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AM I BECOMING MY MOTHER?
By Pacharee Pantoomano

For me, the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) adventure started with this question. I have two small children, a 2 year old and an 8 month old. Like most children around this age, they are exploring their world and developing at a rapid pace. As a mother, I'm eager to help them learn. Though at times, I find myself impatient and distracted. More often than I care to admit, when I had these feelings, I could hear my mother's voice coming out of me. The high pitch fear laden phrases that she use to say to me, I was repeating them. Some of these were things I didn't like to hear when I was a child. Frustrated by my own actions and words, I wanted to find a constructive way to deal with it. My goal is to become a better parent; to do that I realize that I had to heal my relationship with my own mother.

I had heard about EFT for a long time, but was unclear about its purpose. My initial feeling about it was that people seek this type of help because they are down or depressed. Because I didn't see myself as being as such, I didn't think it applied to me. However, as student of life, I thought why not find out more about it. A woman named Shalini had contacted me about her EFT service and asked if she could post an article about it in an e-newsletter of the organization that I run called the Bangkok Network of Women (BNOW). She provided information about herself and her credentials. We chatted via e-mail and through her I learned how EFT works and what's involved. From what she explained, EFT is a simple method that can be applied to a huge range of emotional and health issues. Our negative emotions and thoughts create a disturbance in the energy flowing through the body. This disturbance can make us feel "out of sorts" and also manifest into a physical ailment, i.e. chronic headaches, backaches, fears, phobias and various other physical illnesses. For some people, this state of mind/body becomes a daily occurrence and people justify it, accept it, and make it a part of who they are, though they are emotionally and/or physically suffering.

At our first session, I related to Shalini my frustrations and my goal to be a better parent. Shalini gave me more background information about EFT. EFT is an energy balancing technique that helps alleviate emotional and physical problems. Basically, EFT can be seen as a form of emotional acupuncture (except no needles are used) or as an almost instantaneous stress management tool. The process of EFT consists of tapping on the end points of various energy meridians while you're "tuned in" to your distress. These points are the same as those used by acupuncturists. For the sake of simplicity, EFT uses only 8 to 12 points, depending upon the practitioner. By tapping on the energy meridians, you re-balance the energy flow thus causing free-flow of energy and thereby finding relief from the emotional or physical pain.

After an hour of discussing EFT and the issues I wanted to addressed, we began the EFT exercise. She asked me to close my eyes and review a past stressful situation in my mind. As I started to remember images and sounds from the event, the feelings also surfaced. Shalini started tapping on my meridian points. While she tapped, she asked me to repeated phrases such as “This negative feeling, I release and let it go”. The relief is nearly instant. It felt like a brick wall had been knocked down, weights lifted off my shoulders and I literally felt lighter. We worked on related issues surrounding the same subject and the effects were the same, a sense of release, lightness, and well being. I made peace with my childhood and my mother. I spoke with my mom a week later and we had a great discussion. I didn't mind listening to her advice. I understood this is her way of telling me that she loves me and my children.
In my second session with Shalini, we worked on other root issues. She also taught me how to tap, so that I can manage my daily stress. I tap about 3 to 4 times a day. I find that it helps me refocus and see the positivity in every situation. Instead of stewing in the car about being stuck in traffic or angry that the plumber didn't show up, I tap my hands and release the negativity and within minutes I find that I'm alright with the world and the world is alright with me.

For an EFT session contact Shalini at 089 825 2631 or shalini@eftthailand.com.