EFT World Magazine by Gary Williams

Gary Williams

CONTENTS

Editor of the World Tapping Magazine.

Page – 3: Gary Graig Gary Craig shares with us his experiences working with war veterans and also explains how he believes the Emotional Freedom Technique works.

Hi and welcome to another EFT World News. We have so many new things happening with the magazine at the moment that it is preferable for me to refer you to our new social network website: www.eftworld.ning.com

Page – 10: Ingrid Dinter You will discover new interviews and also meet up with fellow EFTers in the chat room or in the forum.

Ingrid Dinter has more on using EFT for people suffering from war trauma.

You can also post in the blog. Soon I will be interviewing the author of the book The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton. Also on the website Dawson Church, who is coming to the UK in May, invites you to attend a special free EFT meeting. Dawson Church is hosting the Scientific Meeting at the Craiglands Hotel on the evening of Friday 29th, which is open to health professionals and all who are interested in promoting the acceptance of EFT. Also Dawson will be looking at Science, Love and EFT on the same weekend of 30/31 May 2009 in Ilkley, West Yorkshire. The cost is £245 for both days, £125 for one day only. You will learn about the breakthroughs of the new biology: Epigene, and the workshop is organized by Gwyneth Moss, EFT Master. Please contact her or go to our website for more details. The theme in the magazine for this edition is working with war and trauma,. Keep tapping! Best Gary Williams

Gary Craig Founder of EFT www.emofree.com

In our last edition Gary Craig kindly talked us through the basics of EFT and how he believes it works. This time we go into the Emotional Freedom Technique in more depth and talk about working with the veterans. GW Recently Gary you posted a video featuring Vietnam and gulf war vets with some horrendous experiences. What was your reason for working with them and creating the new film that you will be releasing on the subject? GC Well, we had done a video similar to that clear back in 1994 and it was called Six Days of the VA, and we decided that we just wanted a more modern version where the cameras were more up close and in people’s faces instead of just using a home movie camera that we used before. So we got these guys together and they all had severe PTSD, which becomes clear if you watch the preview video on the internet. We wanted to see how far we could go and we basically took these fellas from very, very compromised problems to being pretty much home free. The video that you saw shows them being 50% improved and 90% improved and that kind of thing on some of these issues. But we are just doing some other filming now with these same vets in their home towns and just about everything we addressed to begin with is now pretty much behind them. They’re smiling, living their lives, they’re not taking the same kind of drugs, they’re not drinking, smoking and they are happy and holding their jobs. They are citizens again and they are no longer having nightmares and intrusive memories. They do have bad experiences that they would rather not relive but they are able to function in this world as normal people and are grateful about it. GW How does EFT compare to using other therapies on people who are suffering in that way? GC Well I haven’t applied other therapies and all I know is what I here from the vets and the vets have gone through just about everything from conventional talk therapy to just about anything you can name, and other therapies have not touched it anywhere close to what EFT has done. They made a little headway and some progress along some lines but they were still in the toilet, if you will, as far as their emotional baggage was concerned. It wasn’t until they got to EFT that everything lifted so nicely. It is not to say nothing else works but I have never heard of anything that works as efficiently, delightfully and as painlessly as EFT. GW You had a psychologist and psychiatrist attending and they were observing what was happening during the filming. I think there was a 25% drop in cortisol levels reported, which is a measure of stress response and what did they observe? 3

GC Well these particular doctors were not there to do studies, they were simply there to observe. They were really stunned by what they saw because they had been dealing with vets and they know what their problems are, and they don’t make anywhere near the progress that we were making and that’s what they were commenting on in the preview video. So they were really only there to observe for their own information, and to make comments that would be helpful to move the message of our video along. GW And what did they come away with after their observations? GC Well that EFT should be used starting on the front lines and that EFT should be in the VA and used throughout the military prolifically. Now just because they think that doesn’t mean that the VA is going to do that, the VA or Veterans Administration is a bureaucracy and it is not easy to sit there and crack a bureaucracy. You can show them all the films and all the studies and everything else you want. It is not that these people are not trying to help the vets, but with bureaucracies you have certain things that you have to go through. Layers of people, and you have to convince one person and then go upstairs and convince another and it goes on and on and you have politics that get in your way so it is really an up hill battle. I did that video to start to open the minds of the VA and the whole nation, the whole world about what these veterans are facing and the help that is really there and that is basically being ignored. GW I think that the video really helped to show what was going on in the minds of the vets, and the video that I saw was quite dramatic in that sense. GC Sure, it will be even more dramatic when the larger film comes out, what you saw was just a preliminary film or video. GW You talked about when you originally recorded the Six Days in the VA video and I know you have shared with me before that in some ways you would have liked to have kept some things in that you edited out. GC What is interesting about films is that you do the film and you put it out there and you never know how the public is going to respond to it until they actually respond. So I suppose we could put it out and get the response and then we could change it yet again, and we will do that with the new film if we need to. But we are hoping to put out the new film in such a way that we won’t need to make many changes its message will be clear to anybody who sees it. GW I was thinking about the I killed the Kid Video from six days in the VA, featuring Robert, and you edited a part of that out to protect him in some way. GC Yes, we may have had a conversation, you and I, about that a while back and there was a piece in there where Robert just started crying, and he said “you don’t kill little kids” and he just could not get beyond that. Of course when you look at the reality of the situation it was him or the kid as the kid had a hand grenade and was coming right towards him. I took that out for his protection and in retrospect I really should have left it in. 5

GW So after working with the vets and sharing with them what did you take away from your experience? GC The same thing that I took away when I dealt with the vets, clear back in 1994 with the Six Days in the VA. Here is a bunch of guys who the public thinks are very hardened because the public really don’t know them. They are guys who are conditioned to be macho, you know to defend the country, they are patriotic, there is a massive amount of love between them and they have all had this experience. They feel outcast, they are angry about it, they didn’t ask but I guess they volunteered to be in a war but who really knows what you are going to be involved in when you volunteer for a war. Anyway I ended up with a massive amount of respect and compassion for them, if you will. I remember that one of them, whose name was Bob who you saw in the film, and the little story there was that before we even filmed him and he came out to San Francisco, he was not a believer in any of this. He was very skeptical and he said that this was all a bunch of bullshit. He said that several times and I said to him “all I want you to do Bob is say that on the film” and he laughed and indeed he said something similar to that before we started. When we got all done so much was lifted and he was so free that he was able to sleep etc., and he turned to me and said “I love you man, hold on a moment I just need to tap (Gary Craig taps because of strong emotion) hang on I need to sit here and tap”. But you get that kind of stuff and that is your reward. GW And it makes the whole process worthwhile, doesn’t it really? GC Sure. GW And would be very much a sharing experience I suppose in some way? GC Yes, indeed it isn’t just a bunch of therapists trying to wave their magic wand and trying to fix people like a pill is supposed to do. You know if you get down in the trenches with these guys and they tell their stories, they have to trust, and it is very hard for them to trust anybody because they don’t think that anybody understands them. The therapists that are trying to help them haven’t been in the war, they haven’t had their buddies blown apart in their laps and that kind of stuff you know. And so nobody can understand them, and they are right, I haven’t had that experience so how can I really understand that. They have a very hard time trusting and so getting rapport with these guys was probably our biggest issue. The first night everybody was there and we were trying to introduce ourselves. They were just sitting there looking at us like we had come from outer space; you know “what we are you doing here?” etc. The next day we started to do the 6

tapping and we started to get results and then they started to lighten up, and then “oh my goodness look at this!” and then the next thing you know they were just right in there swinging with us and we had all the rapport and trust we needed. We got right down to it and they were willing to go every place with us - it was really a marvelous experience. GW And Carol Look talked about having to tap on herself. GC Well the stories you know they were just not everyday stories. These are horrendous stories and the guys that are telling them are just emotional messes as a result of them. Some of these guys were only sleeping about an hour or two a night, and that would be all the sleep they would ever get because they were afraid to go to sleep because of their nightmares. So they went around with very little sleep and would have drugs in them and everything else, and they would be edgy and socially difficult to get along with, and all kinds of things as a result of this. And to lift even a part of this, and we lifted just about all of it, is spectacular, and we just want everyone to know that this is possible. GW Are there some people that you can’t help in that way? GC I don’t think that there is anyone that we can’t help, I wouldn’t say it that way, I would say that there are some whose situation is so dramatic, and the issues are so deep that they are not just war issues and they go clear back into childhood. They were abused way back and that kind of thing, and that there is so much to unravel that is takes skill and persistence, more with some than others. I don’t think that there is anybody that we can’t help but there are some that need a lot more effort than others. GW I think it was Andy who had other memories that you worked on which weren’t connected with the war? GC Clear back to childhood - you know he was ridiculed and abused by his own father for years and when you go into the service and into war you are taking all those experiences with you, and then when you have your war experiences they build on top of that to create really dramatic stuff. You saw Andy there stuttering and all kinds of stuff. We are doing some followup with him now and doesn’t do any of that now. What you didn’t see on that film is that he used to drive his truck around, and have guns in his truck and would have them sitting on the seat right next to him. He would have to have that because he was hyper-vigilant and just in case there was an enemy. In reality he is in Alaska driving around and doing a job, and there is no enemy. These guys know this logically but not emotionally. Andy doesn’t do or need this any more and so on goes the story throughout all of these guys. You keep at it with these guys and they just keep unloading and unloading and unloading, and then they can get back to being a regular citizen again. GW So you did some really good work with them Gary. GC Oh well it wasn’t just me we had five other skilled EFTers there doing this. 7

GW To beginners in EFT who have watched you doing this serious work it may seem that they could never reach such heights as you have done in this kind of area. GC Well, just starting out you will not be able to do what you see on those films, if all you have done is read the EFT manual then you are not going to be able to go running into a veterans’ administration centre. You may help just with the manual but you’re not going to get the results that we got because it takes more experience. You’ve got to stub your toe a time or two. I sometimes have people say to me “Well Gary I get 100% with EFT” and when I hear that I roll my eyes and my self talk says “Well you’ve yet to run into a difficult client” because they are out there and you know you may just be tip toeing along the surface. But this tool is still unlike any other tool. You can do just about anything with it if you develop the skill, so it takes time to do that. You have to try these things – you’ve got to stub your toe and say why it didn’t work this time. Go back and go through another door and keep going until you say “Ah! There that is why it didn’t work because of this issue”. It may have taken a while to get it. That is why you have to be a real skilled expert at this, the mechanics anybody can do and get results, but you need to be able to get underneath the surface of some of these issues and pull up the important bowling pin before knocking it over. GW So you need persistence and experience to be successful when using EFT? GC Sure GW Well thanks Gary for sharing and talking about your work. GC You’re welcome. For more information and a wealth of knowledge go to Gary Craig’s website: www.emofree.com.

Ingrid Dinter Ingrid specialises in working with EFT for war veterans and also trauma.

Hello Ingrid Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today. Ingrid Thank you for having me. Now Ingrid before we actually get into your work, when you are working with veterans and everything connected to that can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved in EFT. I got involved in EFT in early 2002, EFT back then to me was the answer to the question "Why would something that happens in a moment take a lifetime to get rid of? Why is something that I understand and forgive, and I love the people that did it, why does what they did still hurt me?” I’ve done everything I could possible do to be at peace with myself and what they did. It made no sense to me at the beginning that tapping would release that. But when I first downloaded Gary’s manual I thought he had so much confidence in this that it better work. I tried it out and I was completely hooked. I got the DVDs and studied and went to Gary’s workshops and did everything I could to apply it. Gary Were you involved in therapy before you found EFT? Ingrid I had 3 hours of talk therapy and the 3 hours of therapy went pretty much like this: The lady asked me why I was there and I told her why I was there. Who did what when and why, and where they were in their life when they did it and where I was in my life when it happened, and how they felt and how I felt and how we figured it out and why it is ok to let it go. And she basically sat there with an open jaw kind of saying well you really have it figured out! And I said yeah, well why does it hurt and she basically said well maybe there’s some hidden things and I said well there’s nothing hidden, this is what happened and I understand that and I forgive that and I have no problem forgiving that. I mean it wasn’t the person’s fault. You know it was just an unfortunate situation and I didn’t know why it was still hurting me and I realised there that everything was said and done and something else must be the reason why I still had these feelings. And why it still came up and why it took a good portion out of my day to just think about it, relive it , argue around about it and all the things people do when they are not at all ok with something On a deeper level, I just wanted to get rid of it. I felt that I have no time to waste on things that happened in the past and that if it didn’t bother me so much you know there probably wouldn’t be that much to it. I’m very fortunate, I did not have very severe trauma that most of my clients have on some levels. I relate to veterans more because I am a daughter of a veteran and my father was a world war II veteran. 10

He was a POW (prisoner of war) in Russia in a Russian war camp for 3 years and I think that when you grow up like that you have an understanding that something profound happened and that things are never the same again. And even though my father never talked about it there were true things that we talked about. We talked about true things but we never asked him about anything apart from that. I think that he really taught me that it’s important to find healing and so that’s the first step for me and I didn’t know anything about EFT back then, I wish I had. Gary So the talk therapy didn’t really help in the way that you wanted it to? Ingrid You know, no! I couldn’t really see that therapeutic part in it. I see value in understanding and talking if that’s what we need to do, but what I love so much about EFT is that we don’t talk about why it hurts but that it hurts. We don’t focus on why we are angry but that we are angry and if we weren’t angry any more then what happened really wouldn’t matter so much. It would be a life lesson that is learned that we can be ok with because it happened in the past anyway. And then we can then take and transform into something that we find important in our lives and just talking about it makes us understand what happens. But we still have the feeling or we have to convince ourselves that we should replace one feeling with another feeling. But basically very often we still have to invest a lot of our power and personal energy in dealing with the problem altogether. Whereas after we do EFT we don’t. We don’t have any more charge and any more of our personal power invested into something that happened in the past. We actually take it out and invest it into something that works for us. So, you know that’s where I am with this. The other thing that I would like to say very clearly is that I in no way shape or form want to say that talk therapy isn’t for some people. What I do know is that talk therapy isn’t for the people that I’m working with because some of them have already had talk therapy and some people just don’t want to have talk therapy. So, there’s a place for everything. If talk therapy is for some body they are not going to come to me. I feel in my experience my clients look for me because they don’t want to do talk therapy or talk therapy didn’t work. So, you know there’s really no competition here because for all those people that have good success with talk therapy, that find peace and acceptance, that find the place in their life that they truly want to be, being in a serene and powerful place where they’ve claimed all their power from past experiences through talk therapy, if that’s where they are then good for them. They’re not going to come to me. Many of my veterans have had extensive talk therapy but all that happens to them is that they brought it back up and then they were taught how to feel about it or how to think about it. They said that it doesn’t change the feelings that they have. I still have extreme intensity even though I know rationally I should know that I’m not in a war zone and every time that I feel in a warzone I make myself think that I’m not but it’s not really true in my world so when we tap on it this intensity releases and they realise that on a deep level they are living this moment and that everything else is in the past, so that’s how I see that. Gary When you started to work with EFT on yourself did you ever imagine that you would be dealing with war veterans and dealing with trauma etc? Ingrid Well I think that as soon as I saw the videos it became very clear to me and that was very early on in the EFT course and the DVD’s. So, the capacity of EFT became clear to me very early on, yes. Another thing that I’ve done in my past is that I spent about 5 years bringing 11

humanitarian aid into war zones in Bosnia and Croatia during the war that was going on down there. So, you know I had a lot of exposure to situations like that even though I’m not a veteran. But I do know what it’s like to be in a situation where mortars are flying around where you’re not sure if you’ll make it out. So you know healing, bringing healing to war, transforming war into something better is very, very dear to my heart and I find that with EFT we can do that. Gary Working with EFT with the veterans must be one of the hardest ways of using EFT. How do you do that? Ingrid It’s probably one of the most joyful things I’ve ever done. It’s extremely powerful, it is extremely gentle, working with EFT with veterans is very respectful and gentle and an appreciative way of working. It is so important since we can work with EFT without retraumatizing a person. Without going in and saying you have to bring this all up and then you have to close your eyes and work your way through. We don’t have to do that because we can work so gently by thinking how intense it could be and then just working with the intensity that could be there, if you allowed yourself to feel intense. Taking the next thing and getting rid of that and really inching your way in until the person is really profoundly ready to do the work that they need to do, because we can work this way. It’s a very loving and gentle and joyful and powerful thing to do. Gary And what do you say to people that work in the therapy field, the more conventional therapy field. What do you say to those people that say “well you know you’re just burying these memories, or they are going to come back in ten years time” and that kind of thing? Ingrid I would say that that’s not the kind of experience that my clients are sharing. My clients are telling me that even a couple of years later, because I keep in contact with my clients, I want to know how they are doing, and I check in and say “you know when you think about how your parachute didn’t open how do you feel about that now?” And they say “I’m ok with that”. I say “well if it’s ok do you feel safe to bring that up and really think about it?”, and they say “I’m having this whole memory in my mind right now and it was tough but it’s just a movie now, there’s no intensity there”. And that‘s the nice thing about EFT. We can test, we are required to test. We have to make sure that we don’t cover up because we wouldn’t be doing our clients a service if we cover it up. So, if a result holds up then I know we are done. If a result does not hold up then I want to know why. I want to know what triggered it, what exactly didn’t hold up or if what they feel isn’t holding up is something that we haven’t worked on before, or it might be a new aspect of something very complex that they are suffering from and that might be for example what somebody said. You know when that situation happened I got reminded of my father and I didn’t even remember that scene, and that’s a big deal for me, and we just go back and tap again and get it out of the way Gary And of course even if you did imagine that if it did come back 10 years later then it’s still 10 years of freedom isn’t it? Ingrid You know the situation is that we are recreating balance and balance is a natural state of being. We are supposed to feel balanced and to feel calm in our core and so once we’ve recreated balance we are in the most powerful place that we can possibly be. Our natural 12

state of being is not being out of balance, that’s a sign of something that’s not really working the way that it should. For people believing that things should come back also assumes that they also believe that this should come back, that it’s normal to come back, that there’s a certain reason that it needs to come back and when you understand the concepts behind EFT - that it is releasing a block in our energy system that stops us from feeling normal, then we realise that once we’ve released a block there’s nothing really building it back up again. It’s just gone and we begin to feel normal again. I like to compare that with my vets - that if they go with the flow like a river and there’s a dam in the river, and the energy builds up behind the dam, and they feel that more and more, and every time they go down that specific arm of that river they come to the dam and they feel that intensity. What we do with EFT is get rid of the dam. Sometimes, brick by brick or sometimes the whole thing altogether. That’s the magic of EFT, you never really know if you get rid of the whole dam or one brick from the top or bottom, it’s different for anybody. But why would a dam in a river be normal? What’s normal to us is that we are flowing normally the way a river should flow in all different directions. Another way that I like to explain it is that if you put a number of magnets together and then you pull them apart, once you reconnect the magnets they are the way it should be. They always connect perfectly, they always connect 100% in place, perfectly the way it should be and there’s no reason for us to believe that out of the blue they will disconnect. This is the way that our energy system is supposed to work. Everything in perfect alignment and perfectly connected. We know these concepts from all over the place. So once we understand that we are actually doing energy work and that the coaching aspect of our work is really just presenting the questions that allow our clients to realise where those blocks are, where the dams are, where the disconnections are and then tapping on putting them back together. This is energy work that we are doing. We will very quickly release the question if issues come back. Gary It would be a bit of a leap say for someone starting in EFT to do the work that you’re doing, but can you maybe offer some advice for people who are thinking of going in to that area. Ingrid Working with veterans you mean? Gary Yes and trauma in general. Ingrid Find your own story. Find the reason inside of you why it is so important to you to do this work. The reason that I’m saying that is because when you work with veterans they approach you the way that they approach everything else in their lives and that is with a huge amount of mistrust. They’ve been traumatized, hurt and they very often still live in a war zone. In a war zone in their mind. They have to make a 15 second decision if somebody is a friend or enemy and it’s not a decision based on what kind of weapon do they have, what kind of thing do they have in their hand, what are they going to do? The question is can I trust them or not? If I cannot trust them I am going to have to get myself ready to defend myself. No matter who they are or what they do. As an EFT practitioner working with somebody it can be incredibly helpful in order to create rapport that we have our own story straight that allows us to be able to present ourselves as a friend. For example in my specific situation, everybody’s situation is different. I share with them that my place of relating to veterans is through my father’s story and if they are interested in that then I share that I was in Bosnia and Croatia. I share that I am not a combat veteran and yes I cannot relate to being in an act of combat because I haven’t been there, but I can understand from my background how profound the trauma must 13

be and that I am set up to help. People have different motivations to do this work, some people may know somebody, some people might just have been in Washington and realised, or maybe they’ve been touched by a film. But understand where you come from when you do this work because veterans have, in my experience, a very intuitive side to them and a deep soul connection even though PTSD in my belief, has a feeling of being disconnected from the soul. They have a very deep understanding of the depth of people and trust and when we show ourselves on that level and present that we are very sincere with what we do, then they usually understand that. Another thing that’s important is that in war situations, especially in acts of combat, vets grow very close. They are each others’ life insurance. They back each other up, they become brothers and sisters and they feel for each other the way that a mother or father would feel for their child. So, it’s not a friend thing, it’s much, much deeper. They kill and die for each other, and they know that if they go, their friend’s going to be there for them and when we have the honour to work with a veteran we take the place of that brother in war. We take the place of the person that says I’m going to go there and work with you if you want to work on a traumatic event or memory. I want you to know that I’m with you all the way through. If things get intense then I’m here with you and I’m going to back you up and I’m going to get you out of this no matter what. I’m going to be here and do whatever it takes to make sure that you can find your way out of this. One of the wonderful things about EFT and as coaches, is that we have the freedom to set our own schedules and say if I work with a veteran for an hour and a half then I can do that. I plan for 2 hours if I want. I can plan accordingly so as not to leave them in the trauma. A lot of the veterans don’t really use the VA for mental and emotional services so there are a huge number of vets that might be ready to do the work that we do and we can learn from them. We can listen to what it is that they need. We can listen to what it is that they say that they want us to do, and how they want to do it, and then adjust accordingly to really make EFT work for them. Gary Recently you got involved in a film that Gary Craig is making at the moment, or has it been made? Ingrid There’s a video out right now, but the project is going to be a full length documentary so that is still being produced. One of the questions that you asked earlier was whether we have long term results, and the documentary is going to show the long term results because there will be follow ups with the veterans and people can see what changes are there and what challenges they still face in their lives and what challenges have been resolved. Gary The video itself is very powerful and it’s only really a slice of what we are going to see in the film. So, what challenges did you have as they were filming as you were working. Ingrid You know I always find, as I said before at the beginning, it’s a very powerful thing. When I first work with a vet and I did that with the veterans that were assigned to me in the film as well, I always step back and ask them what is it that you need to know from me. What is it that I can do to make you feel comfortable doing something that’s highly unusual that you might not have heard about - and even people that have experienced less severe trauma than you might find rather comical or rather ridiculous. What is it that I can do? And people let you know. I think one of the very important things with EFT and in this field especially that we are in a judgment free zone, things are the way they are, they are experienced the way that they are and I don’t judge them. I work with someone in a judgment free zone so when somebody says this is how it is, then this is how it is and you work with that. I would probably ask why 14

they think that it’s that way or what it reminds them of or when they first noticed it is this way, but I don’t doubt that it is this way. I don’t want them to change that it is this way because it will change once they release the emotional intensity about it. I think that having trust, having rapport and being able to use EFT in a very gentle and welcoming way is incredibly powerful if we want to do this work with veterans. Gary And has there been somebody that has really challenged you when you’ve been trying to work in that way? Ingrid It’s not someone, it is something. Some of my veterans, all of my veterans had long term severe trauma oftentimes prior to the war that popped up all over the place. Lives are always connected - everything that happens in our life feeds into something else, so you might have to clean up all different ages. You might have to clear up the war, childhood issues. It’s very complex. Gary Do you find a correlation between childhood trauma and people joining the army or am I assuming something here? Ingrid In some cases yes, and in some cases no. I find that most of my veterans certainly have things in their childhood to clean out, but this is true for each and every one of my clients though. All of us have things to clean out and that’s why we try EFT. You know something happened, or things happened, or people did certain things to us that we need to get rid of. If somebody with that kind of a past goes into the military it can really be very intense for them. They need to clean everything up in order to move forward. Gary And would that be the same when you’re working with any trauma, these ingredients that you’re talking about? Ingrid Well I think that there are certain things that are very specific for veterans. This goes in a different direction. If we talk about PTSD and the symptoms my veterans strongly relate to PTSD being a symptom of a disconnection from the soul, and so there’s a very spiritual component in there and the symptoms that they have are really strongly presenting, as well as a feeling of being very lost. There’s a feeling of being very disconnected and alone and just not able to relate to the outside world, and I find with EFT we can actually tap on that and reconnect on a soul level in many ways. I think that’s what makes working with veterans very, very special, that you can do this work. If that’s interesting to you then maybe we can do some tapping on seeing how this work and its gentleness can be helpful for veterans to get a good start with this technique. Gary Where will we start with that? Ingrid One of the things that I find very useful as EFT practitioners as I said before I like to take things very seriously, so when somebody says I feel overwhelmed right now which is very typical of somebody who faces the reality that they might be able to release their trauma, but they might have to face their trauma first, that’s a very overwhelming feeling. 15

Gary Right, so if people are listening at the moment it might not be such a good idea to work on a big trauma but we’re talking about working on the outside of that? Do I understand that correctly? Ingrid Yes, when we work on feelings like overwhelmed or mistrust we are also helping the rapport to deepen and establish even more. So, for example something I find very useful if we do EFT on a feeling of being overwhelmed is to have positive comfortable endings for this. Even though I feel completely overwhelmed right now, I allow myself to be surprisingly ok with that. Even though I feel completely overwhelmed right now I allow myself to be open to the process in a way that works for me Even though I feel very overwhelmed and I doubt that this is going to work I allow myself to feel safe to try it anyway knowing that I’m in control of what’s happening at any moment Even though I feel completely overwhelmed right now, I allow myself to be surprisingly ok with that. Even though I feel completely overwhelmed right now I allow myself to be open to the process in a way that works for me Even though, I feel very overwhelmed and I doubt that this is going to work I allow myself to feel safe to try it anyway knowing that I’m in control of what’s happening at any moment And then we would probably tap on the top of the head and work down and kind of work in circles. So, tapping on the top of the head: TH: I’m overwhelmed EB: I’m completely overwhelmed SE: This is just too much for me UE: And I don’t want to go there UN: I don’t want to face all this UL: I do want to get rid of it CB: I cannot imagine this kind of work UA: And I do feel a bit ridiculous TH: what if this did work And what if I was safe all along What if I could actually release my trauma? What if I actually didn’t have to think about it anymore? What if I could feel safe? And what if there was a good way to live my life And what if I found a way to feel surprisingly appropriate and comfortable TH: with releasing what I’ve been through Take a deep breath and we would go and check back in and usually what my veterans report is that they feel more relaxed and they usually have a physical sensation when they do that. They say you know I just don’t have that tightness in my jaw any more or I don’t have that heaviness in my chest, or this knot in my throat or my headache is better. So then I can make 16

a connection with them and say “so you’re telling me that by saying things like that, and tapping on certain release points you’re actually having a physical sensation and you can see that there’s a connection between the things we say and the things we feel and that’s the concept that we are using”. And then I’m going to ask them, “Did you feel anything negative about anything about what we just did, was there anything that didn’t work for you?” And usually they don’t because there’s really nothing threatening in this process. Especially when you always help them find ways that really work for them and you’re not going to tell them what that is. So they have the freedom to feel that out and then after that they realise that maybe if that’s what we’re going to do and if I feel this relaxation, I can have another one. Sometimes with veterans it’s helpful to stay on the physical level. As a matter of fact I once had someone who that’s all they wanted to do, release physical symptoms and let the emotional and mental trauma and all of that follow the physical because that’s the only way they felt safe. It’s also best to work in stages and make sure that every time we go out and open a new door, we also allow for the veteran to go back and pick up everything that may be difficult for him and bring the whole thing with him. I find that it’s so gentle and joyful and whenever there’s resistance, we can tap on it, Even though I don’t want to go there Even though maybe I can tap on it without even going there Then you throw in some humour and really work with where they are now. Gary If somebody was listening now to what you’ve just done there and they’ve just tried tapping on the trauma. Where would be safe for them to go now, what would they tap on next do you think, what would be useful? Ingrid Well there are different things that would come up for different people. You mentioned safety yourself. Even though I don’t feel safe and I need my trauma to feel safe I allow myself now to realise that I’ve been safe for a long time Even though I don’t know if it’s safe to release my trauma I allow myself to realise that that was then and this is now. Even though I never felt safe after I came back from Iraq/Vietnam I know what it’s like to be unsafe and I realise now to claim my power back in a way that works for me. And we would then tap TH: I don’t feel safe at all EB: what if I’m not safe SE: I don’t want to release this fear UE: I don’t think I’m safe UN: Looking back I realise UL: that I have been safe for a long time CB: And even though I didn’t feel safe UA: Nobody was really threatening me TH: What if I knew the difference EB: Between being threatened and being safe SE: What if I had what it takes 17

UE: To keep myself safe if there was truly a threat UL: what if I didn’t have to give up my ability to truly keep myself safe CB: And to release the need to be on guard UA: When nothing is threatening me TH: I think I could enjoy that EB: I think I could really like that SE: I know I have it in me UE: I am trained to know what’s dangerous UN: I realise danger easily UL: And I allow myself now to find it just as easy CB: To know when I’m safe UA: And truly enjoy it powerfully Take a breath and check in. Work with the person and what they say, why they don’t feel safe or which situations might make them feel threatened. But what is important is to realise that most things that make them feel unsafe happened in the past. Vietnam veterans are often forgotten and they’ve been through phenomenal things over there or the Iran/Iraq, any war, they very often still live as if they are threatened. So with EFT if we can help them realise that what happened to them is in the past going from 40 years ago, then come to the present time and help them realise that what happened then hasn’t repeated itself. And there can be much healing. Another thing could be for veterans, and for a EFT practitioner this is a tricky one, there are almost key words where I can tell that my veterans might get intense if I use those words, and I don’t want to do that before we have phenomenal trust and rapport established. And before I have some kind of indicator that my vet is ready to go there and one of those words is definitely guilt. We don’t want to bring up guilt unless they are ready to do that, but at the same time we have to do that because it can be incredibly sabotaging if they feel that on some deeper level they don’t deserve to heal. The other keyword is brother because brother represents the feeling that a mother has for her child, so if I throw in that word I may open up a whole can of worms that I don’t’ have to open in order for that person to heal. So, being aware of things like that might be useful for somebody that wants to do this kind of work. Gary So it’s down to your experience in working? Ingrid This is my experience and others may have different experiences. It’s so important that people do what feels right to them. I work this way because this is how I work. This is me and I work with the intention to do the best I can. Everybody does that but everybody is different. I say to people - don’t copy me. The words don’t open the door, it’s how we use words and tapping and where we are in the process as a coach, being an assistant to help the person find their own inner truth. This is what’s going to open the door and our clients will open the door and we’ll be there with them. We are almost a welcome committee for them. But really if any of the things I said resonate with you then take that to the highest grade of excellence that you are capable of and you will succeed. You will be just what your clients need. I feel that every client has a perfect match. Our clients need what we have to give. It’s a word of encouragement to people that want to do this work that they feel authentic and powerful and comfortable when they do this work. Another thing that I find is important is that I encourage people to do their own homework. You need to do your own work otherwise you will be triggered by what people say, and also make sure that you have a neutral mindset, a compassionate mindset. Don’t assume anything, but at the same time have the compassion to be willing to allow your veteran to be who they are at that moment, to be authentic in their pain. 18

Gary So it’s rapport and you also communicating with them at their level? Ingrid Many vets have told me that the military really has a very reduced language. There’s a lot about commands and being short, and being emotionally expressive or specific is not part of the military language. So they don’t really talk in details about how they feel, they more make statements. Using the F word may happen three times in a sentence. The F word stands for the word ‘overwhelmed’ or maybe ‘sadness’. Soldiers understand that but for an outside person it seems like the same word. Gary Words have power as such Ingrid Yes, there’s a lot of underlying communication going on with veterans. They can look at each other a certain way and know what the other person is saying. It’s phenomenal to watch and it’s an honour as an EFT practitioner to be invited into that circle. It’s a humble place as a practitioner. Something that I find is useful is that as a practitioner knowing all the wonderful things that we’re capable of with EFT, it’s important that we don’t’ go in and say you know I’m here to heal all you guys. I’m going to fix this. I’ve seen things like ‘fix PTSD in a week’. You know I have no idea how long it’s going to take and I couldn’t care less. I’m going to do whatever works for my veteran. I have people that go back to sleep in an hour – you know insomnia doesn’t come back. But I can’t guarantee it. I feel that when I work with somebody that it doesn’t help the person if I feel their pain. My place is to deeply understand where they are coming from and go to a place of healing. Gary Are you tapping yourself as you’re doing that? Ingrid I always tap, I even tap when my veterans are talking. I even do surrogate tapping when I am working with veterans. You need to be able to work with where they are in their mind. You need to be in that place of healing which I think comes with experience. There are certain steps to take in order to find healing, some of them we’ve talked about like being overwhelmed. I find out where people want to be and we tap on that. Sometimes they just want to be at peace. Gary And are they tapping on themselves as they are doing that? Ingrid As much as they can and as much as they want. Gary Do you have some that won’t tap? Ingrid I always tell my veterans to tap and so I assume that they tap and I check in that they tap. I have a strong routine of always announcing every point that we tap on as many of the sessions are done over the phone. So that my vets and I are on the same page and we are physically doing the same thing. We’re on the same energetic level and it helps my vets to do 19

it in their mind. I do whatever I can to keep them tapping. The interesting thing is that my veterans are telling me where they are with this and my job as a coach is simply to provide the questions and listen very carefully and then by reframing the connecting thoughts so that what they said fits in to where they want to be once they’re done. Gary So you know where you’re going, you have a destination? Ingrid They have a destination? And I understand that destination because that’s where I am when they are telling me about it. Gary So gathering information is quite important at the beginning? Ingrid Having a starting point is important at the beginning which can simply be the feeling of being overwhelmed. I see where my clients are at and where they want to be. I ask them if they would like to tap on physical sensations, I want to know how they are feeling, what they are thinking, what they believe about EFT and their situation, because we can tap on those beliefs. We can tap on “even though I don’t believe this is going to work I allow myself to be open anyway”. I want to know about their past experiences. If they say they had a session in talk therapy and it didn’t work for me. because this is nice to now. But you know Gary I don’t take a lengthy history for the simple reason that I don’t want to retraumatize the event. I work on core issues anyway and my veterans won’t know what the core issues are anyway, and the chances are when they tell me their stories they will leave out their core issues. They will talk about their dog, boss or neighbour or about something they will not tell me what the core issues are anyway. I will ask them “what does this remind you of?” or “when was the first time that you felt this way?” This is really what Gary encourages people to do so much, get your own art of delivery going and connect with the outcome. It’s about getting veterans to release their response to trauma. My goal is not to know the story. I have clients that say they are embarrassed and they don’t want to talk about it. You know using the movie technique - I say ok if this was a movie how long would it be? Oh it would be a minute! Ok, now you use the crescendo, how many crescendos? 1 crescendo! …. Ok let’s call this issue 1. How do you feel about issue 1. I have 3 feelings. Let’s take the first one, can you find the biggest one, yeah, alright even though I’m feeling an 8 about issue one and I’m really intense about it and it upsets me, that I have this feeling and I have had it all this time. I cannot handle this feeling, I allow myself to release it anyway. And then I ask them what their feeling is about issue 1 and they will often tell me it’s gone. Gary Their unconscious mind already knows what that is, doesn’t it really? Ingrid Actually even their conscious mind depending on how you do it. This is the beauty of EFT using Gary’s techniques creatively. You can use tearless trauma and movie technique together. You can say hey if you had a feeling about issue 1 and don’t have it, you know, to me honestly to me it makes no difference if I call it issue 1 or John. But for my clients they can work on a level of confidentiality on a level of self respect - you know for some people it’s embarrassing to talk so just work with that. Find a way that they can talk about it. We don’t’ have to change that they can’t talk about it - we can work with them. It’s real freedom. We are listening to our clients and not telling them we can fix them but we can maybe release what’s important. 20

Gary So if people are suffering from a trauma which may be associated to war, what would you advise somebody who is suffering from trauma of that kind to do? Ingrid I would advise people who are interested in using EFT to consistently use EFT, and in my experience have the courage to work with somebody that they are comfortable working with. Somebody might have the listening skills to help them much quicker than they can themselves. If people decide to use it as a self help tool I would highly recommend to get Gary’s DVD’s and to write up a personal peace procedure …. You know - this bothers me and that upsets me - that makes me angry, and start tapping away, but working with somebody that is trained and skilled and experienced in working with severe trauma can be an incredibly useful thing to do. I moderate and co- moderate the trauma PTSD forum and the EFT practitioners’ forum on Gary’s website. Gary What’s the address for that? Ingrid You can log on to emofree.com and click on the forums button and that’s where you find the address eftcommunity.emofree.com/forums. Gary And where else can we go to get more information? Ingrid We can sign up for the newsletter, we can go to the archives section on emofree. You can Google what you’re interested in and find the answers that you are looking for. People can save themselves time by working with somebody. Gary Do you have a website? Ingrid I have two websites, my main website is www.eftcoach.us and my veterans’ website is www.eftforvets.com. Gary And people can get in contact with you there and help you in some way Ingrid Yes, I am participating in the EFT for Veterans’ research right now, and I’ve also written an article for peer reviewed website that is on my veterans’ website. It is shown there and people can see some results, and I’m also offering free EFT for 6 more veterans right now for this study, and if people are interested they are welcome to connect with me. If people are interested in learning more and helping veterans, I have training programs for practitioners that want to work with veterans where we go in to the things that we’ve touched upon in this interview. There’s so much more to say and be aware of and to resonate with and that’s what we do in the workshops.

Gary You mentioned that you’re doing most of this work for free so if there is anyone who would like to sponsor you in any way, then maybe that would be useful as well? Ingrid That would be incredibly useful. There is actually a non profit organisation that has already been established that they might be able to get a tax deductable receipt. If people work with people in the foundation that may be tax deductable. You know Gary there is this dream that the veterans should not have to pay for this work and the practitioners should be really very trained and profound and effective and great and highly successful in their practices. And the people that want to help should have the confidence that if they donate money to help veterans that it really goes in to highly effective support for veterans. So you know training practitioners on a high level and providing the material for free and sessions for free or very low cost, you know we all have to figure out how we make a living and do that in a way that works for everybody. You know having that very high ethical standard behind this work and allowing people to donate, I think that this is a wonderful vision and I think that it’s beginning to grow and people will learn about this. Another dream that I have, it’s probably the motivator. I see them go out and teach about war and peace and teach about their very deep experiences and why it’s so important to live a life of peace and they all can do that. When you listen to their stories they have things to say and things to share. Gary You know they can be practitioners themselves; they’re probably the best people to work with other veterans? Ingrid You know I feel so much that the veterans’ community should embrace this tool and veterans normally only talk to veterans. Most vets only share their war experiences with other vets and I find it would be wonderful if we could create self help groups with Skype or telephone or a base in the place wherever they are, and those should be skilled and experienced vets that have done EFT. They should be supervised by people outside the community because it can be easy to get tangled up in experiences that people share and it may be difficult for them to tap on that and they may get triggered. It would be too much at the beginning to be completely clear and not triggered. So it would be a good supported system and I see a wonderful future in that. Gary. Yes, the possibilities are endless, especially with modern technology. Thank you for sharing everything today and I know that we didn’t get to talk about people around the situations, i.e. the families that maybe suffer because of the way the vets are etc., so maybe you can come back and talk to us more about that side of the work, the families that suffer from that and maybe we can do some tapping around that. Ingrid I would love to do that. The families are such an integral part of everything that’s going on and their suffering is overwhelming and astounding. What those families are going through and often not getting support whilst facing that their loved ones will come back changed, and with EFT we can make such a difference there, we can do so much. And obviously there are so many things that we can tap on generically with veterans, parents and with the entire community that tries to be supportive, but doesn’t know how to do that. We are so lucky and blessed to have EFT to get these astounding and lasting and powerful and gentle results.

Gary And we are blessed to have you doing the work as well Ingrid Ingrid Thank you, and I’m blessed to be here on the program, I appreciate all that you do - it’s very important Gary As I said you must come back soon and we’ll start where we left off. Contact Ingrid below: www.eftcoach.us and my veteran’s website is www.eftforvets.com. Medical Disclaimer: The information that you receive from our website"http://www.eftworldmagazine.com; is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of EFT Tapping World Magazine and the many contributors of the magazine. We encourage you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. © 2009 www.eftworldmagazine.com, All Rights Reserved. If you would like to be featured in the magazine or on our website you can contact us by email: gary@eftworldmagazinel.com You can also use this email address if you would like to find out more about advertising with us. To keep up with all the latest EFT Events and post on our blog or in the forum, please join up as thousands have already done so to the EFT World HubVisit our new website: www.eftworldmagazine.com Spread the word and share with a friend!