In my previous articles on EFT, we’ve discussed how you can increase motivation and desire to achieve your goals, how you can instantly improve on any exercise, and how you can use EFT to help with pain and injuries. In this final article, I’ll give you a few more ideas on where you might want to try using it.
Get Past Old Beliefs
My first real introduction to tapping was after I had heard and seen it once or twice, but had never really experienced it myself. Since it looked so weird, I was skeptical that it could do anything. But I wasn’t basing this conclusion on much experience at all.
So, I drove up to Medford, Oregon to train with a man who has since become one of my primary mentors in this and related areas. During that first seminar, I was brought up in front of the class. I told my instructor that one of my goals was to deadlift 500lbs. Using a form of muscle testing, it was revealed to me that I didn’t feel safe deadlifting 500lbs. Or to put it another way, that if I pursued this goal, I’d end up hurting myself.
Why did I believe this? Because I had previously hurt myself in the deadlift. And although I was over the physical trauma of having done that many years before, I wasn’t over it psychologically. There was no pain or injury anymore, but there was this belief in the back of my mind that was holding me back.
Safely Move Towards Your Goal
Fears that remain in our subconscious minds, with little or no conscious realization, are common. The body may heal, or it may not, but unless and until you let go of the emotions surrounding that experience, they’re still in your body-mind.
With a few rounds of the EFT technique of tapping, this belief of mine was blown out. The fear of hurting myself as I pursued my goal was demolished and in its place was installed the confidence that I could safely and successfully improve toward my goal.
When I started seriously training the deadlift again, I achieved a 505lb. deadlift. It’s also worth noting that I haven’t hurt my back since, despite the fact that I deadlift with a rounded back (what many people would consider horrible form).
Working on safety issues can be a useful way to target EFT. I’ve used some quick tapping many times when I’m about to do a backflip and haven’t done so in a while. It is safe in that I’ve done so many flips that my body knows how. But with lack of practice, the fear starts to creep back. A quick round of tapping removes that completely.
Tapping to Beat Your Cravings
On a similar note, if you have a previous failure that stands in your way, you can address those with tapping, as well. This is an easy and helpful way to move beyond your past to focus on doing whatever it is correctly in your next attempt.
For many people, failure shows up in and around their nutrition. Specifically, how they handle their food choices and cravings. Tapping can be a phenomenal tool to utilize if you’re taking on a new diet or nutrition plan.
I’ll never forget the time in one of my early EFT training classes when we’re covering this exact subject. The teacher brought in a Hersey’s chocolate bar that was passed around for people to smell, look at, and then select on a scale from zero-to-ten how much they desired to eat it. I’m a big fan of chocolate and my number at the time was a seven.
Then, we went through a simple couple of rounds of tapping using the following phrases. (Click here for a refresher on these phrases and tapping.)
- Setup: “Even though I desire to eat this chocolate right now, I deeply love and accept myself.”
- Reminder: “This chocolate craving.”
In the end the chocolate bar was passed around once more so we could rate it again on the zero-to-ten scale. For me, my craving dropped down to a zero, but here’s the amazing part…
The smell changed!
I can’t explain exactly how or why this happened. But when I smelled the chocolate the second time, it was no longer the same inviting scent. It’s not that it didn’t smell like chocolate anymore, but instead I experienced the smell as plain and undesirable.
This probably has to be experienced to be believed, so I invite you to try it yourself. But that was a big moment of realization and empowerment for me. After that, it was well within my power to have more control over my eating by being able to erase cravings whenever I chose.
Clear Up Emotional Eating Issues
If you have deeper emotional eating issues (and most people do), you can use EFT techniques to clear these up. Since as children we’re so often rewarded with junk food – pizza parties for winning, cake and ice cream on birthdays, and so on – we have emotional anchors linking eating to positive feelings. We also discover that we can get into a better emotional state when we’re feeling bad by eating those same foods.
Then there’s emotional overeating. Many people eat to shut down their feelings altogether. I’m not judging here. I’ve gone through all of this stuff myself. I bring these issues up so that if you need work on these areas you now at least have awareness about it and perhaps consider trying EFT as a tool to help you.
Find a Competent Tapping Practitioner
For some of the more advanced work like this, a competent practitioner is going to be a better choice than trying to work through it yourself – just as is the case with any complicated aspect of your health and fitness. The goal of this article series was to teach you the basics so that you can experiment and use EFT for simple and easy things. But if you need more help, then by all means ask for it.
Although this is the final article in this series, this are not the only ways you can use EFT to help support your goals in the gym. There are more. Once you have the basics down use your creativity and you too can come up with new and powerful ways.
If you’ve been trying it out or if you have questions about it, please post them to the comments below.
Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.
