Tapping with Compassionate Curiosity

By Andy Bryce, Founding EFT Master 

 

I encourage all of my clients to integrate a few minutes of tapping into their day. When you can catch a wave of emotion and recognise what triggered it, take anything useful from it and allow the rest to flow past, you are living with freedom and choice. 

 

You may have heard the saying,”Change your thinking, change your life.” I heard it decades ago and it is very difficult to master. In the process you can get lost in your thoughts. Overthinking is a common trap that can steal your aliveness. 

 

The way you can change your life is to master your emotions. Emotions dictate your thoughts, a thought can trigger an emotion but once you’re in it, all of your subsequent thoughts will be defined by the emotion you are now in. Just try telling someone to calm down or to not be sad. 

 

Emotions move like water, just like a stream they can clear themselves when they flow and they are designed to flow, as in “E” motion or energy in motion. When you allow an emotion to flow it clears itself but when you repress or suppress it it gets bigger and more intense. You can create a stagnant pond of emotion that is toxic from stuffing your feelings. 

 

Repressed and stored emotions can negatively affect your mental and physical health. 

 

Emotions arrive in waves, like at the seashore where the waves arecontinuous but varied. A word or a tone or an image can trigger awave of emotion. You would not stand with your back to the sea forlong without being taken by surprise by a big wave. So you soon learn to face the waves as they roll in. 

 

You can do the same thing with emotions. When you face them and allow them to be felt, assessed and then released you are not taken by surprise. 

 

Over twenty years of tapping with the intention of creating tools for everyone to use, I have developed a way of safely doing this for anyone of any age. It has been successful so far from the ages of 11 to 80 years old. 

 

I have called this technique; 

 

You can do this for yourself in just a few minutes at a time. 

 

The first step is to become aware and be alert to your emotions so you can catch the Waves of Emotion as they arise. 

 

Then you ask yourself what thoughts, emotions or sensations triggered this wave and where you went with it. 

 

There is no need for a setup statement, just pay attention to your thoughts, emotions and physical sensations that occur in the first few minutes. Allow them to flow by as you tap and observe with kindness. Avoid judging yourself. 

 

When you tell yourself something, you learn nothing, because you have most likely said it many times before but when you ask questions it is possible to learn something new even in your own thoughts. 

 

“If you have a problem and you think you shouldn’t have it, you have two problems” is a statement I made about judging yourself for having a thought or a feeling and thinking that you should be over this by now, or thinking, what’s wrong with me for having this again? Let the judgement go and just observe the experience. 

 

It is essential to be kind to yourself as you investigate the source of the upset and allow the wave to pass by. It is the opposite of judging and repressing your feelings and the positive results are profound from just a few minutes a day. 

 

Andy Bryce 

February 2024