This article isn’t about EFT specifically, but it may be worth reading anyway.
- You will get some ideas about how to bring in your imagination to advance a session.
- It raises some important questions:
How do we know when healing has taken place?
What is healing, anyway?
When Chloe came with a pain in her leg, it was my initial intention that we tap for the pain. Tappable issues did come up, but in this session the information-gathering process took on a life of its own. I have learned to go with what is happening when we tap, if what is happening feels right in the moment. As the “Story People” card on my desk says, “If you hold on to the handle…it is easier to maintain the illusion of being in control. But it’s more fun if you just let the wind carry you.”
Chloe’s leg pain hadn’t been responding to chiropractic or massage or physical therapy. She described her leg in pretty vivid terms, as “dead meat,” cold, achy, and oddly better when she was on hikes. The feeling was intense, a 7 or 8. She had no idea, however, why her leg was hurting.
Casting about for the cause, we couldn’t find any link to experiences that would suggest the physical or emotional source of this pain. Because I am really interested in the ancestral themes that we live out in our families over the generations, I asked Chloe about her family. Was there anyone else who had had “leg stuff?” Thinking about it, she was surprised to realize that everyone in her immediate family had had some leg issues: her father had been in a World War II trench and had developed a severe leg infection, her brother had trouble with his hip and ankle, her sister had broken her hip, and her grandmother had had gangrene in her leg from diabetes.
I got to wondering if there was somehow an ancestral “leg story” being played out here in her leg and her life. She had no idea, so I asked her a question that often serves to “start” a person’s imagination. The imagination needs material to work with, even if we are “just making it up,” and it draws from our own experience, even if the information comes from below our conscious awareness. I believe that what we call imagination is a living presence of deep truth in us.
