by Dr. Pat Carrington

Gary,

Before the details fade in my mind, I've been wanting for some time to report an EFT "intentionality" episode which I experienced when I was flying back from the Toronto Energy Conference last Fall.

Two seats away from me was a young woman I would guess was in her early twenties. She was dressed in a corporate manner with an attache case at hand and seemed to be trying to come across as very cool and professional. But as we waited for takeoff, I noticed she was grasping a book tightly in her hands -- not reading it, just grasping it, her fingers were very tense. As the motors began to rev up, her jaw became tightly set, her body stiffened up remarkably, and her knuckles were almost white because of the intensity with which she clasped the book.

Since there was an empty seat between us I could easily have moved over and mentioned to her, casually, that there is "a new method that people, including myself, often use when flying to make the flight more comfortable at take-off and landing," and then shown her either an energy chord or an abbreviated tapping procedure -- something I've frequently done with other flight passengers when it seemed appropriate to do and for which they've usually been very grateful.

But something told me not to do that. I could see that this young woman's pride was strongly involved in keeping up a properly cool, calm and collected appearance. Her distress seemed deeply embarrassing to her and something she wanted to hide at all costs.

I decided instead to do surrogate tapping for her fear. I did this by going through the entire basic EFT sequence in my mind several times with no overt movement on my part (something I usually do with myself -- it often works better for me if I do EFT mentally than if I do it physically), and I mentally repeated the affirmation "Even though I'm terrified by this plane trip......" and used the reminder phrase "Terrified of this plane trip."

It took about three rounds of surrogate EFTing before I saw her finally look down, loosen her tight grip on the book and hold it in a more normal fashion. I was getting a 6 -7 SUDS rating for her now, rather than the 10 she had, I felt, started with.

PAT CONTINUES: I continued mentally tapping for about another three rounds and then I heard her sigh and open the book. At that point the plane took off and I saw her fingers tighten again somewhat, but not nearly as much as before. I continued to do rounds of surrogate tapping for her, and after another three or four rounds she settled back in her seat quietly and began to actually read, even though the seat belt signs were still on and the plane still rising steeply. She seemed to me to be about a 2 or 3 now, so I stopped "tapping" and turned to things of my own.

Although it seemed as though she had responded to my surrogate tapping, I certainly couldn't prove it. I had to consider the possibility that maybe this woman's usual pattern when flying was to tense up before take-off and relax when the plane began to rise. My tapping might have been coincidental.

I wasn't aware of her for the rest of the trip until we were about 15 minutes out of Newark airport when the flight captain announced that there were bursts of 40 mile an hour winds over the airport and that we might have to circle until we found a strategic way to land, and that we could expect some rough weather while landing.

This announcement was followed by the rough weather itself -- sudden drops and uncomfortable bumps -- and we did start to circle the airport and continued to do so for 20 minutes. I was immediately concerned about the young "executive" and looked to see if this somewhat unsettling situation was causing her anxiety to rise again. To my surprise, although she had tensed up a bit (not really abnormal under the circumstances) she was by no means panicking, I'd say her SUDS level was about a 4 or 5.

I started surrogate tapping for her once more, which turned out to be good for me to do because this way I didn't have time to become concerned myself about the circling, and once again I saw her relax and her SUDS level come down, I estimated, to about a 2 or 3.

I was still not sure whether what I was doing had any influence on her or whether it was all just a coincidence when I noticed that the young woman had begun absent-mindedly to stroke each finger of her left hand. She was doing this very tentatively, almost dreamily, and in a kind of bewildered way. She started lightly stroking her thumb and sort of held it lightly as though exploring it, then went on to the next finger, and the next, very slowly. The way she did this was as though she didn't really know what she was doing, or why she was doing it. It reminded me of the way a post-hypnotic subject carries out a post-hypnotic command -- sort of somnambulistic and uninvolved. I began to get kind of dreamy myself while watching her. I thought "I wonder what on earth she's doing?"

Then I realized something that, as the phrase goes, blew my mind. I realized that at the exact moment that she had been dreamily handling the fingers of her left hand, each one in turn, beginning with the thumb, I myself had been imagining tapping, one by one, in the exact same sequence, the fingers of "our mutual" left hand. She had been in synch with my progress through the EFT sequence.

Coincidence? Always possible of course, but the odds against it this time were thousands and thousands and thousands to one.

The incident ended with even deeper relaxation on her part. She was now so comfortable (after this second series of rounds of surrogate tapping) that as the plane continued to circle, coming down, rising again, coming down again -- she seemed to become more and more at ease, and finally, as it came in for landing, instead of bracing herself like almost everyone else was doing, she yawned and stretched her legs out under the seat in front of her. No other person that I could see around me did that, including me!

I think I should add something I consider probably essential to this outcome. It's that I felt incredibly close to her throughout this whole episode. I experienced a kind of natural oneness with her that made this our mutual triumph -- not hers, not mine. Because of this, when we were leaving the plane, I glanced at her to see if in any way she was going to acknowledge this closeness. But she didn't. She didn't return my glance and there wasn't even a glimmer of recognition. Only I saw that she was fine and there was good color in her face.

This absolute unrecognition on her part of what had happened, this completeness of the episode for its own sake -- no acknowledgements necessary -- made it even more meaningful to me. In some things "thanks", and even acknowledgements, can trivialize a happening because it divides people from other people. Who really is the thanker, and who the thanked?

I'm impressed by this episode -- inwardly and outwardly. It has brought home to me more clearly than ever before the amazing non-separateness of us all, right there before us when we choose to tune in to it.

Maybe that's the most important message of surrogate tapping.

With best wishes,

Pat Carrington