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Deepak Chopra, MD
"EFT offers great healing benefits."
EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques®) Where emotional relief brings physical health
Self help method often works where nothing else will No Drugs Involved ~ High Success Rate
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Note: This article assumes you have a working knowledge of EFT. Newcomers can still learn from it but are advised to get our Free EFT Get Started Package or our Affordable DVDs for a more complete understanding. For more, read our EFT Info and Disclaimer Document
EFT beginner collapses her own PTSD
Hi Everyone,
This is not a happy story, although the ending is certainly uplifting. No one should have to walk in Jamala Rose's shoes but, unfortunately, far too many do. Post Traumatic Stress disorder (PTSD) is among our most debilitating ailments and, until the arrival of EFT and its many cousins, there was little or nothing that could be done about it. Drugs didn't cure it. They simply covered it over.
Despite its "tough to stomach" nature, Jamala's story gives us both inspiration regarding the possibilities AND insights into how a beginner can use EFT even for such a serious ailment. I believe she would have received much quicker benefits had she consulted a skilled professional in the field and I must, out of prudence, recommend that people consult such professionals for severe cases such as this. However, Jamala knew no one in this field and had no money to pay them.
That notwithstanding, Jamala's healing qualifies as spectacular. She says, "The tumors, the angina pain and arrhythmia, the headaches, the panic attacks all sort of drained out. I woke up one day and they were just gone."
Hugs, Gary
Hi Gary
I have had PTSD all my life. My father was a POW in Japan for three years. We all know how brutal the Japanese were on these men. At the end of three years of torture, my father was on a ship 1 mile offshore when the atomic bomb was dropped and, accordingly, suffered radiation sickness.
GC COMMENT: This is important input by Jamala. Abuse cases like this almost always involve abusers who were badly abused themselves. The temptation, of course, is to place blame on the abuser when, in fact, long term healing requires understanding and forgiveness. As easily seen by Jamala's experiences below, Jamala's father wasn't "bad." He was ill.
JAMALA CONTINUES: I remember my first memory of "life". I do not know if it was conception or birth, but I believe it was conception. I screamed in horror and did everything I could to get out of the body, to die. Anything but face this madman.
He abused me horribly from the first moment of my life. I had PTSD from my first moment of life. For all intents and purposes I was born in a concentration camp and raised on terror, hatred, beatings and starvation. Isolation was big, left for long periods of time alone in the dark, probably like the boxes my father was put in for punishment.
I never functioned normally in my life. I was a dead limpless infant and could not eat sleep or eliminate. I could not learn, could not color in kindergarten. I never laughed or smiled and had no idea how it felt to do so. I threw up most days and sobbed every day of my life as
I woke from sleep from grief that I was alive again. I would beg and plead with God to end this now. By the time I was 11 years old I had severe panic attacks that lasted all night long. I would go in the bathroom and writhe in pain for hours and hours feeling like I was dying, like my heart was being crushed and I was being murdered. Then I would pass out on the cold floor from exhaustion.
I finally was given Valium, age 12, I often took almost 50 mgs a day because I was so locked up in terror and all manners of pain. I was a walking panic attack and I walked into walls from all the drugs.
I had migraines daily by age 12. I looked like Dracula's daughter my whole life. There is literally not one photo of me available. I destroyed them all because I looked so dead.
So, OK, I learned basic EFT some 10 years ago from a chiropractor, just the tapping on the side of the hand. I did this almost every day all those years, but for pain relief because I was in too much pain to be consistent with anything.
GC COMMENT: It is important to note that, at this point, the ONLY thing she learned was tapping on the Karate Chop point for physical pain. With persistence she was getting results despite her lack of training in the process. Tapping only on the Karate Chop point does not even qualify as beginner's status. It is pre-beginner's status.
Even though she had no money and no help, she still received benefits. With help or better training, of course, she could have experienced much quicker and deeper results.
JAMALA CONTINUES: Sometimes I had a miraculous relief, I would be doubled over and then suddenly OK. But the next pain was right behind it. I had no money so I had no one to help me or guide me through this. I was going through incest recovery and all that.
GC COMMENT: I spoke with Jamala by phone and learned that 3 months ago she downloaded our free EFT Manual and that allowed her to apply EFT much more efficiently. This is still a long way from the sophisticated refinements in our EFT training videos but it does qualify her as at least a beginner.
JAMALA CONTINUES: I really started to apply EFT this past year, and more specifically this past fall. I finally cleared myself enough to be able to get up every morning and do it like a program.
I would do collar bone breathing first and then sit in a crossed legged position, close my eyes and start with whatever idea was in my mind that moment. I would tap that idea, say for example, "even though my stomach feels like I swallowed a bowling ball", "even though I want to die" ( that one was always loaded), "even though my head hurts", etc. Then I would allow my thoughts to flow and follow them, like a vipassana meditation. I EFT'd whatever next thought flowed. I would stop if needed to do.
GC COMMENT: This is a superb, creative use of EFT. It is a form of "chasing the pain" (which is covered in Steps Toward Becoming The Ultimate Therapist ) only it goes a step further. Instead of limiting it to physical pains as they shift around the body (typical of some EFT sessions), she also applied it to her thoughts.
JAMALA CONTINUES: The end result (three months I did this) is I rarely have a panic attack anymore. I occasionally get the beginning of a migraine but work it out pretty fast. I had huge tumors in my uterus and ovaries and was almost bleeding to death every month, so I targeted them specifically a month ago and they are all gone!!!
Our bodies and minds present many symptoms at a time, but there is always one core energy to it all. To try to EFT with each specific thing was driving me crazy. I could not keep doing it, there was too much. I eventually stopped being "specific" and started to get "core".
GC COMMENT: To me, the most efficient way to apply EFT to complicated issues is to break them down into the SPECIFIC EVENTS that underlie them. This is a highly effective way to go about this process. However, a newcomer such as Jamala who has no other guidance or outside help can, and did, find this to be difficult. It is easy to resolve one SPECIFIC EVENT and then shift to another painful issue quite quickly. This can be disconcerting until one has more experience with the process. Thus, there is no ONE way to do any of this. We must be flexible and take our clients by the hand and walk with them down their most gentle path.
In my phone conversation with Jamala, the "core" that she was talking about had to do with some spiritual understandings that come from A Course In Miracles .... forgiveness and Oneness being among them.
JAMALA CONTINUES: I unplugged that core and everything began to empty out. Like washing out a dirty garbage can. My body shifted into a cleansing mode. I had a stomach ache for 6 weeks during which I felt I was going to die, but stayed focused on this following the stomach ache, like a good craniosacral unwinding. Then it suddenly emptied out. The tumors, the angina pain and arrhythmia, the headaches, the panic attacks all sort of drained out.
I woke up one day and they were just gone.
I then found myself looking at my few relationships, all dysfunctional, and let them go. I spoke honestly to everyone I knew, which I was afraid to do before, I began eating only raw foods. I signed up for a class that was just for fun, the first in my life at the age of 48, threw out all my old clothes and got new ones (OK from the second hand store but new to me). Now I am looking at my work and affirming I choose to earn a living doing what I enjoy and do well, and it will not be a rival for my spiritual life, which is what I live for.
EFT is a powerful tool for transformation. There are other things we must do along with it, following the healing process on every level as it presents itself, making the changes, but it is definitely a powerful primary tool. Everyone can be helped with it.
I was a trained holistic therapist so I know the levels of severity human beings can be damaged at. I was a worst case. I was the worst life case I ever saw and I had many a guru in my life whom I asked for help. I was considered incurable by every healing modality. And I was incurable, but I learned the curing and healing are different. There are a lot of people who may be considered incurable, but every one of them is capable of being healed. And I know because I should have died decades ago. I beat all the odds. So I know there is not anyone out there who cannot follow in my footsteps and do the same.
Blessings to you,
Jamala Rose
