Archive for the ‘Complementary Therapies’ Category
Courage to Accomplish Change
Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all. From now on you will be travelling the road between who you think you are and who you can be. The key is to allow yourself to make the journey.
Author Unknown
Energy Therapies Can Defuse Bad Memories
From the Psychology Today Blog with Eric Newhouse
Published on February 13, 2012 by Eric Newhouse in Invisible Wounds
After reading Dr. Norman Doidge’s remarkable book, The Brain that Changes Itself, I tracked Doidge down by phone at his office in the University of Toronto to ask whether neuroplasticity (see my previous blog, “The Plastic Brain”) could be used as a therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“Yes,” he said immediately, adding that EMDR was the most promising treatment that he was aware of.
A number of counselors are already using eye movement and desensitization reprogramming with promising results. EMDR involves remembering a painful incident, but stripping it of its emotional content by asking the patient to follow the therapist’s fingers with his or her eyes. Then when the memory is stored away again, it’s in a less threatening form. Dr. Francine Shapiro, the founder of EMDR, found that three 90-minute sessions could alleviate symptoms of civilian PTSD in more than 77 percent of the patients she treated.
Several years ago, I interviewed Heather Krysak, who had recently ended a nine-year career with the New York National Guard in which she had been involved in heavy combat in Iraq that left her battling anxiety, fear, nightmares, depression and anger.
“Eye movement desensitization was really weird,” she told me. “It brought things out of my memory that I had been totally repressing from Iraq. One moment I was laughing, and the next moment I was crying.”
While she still experiences nightmares, she said, they were less intense and much less frequent after her EMDR therapy.
A related alternative is emotional freedom techniques (EFT), which involves remembering a painful incident. Four elements are generally components of this trauma: 1) it’s a perceived threat to survival; 2) it overwhelms the coping capacity, creating a sense of powerlessness; 3) it violates expectations; and 4) it creates a feeling of isolation and aloneness. While remembering this trauma, the vet puts a positive spin on it and begins tapping a series of acupressure points (the same points that the Chinese have used for acupuncture over the past five millennia). A vet might say, “I had to shoot the kid who ran toward my Humvee wearing an explosive vest, but I completely and fully accept myself” and begin tapping his way through five acupressure points on his face and three on his torso. For exact locations, check out the EFT Web site:http://www.eftuniverse.com/
One of the most passionate advocates of EFT is Ken Self of Boston, a veteran of 11 years in the Marine Corps who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and two more tours in Iraq. He had three issues that were crippling him emotionally, including being forced to shoot a child. “That came back to me night after night for years,” he told me recently. Before he started the therapy, he rated his anxiety levels as 8 on a scale of 10, but after tapping them out, they were reduced to 0, he said.
“After tapping, you still have the emotion, but it doesn’t own you,” he said. “It’s not overwhelming. It’s just a memory.”
For more information, visit the Veterans’ Stress Project at http://www.stressproject.org/
The Veterans Stress Project has completed a study in which 59 vets with PTSD received EFT. EFT is a drug-free coaching technique which can be done via Skype. It involves brief cognitive and exposure protocols but adds the novel element of the vet’s own physical stimulation by light tapping. Before treatment, the group averaged 66 on the Traumatic
Stress Disorder Checklist-Military (PCL-M) test on which 50 or above is considered PTSD, but after six one-hour coaching sessions, the average score dropped to 35. On follow up, average scores remained far below the clinical criteria for PTSD at 35 on three-month follow-up and 38 on six-month follow up.
Dawson Church, founder of the non-profit, concluded: “The wait-list group’s results were unchanged over time, while the EFT group demonstrated statistically significant drops in PTSD, from clinical to subclinical scores, as well as improvement in the severity and breadth of a range of comorbid psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. The results of the present study are consistent with previous trials showing that brief EFT interventions improve PTSD as well as co-occurring conditions, with gains maintained over time.”
The Veterans Stress Project is looking for vets with military-related stress who are willing to participate in further studies, including an exact replication of the trial described above. For more information, visit the Veterans’ Stress Project Web site, listed above, or call 707-237-6951.
While I’m not affiliated with EFT in any way, I should say that I have personally benefited from it. In 1997, I was driving my rig along a frontage road outside of Great Falls, Mont., when a battered old car slowed down in the approaching traffic lane and the left turn signal came on. Just as I approached it, the car edged into my lane and broadsided me on the driver’s side door. My rig dropped into the ditch, came up over a driveway and became airborne. It landed on its passenger side wheels and rolled; I remember seeing the windshield blow out in slow motion. The rig was totaled. I was unharmed but very shaken up.
For the next few years, I had an unusual reaction every time I approached a car signaling to cross my lane of traffic. My heart started pounding, my throat constricted, my mouth got dry and my gut twisted. I generally had a strong urge to stop dead in the road and wave the guy in front of me across the road.
Then a friend introduced me to EFT. The next time an approaching car signaled a left-hand turn, I told myself, “This scares me, but I totally believe that driver will obey the traffic laws.” Tapping seven pressure points seemed too complicated, so I just tapped my own breastbone, right over my thumping heart. After four or five encounters, I was totally surprised to realize that I no longer needed to do it. And it has not been a problem since.
I wondered at the time if that was like PTSD so I asked a local counselor about it. “You were probably suffering a small stress disorder, but a tiny one compared to most vets,” he said. “You were in an accident, but you weren’t harmed, nor was anyone else. You weren’t out in the field, picking up pieces of your friends and putting them in body bags. And this happened to you once, not two or three times a day for 12 or 15 months.”
That gave me a whole new appreciation for what our combat vets are going through.
Breakthroughs in Energy Psychology: A New Way to Heal the Body and Mind
Yoga, meditation, massage, acupuncture, and herbal remedies; these are just some of Eastern medicine’s contributions to our decades-long search for ways to live well with fewer pills and less-invasive health care. Toward that end, I’m excited to report that there are promising new findings in the field of energy psychology, specifically about a practice called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), or tapping, that is taking our search for holistic solutions to an exciting new level.
What’s unique about EFT is how it combines Eastern wisdom about acupressure, or “meridian points,” in our bodies, with traditional Western psychotherapy. The practice consists of tapping with your fingertips on specific meridian points while talking through traumatic memories and a wide range of emotions. “Acupoint tapping sends signals directly to the stress centers of the mid-brain, not mediated by the frontal lobes (the thinking part, active in talk therapy),” explains Dr. Church, Ph.D., who has been researching and using EFT since 2002. Because EFT simultaneously accesses stress on physical and emotional levels, he adds, “EFT gives you the best of both worlds, body and mind, like getting a massage during a psychotherapy session.”
In fact, it’s EFT’s ability to access the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of your brain that initiates your body’s negative reaction to fear, a process we often refer to as the “fight or flight” response, that makes it so powerful. “By reducing stress,” adds Church, “EFT helps with many problems. There’s a stress component to sports performance, business and financial pressure, and most disease. When you reduce stress in one area of your life, there’s often a beneficial effect in other areas.”
Church estimates that 10 million people worldwide have used tapping, and what’s so exciting is how incredibly quickly it’s alleviating issues like depression, anxiety and insomnia, as well severe PTSD, physical pain, even illness.
At this point you’re probably thinking what most intelligent and sane people are — how is that possible? How can tapping on “meridian points” resolve serious health issues? As an EFT practitioner and the producer of the movie The Tapping Solution, it’s a question I’ve been asked repeatedly over many years. In fact, you’ll often hear me refer to EFT as “this strange tapping thing.” Fortunately, there’s very real science (and results!) behind it.
In partnership with Dr. David Feinstein, Dr. Church has been able to confirm that tapping on specific meridian points has a positive effect on cortisol levels. Cortisol, known as the “stress hormone,” is integral to our body’s “fight or flight” response. Originally designed to help us survive life in the wild, the “fight or flight” response was essential when our ancient ancestors were faced with sudden, brief danger like, let’s say, a tiger. However useful in short bursts, releasing cortisol too frequently, as we seem to be doing in response to the ongoing or “chronic” stress of modern life, may have serious, even scary, impacts on our physical, mental and emotional health. In fact, living in this kind of biological “survival mode” may be making us more vulnerable to everything from cancer to heart disease, and more.
In Dr. Church’s study, 83 participants were separated into three groups. One group was guided through an hour-long EFT session, the second group received an hour of talk therapy, while the third, the control group, received no treatment. The group that did an hour of EFT demonstrated a 24 percent decrease in cortisol levels, while the other two groups showed no real change. The EFT group also exhibited lower levels of psychological symptoms, including anxiety, depression, and others, as measured by the Symptom Assessment-45 (SA-45), a standard psychological assessment tool.
Research suggests that EFT may be so effective because of its perceived ability to balance out the nervous system, leveling off the activity of the parasympathetic and sympathetic regions. Responsible for promoting cell regeneration and relaxation, the parasympathetic region helps to slow your heartbeat, support digestion, and more. The sympathetic system, on the other hand, prepares you for vigorous physical activity by speeding up your heart, constricting your pupils, and so on. As noted in Church’s study, imbalance between these two regions is associated with a long list of health issues, from high blood pressure and heart problems (most often seen in those with an overactive sympathetic region), to depression, fatigue, and weakened immune response (in those with excessive parasympathetic activity).
In his study findings, Church asserts that EFT, which he refers to as “acupoint treatments” produces “a neutral emotional state,” which, biologically speaking, is the gold standard of health and wellness. It’s also the state of well-being people have sought to achieve for millennia through meditation, prayer, yoga, and other mindfulness practices.
Dr. Feinstein, a clinical psychologist who uses EFT in his own practice, adds that EFT is an “unusually precise, rapid, and direct for shifting the neurological underpinnings of a range of psychological problems.” In fact, he adds, “the number of therapists using EFT has been rapidly increasing over the past decade, and now peer-reviewed research is showing that their instincts have been right. Surprisingly rapid outcomes with a variety of disorders are being documented.”
The results of that documentation can (and will!) impact millions of lives in incredibly powerful ways, which is why I’m excited to share a host of new studies with you here, in future posts. In the meantime, I look forward to hearing your feedback. Are you familiar with tapping? Do you use it yourself, or know others who do? Are there specific topics you’d like me to focus on in future posts?
Nick Ornter is the creator and executive producer of the hit documentary film, “The Tapping Solution.” His new book on EFT will be published by Hay House in April 2013. To get a copy of his free eBook, “Tapping Your Way to Health, Happiness and Abundance” visit visit TheTappingSolution.com
Source Huffington Post
If you would like to experience EFT then please call us here at Accomplish Change Clinic in Dublin where Aisling Killoran or Ray Manning ( two experts EFT trainers and practitioners ) will be happy to help you experience positive change in a short amount of time !!
Stress,What is Stress, What causes Stress and how do you release stress?
What is Stress, What causes Stress and how do you release stress ?
What is Stress? Is stress making you sick ?
Stress is your body’s way of responding to any kind of demand. Both good and bad experiences can cause stress. When people feel stressed by something going on around them, their bodies react by releasing chemicals into the blood. If their stress is in response to something emotional which is often the case and there is no outlet for this emotion it gets stuck in the body, the body feels under attack and starts to create illness if not dealt with.
What causes stress :
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Stanford University Medical School, and numerous health experts, the number one killer on the planet is STRESS! Up to 95% of all physical and nonphysical health problems have stress as their origin. Every time we have a health problem we should be asking, “What stress is causing this, and how can I eliminate it?”
Wrong Beliefs Cause Stress:
According to research at Stanford University by Dr. Bruce Lipton, stress originates from wrong beliefs we hold about our circumstances and ourselves. These wrong beliefs cause us to misinterpret our circumstances, our environments as threatening, which creates internal stress.
Stress comes from the inside out. Because of these false beliefs and misinterpretations, you then view your life, your personal circumstances and the world around you, as being dangerous and threatening to you causing the cells in your body to break down so you are less able to heal yourself and the body looses its capacity to heal naturally.
The Real Problem:
The destructive internal images that we broadcast sends a signal of fear all over the body, sending the nervous system into a state of fight or flight. This state is synonymous with stress. Over time the fight or flight syndrome will lead to illness and disease, and our internal defense mechanisms begin to shut down resulting in anxiety disorders.
Are you experiencing stress in the work place ?
Are you looking to reduce stress ?
Are you ready for some stress relief ?
There is a way to reduce the negative Stress through stress management techniques.
How do you release stress ?
By using EFT Emotional Freedom Techniques, you are able to change these false beliefs, and misinterpretations. When YOU relieve stress the body goes in to healing mode. Your immune system then becomes “supercharged” and you rid yourself of illnesses, and protect yourself from creating new ones.
Your body is the world’s most perfect healing machine, when your cells are not forced into a defensive position, brought on by stress.
EFT – Emotional freedom technique ,gets to the heart of the matter and has been shown to address the real cause of sickness and disease at the cellular level… where disease, illness, and sickness actually starts.
Dr. Bruce Lipton, a former Stanford Medical School Research Cellular Biologist says in his New York Times best selling book “The Biology of Belief,” that the stress that causes more than 95% of all illness and disease is caused by a wrong belief. That wrong belief is an interpretation of destructive cellular memories.
So these memories give off destructive energy signals of fear, anger, low self worth, depression, sadness, anxiety, overwhelm, irritation, resentment, bitterness, panic disorders, manic panic you name it. There are hundreds of wrong beliefs that are interpretations of our cellular memories and our experiences.
EFT heals destructive memories or beliefs which allows the immune system to start to heal whatever needs to be healed.
There are so many sources that are saying similar things to Southwestern Medical School and Dr. Lipton about these unconscious or sub-conscious memories, wrong beliefs, as being the very source of stress related illness and disease which brings about anxiety, be it generalized Anxiety disorder, social anxiety, nerves, panic attacks etc…
While you can take stress tests everyone is different so the best way to reduce stress is to be aware of the Symptoms of stress and take action to bring your mind and body back into balance using EFT Emotional Freedom Tapping, Hypnosis, Meditation, along with many additional therapies that we use at our clinic in Sandymount or Ballinteer.
If you would like to reduce stress then please call us on 01- 2986507 and we will help you relieve stress easily and effortlessly. Aisling Killoran & Ray Manning
