Seven Years

Dear Tappers

Last week I wrote about the three pillars that support a livelihood based on EFT namely: Experience, Reputation and Systems (or processes). Well that got me to thinking more about how my practice has grown from an acorn to a recognisable Oak over the last seven years and what were the phases that I went through since first reading Gary's manual.

I usually do my thinking when walking, particularly when walking slowly uphill. If I lived in San Francisco I'd be a philosopher! Anyway wandering up Skipton fell the other evening I identified four phases. I'll give those names and write about each one in the next few blogs:

• student
• apprentice
• practitioner
• master

The student phase is when you are first getting your hands on the tools of your trade and more importantly learning how to learn. I feel blessed to have learned how to learn about therapeutic change work through Wilf Proudfoot. Wilf now in his eighties teaches Hypnosis and Neuro Linguistic Programming in Scarborough, North Yorkshire and has done for over twenty five years. Wilf's life has a theme of communication: as an RAF technical trainer; building a grocery business in the early days of supermarkets; as a Member of Parliament; and in owning and managing an offshore radio station.

He told me that as an MP he had been to see a Hypnotherapist for help with his weight. It hadn't helped much but he became fascinated by the process and by the subconscious mind. On leaving parliament he travelled to America and trained in hypnoisis with the renowned traditional hypnotherapist Gill Boyne and then with the greats of NLP: John Grinder, Steve Andreas and Robert Dilts. His greatest influence though was Virginia Satir and he became a good friend of hers several times attended her month long working retreats in Crested Butte Colorado and with her the Evolution of Psychotherapy and other conferences of the Milton H Erickson Foundation.

Wilf then set to work bringing all this skill and knowhow to the people of Scarborough. He began teaching NLP and modern Hypnosis long before these became popular and eager students travelled from all over the counry (and from other countries too) to his intensive week long classes.

It was at one of these that I first entered my student phase and began learning to learn. Wilf teaches entirely by practical demonstration and exercises (he says you can read theory in a book) . He takes a ramble around a topic, invites someone up and works with whatever arises and for however long it takes and then we all split into twos and did the same. There was a lot of laughter and some tears.

Initially it was disorienting for someone who has two degrees and had always learned by theory, by reading and analysing and writing to learn in this way, this playful, practical and simple but chaotic way. Yet somehow I learned to observe people, to listen to their exact words and tone and some natural creativity in me that had been longing for this kicked in and to my surprise I discovered talent!

We got our hands on many techniques of hypnosis and the patterns of NLP in this way. I look back now and realise that as much as learning techniques I was learning how to learn in this new field. Learning what worked through experience, observation and feedback and how to trust my inner guidnace rather than referencing to external authorities.

So that when someone showed me EFT it came easily into my toolbox and I then devoured Gary Craig's (then) three video tape sets and spent long hours in my local library scouring www.emofree.com I started tapping with friends and they and I were astounded as stuff just changed!

The student stage is about getting your hands on the tools in a practical way. Becoming familiar with the techniques. Getting used to being with a person with the intention of their change and letting all your senses tune into them and absorb where they are at. Getting practiced at choosing the approach to fit the person and the problem.

In the EFT world Level One and Two training is your entry to the student stage. Supplement that with Gary Craig's dvds and reading the treasure trove of articles on www.emofree.com The delight of EFT is that there is so much you can use to fuel your learning that does not cost much.

More next week,

Happy Tapping

Gwyneth

Dear Diary...

Oh dear! Its almost the end of August and after my initial surge of blogging enthusiasm back in the cold, dark months of the year, I have been absent from these pages.

Its very like when the diaries I started every year from the age of eight onwards. Few of them made it beyond the end of January. Anyway I'm back with the blog so let me share what's happening in my tapping world.

Throughout the spring I was teaching EFT Foundations and Practitioner courses and am so delighted and impressed by the tapping tales and feedback you send me. You really are trying it on everything... Animals, children and people of all ages and persuasions with great success But I know how much energy, focus and effort it needs to get a fledgling EFT practice to be an EFT livelihood so I'd like to share some experiences and ideas.

In July I was chosen to be interviewed for an EFT Marketing package that brings together the advice, views and business building tips from a range of successful EFT folk including Pat Carrington, Rue Hass, Brad Yates, Carol Tuttle, Rebecca Marina and others. We were all interviewed by Angela Treat Lyon who has then used her talents with both art and technology to bring the materials together. The whole experience of thinking out my own answers to her questions and then reading the responses of successful EFTers was very valuable. I realised just what I have achieved in seven years of focused work.

What can I share? Well the themes that run through all that I have reviewed so far in the package follow the three pillars that structured my own response

• Experience
• Reputation
• Processes (and technology)

Experience is how you get good at what you do. EFT is a craft or a skill that has to get into the muscle - like learning to drive a car or ride a horse or play a ukulele, its about repetition. Doing something over and over so that you don't need to think anymore and that takes you to the stage where you can get creative. Experience is what gets you so good that you have the right to put yourself out there and ask for a return. Experience is so valuable that you don't have to be paid to get it - volunteer or exchange or give your work in return for testimonials. The joy of EFT is that if you are tapping you are learning.

Reputation in how you get found. Its what is added to your skill, your name and the need of someone out there such that they pick up the phone. Reputation needs the hook of your name to hang on, so the first stage is getting your name out there. And in these internet days its so much easier - with technology as your best friend there are so many opportunities for you to spread your name around the virtual world. Even better is that many of them cost no more than your time and energy. The next stage is connecting your name to something that its known for. You may be a generalist who works with anyone who walks through the door but find a theme to write about, to talk to the world about. Then if you can find a niche, a group, a community for whom that theme responates, if you can get talked about in that community, you are on the way to fame. They say in Bollywood: Name>Fame>Gain

Processes are how you make it easy for people who come to you and for yourself. This means at a basic level having a simple way for people to make appointments and get directions. Clear written or verbal agreements. Simple ways for you to keep notes, keep your books, handle receipts. Simple ways to get your name out through leaflets, business cards, websites, blogs, YouTubes, directories and all of that... For me Regonline has not only streamlined my workshop registration but the whole process also looks far more professional. Key to effective processes is making your computer your best friend and getting to know the many ways that the web can turbo charge your ideas.

And after all that remember that you are marketing YOU and not EFT. People buy people and they buy people they like. Just think of the people you buy from- everyone from your electrician to your hairdresser to the bar staff in your favourite pub. So let your marketing, your website, your leaflet, your writing express YOU, who you really are. And let yourself be who you really are, not who you think you should be or try to package yourself as an imitation of someone already successful. And if that throws up writings on your walls, then you know what to do with those!

Invest in yourself. You have spent money, time and energy on building EFT skills and may have become a workshop junkie. So invest in some more skills, writing skills, technology skills, marketing skills, public speaking skills. Local colleges and Business Link have some great value courses and you never know who you might meet because...

You are going to do it yourself but you don't have to do it in isolation. You need support. Find someone to talk business with, thrash ideas around with. Someone who gently stops you going around in circles and points out the obvious and gives you a pat on the back once in a while. This need not be another tapper. I started by talking things through with my accountant (now a tapper, its contagious) and going out for dinner with the owner of my favourite dress shop. Talking with other small business owners is always supportive and encouraging so seek them out and make new friends.

More in my next post, which won't be six months (I have a process to remind myself now). And you can find out here about the EFTBiz package


Happy Tapping
Gwyneth

The Tappers Dance

This weekend I taught my Foundations EFT workshop to a now confident and capable group of tappers. On the second day it was a delight for me to sit and watch them working with each other in pairs. Without hearing their words I could see an intricate play of movement and attention between them which reminded me of watching the balroom dancers that I wrote about in my first post.

Only its different. Watching the balroom dancers one (the man) was clearly leading and the other (the woman) was clearly being led backwards across the floor. Watching EFT I saw that though there is a clear difference between the two players it is a cooperative process of too and fro which starts with a dialogue. One, lets call them the therapist, asks questions and pays rapt attention to the one we'll call the client who answers, the interplay of questions and answers continue until the therapist raises her hands and starts to tap and offer short phrases. The client mirrors the movement and repeats back the words. Then after a few rounds of tapping the two return to the questioning interplay to test progress and find the words for the next phase of tapping.

The words used during the tapping are the words the client has just given the therapist. The therapist may appear to lead the questions and the tapping but the content is given to them by the client. Its a dance of cooperation. In a sense the therapist manages the process and the client manages the content.

Watching the group evolve from first uncertain and mechanical attempts in the first exercise to flowing, cooperative confidence in the fourth I see faces softening, hear laughter and there is a relaxation and gentle openness of expression between each pair, it becomes more and more difficult for me to work out which is being therapist and which is being client. These people are doing therapy, they are working on life long emotional blocks and traumas and yet they look like they are enjoying themselves and enjoying dancing together with EFT.

I've often used the teaching metaphor of the therapist as guide dog. Helping to cross the street but not deciding the destination. Walking beside with gentle guidance and never pulling on the lead. Now I'll use the metaphor of dancers but its just not ballroom!

Your thoughts?

Gwyneth

The Tapping News goes BLOG!

Dear Readers

The Tapping News is the newsletter that I've sent out once a month (or so, sometimes months accelerate without me noticing) for the last four years to those who have trained with me on Emotional Freedom Techniques workshops. EFT is also known as the tapping therapy because that is what we do. Well the Tapping News will still go out in Newsletter form but tonight I have taken this big step into the web of life and here I am BLOGGING!!!

On Friday a girlfriend and I went to The Craiglands Hotel which was our venue last year for www.eftmasterclass.co.uk and is where April's exploration of EFT and Brainwaves will be held www.eftevents.com only this time it was for a night out with the Idle Hands superb local jazz and soul trio. After an excellent meal we watched slightly envious as several couples glided around the dance floor with apparent ease. "Can you dance?" I asked and Linda confessed shamefaced that as a tall girl at school she had been a "boy" in dance lessons and now couldn't not lead! I laughed because that had been exactly my experience too. Every attempt to dance had failed because my body hadn't a clue how to follow and I'd crushed the egos as well as the toes of potential partners.

Of course I got to thinking about EFT. Could I tap to unlearn a learned behaviour? And if successful would I then have to learn the behaviour not learned? This seems to me fundemental to therapeutic change. We learn something when young which fits at the time then as our circumstances and environment change what was once a solution becomes a problem. Part of the change is the unlearning of the old solution and the other part is the learning of the new solution.

Your thoughts?

Gwyneth