It’s all in the voice.
I can watch a video of some doctor in a white coat, informing me intelligently what I need to know to live a better life.
And then I click away. I forget what I’ve learned within milliseconds. “Oh, look at that cute cat video!”
But there are some people I just can’t resist. I don’t know why.
I devour everything they have for sale: videos, books, audio recordings. They could be explaining the Martian quotient of the moon, and I’d be drifting away to their voice, lost in my own private sea of peace.
One of those people is Brad Yates.
He’s married, he’s graying, he wears glasses, but there’s just something about him that’s so darn cute. He used to be an actor and attended clown college. Maybe that explains it.
If it weren’t for his adorably appealing voice, I would have never tried Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), better known as tapping.
Tapping is a bit weird. You tap your body on specific places while repeating affirmations. It stimulates the same energy meridians as acupuncture, leading some to dub EFT “emotional acupuncture.”
As an alternative therapy, EFT doesn’t have the weight of the scientific establishment behind it. But unlike conventional therapies, it doesn’t require a serious investment in time or money.
You do it at your leisure, anytime, anywhere. It can take as little as 5 minutes. You can experiment with free videos online, learn how to do it yourself, or work with a practitioner.
And there are tapping programs for everything.
Trauma and anxiety, aches and pains, fears and worries, phobias and addictions, hopes and dreams, health and wealth, you name it.
But mainly it’s nice just to sit with Brad for a few minutes. Listening to his hypnotic voice and drifting off to sea…
For me, one of the best parts about learning EFT has been absorbing the philosophy behind it. No problem is big enough to give up on yourself.
In fact, no matter what is happening in your life right now—no matter what you’re struggling with—you can love, honor, respect and accept yourself. And you can expect others to do the same.
There’s a lot of love in EFT. It’s a practice that acknowledges our deepest fears, brings them to the light, and returns to the truth.
The truth is that we’re all beautiful beings who deserve love, honor and respect. We don’t deserve to be punished. We deserve peace and happiness.
But sometimes living in a head can be punishment enough. Our thoughts cause us pain. We dwell on thoughts of inadequacy, humiliation, revenge, or dread.
If we look closely at those thoughts, we often find there’s no basis to them. It’s very unlikely that we’ll never be loved again. It’s very unlikely we’ll end up living on the streets or becoming a bag lady. It’s much more likely that life will turn okay.
Life usually does turn out okay in the end. Wait long enough, and you’ll eventually realize that everything happened as it was meant to.
But, in the meantime, there are problems to be dealt with. And tapping is here to help us through the worst.
A tapping video will ask you to follow along with the practitioner as he or she taps specific places on the head and body with the index and middle finger of the dominant hand.
As the practitioner taps, he or she will make general statements about what it is like to experience this problem. You’re asked to repeat those statements.
As you tap and repeat after the practitioner, you may find yourself awakening to a new understanding of the issue. You realize the way you’ve been thinking hasn’t worked. You can choose to see the problem from a new perspective.
As you open to the idea that this issue doesn’t have to control your life, you feel freer and lighter. You can be imperfect and still love yourself anyway. What a wonderful realization!
That’s my experience, anyway. Yours may be different.
If you’re open to alternative therapies and curious about digging into stuck emotional patterns, then tapping may be a good addition to your toolkit.
Or just try a tapping video one day instead of watching cute cat videos. See which brings warm fuzzies to your heart faster.
And enjoy the quality time with some pretty amazing people. Tapping is attracting a lot of attention among luminaries like Jack Canfield, Arielle Ford, Bob Proctor, Cheryl Richardson, and Joe Vitale. I haven’t even mentioned Nick Ortner, who’s the rising young star of the tapping world. Married, sadly, but there you go.
Just follow along and let your mind open.
Let us know what you think!