Sufi Wisdom

Many years ago, in a poor Chinese village, there lived a farmer and his son. His only material possession, apart from the land and a small hut, was a horse he had inherited from his father.

One day, the horse ran away, leaving the man with no animal with which to work the land. His neighbours, who respected him for his honesty and diligence, went to his house to say how much they regretted his loss. He thanked them for their visit, but asked:

‘How do you know that what happened was a misfortune in my life?’

Someone muttered to a friend: ‘He obviously doesn’t want to face facts, but let him think what he likes, after all, it’s better than being sad about it.’

And the neighbours went away again, pretending to agree with what he had said.

A week later, the horse returned to its stable, but it was not alone; it brought with it a beautiful mare for company. The inhabitants of the village were thrilled when they heard the news, for only then did they understand the reply the man had given them, and they went back to the farmer’s house to congratulate him on his good fortune.

‘Instead of one horse, you’ve got two. Congratulations!’ they said.

‘Many thanks for your visit and for your solidarity,’ replied the farmer. ‘But how do you know that what happened was a blessing in my life?’

The neighbours were rather put out and decided that the man must be going mad, and, as they left, they said: ‘Doesn’t the man realise that the horse is a gift from God?’

A month later, the farmer’s son decided to break the mare in. However, the animal bucked wildly and threw the boy off; the boy fell awkwardly and broke his leg.

The neighbours returned to the farmer’s house, bringing presents for the injured boy. The mayor of the village solemnly presented his condolences to the father, saying how sad they all were about what had occurred.

The man thanked them for their visit and for their kindness, but he asked:

‘How do you know that what happened was a misfortune in my life?’

These words left everyone dumbstruck, because they were all quite sure that the son’s accident was a real tragedy. As they left the farmer’s house, they said to each other: ‘Now he really has gone mad; his only son could be left permanently crippled, and he’s not sure whether the accident was a misfortune or not!’

A few months went by, and Japan declared war on China. The emperor’s emissaries scoured the country for healthy young men to be sent to the front. When they reached the village, they recruited all the young men, except the farmer’s son, whose leg had not yet mended.

None of the young men came back alive. The son recovered, and the two horses produced foals that were all sold for a good price. The farmer went to visit his neighbours to console and to help them, since they had always shown him such solidarity. Whenever any of them complained, the farmer would say: ‘How do you know that what happened was a misfortune?’ If someone was overjoyed about something, he would ask: ‘How do you know that what happened was a blessing?’ And the people of the village came to understand that life has other meanings that go beyond mere appearance.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change...

What the bleep do we know?

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.

EFT - Try it on everything

EFT for chronic back pain

EFT can be incredibly useful for resolving chronic and severe pain issues. One of my most interesting and dramatic cases so far was with a client called Kay, a lady who had suffered with chronic back pain for the previous seven years. This had been described as a muscular issue by medics and for which the client was currently receiving physiotherapy, with no marked improvements at all.

Kay was familiar with energy work, being a Reiki practitioner and had also tried many other forms of complementary therapy (Reflexology, Bowen technique etc), without success.

She moved very slowly and stiffly, had to take the time to push herself up from the chair using her arms and found it painful to bend over to pick anything up from the floor. She also had shoulder and neck pain a lot of the time, and was struggling to cope with everyday tasks that involved lifting or physical activity. She rated the level of intensity at about a seven (on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst) at a specific point when trying to get out of the chair, and said that she was only without pain whilst sat still and upright and that any movement started the pain off. Her body language was tense; she rarely smiled and explained that she felt constantly tired and very depressed about her condition.

After explaining to Kay the nature of eft, we began tapping just on the physical sensations to begin with;

“Even though I have this sharp stabbing pain in my lower back when I try to get up from the chair...”
“Even though it hurts my lower back so much when I stand up...”
“Even though I get these pains shooting down my legs...”

I then asked her to test by standing up from the chair, at which point the pain had dropped to around a five. She then stated that she was feeling a tingling sensation and warmth spreading from her lower back down her legs.

We continued to tap then on the feelings surrounding the pain;

“Even though I’m so fed up of being in constant pain...”
“Even though I’m scared that I will just have to learn to live with it...” (A lovely phrase from a doctor incidentally that one...)
“Even though I’m so tired of hurting all the time...”

At this point she declared that the warm sensation was moving down her legs and that her feet were beginning to tingle. She described a feeling in her back that was like the muscles beginning to relax.
We tested by getting up from the chair, and the pain had dropped to around a three. She then stated that the pain in her shoulder and arm was getting worse.

We then tapped on this, before which I asked her to be aware of thoughts and feelings that may surface during the tapping round. After this she said the pain had moved to her heart. At which point she announced “Oh! It’s my Dad!” and burst into tears. (Kay had lost her Dad to cancer about fifteen years before)

As she was very upset, I began tapping for her on the Karate point, while she told me how she felt about her Dad’s death, and was ok with me continuing to tap whilst I repeated what she had said;

“Even though I still miss him so much...”
“Even though it’s not fair and he should still be here...”
“Even though I’m angry because he was too good a person to go so soon...”

It was of course very emotional, and we managed to get it round to;

“Even though it still hurts so much... maybe I can keep all the love and happy emotions and let go of this pain...”
“Maybe Dad would want me to feel the love and move on now... maybe I’m ready to let go of the hurt, maybe I can still keep the happy memories...”

Kay calmed down during this, stopped crying and visibly relaxed as I continued to tap for her. When I finished she gave me a big smile and said she felt light and completely free from pain. I asked her to stand again, which she did gingerly – but completely pain free! We both looked at each other in shock, and then had her walk around, bend over to pick something up from the floor and sit back down again. All of which she did without a hint of pain! I then commented on the fact that she still seemed fearful of standing up, so we then tapped on any remaining fear of the pain, after which she stood up normally with smooth movements and dramatically altered body language. She stood up straight, her head was held high and she was relaxed and fluid in her movement. Even her eyes and skin were brighter and seemed to have improved in appearance.

She then tested again and could get up and down out of the chair easily, bend over to pick something up and even touch her toes! She literally danced around the room in excitement, stating that she hadn’t been able to do any of this for such a long time, she had forgotten what it felt like to be completely pain free. She couldn’t stop laughing and hugging me and I felt truly humbled to be able to experience seeing this healing take place in front of my very eyes.

Since that session, she reported slight discomfort in the lower back area the following day, which she promptly tapped on and got rid of, and has had no reoccurrence of the pain whatsoever since then. Not only has she experienced the physical benefits, her emotional health has benefited enormously and she is much more light-hearted and prone to laughter than I have ever seen her. This one session took place just over two months ago and to date she continues to improve daily.

The Secret

Introduction to EFT by Gary Craig

Changing negative thoughts

One of the biggest obstacles to creating the life and future that you dream of, can be the occurance of negative thoughts. Thinking of what has happened in the past, worries of what might happen in the future, these all have an impact on the way we feel in the present and therefore affect what we attract into our lives.

Even though we may know logically and consciously what we should be doing (ie thinking positive thoughts) sometimes it can be really difficult to know HOW to change our negative thinking and what we need to do to stop those thoughts when they arise.

Unfortunately we don't come with an instruction manual and we tend to find that the more we try not to do something, the harder it is to stop. One of the main reasons for this is that your unconscious mind doesn't recognise negatives, such as no, stop and don't. For example if someone were to say to you "Whatever you do, DON'T think about a pink elephant!" - you think of a pink elephant. You can't help it - in order to dismiss something, you have to first think about it.

Abraham says, when you look at something and you shout no at it, you include it into your vibration, when you say to yourself "DON'T think about that" you are actually telling yourself in fact think TO about it, and including that into your thoughts. However when you change whatever you don't want into what you do want, for example, instead of "Don't forget your keys" you say "Remember your keys", you include remembering your keys into your experience. If you ever find yourself saying what you don't want to happen, use that to imagine what you do want, instead.

You can change how you feel about your thoughts, by using the way that your mind naturally processes information. When you think of a memory that you feel very strongly about, either positively or negatively, you experience it with your senses. You may get a visual image in your mind's eye, you may have sounds or voices connected to it, it may even have smells and tastes and you will also get a feeling that goes with it.

When you have a strong emotional reaction about something, those senses tend to be amplified, so the image will probably be a movie as opposed to a still image, brightly coloured, quite close and big and you may be imagining it through your own eyes. The sounds may be quite loud, clear and near and you may get a physical sensation in your body that matches the emotion.

If your thought is one that makes you feel strongly negative, you can adjust each one of those factors so that your brain interprets the information differently and therefore doesn't react in the same way. So for a negative visual image you can:

Imagine you can see yourself in the image instead of through your own eyes.
If it's a movie, make it into a still image.
Make the picture black and white, and push it further away.
Shrink the image or make it see through

For auditory elements, such as a negative internal dialogue, you can:

Turn the volume down
Make it come from further away from you or a different place
If it's an internal voice, change it into a funny voice, such as your favourite comedian or Donald Duck.
Make it softer and kinder

On the flip side, you can also use this to create compelling visual images of what you do want, which helps with manifesting your desires. To do this, reverse the above - make images more colourful, bigger, bring it closer and see through your own eyes. Turn sounds up, make them clearer and surround sound or give your image an inspiring or motivating soundtrack. When you say positive things to yourself, say them in your mind loudly in an excited, motivated tone of voice (or calm, relaxed etc).

Your mind is an incredible learning machine, and it doesn't take it very long to learn new ways of thinking about something. If you keep repeating your adjustments, your brain learns to think in the new way and does it automatically for you. Then by being able to adjust your thoughts so you can feel better right now, manifesting what you do want instead of what you don't, becomes a lot easier.