By Linda Pincus

My husband, Gary, has experienced atrial fibrillation, or irregular heartbeats, for over two years. He has no heart disease, yet when these episodes occur, he feels weak, lightheaded, short-of-breath, and just plain tired.

The atrial fibrillation occurs somewhere between one to six weeks repeatedly and, when it appears, it lasts for 16-24 hours. Luckily, his pulse stays in the 70's-80's, or we would be in the hospital to convert it back to a normal rhythm. Basically, during these times, he takes to his recliner and pretty much just rests.

He is on no medication other than a daily aspirin, because he is healthy except for this most annoying and at times scary irregular beating. After all, it is his heart...pretty important. The main concern with this condition is the possibility of a stroke from blood pooling in the upper chambers of the heart, and then forming a clot. He didn't even want to take aspirin, but made that concession in the interest of longer term health.

Atrial fibrillation, or a-fib, as we call it, has made an otherwise athletic man who hikes, plays tennis, and is generally quite active, into a sedentary and fearful person during the episodes.

But that was BEFORE EFT.

One day, during one of his a-fib times, I said to Gary, "Look, I know you are skeptical of the EFT I use in my practice to help people with many things, but you have nothing to lose. Why not try it?"

He finally agreed (hooray!), and I told him he had to follow it exactly as I would teach it to him and do what I recommended. He agreed to that too.

I showed him the technique I felt would be best for him. He did it three times, left the room, and I went to my computer to do some work. In about fifteen minutes he was back. I thought he wanted some further instruction, or to tell me that he wasn't going to do this "silly tapping." Was I ever wrong....he told me that his heart was in a normal rhythm...took 15 minutes to convert it back. (Another and bigger hooray!)

That was over four months ago. Gary so far has had no recurrence of the atrial fibrillation. Now, EFT is almost a "religion" to him. He taps every day for a "strong, steady heartbeat" without fail.

By the way....I taught him how to tap for his nightly snoring...and that has ended too. We have two very happy people here (and I am sleeping MUCH better).

Linda Pincus, RN, CC-EFT

Curriculum for Calamus University
By Tam Llewellyn-Edwards

Hi Gary,

I have just heard that Calamus University has accepted my proposed undergraduate units teaching EFT and they will now be available as study units leading to a degree. I have included your video sets as required "reading" for these units, so if you get some strange requests from across the world you'll know why.

Calamus is an International Correspondence University working on the US system of giving students credits for various units they complete on the way to their degree. There are three EFT units each carrying two undergraduate credits. The first two teach to practitioner level and the third is a link unit bringing students up to the latest standard and on to a higher level research degree. I hope this will encourage some students in the future to work for their higher degrees researching the various aspects of EFT.

Hugs,

Dr. Tam Llewellyn-Edwards

Water phobia session saves lives
By Steve Burgess

My client, Doreen, came to me one year ago for help with a severe phobia of sea water. She was able to stand next to the sea on a beach but unable to stand in it. As soon as the water covered her feet she became terrified and had to rush away from it. She was about to go on holiday and wanted to take part in all normal beach activities without any fear. We spent a session doing EFT and I had assumed it had been fixed.

I heard nothing from her for about a year when out of the blue she rang last week and left a message on my ansaphone, "Hi Steve, there's no need to ring me back but you just might like to know that the work you did with me last year has saved my life and the lives of 5 children. Bye."

No need to ring me back? Who did she think I was? I rang her that night and she told me the full story.

Firstly, she told me that the work we'd done last year had indeed shifted the phobia. She was not just OK paddling in the sea but after a couple of days tapping whilst standing in the sea she was able to swim on her back!

Secondly, the loss of the phobia had actually saved lives. A few weeks ago she was walking with her grandchildren and their friends (children ranging from the age of 4 to 11) out along the beach at Cleethorpes, a delightful, sub-tropical (sic) British seaside resort. They walked some distance before realising that the tide had turned and was coming back in.

Cleethorpes Beach, is notorious for the way in which the sea
comes in at speed and in a pincer movement. They were cut off from the main beach and as the water began to rise around them Doreen realised they were in a bit of a pickle. The local coastguards spotted their plight and launched a rescue vessel but because of the treacherous currents it had to take a long route round to try to reach them and would not have reached them in time. A helicopter was launched to assist but by this time the water was raising higher and higher and the stretch of sea cutting them off from the main beach was widening all the time.

Doreen decided that they had to try and escape as the children were becoming more and more frightened. Telling them not to panic, she picked up the youngest child in her arms and together they began wading through the water. They had difficulty walking as they were wading through thick mud which kept sucking their feet down but they kept on pushing their way through the water which got higher and higher around them. Doreen herself
wondered, as the water came up over her waist, if they were going to make it but she kept on encouraging the children forward and eventually they made it back onto dry land and safety.

She had no doubt when telling me all of this that if we hadn't done the tapping last year that they would all now be dead, as she feels that if she had still had had the phobia she would have been too petrified to move off the sandbank with the consequence that they would have all been swept away into the sea.

Isn't it wonderful to realise the unforseen, far-reaching effects that the work we do with clients can have?

Steve Burgess