We are using EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique/ Tapping) on our upcoming Yoga Retreat: Feel to Heal (21/3 – 23/3). For me it’s a really easy technique to help you transform on so many different levels. EFT is a somatic technique and I use it with my life coaching clients and for selective breathwork clients. I started using EFT with my life coaching clients when we would hit a roadblock: there was that something that kept the client stuck in this loop, and they kept revisiting this unconscious self-sabotaging behaviour without even realising it. Talking about it just didn’t help because often we couldn’t pinpoint what “it” was. So, I used EFT as a tool to help them break that pattern. In the world of somatics, we call these roadblocks a trauma loop or in yoga, a samskara. A samskara is a groove in the mind that your unconscious body keeps defaulting to when the right triggers arise. And then with my Rebirthing Breathwork clients, sometimes the trauma was so deep, and had been held for so many years, the client could not handle the releases that kept coming up using Breathwork. So I used EFT, which is much more gentle and easier for these specific clients to manage.
So what is a trauma loop? The trauma loop is simply a brain state that has created a pathway in the nervous system. A trauma loop occurs in response to repeated exposure to traumatic experiences and during each traumatic event, neurochemicals flood the brain. With the trauma loop in place, our bodies create a hypersensitive response to a stimulus similar to the originating traumatic event. In Indian philosophy, samskaras are the subtle mental impressions left by all thoughts, intentions and actions that an individual has ever experienced. Likened to grooves in the mind, they can be considered as psychological or emotional imprints, below the level of normal consciousness, that contribute to the formation of behavioural patterns. They can be positive or negative habits. Eckhart Tolle likens samskaras to his idea of the ‘pain body’. The pain body is a negative energy field that occupies our bodies and minds. Every time we experience emotional pain; a residue is left behind and this residue merges with all other pain or traumas from our past. If we keep feeding our pain body through trauma loops or negative samskaras, we are kept hostage to this pain and self-sabotaging behaviour. Addictions are a great example of samskaras. Addiction is a groove that we fall back on subconsciously over and over again to numb the intensity and discomfort of the present moment.
Somatic interventions try and break this cycle of negative, unconscious behaviour. Yoga, breathwork, meditation, movement, EFT, are all somatic and the idea is that we want to disrupt this cycle at the level of the body and the unconscious mind. The rational mind doesn’t really come into it. So as these uncomfortable emotions, feeling and memories come up we regulate the nervous system of the body through stimulating acupoints via tapping.
And as my body is flooded with feelings ( “feelings “are the key here, we have to relearn to feel these physical sensations if we want to break the pattern of response) I am taking you through a script and you and I are tapping away at the acupoints and consciously overriding your body’s desire to race down that rabbit hole of the trauma loop or the samskara. While tapping the acupoints as we confront these feelings, we flood the body with serotonin and endorphin. So eventually your physical body is able to convince your mind to let the trauma loop go. Its good stuff! I can’t wait to retreat with many of you soon! Love and namaste Margot