Mind, Body and Spirit

I attended a local Mind, Body and Spirit event this weekend. There seemed to be a huge number of delegates, with a wide variety of stalls, ranging from beautiful hand made gifts, to therapists with massage tables doing all sorts of treatments, even the wonderful aura camera, as you can see from the pic.

I was at the event mainly to network and get the chance to talk about EFT. The most common query was regarding pain relief and I had a lot of interest in my Pain Relief with EFT course, which is running on Saturday 29th November. This is a group workshop that teaches the basics of EFT and how to apply it to reduce and relieve even severe problems with pain. The current class only has a couple of places left at the moment so I will be organising another one to take place in the New Year.

Another popular enquiry was regarding stress and anxiety, of which there seems to be an awful lot about at the moment. In the current economic climate people are suffering the effects of stress now more than ever and are searching for alternate ways of handling the problem, rather than having to rely on medication. While I am an advocate of antidepressants and such like where needed, I feel it is equally as important to treat the causes of the problem, as well as the symptoms. I think that in order to be able to cope better with the effects of stress, we need to know exactly how change our thoughts and what we need to think in order to feel better.

One common problem is that we often tell ourselves and visualise what we don't want to happen. We imagine the terrible things that could happen to us and we feel bad about them now - even though they haven't happened yet! Whenever we do this, we release the same stress chemicals in our brains that we would if this was actually occuring, and our bodies can't tell the difference between what is real, and what we are just imagining, so reacts by feeling stressed or anxious.

This means though, that we can use this to our advantage when feeling stressed. It's no use telling yourself NOT to think about something, as this will only make you think about it even more. The key is to notice when your thoughts are making you feel bad, and to use that realisation as your trigger to think about and vividly imagine something that makes you feel better. You cannot hold a state of panic and a state of calm simultaneously, and when you turn your thoughts from what makes you feel bad to a specific memory of a time when you felt calm, happy, joyous etc, you release those same calm, happy, joyous chemicals in your brain, and your body responds accordingly.

Think of a time when you felt good and really put yourself into that memory. See what you saw, hear what you heard, and really feel what you felt at the time. Make the picture bigger and brighter, make sure you are seeing through your own eyes and bring everything closer. Amplify the sounds, the smells, the tastes and notice where in your body you feel calm or happy. Give that feeling a colour and imagine that colour spreading and filling your entire body and surrounding you. Imagine that you can spin that feeling, spin it faster and faster until you reach a maximum point of intensity to the good feeling. When you feel that, you can give that feeling an 'anchor' - essentially a connection between the feeling and your anchor. You can squeeze together your finger and thumb, say a word, or imagine a symbol, and you will associate the two together.

You can also repeat this with other, positive memories and anchor using the same trigger, to make a powerful connection to good feelings, whenever you need them.