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EFT With Energy In Mind - No Sore Spot - Heart Healing - Crown Point - Under Arm Point - Ring Finger - EFT Finger Points - EFT 9 Gamut - Deeply & Profoundly - Breathing - EFT Heart & Soul

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Changes To The Classic EFT Protocol - What & Why

EFT With Energy In Mind

Silvia Hartmann writes: I have personally worked with the Classic EFT protocol for five years without fail and would like to start by saying that whatever EFT protocol you are familiar and comfortable with, what works for you, is what you should be doing with EFT.

The Classic EFT Protocol has helped many people and introduced us all to the concept and practice of EFT, so of course I am very fond of it and have resisted changing it for the better part of a dozen years now.

However, there have been significant advances during these last 12 years on the nature of energy work.

Energy work is not the same as psychology or physiology; it is a field in its own right with its own presuppositions, methods, techniques, instruments and theories.

And EFT is an energy technique. EFT is designed to remove energy blockages from the energy body in order to bring about changes in the energy system which then reflect in changes in the physiology and psychology.

• When we tap on a meridian point, it is not the material fingers on the material physical body that bring about changes; it is the energy hands touching the energy system which do the job.

People in the past have really been reversed to and afraid of "admitting" even to themselves that what they are doing when they tap EFT on themselves is ENERGY WORK. It's not psychology, and it isn't medicine or physiology either.

By trying to play down and/or ignore the simple fact that EFT is ENERGY WORK, one might say the point of the treatments was often missed; and more often still, EFT treatments were simply not as direct and effective as they could have been.

The conscious mind and what it thinks whilst we are tapping EFT has a lot to do with how an EFT session works; and if EFT practitioner and client are tapping in a confusion as to what they're doing and why, and how any of this works, likewise confusing results come into being instead of perfectly simple, arrow straight, practical, results orientated energy work.

The more the practitioner of EFT especially can embrace the concept that we are working with energy and the energy body, the better the treatment flow of an EFT treatment will become.

The treatment flow of a Classic EFT session can have its ZZZTs and energy blockages; places where the smooth communication and rapport between EFT practitioner and EFT client can break down; reversals, problems which impede the power of the EFT treatment.

In the Heart & Soul protocol, we have done our best to remove these practical blockages to a smooth energy based treatment flow and make it so that each and every single round of EFT produces the maximum increase in energy flow possible for this one client here today.

The moment a person places both hands on their heart of energy, we are in a natural place where their healing hands become activated also (their hands of energy) and for the practitioner, we are reminded that we are not "stimulating glands" or "massaging neuro-reflex points" but instead are working with the energy body - full stop.

• The entire Energy EFT Heart & Soul Protocol has been designed with energy in mind.

This is what distinguishes modern Energy EFT from the Classic EFT protocol which wasn't quite clear about what we were tapping on and why, or even how these changes came into being.

When we focus all our activities in an EFT treatment or self treatment on improving the flow of energy through the energy body, we get better results, faster.

At the end of the day, EFT Emotional Freedom Techniques is here to help people gain freedom from negative emotions - which are the direct feedback system of the energy body - and to change their experience of a variety of other problems by addressing the energy body.

We as EFT practitioners and EFT teachers are trying to help people feel better.

The faster and the more elegantly we can accomplish this, the better for all concerned; and by focusing on the real driver behind the changes we can expect with EFT, namely the energy system, we unlock the power of EFT to help people feel better to a whole new level.

In this spirit, here are the changes that were made and why they were made.

 

 

 

No Sore Spot

The Sore spot has always been a sore spot with many Classic EFT practitioners and clients.

Yes, it is sore.

But that's half the problem; the other half is to convince people to start stabbing around on their chests when they first learn EFT to find something that hurts.

We found this to be very distracting and actually quite destructive if you are trying to build confidence and as a first introduction to the whole idea of EFT.

If a client can't find it, and often they don't, you've basically dug a hole for yourself, for the EFT treatment and the client that is going to be very difficult to climb out of again.

If they do find it and stab it too hard, as newbies invariably do, they have a pain experience that distracts them from the actual problem at hand and again, they don't like it, it increases resistance, and also the expectation that this will hurt again at some point.

So I quietly dropped the sore spot within the first 20 clients as being unhelpful and replaced it with the flat hand placed over the general area where the sore spot resides, instructing the client to feel the warmth of their hand coming through the clothes, and making their opening statement much as you would swear allegiance to your flag.

This is before the sore spot was dropped in many other places and replaced with the reversal correction on the karate chop point; I liked the “placing the hand on the chest” start for the EFT session so I used that instead in most cases.

When we developed the simple but profound Heart Healing technique in EMO, I started using the Heart Healing posture to start an EFT session instead.

 

The Heart Healing Posture

The Heart Healing posture is very centering; and the heart of energy is the structural center of the energy system. Any healing intention placed there has the widest ranging benefits for the entire energy system; plus placing both hands on the center of your chest to make the opening statement is mindful, and very focused.

The Heart Centre is *the* place for all and any global reversal corrections and much more effective than any of the "lesser tapping points" to achieve stabilisation of the entire energy system.

If a further global reversal correction is required, this will come on the karate chop point towards the end of the treatment anyway; but Heart Healing has a better chance than both sore spot AND karate chop point to deal with global reversals, right there and then.

As I have often noticed that people at the end of a round of Classic EFT can appear confused and disorientated, not knowing really what to do next, I appended the Heart Healing posture at the end of the protocol one more time.

• Here, three deep breaths are taken in the Heart Healing posture to bring the treatment together, focus, ground and center the client (or the self in self help treatments) and to literally give a breathing space for cognitive insights, which is very valuable indeed.

This way, the EFT protocol gains a definite start, and a conclusive end; it makes the treatment feel very complete, from start to end.

Clients like this, and I do too.

There is an additional bonus to this, namely that in public or in self help, simply assuming the Heart Healing posture can stabilise a person quite profoundly and with practice, can set a kind of automatic EFT experience in motion which is very helpful.

* See also Heart Healing here.

 

Top Of The Head or Crown Point

On the top of the head is a massive congregation of all kinds of energy exit and entrance points and in much energy work, a central "power channel" that goes straight in through the top of the head is physically experienced. In long standing EFT practice, this area on the top of the head often unlocks many things. It has been said that it is particularly useful in the treatment of addictions of all kinds, but as a real power point of the energy system the top of the head area can probably help with almost everything.

It is also a natural natural starting point "from the top down" which is a feature of this protocol and as we tap/touch/massage down the body on the EFT treatment points, going with gravity, stress release feels easier and more natural.

 

The Third Eye Point

There are a myriad points that could be added to the basic EFT tapping routine; the only one that I always wanted to add was the Third Eye Point.

This is one of those things that is in global consciousness and that just about everyone knows signifies something spiritual – even if it is because the spot was observed on the foreheads of Indian ladies, the Third Eye point is something that people really understand and take to right away.

To start the round with the Third Eye point to me signifies that we are asking our higher selves to become involved and to call on higher powers to assist this endeavour of healing or change.

If a person thinks of the Third Eye point as a connection to higher forces, to their own soul, to their energy mind or to other unknown higher powers, this definitely shifts the EFT round towards a more rounded, spiritual form of healing and self healing.

This is just a slight shift; and it is isn't spoken as to a beginner, the points are just where the practitioner says they are. In my experience, adding the Third Eye point is natural, and very helpful to lead into the round proper.

 

To Monkey, Or Not To Monkey?

I am referring to the Under Arm point, of course.

This is, especially for beginners, but pretty much always, a definite state breaker to the whole EFT round.

For beginners, it can be very off putting both to see it being done, as well as to try and find the point and to tap on it.

Putting people off is never a good thing because EFT needs to be given the benefit of the doubt, and the smoother it can flow, especially on the first contact, the better for all concerned.

Some might argue that the Under Arm point is very necessary and causes many good shifts, and this is true; however I have weighed this in the light of other points that were dropped out for similar reasons, most notably the point that lies in older women beneath their breasts and who would have to lift their breasts up physically in order to tap that point.

The loss of neither point has significantly affected the effectiveness of EFT treatments, so I decided to drop the Under Arm point.

For beginners, the “monkey scratch” is that one step too far, presents too great a danger of the whole technique becoming “ridiculous” and leaving it out flows both the demonstration as well as the session better, which in and of itself expedites lerning EFT, and then healing and change through EFT, by virtue of design.

 

 

Keeping The EFT Finger Points

Since I originally developed the Heart & Soul Protocol, it has become fashionable to drop all the finger points and to tap only the face.

I have discussed this with colleagues and they agree with me that the fingerpoints are useful in the treatment flow as the tapping moves down the body and out in the end, all the finger points offering a potential pathway for stuck energy to flow out of the body.

There are many other reasons for keeping the finger points in the protocol; one that I gave to a novice this morning was as follows.

When you are in a fairground, and you're paying say, 1 dollar for ten bullets at the shooting booth, and you want to get a nice stuffed giraffe for your girlfriend, would you rather have ten bullets, or twenty?

Of course, someone who has been doing EFT for a long time and who is a “good shot” as it were, can know immediately which points need tapping to get a good shift, and they can certainly “get by” on the face points alone.

But a beginner is generally grateful for those extra bullets, the extra attempts AND the extra time spent re-balancing the energy system is a good thing, if you are a beginner or not. You simply improve your chances to “hit the right button” and have the problem reduce, or disappear altogether.

 

Ending The Ring Finger Confusion

If I got a dollar for every time someone asked me, “But why don't we tap on the ring finger?” and me wearily replying, “That point is covered by the Gamut point which comes later ...” I would be a lot richer than I am!

And why bother?

It is NATURAL when you're tapping the fingers to tap all five of them.

It is natural, it is obvious, and it ends that question for good, once and for all.

The extra taps won't do any harm and the treatment flows MUCH better if we include the ring finger – and there are bound to be some energy channels running down that finger too, one way or the other, so we might as well tap it and save all that ring finger question trauma and confusion!

 

Removing The 9 Gamut Treatment

Unlike many others, I am not averse to the 9 Gamut Treatment per se, if we leave out the humming of “Happy Birthday” for beginners especially.

I find the jumps in the eye movements very interesting, but then I'm an NLPer, so I would.

I keep the 9 Gamut Treatment as optional and something to do if the treatment gets stuck, or something extra is required; this is also so for the Collarbone Breathing technique.

With elegant and thoughtful opening statements and the right encouragement from the practitioner, these things are rarely needed as the round itself delivers the changes in the context of a HEALING TAKING PLACE spontaneously between the client, and the practitioner, that is above and beyond all the tapping that goes on at the surface.

 

Deeply & Profoundly Loving Yourself Is Optional

I have found, once again and especially when dealing with beginners, that the phrasing of the set up plus "and I deeply and profoundly love and accept myself" causes all manner of unnecessary conflict and confusion.

Most importantly, what are we tapping on when we are adding that tail to the set up?

In theory, it would be nice if people did indeed deeply and profoundly love and accept themselves, but that's an EFT treatment (or two, or three) in its own right and is rather irrelevant to whatever the set up statement or opening statement may be.

I have found in years of practice that it is much simpler and easier to simply state the problem in the client's own words as directly and succinctly as possibly and to start the EFT treatment as soon as possible.

Once an opening statement has been found, we can consider it in the Heart Healing posture, tune into it fully and then start to tap down the body, starting with the head, and the reminder phrase is then the same as the opening statement which further clarifies what we're actually working on and lessens confusion across the board.

So if the problem is, "I'm afraid of the dark," that is the opening statement and the reminder phrase all the way through.

The "deeply and profoundly love and accept myself" can be appended if that's required, or any other form of such a statement that's appropriate. Care should be given that the EFT treatment round remains focused on the actual problem and doesn't get side tracked into other issues.

 

Breathing Between The EFT Tapping Points

Breathing is so important in energy work. It relaxes, releases stress and improves energy flow dramatically. Especially in emotional distress and under high stress, people can "tap frantically" and although all tapping is good, the effectiveness of EFT treatments can be improved considerably by taking the time to take a deep breath in and out before moving on to the next EFT treatment point. This also creates a rhythm to the entire session which is very stabilising and helps the energy flow.

Combined with the three deep breaths in and out in the Heart Healing posture, this is a very helpful addition to make EFT treatments flow beautifully and feel good.

 

 

The Energy EFT Heart & Soul Protocol Complete

 

 

So here is the Heart & Soul EFT Protocol all together:

1. Assume Heart Healing Posture and take three deep breaths, in and out.
2. Say the opening statement and start tapping/touching/massaging the top of the head. Take a deep breath in and out before moving on to the next treatment point.
3. Continue in the same way to the Third Eye point and all following points.
4. Top of the Eyebrow
5. Corner of the Eye
6. Under Eye
7. Under Nose
8. Under Mouth
9. Under Collarbone
10. Thumb
11. Index Finger
12. Middle Finger
13. Ring Finger
14. Little Finger
15. Karate Chop
16. Return to the Heart Healing Posture for a moment of silent reflection. Take three deep breaths, in and out.

This completes the EFT Heart & Soul Protocol.

I offer this not as a replacement for Classic EFT, but simply as an alternative that works well and flows well, and is more happily embraced by some clients and audiences who are a little uncomfortable with a too mechanical seeming approach to mind/body changework and healing.

The EFT Heart & Soul Protocol - © Silvia Hartmann - 2003/2009/2011

 

* EFT mit Herz & Seele auf Deutsch here.

* Do the new Energy based Energy EFT Foundation Course (includes Positive Energy EFT!)

* The EFT Heart & Soul Protocol is used in the EFT Master Practitioner Training Course certified by The GoE.

 

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EFT With Energy In Mind - No Sore Spot - Heart Healing - Crown Point - Under Arm Point - Ring Finger - EFT Finger Points - EFT 9 Gamut - Deeply & Profoundly - Breathing - EFT Heart & Soul

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• 👉 Further Information: Changing The Classic EFT Protocol To Energy EFT Heart & Soul