Valerie Lynch - Emotional Healing in Minutes: Simple Acupressure Techniques For Your Emotions

Part 1
Introducing Emotional Healing

Part 2
The Emotional Freedom Technique

Part 3
Emotional Healing in Practice

Gratitude to Paul and Val Lynch for this highly useful version of EFT. They have combined the power of the EFT procedure with their own innovations to creatively portray an easy-to-apply technique that is useful to almost everyone. Please study this loving work carefully as many of its concepts are life changing. Use it, practise it and pass it on to others. The world will be a better place for your efforts.

Gary Craig, Founder, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)

Emotions are beautiful and creative energies and without them life would be extremely dull. We would function as nothing more than robots, devoid of all feeling. Depression is often described in the same way, as a condition in which everything feels flat and emotionless.

A healthy emotional life leads to a fulfilling and meaningful existence, rich with colour and experience. Our emotions make us aware that we are alive; they represent a pure expression of our deepest self. Emotions by their very nature cannot lie. They continually communicate with us, inspiring us and filling us with passion. From the moment of our conception to the time of our death we experience emotions. They are essential to our psychological growth and play an essential role in our well-being.

Feelings attract our attention, indicating the desirable and non-desirable elements in our lives. They illustrate the things we find pleasurable, rewarding and that make us happy, as well as the circumstances that do not. When we feel joy and happiness we are encouraged to move towards those people, situations or environments that produce these feelings. When we experience emotional pain, it signifies the need to remove ourselves or stop whatever it is that makes us so miserable. By listening to the message our emotions send, we are guided in the direction that needs to be taken.

Emotions are our true teachers, healers and guides. For instance, appropriate anger alerts us to the possibility that our boundaries have been broken. We may need to assert our needs more visibly or defend our position. Fear is designed to protect us and guide us away from threatening situations. Through grief we begin the process of adjusting to our painful loss and so allow healing to take place. It is through our emotions that we evolve, change and mature.

Emotions are fluid, moving energies that encourage us to be transformed e-motion = energy in motion. When we express our emotions naturally, we continue to grow, expand and develop into more of our own inner potential. By staying in touch with our true selves, we become balanced and healthy individuals with the ability to function and cope with the demands that life places upon us.

Not all emotional experiences are pleasant. Some people feel very uncomfortable with the torrent of emotion that flows through them, preferring instead to take solace in the safety of logic and reason. But suppressing or denying our feelings prevents change; we remain stuck and rigid. Unexpressed emotions never disappear of their own accord. We may try to put them behind us, but eventually this will only lead to more problems. Repressed emotions often express themselves physically. Many illnesses have an emotional component that has become locked within the body. Physical pain can be just another form of emotional expression that we are not acknowledging.

In our attempts to escape emotional pain, we shut out the feelings that make living such a wonderful experience the ability to love and feel loved, spontaneity and creativity suffer as a consequence. We lose the opportunity to know ourselves and discover the unique qualities that make us who we are, giving way to a dry and monotonous existence that lacks any meaning.

Sometimes we feel emotions that are scary and overwhelming. When this happens we try anything we can to avoid facing them. Once an emotion becomes stuck, it ceases to hold any purpose other than to keep a person frozen in time. At worst this can be totally devastating, especially after an intense trauma, and the person becomes trapped within the experience, unable to move forward.

Many of us do not have to contend with this level of emotional distress, but at some time in our lives most of us will come across an emotional stumbling block that we find difficult to overcome. Perhaps we are held back by our own fear, consumed with anger or locked into resentment and blame, or plagued with feelings of low self-esteem, intense grief or a sense of guilt. None of us are immune to any of these feelings.

It is these emotions that The Emotional Freedom Technique addresses. The purpose of this book is to introduce you to a technique that will enhance your life. We invite you to discover for yourself the versatility and freedom that EFT can offer you.

There is a subtle transformation occurring within the field of medicine and emotional healing. Alternative therapies and the theories that support them are attracting widespread interest and research as public demand increases. This has led to the introduction of new and exciting methods that complement the current models of healing. Alternative approaches are gathering momentum. A new awareness is growing that aspires to a more natural and non-invasive approach to healing the body and the mind.

Medical science has made enormous progress in the treatment of disease and life threatening illness. Yet, for all the technology and scientific research, it lacks a basic understanding of the true essence of an individual as a whole. How our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and attitudes influence our health has been largely ignored. However, within a holistic framework, the relationship between the mind, body and spirit is seen as fundamental in the role of producing health.

Many people are now familiar with the concept that the body can be healed through the mind, yet few people realize that you can also heal the mind through the body. At the cutting edge of this new paradigm is a technique known as The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) a form of Energy Psychology that shares the same principles as the ancient art of acupuncture, which recognizes the existence of an inherent energy factor within all of us that is responsible for our overall health. This is the electrical/energetic blueprint of the body known as the meridian system.

The meridians are energetic pathways within the body that relay information to the entire system, as well as channelling vital energy to the organs and tissues of the physical body. It has been acknowledged that blockages within the meridian system can cause internal disruption and eventually lead to the onset of illness and disease.

Perhaps more subtle and less known is that the energy within each meridian also registers emotions, feelings and sensations. Every time we experience an emotion the bodys energy system is influenced to a certain degree. The meridian system and our psychology are intricately linked. Acknowledging this, EFT has been designed to directly interact with the energy system, rebalancing and stabilizing the disruption that occurs when a distressing emotion is experienced. This enables our energies to flow freely again, leaving us relaxed and at peace.