Tapping And Self-Care After Trauma

Founder, National Institute for Integrative Healthcare
- Discover how EFT tapping combines emotional awareness with gentle stimulation of meridian points to help calm the stress response and reconnect the mind and body.
- Understand how approaching painful memories one event at a time, with self-compassion and attention to physical sensations, can make trauma recovery feel safer and more manageable.
- Create a personal joy list using practices such as meditation, gratitude, music, movement, and time in nature to make self-care part of your everyday life.
Full Transcript
Welcome and Summit Introduction 0:00
As we tap on these different meridian endpoints, it sends a calming signal to our amygdala. It sends the calming to signal our nervous system. That allows us to actually snap out of the stress response, snap about a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, and allow us actually create a contradictory experience to what we're actually going through right now. So even though I'm feeling all this stress, I accept myself and I am telling my body that it can be calm even in the midst of this And as we do that, we are literally rewiring.
This is Dr. Talks. I am so delighted you are here today because you haven't shown up for me, you have not just shown for the summit, but you showed up yourself. You have shown your own well-being, your highest good, and your best potential. And that is a profound statement. Just think about all the people who are just going about their daily lives, doing what they have always done, thinking what Following the behaviors they've always followed and not give themselves time and space to rise up in consciousness to a higher level You have done that you're exposing yourself all kinds of ideas.
Not only that, you are looking at how to Alchemize some of the terrible things that have happened to you and terrible thing to happen to most of us. So all kinds of damage and disappointment both as children and adults and yet the record shows, the research shows that we can use those very obstacles to be a springboard for our growth and you by showing up here for guests, showing here up for community have made that choice for you. So I congratulate you, I'm so thrilled you're here, and you are going to be so moved and touched and feel a shift in your body as we go through the process we'll go though today.
It's a really practical one and I am also going remind you to have your journal close by. Always have you journal with you for each of these episodes because what we will be doing is we are having you do little mini exercises throughout. So as we hit an interesting point, as be hit someplace you can practice, I'll have you make notes in your journal, and you might do a bit of writing during the course of our time together today. And then also you'll develop those thoughts as time goes on. By the end of the summit, you will have a whole action plan for transformation.
You won't just be inspired, but you look turn that inspiration into an action planet you could apply in and just being inspired, and being a listener, just taking the information in is important in one phase of learning. But applying it is another. I know I spent many, many years going to all kinds of workshops and taking long classes. And I took three-month classes and six- month classes, one-week classes weekend classes virtual classes books and I was thirsty for knowledge. but I know that I was actually not able to assimilate that and turn it into action in my life.
So a lot of that went unused, went unprocessed. It didn't get turned into actual effect of change. I don't want that to be you. i want this summit to the time when you say, you look back and say there was version 1.0 of me and now I'm welcoming version 2.00. Thanks to all those great ideas that i had and turned it to action. so keep that journal handy, make notes, also you can develop those notes as time goes on. I am so thrilled to welcome our guest today. She is a friend. she is A sparkling human being.
Her name is Amanda Wonderland and you can get more information about her and her work at amandawonderland.com. He is an EFT and energy psychology mentor and trainer. he's also trained as a yoga instructor and trauma theory practitioner. She has a degree in gender studies from the University of Texas, and she serves as a mentor for the Short Path to Oneness, a year-long program on awakening based on the developmental stages of the great nondualist teachers. Amanda, I'm so thrilled to welcome you here today.
I am equally delighted to share this space with you and to spend this time. Thank you so much for having me, Dawson. I know in advance for a fabulous time and people will feel the shifts as we we work with these big issues, big concepts and practices. So how did you come to all this? Where did he come from? How did we move to it? What was your life journey that brought you to this point? Well, Blanket statement that I was a bit of a trauma train wreck when I first came into this deep somatic work that has so thoroughly transformed my life.
Amanda Wonderlandu2019s Trauma and Tapping Journey 5:00
There was a lot going on in my childhood, but it initially started in utero. In my mom's belly, I was already idling high. She found out the year that she was pregnant with me that my brother had muscular dystrophy and wouldn't live to adulthood. So while I within her belly she got this devastating news and had a really difficult pregnancy. And so it felt like my whole life, my norm, hum, just kind of a low level stress that ran my life. And so I experienced a lot of overwhelm, a a burnout, perfectionism, people pleasing, codependence, all of these different labels, basically, that I was suffering from.
And so I spent many, many years, at least 20 years in talk therapy and tried so many different modalities. I, like you, was thirsty for transformation, just desperate to break the habit of being myself and could not figure out how to integrate any of the things that i was learning. i would use my affirmations, I would work with the law of attraction, but my subconscious mind still was carrying around all of this low self-worth. So finally when I was able to bring my mind and my body together, it all clicked.
And the sun shone down on me and there was finally hope for a transformation for me to finally become the person that I actually always dreamed I could be. So that's kind of where it came from. The stress broke me until I had no other choice but to find some solution to allow myself some reprieve from it. I'm so glad you did because I was reading a study actually this week about cortisol crossing the placental barrier and the study showed that mothers who have stress in the womb are literally transferring those biological imprints of stress like cortisol to their offspring and offspring have a heightened cortisol response as a result.
So we're actually being trained. to be dressed in the womb. What I'm really curious about is that when you mentioned that that shift you had, was there like one moment there was a big epiphany or was it a gradual series of things? What was the key event there? I think there was a huge moment that happened in 2016 when my entire body was covered in hives. I was working as a yoga instructor in a hot yoga studio, managing the studio as well. So there were just a lot of 24-7 on-call duty work that was there and my whole body broke out in the hive.
and I happened to find tapping. And within a number of days, maybe two days of tapping regularly on this, my hives were completely gone and that was when I was sold. I completely sold on tapping to be EFT tapping, to the solution for me that it calmed my nervous system enough that this evidence, this physical evidence that I could see of my stress completely disappeared. So that is when the shift Fully, fully happened. There were lots of little shifts along the way where I started to believe in my potential to become bigger and better than I was, but I didn't know how to put it into practice.
I'm a practical girl, I need a step-by-step program and EFT provided that for me. So that was when the big shift happened I'm so glad that happened for you. And when we have those dramatic healings like that, when you go from one state, we're already sick to another, where we'll well rapidly, that will catch our attention. It's also been evident to me as I've been reading studies recently, how fast that can happen. So I just want to have you journal right now. Everyone just grab your journals for a moment.
Is there any long standing physical affliction you have that you don't think you can change? Is there any long standing physical affliction you have, you don't think you've been changed, might be chronic pain. About two thirds of adults at some point in the US have a protracted period of chronic, pain that means usually pain of three months duration or more. So is it pain? Is it some other condition? What we find with tapping research is that people's issues, physical issues shift rapidly. Some shift completely, some shift partially, but you will see and feel a change.
In fact, my prediction is many of the people listening will See and Feel a Change in this hour as they tap along with Amanda and me. So in your journal, make note of that, and we'll see if that shifts for you. So then how do you explain EFT tapping to a first-time person who doesn't know anything about it yet? I basically highlight that our mind and body are one and they can't be considered separately. So when we start to treat and notice the mind-body connection and start utilize it for our own good, that's when the transformation can actually happen.
It's emotional acupressure. We basically tap on these nine different meridian endpoints in our face and our torso while we think about some upsetting events, upsetting emotions, stress in general. It is a stress relieving tool. And as we tap on these different meridian endpoints, it sends a calming signal to our amygdala. It sends the calming to signal our nervous system that allows us to actually snap out of the stress response, snap about a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, and allow us actually create a contradictory experience to what we're actually going through right now.
So even though I'm feeling all this stress, I accept myself and I'm telling my body that it can be calm even in the midst of this stress. And as we do that, we are literally rewiring our brains. We are re-laying down new neural pathways for ourselves. So that was the final straw for me when I finally found the neuroscience of it. I was like, I am 100% sold because this is how you can make fast acting and long lasting transformation for yourself. So after the Hives experience where you were seeing this dramatic shift in your physical health and physical body as a result of tapping, what was the next thing you tackled with tapping?
So the hives went away and I had enough power from that revelation to quit my job as yoga instructor and so the hive never came back and i didn't actually use tapping for the started a new job. I was very excited about it. And then as those first two years as a flight attendant went on, I developed lower back pain, chronic, severe lower-back pain. It was excruciating all the time. Very quickly, within a very short amount of time, it was completely gone and it still hasn't returned. So that was six years ago.
And I've had no lower back pain since. That was when I decided to become a practitioner. After I saw how quickly my pain disappeared, I wanted to help other people experience the same results. And did you find an underlying emotional trigger for the back pain? I did. There was a lot of suppressed grief. I lost my mother and my brother at a very young age and lost a lots of other relationships in my life and I hadn't allowed myself to fully experience and process that grief and i was holding all of it.
in my lower back, and I was doing everything I could to numb it. I drinking, I smoking, addicted to everything, in toxic relationships, anything I can do to prevent myself from feeling the pain that I didn't want to feel. And once I finally could allow myself to that pain while keeping my nervous system safe and regulated, it alchemized. and it's now become my superpower. All of this trauma, all of the pain that I went through has now became what has allowed me to facilitate transformation in others.
I know also you've been teaching workshops and making a difference in the lives of others besides your private clients and besides the mentoring and I love you. This is where I talk today to feel free to share stories of people you work with who experienced big shifts in their lives. And let's get a few of those vignettes in there. People you worked with, who you have seen have dramatic shifts once they do that. But yeah, you know, You're right, we tend to mask all of our pain with these other behaviors to distract ourselves, to give us an overlay of other stimulants to perhaps distract our attention from it.
And so it can be pretty scary to actually confront our paint without those things. What do you tell a client who is maybe in those same patterns you're in toxic relationships, addictions, maybe binging, all kinds of others behaviors, how do get them going with a different perspective? We meet them right where they're at in that moment and we take it one step at a time. So I consider that to be my job is to hold unconditional compassion for them so that I can model for what unconditional self-love and self compassion will look like as well.
And then I feel like It's our job just to move them one step forward. So healing for me is getting back to our authentic self, which is unconditionally self-loving and authentically joyful, just like we were when we where those magical little inner children before any of the conditioning or the programming came in. So eventually that is the goal to get to the point where we can get back to those beautiful flowing crystalline blue streams of water without the rocks that have been put in there by our caregivers and society in general.
So I say to them that these can sometimes feel like insurmountable issues and things that you have probably tried to attack from all different angles in
How EFT Tapping Works 15:00
your life, but the best way for us to get to it is to create a safe space in order for you to pull them out one at a time, little by little, and work on them individually. And the beautiful thing about the way that the brain works is that you don't have to work all thousand events, all millions of memories you have. You can work a few in the hippocampus tags, or similar events so you can really clear a lot more just by focusing on one memory or one event. So I say we take it slow with self-compassion and authentic joy as much as we can along the way.
Give an example of somebody who you work with who picked one thing, one particular event, and that was that leverage point that resulted in hippocampus then generalizing that healing and emotional release to all similar memories in their lives. So this last week I taught a workshop at the Being Gathering, this beautiful spiritual gathering in Portugal, and I talked on re-parenting the inner child. And one of the memories that came up for one the participants was that she wanted to wear this white dress.
when she was little. And instead of her father saying to her, no, you can't wear this white dress because of this reason or whatever, he ended up getting very, very upset, screaming and hitting her mother in response to this. So we worked through this event in a group context, but she able to focus on her specific event. And at the end of that, she brought in a different resolution for her inner child. So her father was able to control his temper. He was to explain to her why she wasn't allowed to wear the white dress.
And she said she had never felt that kind of connection with her Father in real life, but it felt so real in this guided visualization with tapping that she felt like years of lack of safety and fear of him and feeling the need to be small and to not stand up for herself and make her own decisions had dissipated. And so she had an action step. I always try to give my clients and participants action steps. How is this going to change how you show up in your life? And what's the first step that you can take to toward that.
And so her first step was having a conversation with her father as her adult self standing in her power, saying, this is what I'd like to have for this dinner together, instead of cowering and being afraid that that old event might come back or something similar. So it completely changed the way that she saw her Father, her relationship with Her father and her ability to show up authentically in context of that, so that was pretty huge. Just in a short hour, long session and visualization. And was that with her real father or was this an imaginary encounter?
So the event was her father but we went into an alpha brainwave state and got into that higher consciousness through our subconscious mind and she did some re-parenting and brought in a different resolution for her inner child and then we integrated it by tapping it all into her body. So I believe that time is not linear and the things that we do to heal our past actually change the way that We show up in our present and in Our future even if it didn't actually happen in reality as some people see it It happened that way for her and so that allowed her to change The way, that she showed up and I think it will change, the, way her father shows up to in relation to her Yeah.
And just having our own brains and our old perceptions change often does shift the world around us. Yes, absolutely. That butterfly effect. Yeah. What do you do personally to bring yourself to elevated states of consciousness? And I've talked to you before about your self care routine, which is a really powerful one. And let's have you just share how you bring your cell yourself. So there's this one phase here, we're just trauma healing, and then to create a different future yourself free of that trauma.
But then also there is this, this this practice of moving into elevated States of Consciousness. Yeah, I think the more pleasure we can introduce to our nervous system, the comfortable it gets with it and the less comfortable with sorrow and distress. So I have a joy list. I've a list of all the things that bring me joy and a lot of them are the thing that brought me Joy as a little girl. I loved camping, I love playing house. So I try to spend as many nights in nature as I possibly can. I tried to earth every day, so walk outside barefoot on my beautiful garden and grass looking out at the ocean.
But one of the quickest ways for me to jump into a high vibe is to turn on some music and sing and dance. Anytime I'm preparing food or making some homemade green juice or anything, if I turn some on music, and singing and dancing, then I am there. It's super duper quick. I do it in my meditations in the morning as well so I really feel into heart coherence and I think about everybody in life that I want to be healthy, happy, peaceful and well. I wish that for myself aswell so kind of the compassion meditation and allow my heart to fill up like a balloon.
with everything that I love about my life, with every thing that brings me joy, and there's nothing that makes the sparkles pop out of the pores of my skin faster than gratitude. So when I spend time every morning in meditation connecting with Source and then spending the rest of time in my meditation stating every single thing I'm grateful for and really feeling it, not out-of-wrote uh routine but really feeling it having that compelling sense in my body that gets me into i have high vibes super duper quickly yeah so here are some practices here to note in your journal i'd like you to just open it again and write these things down and notice the number of practices that amanda is using to support herself now she is not using something she She has experimented with different kinds of practice and found those that really work for her.
She mentioned time and nature. That's one of them. So that may really worked for you. And I recommend that even if you live in an urban setting that you find the closest patch of grass. and goes stand there, Amanda mentioned taking her shoes off and walking barefoot and so that will ground you. Right now I actually have a grounding mat under the desk I'm sitting at so I am grounding myself even though I m indoors and you can ground yourself in different ways like that. The simplest way is just to walk bare foot on the earth.
So that may be a useful one for you, she mentioned compassion meditation. compassion shifts your brain. She mentioned a visualization allowing my heart to fill up like a balloon as I think about all the things I'm grateful for.
Healing Through Specific Memories 22:00
Gratitude is powerful and the classic gratitude practice is just to think of three things that you're grateful or every day and write them down in your journal. And you might think that after you've done that for say 100 days, that's 300 things. Are you running out of things? No, you are not. is how you've sensitized your neural network to gratitude. And you are noticing things to be grateful for that you never noticed before. So the number of things you're grateful, for actually expands and multiplies, as you start to pay attention and to cultivate that gratitude practice.
She mentioned singing. just sing doesn't matter if you don't have a voice like an opera singer or pop star, just saying the same let your heart pour out in in some dance move your body, you know, it'd have to be a fantastic dancer to do it just move body. However, feels natural feel what your buddy is naturally wanting to and then move with that. Putting on your favorite music, putting on music that inspires you, that nurtures you. It's so easy now to have that music. One of the things I'm grateful for is that, I think back to my ancestors, some of whom were nobility in England 200 years ago, and they didn't have what I have, which the ability to say a few words to a device and bingo, I have any kind of music I want.
We're rich in music. So use music to inspire you. And again, there are many other practices that are available as well. Do what Amanda does and cultivate this in your life. It is so easy to do. These are all ways of cultivating gratitude. As I mentioned, these few, make a note of them. Make another ones you haven't tried before. practice different things until you find a group of these techniques that really works for you, that already helps you shift. So thank you Amanda for that wonderful picture.
Yes, absolutely. I think everyone should have a joy list and you can just rotate through everything. You know, if you don't feel like singing and dancing that day, then do something else. But I thing it's wonderful to know what brings you joy and to make that a priority at least one time a day for yourself. those meditations you do, where do you go? What is it like for you when you're in that highest possible state you get to in meditation? I go everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. It often feels like just a white sheet in front of me and it just everything comes together and its all just one.
The mind ceases, the breath regulates and Everything is as it should be. I'm not questioning anything, I am not thinking about my to-do list, and not regretting anything I did yesterday.I am in it. In this present moment connected to all that is. So that's the best description that I can give of where I go. So imagine doing what Amanda does. Imagine starting your day, she mentioned starting her day with meditation, imagine starting day in bliss every day. It's going to change you and change really quickly.
So I strongly recommend you follow Amanda's practice there and just go ahead and jump in. There are lots of bonuses you get here in the summit. You can easily find those, you can use meditations. Do them, start them right away. And there's no reason not to begin your day with that blissful state that then will tend to propagate itself then into later periods of your life. You'll have a better day as a result of that morning practice. So Amanda, as you do these things, obviously, life isn't perfect, you're still hitting roadblocks, challenges, difficulties.
What are some of the recent ones you've had and how do you use your tools to get through them? Some of the recent ones I had is an end of a relationship recently. So that was a difficult kind of rug being pulled out from underneath me. And for a snap second, I started to distrust the process. But because of all these practices that have become habitual for me, surrender and trust, those are the words that I hear the most, that's probably the slogan for my life, is surrender in trust. And as a result of allowing myself to just do that, to trust fall back into the arms of the universe, I saw so quickly the synchronicities and all the reasons that it had to happen this way.
And I literally fell to my knees in tears at the beautiful elegance of these lessons that I'm learning. So even though it was painful and it's still a grieving process sometimes, trusting the process and knowing that it couldn't have happened any other way. Everything works together to produce my highest good and I can see it. I see the bird's eye view and what a gift to be able to see that. So that's a recent one. There's been a lot of grieving and relationships in my life just because of the way I was raised around toxic family dynamics.
There's a lot of trauma growing up. There was childhood sexual abuse. I was raised in a very toxic family with secrets and denial and oppression. And there was a lotta poverty and addiction. So, and there's was lot religious overtones with all of that. so there is church trauma as well. A lot that led to addictions, to eating disorders, suicidal ideations, being hospitalized. It was just trauma upon trauma, upon losing my brother when I was 13 and he was 17 losing, my mother when i was 25 and then feeling completely alone.
All of those things contributed to me just basically needing to open the pressure cooker. because it was so much suppressed and repressed trauma that if I didn't get some help with it, I most likely would have gone a really, really down a different path. And so I'm grateful that it all was kind of the alarm bell for me to come to my senses and say, you know what, You deserve better than this, just because that's always been this way doesn't mean it always has to be this. You can change how you're showing up in life.
Now I want you to do another journaling exercise and that is what is it in your life that doesn't seem like a gift? And what Amanda has said here is that she's seen, for example, in the end of the relationship. she's seeing the gift and that's really advanced gratitude practice sure I'd be grateful for being healthy and for the many blessings in my life but grateful Grateful for people who disappear, grateful for addictive patterns, Grateful for People who betray me, grateful For abuse, really? I mean, can we not be grateful For all of that?
So just take a moment and jot down a couple of things and enough the whole event but just the name of the event and you can work on it later of Things that you have a really hard time feeling grateful for I'm not saying you need to feel grateful to them now But I am saying that in time you might feel Grateful for them and he might have looked back and have very different story around them So Amanda is a mature soul who's done a ton of work and is now able to look back And see even those terrible things with that perspective of gratitude, we don't get there in a minute.
Joy, Gratitude, and Elevated States 30:00
We don' get through hoping to do that. That's something you do after a while. And so I just want you now to think about some of the things in your life that are really hard to understand. Why did that happen to me? Why was this person in my life? why was I abused that way? Just be aware of those things and to just hold those in in your awareness as you move along your spiritual journey. As you resolve your trauma, as he moved these higher states, you may wind up with a very different picture from the regrets that haunted you.
earlier in your life or that haunt you now. So let's give you a moment, give yourself a little bit of self-compassion that those things happened to you. They shouldn't have happened you, they were unfair, it was a tragedy they happened, to they did happen to. And as Amanda is illustrating here, you might learn to see them differently in the future. And we'll do more consideration of this in time. But for the time being, just realizing there are those things that hurt you, acknowledging them, admitting them and putting them in this mix of issues that you work through both in terms of trauma healing, and then moving to those states of self observation and eventually to gratitude.
That was the long list of pretty horrible things. So Well done. You don't have any energy of that now. Like I've seen Amanda in person a number of times and we talk together and you know, Amanda, you just don' carry any good energy with you anymore. It's interesting. No, it's alchemized. It's, the process of the work, It can be done. And that's the most exciting news that I have for anybody. it can, be, done, no matter what you've been through. None of us have escaped trauma. Every single one of, us I've experienced trauma in our lives.
and it doesn't have to run our, lives anymore. doesn' have, to take away our power. Doesn't, have be our excuse for not shining and showing up as our authentic, selves. Can be what propels us into all of those things, actually. Is there a client you've worked with that stands out in your mind who went through a similar trajectory who was faced with the memories and the imprint and after effects of early trauma and had a really big impact on them and then was able to shift and break through? Yes, yes, many.
I actually think that the greater reason that I went through so much trauma was so that i could hold space for people with similar trauma. So I tend to attract people who have been through what I've been, through and sometimes it's almost just in the nick of time. It's like I deal with my own stuff, I process it, i release it I alchemize it and then the next day I get a client who wants to work on that thing. So it's like they they come, I guess the student comes when the teacher is ready. So I worked with a client who had rampant childhood abuse like me and had no trust of any men and Had these very limiting beliefs about There being a lack of good men in the world and also having very low self-worth as a result of all the things that had happened to her.
Maybe seeing herself as only good for one thing because that's all that she was ever valued for as child. And I understand that. I resonated with that and we worked through. little by little, event by event, core belief by core, belief the somatic sensations in the body, the feelings that she could feel, as you say, emotions are just labels for physical sensations. And so getting her really in touch with her body and where she was holding those things have resulted in her showing up in a completely different way.
with her husband, with everyone in her community,with her family, but most importantly with herself. She no longer sees herself as that little girl who's so afraid and ashamed and has to cower because of everything that she's been through or maybe feels like she did it to herself or like, she deserved it in some way. She's no longer that woman. She stands tall, she stands proud, She puts her shoulders back. she knows what she has to offer and she offers it. And she's now sharing it with the world in a really meaningful way.
and that's just one example. I see it happen all the time. It's the most fulfilling job I've ever had to be able to facilitate these transformations and see my clients go from our first session to our final session together. it's mind boggling. So when we go, now you met with people who are in EFT certification learning about this powerful tapping technique, which we'll do together in a moment. And then also people on the short path to oneness, Which is this developmental path of awakening, enlightenment, hitting these elevated states.
What is the difference in that mentoring? And what are some of the states that people in the Short Path are realizing, achieving, experiencing? The difference between EFT mentoring and short path mentoring? Very different. Eft, we're focusing more on emotions. And although I don't think that you can separate the psychological from the spiritual, but I do think oftentimes we need to work on the physiological stuff in order to reach that freedom to go as far as we want to spiritually. But I feel like with EFT, were focusing mostly on the mind-body connection and on helping people alchemize their traumas and acknowledge their emotions and finally accept themselves as they are.
The short path, I feel like, is what happens once you've done all of that. So the short-path is once, you have worked through your personal peace procedure and you actually systematically tapped on all the things that are still hard to understand for you, the thing that is hard for to accept and be grateful for, Then you're able to move into those elevated states of consciousness. Then, you are able achieve unity consciousness throughout the day. With every breath, your able remember who we truly are, why we're truly here.
So the short path, I would say, is just the deepest dive that you can possibly take into your soul, into who you actually are. And I think EFT is a wonderful way to get there. What changes have you seen in people who are mentoring in the Short Path Program? There have been a lot of things that would normally stop them in their tracks. So they will encounter things in life as we all do and it would normal spiral them backward into feeling like they're no longer in control and they don't know where to go from there.
But now that they have these tools, they had these meditation tools and these steps that can take in order to stay connected to what's true. it's almost like water off a duck's back. These things that they encounter in life, they recognize it for what it is. They find the gratitude for, without spiritually bypassing, They're not just coming in with toxic positivity. they're just in a different place, in different frequency.They've raised their vibration, elevated how they show up in their life. And so things just don't trigger them as much.
There not as blocked subconsciously. They're no longer held prisoner to their unwanted patterns and beliefs and habits, and they're actually holding the steering wheel of their life. And so I think that's probably the biggest change I've seen in short path mentees. having the tools not spiral back and you still have those disappointments and challenges and yet you're just at peace and anchored in this state of well-being and notice those things that they aren't able to suck you back in anymore. Yes, there's a divine trust.
That takes that takes its place and you just remember i'm just going to keep putting my foot down and the road will pave itself Exactly as it needs to and I can trust that everything's working together to produce my highest good What a place to be in Yeah, the trust of everything that's worked together To produce the highest go take a moment to write that in your journal And if you don't believe it, just write the words, what if, before it. Yes. And what else is possible? If that's possible. Oh my gosh, What else Is possible for me?
I love that. Yeah. What Else Is Possible for Me? What if everything were working together to produce my highest good? One of the wonderful words for this is pro noia. Yes, Pronoia. You're thinking everything's out to get me. Pranoia is that belief, everything is out support me! Yes! Love it. It's a beautiful song that I love to sing and dance to called Prontoia, it's one of my high energy mixes. Yes it is really good. So let's do some tapping together. I'd love to have you guide everyone through a basic tapping routine.
Guided EFT Tapping Exercise 39:00
For those of you who haven't done tapping before, this is your exposure to it, and you'll literally feel the shifts that happen in your body. So Amanda, we're all brand new to, it just seem we don't know anything about it. Please guide us through. Okay, so we'll start really general today. We're just going to tap on stress because everybody can identify with some stress in their life. So I'd love for you to think of just a recent time that you felt stressed, maybe in the last two days, if not in last week.
Recent time you've felt stress. And I'd love for you to give that a score. We call it a SUD, which is the Subjective Unit of Distress. So zero means I felt no stress in that moment. Ten means, I've felt the most stress that I have ever felt. Before we get started tapping, we want to get the grade of your stress, in this moment in the last week or the past few days. Zero to ten. How distressing was this Moment of Stress for You? And then I want you to feel in your body where that stress lives. So EFT is about mind-body connection, getting that somatic awareness, which means in our body.
My example is I thought I was going to miss my flight coming back from this festival last week and my heart was just pounding and I felt rushed and sweaty and needed to go. So that can be similar to what you may have felt. Notice what it feels like in your body and rate it 0 to 10. And then we'll just get started. I'm going to keep it really general and really simple because I want you to remember that this is a self-administered tool. So you don't necessarily have to have a practitioner to help you through this.
You can use YouTube videos, but it helps to get into a specific moment when you felt this, so I am going keep the words very simple so that you can do it on your own when get home. So we'll start with the side of the hand, and we basically just tap in between the pinky knuckle and the wrist bone. And we tap very gently with other hand. It doesn't matter if it's your dominant or non-dominant. You can actually even tap both sides of that hand together. Then you just have it as hard as you would if you're just drumming on a table.
Like you are just bored. So you want to feel it, but you don't want hurt yourself. Just tapping gently. maybe do seven times on each spot. And we start with an acceptance, a setup statement. So that includes the exposure to how you're feeling, telling the truth of the moment, and then we end it with some type of acceptance. We're going to say, even though I feel the stress in my body, you can repeat after me to yourself, I'm open to accepting how I And if that isn't true, then you can change it to say maybe someday I'll be open to accepting how I feel.
It has to be true for you. And then we do that two more times. Even though I'm feeling the stress in my body, I give my buddy permission to relax anyway. I am open the possibility that my bodily could relax any way. Then one more time. I have compassion for where this came from. And I'm open to feeling calmer right here and right now. Then we move to the top of the head. So just right in the center of your head, right where that baby soft spot is, this is your governing vessel here. We'll just tap here, the stress in my body.
And if you have a specific place, say where it is, we move to the eyebrow, which is right where your eyebrow meets the bridge of your nose. You can tap with two fingers or one finger, but it's important that you get right on that spot right there. The stress in my chest, that's where I felt it, the stress of my heart. And then we moved on to side of the eye, just right were your orbital bone is. Right across from your eyeball. Tap right here. Nice, full, gentle breath as you remind yourself of this stress in your body, that moment you experienced it this week or last.
And then we move underneath the eye, directly below the pupil, also on the orbital bone. This stress on my body. Nice full gentle breathe. And then we move under the nose. So just right in between your nose and your upper lip, tapping right on the center. And, then, we moved under-the-mouth. Right in that divot between the chin and the lower lip. The stress in my body. This stress on my stomach, this stress of my head, the stress and my heart, wherever you feel it. Then we move to the collarbone.
So you have this little clavicular notch in the middle where your clappicle is, and then you can go down an inch or five centimeters, then we go out toward the shoulders an-inch or 5 centimeters and you'll feel a little meaty part there. That's your collar bone point. This is one of my favorite points and I tap on it anytime I feel triggered. Think about what happened last week. or this week when you felt that stress in your body. Tuning into that stressed in body and just tapping here. And then our final point in this nine point sequence is in you armpit.
So basically you put four finger widths underneath your armpits and it's right underneath you arms. It's kind of where the bra line is for women. You just tap there. That's one round and I'd love to just do a quick little nine gamut to see if we can get the suds down. I'm just going to skip a few steps and go straight to this beautiful point called the triple burner, the Triple Warmer Point on the back of your hand. So it's in between your ring finger and your pinky finger bone on your back. And you just tap right in-between there, nice and gentle.
You can even place your hands on you chest if you'd like to. And then we take a nice, full, gentle breath as you close your eyes, tuning in to that sensation of stress in your body. And, then continually tapping that point, open your eye and keep your head steady as your look hard down to your left, like you're looking at your shoulder, only with your ice. Then come back to center with you eyes and look down hard to the right like your looking your right shoulder. then come back to center with your eyes.
Then roll your eye all the way up to the ceiling, keeping your head as steady as you can and pretend that there's a big clock in front of you. So your are going to go all of the up ceiling and then you're going begin circling that clock with you eyes, moving clockwise to one, two, three, stretching as far as can to right and moving all way down to four, five, six, looking down at the ground there and then continue moving to seven, eight, nine, stretching all the way to your left and all of the up to ten, eleven.
We'll do one more circle in that direction. And we're just scraping the edge of the peripheral vision, nice and slow, hitting every single number on your clock as you tune into that stress in your body. This is sending such a strong signal to your brain right now that it doesn't need to be in fight or flight. So moving your eyes all the way around in a clockwise direction, taking nice, full, gentle breath. And then once you get up to 12, we'll go the opposite direction. So we're going counterclockwise, going to 11, 10, 9, moving all the way around, allowing the shifts to happen in your body, paying attention to where that stress was living.
And we will do one more circle in this direction counter-clockwise. Beautiful big eye circles, simulating delta brainwave state. allowing you to get nice and calm in your subconscious mind. And then when you get up to 12, you can blink a few times and relax your eyes. Then I like to go straight to the side of the hand where we first started, and we'll just end with a setup statement here. Even though I feel all the stress in my body, or I felt all this stress and my buddy, I deeply and completely accept myself and all of my feelings.
And then we take a break. We relax our hands. This is always when I like to grab a drink of water to help hydrate the meridians. Kind of move the energy through. And then let me check in. We go back to that feeling in the body and your SUD score, zero to 10. Has anything shifted? Has that movement in your body shifted to anything? Are you feeling a bit calmer? How do you feel about that memory of what happened last week or the week before? and see what has changed for you and be open to the energy continuing to move because we've opened up your neural pathways right now by exposing you to this moment of stress and so this is its opportunity to come in and create a contradictory experience of calm in order for your to take it one event at a time learning how to regulate your nervous system when it's dysregulated.
That was beautiful. I'd like to ask you as well to please post your first and last numbers in comments. Let Amanda and I know what was your 1st number and your 2nd number. So if your number was a 7, perhaps your second number is a 2, then let us know that.
Retreats, Teaching, and Closing Reflections 49:00
We don't need to know you were working on. That's between you and you're own personal growth. But it'd be handy to know what your numbers are, and encouraging because it's really wonderful to look at people's numbers and say, see, wow, they went way, way way down. And you have the simple technique, you can use it again and again. You've used wherever you're stressed, made lists of things that stress you out and then work on them systematically. We actually have a whole procedure for doing that in the short path to oneness, we have resources on EFT universe.
We have many different ways of letting you use Eft, and then you can tap along with YouTube videos, we have the whole YouTube video channel. There are all kinds of ways you could use the EFT and implement it in your life. And the main thing is to use it. So here's where I want you to not take Amanda's advice, okay? Here's what she did wrong. You don't want to follow her example. She got rid of her hides and then she didn't do it again. Yes. Don't stop tapping. Even when things feel good, you can still keep tapping to integrate all of that goodness for sure.
We tend to reach for self-help tools in a crisis. And then once the crisis has passed, it's like, I'm over it. Yep, we do. You're absolutely right. And I think if I would have quit like I did the first time, I wouldn't be back here with chronic pain or some other chronic autoimmune disorder or something. But because I've continued, have been able to maintain this beautiful norm, which I'm so grateful is my norm now. I am so greatful that this is how I get to live my life. And you created this beautiful emotional spiritual life yourself.
And so what is your vision for what happens next? Do you feel yourself being drawn to anything? do you have a picture of what might be unfolding for you as the next step? Yes, definitely. I'm running retreats. So right now I am running a woman's retreat called the Personal Peace Retreat where we work through the personal peace procedure which we were talking about. And so I love those types of experiences where you can just spend time together a week long in nature, exploring different somatic practices and learning how to be vulnerable and work throughout things in a supportive community.
So I love doing retreats. I do a free tapping circle every month, the first and third Wednesday of every months, which you can sign up for at personalpeaceretreat.com. And I'm living in Europe right now. So, I'll be moving to mainland Portugal and getting a camper and traveling with my camper in europe and then spending six months back in America with the camper. At some point, I think it would be fun to have a little animal and just keep teaching. I just, there's nothing that makes me come alive more than teaching and mentoring people and facilitating transformations.
So I found it. My purpose, my mission, and nothing's going to stop me from continuing on with everything that's happening already for me. It's wonderful to share this with other people too. You look at people suffering and you think that's so preventable. We have a technique, we have skills, We Have breakthroughs that can prevent that. And so I know that for me too, Amanda, it's powerful to have it as motivation, see people suffering and think, let's offer them these tools that can help them shift.
So I'm so grateful you're doing that. Amanda and I also are at places like Omega Institute. There are lists of these workshops on the EFT universe. You can find them online. Find them on Amanda's website, find the money at the universe website. for more information on the short path, go to theshortpath.com, find these things that speak to you and then pursue them, take action, do them. And then again, as a man and I are saying, recommending stick with the process. So many of us turn to these issues, turn when we have big issues.
We turn these techniques and we find a temporary way of feeling better, but then don't sustain them We want you to be on the sustained personal growth journey, where you really start to express and fulfill your whole potential. So be that person that just applies these things on a consistent basis and then moves into whatever life is calling to you to do. Initially, it's usually trauma clearing that might be expressing your full potential of singing and dancing by yourself. After a while, like Amanda, you might teach others to sing and dance their lives out loud as well.
Staying actively engaged and being inspired. I really think that that needs to be more of a priority for us because we can succumb to the doldrum of everyday life sometimes to this adulting thing. But if we stay actively then life becomes so much more enjoyable. Absolutely. I've also been noticing little tendencies in me to be a little bit less happy than I might otherwise be. Absolutely, observing yourself. I think that radical thought interruption and redirection is one of the most important steps on the spiritual journey, just to be able to hear your inner critic and how they speak to you and replace that with an inner advocate.
And also some of these old tapes that are just running in there to able observe them, pay attention to them and say, that's not mine anymore. That's old. that is remnants from the old me and it's time for me to start integrating the new me. So there's an old you, there is a new you. We encourage you to make finding and then vibrantly and fully expressing the new, you what you do and the direction you move. There are so many tools here. There are so many techniques here, there's so Many ideas here and again, we're encouraging you to look at your journal and to apply these things in your life.
Have an action plan, decide what you'll do and follow through. And then I'm so grateful to you I love when we're teaching together and we are both there sharing with people. It's wonderful. Your energy is just incredibly inspiring to people and I'm so glad you're shining your light so brightly for so many people at this point in your life and looks like you are finding ways to expand that in the future too. I am so grateful for that as well. Yeah, thank you so much, Josh. That's been my absolute pleasure to spend some time with you today.
Hmm, so everyone again you have your list of practices you had your notes, please apply them Please use these practices and then we will be moving into other themes other Possibilities other topics and you'll find this all works together in this powerful hole that can Dramatically shift your life and give you a very different life as you move from that 1.0 version of yourself to expressing your full potential, that healed version, of you that's able to express your potential in the world around you.
I'm grateful you're here. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks dot com. Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on Doctor Talks, real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.

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