Is Your Heart the Right Size? - Rue's News

	Rue's News January 2007 Volume 1, Issue 4

	In this Edition... Welcome Is Your Heart The Right Size? Claim Your Gift!? New Teleclasses Books, Books, Books Welcome! Hello Dear Friends - To all the new subscribers to this letter, thank you for joining this thoughtful, caring community of people who are willing to dream big about what is positive and possible for our world! Please let me know your response to the newsletter, and let me know too what you would like to read about here. I love hearing from you. Thank you particularly to those of you who have answered the questions I asked about future teleclasses that would appeal to you. If you haven't yet, claim YOUR copy of my ebook, "OUT, RAGE! 5 EASY STEPS TO FEELING BETTER RIGHT NOW WITH EFT." Just answer the questions at the end of the online version of this newsletter, and it is yours.
	Is Your Heart the Right Size? I got a wonderful email recently that set me thinking. It was from a New Zealander named Jo who is living in France , talking about her Christmas plans with her friend in Canada , sent here to me in the US — we are so global! The theme is global too. It’s not really about Christmas, but about the spirit of love and appreciation and giving. These are human attributes that we all share and want to deepen in our lives. So fill in any references to Christmas with your own version of how you celebrate the human spirit. Here is her email: Inspired by some of the things I’ve learnt this year, I’ve decided to transform my usual Christmas Grinch spirit into a spirit of giving thanks. After reading a fabulous book this year, I realised that grumping about the effect of Christmas on the environment is being part of the problem, rather than the solution. So this year, when my friend in Canada and I were planning our Christmas together, we decided to do something really different. Hanging in an old farmhouse in the South of France this year, are 240 coloured cards cut out in the shape of jigsaw puzzle pieces. Each card hangs in gratitude of someone who has done something I am thankful for this year. Attached is a photo of the cards. Every night over the Christmas season, I’m going to lie in front of the fire under the cards, and send out a silent thank you to all you folk who have made up the pieces of my puzzle this year, and send out wishes for your dreams for 2007 to be realised. To get a clue as to what is written on your cards, here’s the text of a posting I put on the Living Magically Forum this morning: “I just had to share something really exciting with you folk. After I read the book I mentioned in an earlier posting about Highly Sensitive People, I did a little bit of EFT with it, but not a lot, as just suddenly understanding that there is nothing wrong with me just because I’m highly sensitive seemed to shift my energy a lot. I’m in the process of studying the EFT training DVDs at the moment, and yesterday I watched something that normally would have had me in tears and my whole energy shrinking away from it, without any emotion at all. It was Vietnam vets telling stories of the horror they went through, and I heard stuff that I’ve never been able to listen to before, like they were talking about going shopping. I’ve always had to leave the room when the news is on and it’s showing something really awful, and just choke up hearing people talking. Now I still feel sad and empathise, but it doesn’t take over my whole energy system and leave me feeling awful. This is seriously cool!!!!!!! I’ve suddenly understood that I don’t have to be an energetic and emotional wreck, just because I’m sensitive. If anyone else out there struggles with this, I seriously recommend Rue Anne Hass’ book, This is Where I Stand – The Power and Gift of Being Sensitive.” Well, of course I have to admit that I loved her plug of my book, but what got me thinking was the Grinch. What creates a Grinch? How does a person get grinch-y? How could someone get de-grinched, so to speak? I loved Jo’s strategy to transform her own inner Grinch. We could all do that for ourselves. Wouldn’t her puzzle piece game make a wonderful year-long, even life-long peace-and-joy-bringer into our lives? I went back to the original text of the Dr. Seuss book, and found again those poignant words: The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season! Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason. It could be that his head wasn't screwed on quite right. It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight. But I think that the most likely reason of all May have been that his heart was two sizes too small. My heart went out to the Grinch! He was in pain. What happened to him that made his heart two sizes too small? Surely he was born with a regular sized heart. Weren’t we all? But like many of us, there must have been a grinch-y person in his life who squeezed his heart to keep it from growing, perhaps because someone else in their life had squeezed their heart and they just hadn’t known any better. Or because they couldn’t stand the hurt in their own heart? There is even a medical condition called the “broken heart syndrome” (stress cardiomyopathy, in medical-ese). In an energy field of grief, stress and trauma, the heart beats faster while the arteries and muscles constrict. Think of how your whole chest area feels when you are stressed and sad: people describe the feeling as heavy, tight, pressure, shallow breath. No wonder! How Does a Grinch Get Grinch-y? I thought of some recent EFT sessions that I have had with people, and how well EFT works as a Grinch transformer. There was Sara, who had always thought Christmas was wonderful, until something triggered repressed, painful family memories, especially about how her father had treated her and her mother. After that, every holiday season became a reminder that her family was not the family she thought it was, and she felt sad and disillusioned for weeks around this time of year. Her inner thoughts were “I am never going to have a wonderful magical time like I did as a child. Christmas is always going to be horrible for me.” The Grinch: What had happened to her father that he behaved that way? With our EFT work Sara remembered that she was in charge of her own plans for the holidays, and she could plan something really magical and wonderful for herself! Laney had recently gotten so sick with her chronic illness that she couldn’t visit her son and his wife and child in another state for the holiday. She has even had heart trouble, though the doctors can’t find anything wrong with her. Then she got a terrible blaming email from her son who said she had never cared about him. In our tapping session it came to Laney that her illness had been her unconscious excuse to avoid the visit, because although she loved her son she didn’t get along with his wife and even her grandson very well, and didn’t like their family dynamic which was full of drama and anger. “Oh my goodness,” she said. “That is just what my mother did! She would get sick because she couldn’t say no! That was her excuse!” The Grinch: What had happened to that mother, that her only strategy for standing up for herself was to lie down in illness? “But if I don’t go visit them, I lose connection with family!” Laney sobbed. “They are all I have! They probably wouldn’t keep in touch with me. Isn’t it my obligation to keep the connection?” Laney realized that what she was really yearning for and seeking was the closeness and belonging feeling of family. Some part of her mind was forgetting that actually being together with them was toxic for her. What could be possible if Laney was guided by her feelings of obligation and illness towards creating the heart-expanding feelings that she longed for — with people she actually loved to be with? What if she arranged a special time with her son, just the two of them, I asked. “I can’t do that, can I?” she asked incredulously. I would say yes. Would you? There was Judith, whose mother had given her another gift that showed Judith yet again that her mother didn’t really know her, and didn’t really care about her all that much. Judith felt all over again that she would never have love and attention from her mother. The Grinch: How had Judith’s mother’s heart been so squeezed that she couldn’t see or feel her daughter’s love and devotion? We tapped and tapped and tapped. At last Judith felt better when she realized that her mother’s own bleak emotional childhood had led to her never feeling seen or understood herself, and so she never learned how to offer a sense of connection with her daughter. Judith finally realized that her mother’s actions weren’t about her, after all, and that was a huge relief. Also there was John, whose partner/mentor took great pains to demonstrate that his Ph.D. made him a better person than anyone who didn’t have one. The Grinch: Who in this person’s life made him feel so insecure, needing always to be one-up? Who gave him the idea academic perfection was the only qualification for his self-worth? All these Grinches, whose hearts had been squeezed two sizes too small by someone in their own past, were passing the constriction on like a virus. Dr. Seuss’ Grinch surveys the town of the Whos, and dreads seeing everyone standing hand in hand, so happy, so noisy, so full of song, so full of good food (roast-beast!). He couldn’t stand to think of their joy. Do you think it was because it reminded him of what he didn’t have? Perhaps he couldn’t let the Whos have anything good because it hurt him too much to remember what he hadn’t ever had? Tapping for the Grinch! But by the end of the story the Grinch has had a transformation. Even though he has stolen all their things, the Whos still stand together hand in hand, singing, the heartfelt spirit of their communion untouched by the Grinch’s efforts to make them unhappy. I like to imagine that down there in Whoville they are all doing some surrogate EFT for the Grinch, helping him to fill up all those sad painful spaces in his heart: And he puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! "Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store. "Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!" And what happened then...? Well...in Who-ville they say That the Grinch's small heart Grew three sizes that day! And the minute his heart didn't feel quite so tight, He whizzed with his load through the bright morning light And he brought back the toys! And the food for the feast! And he... ...HE HIMSELF...! The Grinch carved the roast beast! Step off the Beaten Path What could you do for your heart that would reverse the effects of the Grinch in your life? You might try what Judith and I did. A situation like this is a good opportunity to do “Continual Tapping EFT.” You do this by talking to yourself out loud, in a stream of consciousness style, about whatever thoughts, images, stories, memories and feelings are coming to mind, while you tap continuously through the main points: eyebrow, side of eye, under eye, under nose, chin, collarbone, under arm. (Of course you can add any other points that you want to as well) You can add set-up statements if you like, but the main idea here is to just listening to yourself talking to yourself. This is a very good therapeutic tool to use as a practitioner with clients, and it works well for your own self-care too. Judith and I began by tapping continually as she talked about the issue itself: her mother’s gift to her and how she felt about it, and how it reminded her of all those other times that her mother hadn’t really seen her, hadn’t seemed to care about who she was. We just tapped together while she thought out loud, crying sometimes, raging sometimes. While we continued to tap, I asked Judith to begin to imagine her mother as a child who was growing up with people who actually saw her and honored who she most deeply was, so that she already had those feelings of connection and belonging right from the start. Judith tapped as she talked through the feelings that brought up. Now I invited her to imagine that she could slip into her mother’s body, and feel her receiving the knowing of being seen and heard and appreciated from the important people in her life, noticing how those experiences felt in her mother’s body. What changes in her? Now I asked her to feel her mother growing up, being able to see and honor herself through her own life. Next, continuing to tap and talk, Judith imagined herself as a child, receiving from her mother the flow of all that recognition and love and caring that her mother could now give to her, because she had received it herself. This touched off a lot of emotion, but we just stayed with it talking and tapping until something shifted inside. Of course all this is happening in imagination, but it is surprising how powerful the energy of the imagination is. I asked Judith to create an image of her child self and her mother self, as if she were seeing them from a distance. She watched how they were interacting now, and tapped while she talked about what she saw and how it felt. Finally I asked her to imagine “growing her own self up” as a child who had actually had a mother who could see her, who knew how to connect with her, a mother who could mirror back Judith’s goodness to her because someone had done this for her. We tapped all the while we were doing these visualizations, though all the emotions they brought up. As her mother began to appear less Grinch-like, I watched Judith’s face and body move through many cycles of changes, contorting with grief, and tightening with rage, and softening as her heart grew a few sizes bigger. Her breath changed, her body relaxed, and she began to speak differently about that gift that had been so painful before, what it meant to her now and, importantly, how she could begin to act differently (less grinch-y!) with her own young daughter. Transform Your Inner Grinch: the Steps Briefly, these are the steps. Tap and talk out loud (the out loud part is important) while you imagine: · the issue itself, notice how your heart feels · being the Grinch Person as a child, getting what they needed (interestingly, this turns out to be what YOU need too...) · being inside the Grinch Person as a child, feeling what it feels like in their body to receive what they needed from the person THEY needed it from · being yourself as a child, receiving from the (now happily modified) Grinch Person what you needed from them, noticing what that feels like in your body · being an observer, talk about what you notice about “those two people over there” as you watch them interact in this new way · being in yourself now, imagine/feel yourself growing up just having this quality or experience from the beginning, as a given · feel the size of your heart now... Back for a moment to Jo’s email to me that inspired these thoughts. I responded: Jo - What a lovely letter you wrote. I can't imagine you being the bearer of a "usual Grinch spirit" from reading about your magical, creative, inspiring, loving and thoughtful puzzle pieces. And thank you so much for your comments about and recommendation of my book. It is lovely to hear you say that you can just BE the sensitive being you are, in appreciation, without being triggered by old thoughts or even the news. Holding this space, you are a blessing to the world. ....With love and blessings and cyber hugs to you. Make sure there are puzzle pieces up there with YOUR name on them... And Jo wrote back: Thanks for your lovely reply to my message. You bet there are some up there with my name on them - 25 in total! Do have to admit though that they were the last ones I thought of doing, but they are there! Your book has made a huge difference to me, and I suspect will help some of my friends too. Thanks for writing it Rue, you have really made a difference in the world. When I went to the HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) website I was horrified by the victim energy I found there - you combining HSP with EFT is a godsend. With love, The original Christmas Grinch who is no more!!!! (quotes from How the The Grinch Stole Christmas, by Dr. Seuss) Rue IntuitiveMentoring.com 'Profoundly light-hearted strategies for unsticking stuck stuff' Claim your gift! If you will send me an email answering the following questions (briefly or at length), I will send you an ebook I wrote called Out, Rage! 5 Easy Steps to Feeling Better Right Now with EFT . What is your idea of the very best teleclass ever? As a sensitive person, what concerns and issues do you most want help with resolving? Would you prefer regular monthly teleclasses, or a theme-based 5 week series? If you attend the teleclass or just purchase the recording, would you prefer it to be a downloadable MP3 (to play on your computer or iPod) or would you be willing to pay an additional $10 to have a CD sent to you? New Teleclasses for a New Year! Practice the powerful innovative way of using EFT above, and learn lots of other creative ways to use EFT to change your life with me and other people you will enjoy interacting with in a teleclass. Click here for more information: http://www.intuitivementoring.com/teleclass.html NEW BOOKS! I love sharing the stories of the deep power of change in people's lives. These books are my way of giving a voice to that force of goodness flowing through our humanity. If you are a practitioner of EFT, or any modality, for that matter, these books will help you to expand your perception, imagination and creativity to enhance your skill. Read more at http://www.intuitivementoring.com/EFTbooks.html PLEASE FEEL FREE TO FORWARD THIS NEWSLETTER! © 2006 Rue Anne Hass, M.A., All rights reserved. You are free to use material from Rue's News that You Can Use for Artful, Heartful EFT in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including a live web site link. Please notify me at Rue@IntuitiveMentoring.com where the material will appear. The attribution should read: 'By Rue Anne Hass, M.A. of Intuitive Mentoring and I-Mentoring. Please visit Rue's web site at www.intuitivementoring.com for additional articles and resources on EFT and Sensitive People.' (Make sure the link is live if placed in an eZine or in a web site.) If you want to change your email address or unsubscribe, please don't email me. Click the link at the very bottom. It only takes a few moments to leave or to make changes. Thanks! PRIVACY AND SPAM POLICY: I never rent, trade or sell my email list to anyone for any reason. 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	Profoundly lighthearted strategies for unsticking stuck stuff Home • Sensitivity and Chronic Pain •Artful EFT Work � Rue's EFT Books and Resources •Articles and Links • About Rue • Kind Comments Rue Anne Hass, M.A. • rue@intuitivementoring.com 6225 University Ave • Madison, WI 53705