become uncomfortable. This is usually because THEY DIDN'T FOLLOW DIRECTIONS and strayed from their SPECIFIC EVENT. In any event, it is appropriate to advise audience members of this possibility in advance and advise them to bring professional help where merited. If you are doing Borrowing Benefits before a live group, you should have experienced EFTers in the room to helpjust in case.

SPECIFIC EVENTS are the most important thing
to remember about Borrowing Benefits

The audience members MUST SELECT A SPECIFIC EVENT TO WORK ON. Unfortunately, most clients describe their issues too globally and your audience members are no exception.. Here are some typical examples:

My mother doesnt love me.
Im an angry person.
Sometimes I feel very intense or anxious.
I dont want to put myself forward.

These issues are made up of underlying SPECIFIC EVENTS and it is these SPECIFIC EVENTS in our lives that form the foundation under our more global problems. For example, a SPECIFIC EVENT underlying My mother doesnt love me might be The time mother left me in the shopping center at age 8 and I had to find my way home. These SPECIFIC EVENTS are the building blocks of the larger problems. Without them, the larger problems have no foundations.

Thus it is vitally important that audience members select, and Borrow Benefits for, a SPECIFIC EVENT. Otherwise, they will be tapping on some global issues and are likely to shift within them from aspect to aspect or event to event. This is begging for some audience members to have unnecessary emotional intensity. However, if they start withand stay on.a SPECIFIC EVENT during the Borrowing Benefits session the following benefits usually occur.

1. They are much more likely to resolve that SPECIFIC EVENT and notice the relief.

2. They are much LESS likely to experience uncomfortable emotional intensity.

3. After one resolves a few SPECIFIC EVENTS underlying a more global issue, a GENERALIZATION effect takes place that serves to collapse the global issue.

How to conduct a Borrowing Benefits session

1. Before you start, PREFRAME THE AUDIENCE with some important features.

a. Explain the mechanics of the process as well as the items above under SPECIFIC EVENTS are the most important thing to remember about Borrowing Benefits.

b. Emphasize and re-emphasize the importance of using a SPECIFIC EVENT. Without this table-pounding-emphasis, people will tend to pick out a globally stated issue.

c. Emphasize the tendency for people to have some resolution of their SPECIFIC EVENT and then shift to another event or another aspect of the same event. Without this emphasis, many people will get resolution but will not notice it. They may say, it didnt work when, in fact, it worked beautifully

d. Describe the possibility that some audience members will come up with intense issues (perhaps unexpected) during the Borrowing Benefits procedure. Since the audience member is tuned in to the problem this is often a good time to temporarily forego Borrowing Benefits and begin repeatedly tapping the EFT points up and down the body. Often resolution will occurperhaps of a major core issue.

2. Have each audience member pick out a SPECIFIC EVENT to work on and give it a title as though it was a short movie. This title should be written down and glanced at frequently (as a reminder) throughout the Borrowing Benefits session.

3. Before starting your on-stage session, quiz members of the audience as to the SPECIFIC EVENTS they have chosen. You may be surprised at what people consider a SPECIFIC EVENT. By guiding some audience members in finding their SPECIFIC EVENTS, other audience members are more likely to be more accurate in their selection.

4. Ask the audience members to write down their intensity, on a 0-10 scale, regarding the SPECIFIC EVENT (some may be very intense about their issues and, in such cases, it is helpful to just have them guess at their 0-10 numberthis is usually accurate enough). This intensity must be what they feel NOW as they tune into it and NOT what it WAS when it was happening. If they cannot bring up a 0-10 intensity (because they have repressed the event or swept it under the rug), then use the Movie Details Method described below.

Movie Details Method: This comes from Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and centers around a technical term known as Sub-Modalities. Despite the technical language, the concept is both simple and useful.

Typically, an intense memory shows up in your mental movie as being in vivid color, close to you and in sharp focus. You may also find yourself IN the movie rather than WATCHING it. Further, the sounds tend to be dramatic and loud while the feelings might be described in intense terms such as sharp, pounding, etc.

Interestingly, after successful rounds of EFT these movie details shift to less intense levels. The images tend to be fuzzy, black & white and in the distance. Also, you tend to be WATCHING the movie rather than IN it. The sounds and feelings also tend to fade.

Thus a client (or audience member) can evaluate the intensity of the movie details both before and after EFT and, by this exercise, get a good sense of their progress with EFT.

5. Then do a thorough and complete session with the person on stage. It is best to assume that one or more audience members are emotionally frail and thus start off with some globally stated Setups to take the edge off. e.g. Even though I have some problems

It is important that you remind the audience to glance at their movie titles from time to time. This tends to keep them tuned into their SPECIFIC EVENT. Also, insist that the audience say their EFT statements out loud and with emphasis. They will tend to mumble and this can detract from the ultimate result.

6. Instruct audience members that they may tune into an unexpected and/or intense memory during this process. Since they are obviously attuned to the issue they may choose to temporarily discard participation in the Borrowing Benefits session and begin tapping the points up and down the body repeatedly until they come down. Experienced EFTers will recognize this as an ideal time to tap because it will often collapseor substantially relieve

7. When the on-stage session is completed, ask everyone that believes they have had resolution to vividly imagine their SPECIFIC EVENT and write down their current 0-10 intensity or the change in their movie details. If you have people in the audience that have exhibited unusual intensity, you may need to handle them individually. Often I will ask them to guess at their intensity and then try to imagine it if comfortable doing so.

8. Finally, go around the audience and have people relate their experience. This is good for the whole group. Almost invariably, those that have seemingly made little or no progress have shifted off to another movie or another aspect. When this occurs, it is VERY important for everyones education to point this out (tactfully, of course).

Here are some of the presuppositions and beliefs
that underlie my own delivery of EFT:

1. Everyone does the best they can given their beliefs, experiences and background.

2. We are living in a worldly dream and our ultimate goal is to get out of it and enter the Peace of Eternity and God.

3. The clients goal is to have a better version of the dream.

4. Our emotional issues do NOT come from what happens to us from the outside world. Rather they come from our RESPONSE to what happens to us from the outside world. They are all an inside job.

5. From The Palace of Possibilities

a. The writing on our walls is our version of the Truth and it is very important to useven if it is wrong.

b. We constantly consult the writing on our walls.

c. All arguments are between the writing on our respective walls.

d. Dreams may not necessarily come true but they always take you in directions.

Questions I like to ask.

1. How do you know that?

2. If there was (another) emotional issue causing this problem, what might it be?

3. What does that remind you of?

4. If you had life to live over again, what person or event would you just as soon skip?