EFT for Fibromyalgia, page 7
Hum two seconds of a song (such as “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “Happy Birthday”).
Count rapidly from 1 to 5.
Hum two seconds of a song again.
It may seem like a lot to remember at first, but after you’ve done it a few times, you will find that you can accomplish the nine actions quickly and easily. Though the actions may seem arbitrary, there is a purpose to each. As explained previously, there is a link between eye movements and the neural pathways of traumatic memories. As for humming a song, it activates the right brain (the creative side of the brain), while counting activates the left brain (the logical, reasoning side).
Some EFT practitioners have discovered that using “Happy Birthday” as the song to hum can raise unhappy birthday memories in clients, thus interfering with the EFT work at hand. For this reason, some use “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” instead. Again, it’s up to you what you decide to hum. Make it something easy and automatic, however. Thinking about what to hum takes you out of your right brain into your left, and defeats the purpose!
Some Optional Points
Since the development of EFT, many variations have emerged, including the addition of acupuncture points that are not part of the traditional Full Basic Recipe. As mentioned, it doesn’t hurt to add more points to the tapping sequence. Many EFTers and practitioners regularly include the following points. It is not necessary for you to use them, but you may have fun trying them out. If you decide to add them to your standard tapping sequence, it is a good idea to get comfortable with the basic seven or twelve points first. Overwhelming yourself with points to remember might deter you from integrating EFT into your daily life and discovering the full benefits of this simple technique.
Top of the Head: This is the highest point on your head, which is not the exact center of the top of your head, but slightly back from the center.
Wrists: There are acupuncture meridians running through the inside and outside of your wrists. When you tap on the fingers and thumb in the Full Basic Recipe, you are tapping on endpoints of these meridians. Some practitioners have their clients slap gently on the inside (at the base of the palm) and then the outside (at the base of the back of the hand) of either wrist instead of tapping on the thumb and finger points. This addresses all the thumb and finger meridians at once. Again, either way is fine: tap on your hand points or gently slap both sides of your wrist. You can also cover all of the wrist points at once by tapping one wrist against the other, first with the insides together then with the outsides together.
Ankles: As with the wrists, meridians run through the ankles. Though perhaps not as convenient to tap on as the wrists, the ankle points are part of many EFTers’ tapping protocol. To address these points, tap on the front and back of either or both ankles. As with the wrists, you can also cross your ankles and tap one against the other, front to back, then switch to cross and tap with the other foot in front.
The Tendency to Explain Away EFT’s Positive Effects
A phenomenon that often occurs in the use of EFT is the tendency not to acknowledge the effectiveness of EFT either through coming up with various explanations for why it worked (a common one is “The tapping distracted me from my problem”) or denial that the problem was that bad to begin with. This tendency to explain away the positive results is known as the “apex effect” or “apex problem,” as clinical psychologist Dr. Roger Callahan termed it.
It can be difficult for people to accept that this simple method of tapping could have resolved their physical, emotional, or behavioral problem, especially if they’d had the problem for years. Faced with the quick or relatively quick resolution of the problem, the mind cannot grasp how this could possibly be. After trying a dozen other methods, after ten years of psychotherapy, after taking every medication imaginable—how could my problem have gone away? The mind, not understanding how EFT works, casts around for logical explanations in its own realm of experience, which before this has not included energy medicine. With nothing to compare the experience to, the mind comes up with a range of reasons, none of which are all that logical.
Denying that the problem wasn’t that serious is one way to explain the “illogical” results of the tapping. The denial may not be purposeful. Sometimes the person really doesn’t remember that it was a serious problem before applying EFT to it. This is actually a common occurrence with EFT. The emotional upset associated with an event disappears so effectively that the person can hardly remember what was so upsetting about the event. This is one of the reasons we use the SUD scale. Writing down the intensity of your feeling before you start tapping gives you concrete evidence of the severity of your problem. Writing down your ending SUD level shows how effective the tapping really was. Keeping a tapping journal is a good idea. That way, if you find yourself minimizing the severity of the problem you tapped for, you can pull out the journal to remind yourself of just how well this simple technique is working.
To help your mind integrate the effectiveness of energy medicine, you might want to go to the research pages on the EFT Universe website. There you can satisfy your mind’s quest for a logical explanation for this “strange” thing called tapping.
The reason for this discussion is to prepare you for the apex effect so you don’t let it stop you from continuing to use EFT. Even if you’re thinking EFT makes no sense, consult the numbers in your tapping journal to remind you how much it is helping, and keep tapping. You don’t have to believe in it for it to be effective. That’s a wonderful feature of EFT!
Another great feature is that you don’t have to do it perfectly for it to work. If you forget a point or tap the points out of order, you will likely still get results. So don’t worry about getting it just right. Keep reviewing the points and keep tapping. With use, the tapping points and the sequences to follow for the Basic Recipe and the Full Basic Recipe will become second nature to you.
Practicing the Full Basic Recipe
Now that you have learned the parts of the Full Basic Recipe, let’s review it using a sample problem. To keep it simple, we’ll stick to a physical symptom—shoulder pain. You can use this same basic script, however, to address other aspects of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, including depression and anxiety.
State the problem: I have pain in both my shoulder joints.
How bad is it? It’s really painful. On a scale from 1 to 10, the pain is an 8.
Setup: Tap on the Karate Chop point or rub the Sore Spot while saying:
Even though I have this shoulder pain, I fully and completely accept myself.
Even though I have this shoulder pain, I fully and completely accept myself.
Even though I have this shoulder pain, I fully and completely accept myself.
The Sequence: Tap on the twelve points of the Full Basic Recipe while repeating your Reminder Phrase: This shoulder pain. End by saying the Reminder Phrase while tapping on the Karate Chop point.
9 Gamut Procedure: Tap on the Gamut point while doing the following:
Close your eyes.
Open your eyes.
Look down hard right (without moving your head).
Look down hard left (without moving your head).
Roll your eyes in a full clockwise circle, again without moving your head.
Roll your eyes in a full counterclockwise circle, without moving your head.
Hum two seconds of a song (such as “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “Happy Birthday”).
Count rapidly from 1 to 5.
Hum two seconds of a song again.
Repeat the Sequence: Tap on the twelve points and the KC point while saying your Reminder Phrase.
That’s it—the Full Basic Recipe. Now measure your progress on the 0-10 scale. How does your shoulder pain feel now? If it is completely gone, down to 0, you need do no more on this symptom. For illustration’s sake, let’s say your pain has dropped from an 8 to a 3. Your shoulders feel somewhat better, but the pain is still there. Do another round of the Full Basic Recipe, using slightly modified language.
Adjusted Setup: Tap on the Karate Chop point or rub the Sore Spot while saying:
Even though I still have some shoulder pain, I fully and completely accept myself.
Even though I still have some shoulder pain, I fully and completely accept myself.
Even though I still have some shoulder pain, I fully and completely accept myself.
The Sequence: Tap on the twelve points and the Karate Chop point while saying your modified Reminder Phrase: This remaining shoulder pain.
9 Gamut Procedure: Tap the Gamut point while doing the following:
Repeat the Sequence: Tap on the twelve points and the KC point while saying your modified Reminder Phrase: This remaining shoulder pain.
Rate your pain on the SUD scale again. If you are still not at a 0, tap through the Full Basic Recipe again.
Tapping directly on physical pain, as we did in the example here, is the easiest way to learn EFT. It is important to note, however, that EFT is most effective when you address the emotional components of your physical pain, or any other problem. You may be able to tap your pain down to the lower numbers on the SUD scale simply by doing tapping rounds on the pain, but getting your number to 0 may require using EFT to uncover and clear the emotional aspects of your pain. The basics are the same.
You now have the tools you need to use EFT to address any symptom or aspect of your fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, Lyme disease, or other autoimmune conditions.
4
Tapping for Fibromyalgia as a
Spiritual Energy Imbalance
by Rue Anne Hass, MA, EFT Founding Master
There is often a deeper truth underlying fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, which makes successful treatment of these conditions using conventional medicine difficult or even unlikely. The process of EFT can help you uncover that truth.
In the realm of traditional Chinese medicine, the medical system in which acupuncture is a primary technique, fibromyalgia could be called a “disharmony of the spirit.” Think about this phrase as you read the following descriptions of two “typical” fibromyalgia sufferers:*
Eight years ago, Tammy worked as an office manager and had three young children. Then her husband died, and her children began to have problems adjusting at school. A single working mother with a stressful job, Tammy would lie awake at night worrying about her situation. “My sleep went off first,” she recalled. “I’d never had trouble falling asleep before, but I would lie awake night after night, thinking about my kids and my job, and it seemed that I never had a deep, sound sleep, even if I dozed off. After a while I would wake up in the morning feeling stiff all over and extremely tired. When I went to see my doctor he gave me an antidepressant, but it didn’t work, plus I gained weight.” Gradually, Tammy’s condition worsened.
Sheila is an elementary school teacher. Six years ago, her twenty-four-year marriage ended in a bitter divorce. Four years ago, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. She had multiple complaints: fatigue, depression, muscle aches, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome, and poor memory. She always woke up between 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., feeling restless and remembering a lot of dreams. She has always driven herself to excel in her work, but, these days, she is finding it very stressful and often thinks that she can’t handle it anymore.
Both Tammy and Sheila were in pain and having trouble sleeping. Tammy was mostly worried, whereas Sheila’s emotional tone contained more anger. Both had responded to the life conditions that befell them by tightening up inside. Acupuncturists say, “Wherever there is pain, there is no free flow of energy. Where there is no pain, there is free flow of energy.” Perhaps Tammy and Sheila’s inner tightness, which interferes with energy flow, led to the development of their fibromyalgia symptoms.
At the deepest level, however, I believe that both Tammy and Sheila were experiencing a disharmony of spirit, a constriction of their self-expression, the natural free flow of energy in the body, mind, and spirit.
Three Different Perspectives on Fibromyalgia
Conventional Medical Perspective
Fibromyalgia is a syndrome diagnosis (many different recurring symptoms under one name).
Fibromyalgia is a complex nervous system pain disorder (shows up in many ways in the nervous system).
Abnormal brain activity starts with a trigger but does not return to normal when the trigger is no longer present. The trigger may be repeated over time. This brain response may be adaptive for protection.
The sensitive temperament is able to regulate physical and emotional responses only when there is very low stimulation in the person’s environment.
Psychospiritual Perspective
Chronic emotional and physical pain is obstructed spiritual energy, a constriction of the heart, reflected as pain in the body.
Some of the essential qualities of spirit are love, expansiveness, generosity, creativity, imagination, possibility, openness, growth, flow, and purpose.
A sensitive person may feel unable to fully express his or her true self in what feels like a harsh, critical, wounding world.
As a result of life traumas, a sensitive person may eventually respond by constricting his or her whole being around a thought: “I can’t express what I really feel, I can’t be who I really am, I am not good enough. In order to matter or have significance, in order to have inner peace, and in order to justify taking care of myself, I must be ill.”
Energy Psychology Perspective
In EFT and other energy methods, we are working with the energy meridian system as described by traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
Fibromyalgia is a Western diagnosis that has been used to label a condition that can manifest in TCM as several different patterns of imbalance. When we approach a problem energetically, we are engaging with a specific pattern that is manifesting in the body, without trying to label it as a diagnosis.
Emotions like sadness and anger constrict the flow of energy (qi or chi) in our bodies, which can cause blockages and imbalance in body and organ systems. Lack of free flow can present as pain. The body can become ill.
Fibromyalgia could be called an interruption in a particularly sensitive person’s electrical system resulting from emotional trauma.
Repeated experiences of stress or trauma can disrupt the energy system and restrict the flow of life, limiting access to our capacity to think and act and make choices.
If, over time, we repress the emotions (sadness, anger, fear) that arise in response to our traumatic experiences, the disruption in the electrical system is likely to show up as pain and dis-ease in the body.
In TCM, the Heart is called the master of the organs. The Heart houses the Spirit. Clearing the disruption with energy techniques can clear the pain, change thought, change behavior, and open the Heart, resulting in healing.
These three ways of describing fibromyalgia are different ways of describing an obstruction or a tightening—the “not-free-flow”—that is happening throughout the body-mind-spirit system.
The “pain of the spirit” means to me that the person is restricting the free flow of his or her life expression. In the case of the earlier examples, Tammy is constricting around worry and fear, and Sheila is constricting around anger.
Pain in the physical body can be a signal that we have been holding worry, fear, and anger inside for a long time.
Fibromyalgia as a Disharmony of Spirit
My colleague Dr. Nancy Selfridge, with whom I taught classes on fibromyalgia, has said, “Doctors don’t know what to do with their fibro patients. Physicians hate to be unsuccessful, and they are almost always unsuccessful when they try to heal fibromyalgia with conventional medicine.”
While fibromyalgia is puzzling to medical science, it makes perfect spiritual sense.
There is a quality of energy or presence that each of us carries with us throughout our days. That energy, as it expresses through us in ways unique to each of us, has the capacity to form empowering, nourishing, cocreative, and liberating connections.
I believe that, as humans, we are open flowing systems, capable of drawing in and transforming energy from the infinite into the particular. Our actions and our choices form our individual bodies and lives. We are also able to flow our own energy from ourselves into the infinite.
Often, however, we hold within ourselves smaller “systems” of energy that are more closed than open. This diminishes the open flow of our energy. The overall effect is that we feel isolated, separated, and alienated from the cosmos around us.
When we have a wound, a memory, a rigid habit, a restrictive belief, it is as if we constrict ourselves around it. Like the grain of sand in an oyster, these “particles” of ourselves are where we become less flowing, less open, more self-protective, or even self-denying. In the very act of living each day, we run into situations that can cause such constrictions.
But suppose we are constricted around being ourselves? Suppose we view the very idea of being a self, of being a unique person—of being a person at all—as a condition of separation and constriction? Suppose I feel shame, for instance, about being a human being, or about deserving to take up space in the world. Or suppose that I struggle with having a physical body with its passions, appetites, instincts, fleshiness, and so on. Then I cease to be as open a system as I might be. The flow of life energy, of light, of power within me is diminished. At that point, all the other ways I create constriction and obstructions in my life become that much more powerful, that much more difficult to work with.
In the same way, when for some reason we feel alienated from ourselves, or that our “self” is a condition of, or a reason for, constriction, it is like a metaphysical attack of asthma. If this feeling is denied or “stuffed” so we don’t have to feel it, it can show up in the body as pain.
Count rapidly from 1 to 5.
Hum two seconds of a song again.
It may seem like a lot to remember at first, but after you’ve done it a few times, you will find that you can accomplish the nine actions quickly and easily. Though the actions may seem arbitrary, there is a purpose to each. As explained previously, there is a link between eye movements and the neural pathways of traumatic memories. As for humming a song, it activates the right brain (the creative side of the brain), while counting activates the left brain (the logical, reasoning side).
Some EFT practitioners have discovered that using “Happy Birthday” as the song to hum can raise unhappy birthday memories in clients, thus interfering with the EFT work at hand. For this reason, some use “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” instead. Again, it’s up to you what you decide to hum. Make it something easy and automatic, however. Thinking about what to hum takes you out of your right brain into your left, and defeats the purpose!
Some Optional Points
Since the development of EFT, many variations have emerged, including the addition of acupuncture points that are not part of the traditional Full Basic Recipe. As mentioned, it doesn’t hurt to add more points to the tapping sequence. Many EFTers and practitioners regularly include the following points. It is not necessary for you to use them, but you may have fun trying them out. If you decide to add them to your standard tapping sequence, it is a good idea to get comfortable with the basic seven or twelve points first. Overwhelming yourself with points to remember might deter you from integrating EFT into your daily life and discovering the full benefits of this simple technique.
Top of the Head: This is the highest point on your head, which is not the exact center of the top of your head, but slightly back from the center.
Wrists: There are acupuncture meridians running through the inside and outside of your wrists. When you tap on the fingers and thumb in the Full Basic Recipe, you are tapping on endpoints of these meridians. Some practitioners have their clients slap gently on the inside (at the base of the palm) and then the outside (at the base of the back of the hand) of either wrist instead of tapping on the thumb and finger points. This addresses all the thumb and finger meridians at once. Again, either way is fine: tap on your hand points or gently slap both sides of your wrist. You can also cover all of the wrist points at once by tapping one wrist against the other, first with the insides together then with the outsides together.
Ankles: As with the wrists, meridians run through the ankles. Though perhaps not as convenient to tap on as the wrists, the ankle points are part of many EFTers’ tapping protocol. To address these points, tap on the front and back of either or both ankles. As with the wrists, you can also cross your ankles and tap one against the other, front to back, then switch to cross and tap with the other foot in front.
The Tendency to Explain Away EFT’s Positive Effects
A phenomenon that often occurs in the use of EFT is the tendency not to acknowledge the effectiveness of EFT either through coming up with various explanations for why it worked (a common one is “The tapping distracted me from my problem”) or denial that the problem was that bad to begin with. This tendency to explain away the positive results is known as the “apex effect” or “apex problem,” as clinical psychologist Dr. Roger Callahan termed it.
It can be difficult for people to accept that this simple method of tapping could have resolved their physical, emotional, or behavioral problem, especially if they’d had the problem for years. Faced with the quick or relatively quick resolution of the problem, the mind cannot grasp how this could possibly be. After trying a dozen other methods, after ten years of psychotherapy, after taking every medication imaginable—how could my problem have gone away? The mind, not understanding how EFT works, casts around for logical explanations in its own realm of experience, which before this has not included energy medicine. With nothing to compare the experience to, the mind comes up with a range of reasons, none of which are all that logical.
Denying that the problem wasn’t that serious is one way to explain the “illogical” results of the tapping. The denial may not be purposeful. Sometimes the person really doesn’t remember that it was a serious problem before applying EFT to it. This is actually a common occurrence with EFT. The emotional upset associated with an event disappears so effectively that the person can hardly remember what was so upsetting about the event. This is one of the reasons we use the SUD scale. Writing down the intensity of your feeling before you start tapping gives you concrete evidence of the severity of your problem. Writing down your ending SUD level shows how effective the tapping really was. Keeping a tapping journal is a good idea. That way, if you find yourself minimizing the severity of the problem you tapped for, you can pull out the journal to remind yourself of just how well this simple technique is working.
To help your mind integrate the effectiveness of energy medicine, you might want to go to the research pages on the EFT Universe website. There you can satisfy your mind’s quest for a logical explanation for this “strange” thing called tapping.
The reason for this discussion is to prepare you for the apex effect so you don’t let it stop you from continuing to use EFT. Even if you’re thinking EFT makes no sense, consult the numbers in your tapping journal to remind you how much it is helping, and keep tapping. You don’t have to believe in it for it to be effective. That’s a wonderful feature of EFT!
Another great feature is that you don’t have to do it perfectly for it to work. If you forget a point or tap the points out of order, you will likely still get results. So don’t worry about getting it just right. Keep reviewing the points and keep tapping. With use, the tapping points and the sequences to follow for the Basic Recipe and the Full Basic Recipe will become second nature to you.
Practicing the Full Basic Recipe
Now that you have learned the parts of the Full Basic Recipe, let’s review it using a sample problem. To keep it simple, we’ll stick to a physical symptom—shoulder pain. You can use this same basic script, however, to address other aspects of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, including depression and anxiety.
State the problem: I have pain in both my shoulder joints.
How bad is it? It’s really painful. On a scale from 1 to 10, the pain is an 8.
Setup: Tap on the Karate Chop point or rub the Sore Spot while saying:
Even though I have this shoulder pain, I fully and completely accept myself.
Even though I have this shoulder pain, I fully and completely accept myself.
Even though I have this shoulder pain, I fully and completely accept myself.
The Sequence: Tap on the twelve points of the Full Basic Recipe while repeating your Reminder Phrase: This shoulder pain. End by saying the Reminder Phrase while tapping on the Karate Chop point.
9 Gamut Procedure: Tap on the Gamut point while doing the following:
Close your eyes.
Open your eyes.
Look down hard right (without moving your head).
Look down hard left (without moving your head).
Roll your eyes in a full clockwise circle, again without moving your head.
Roll your eyes in a full counterclockwise circle, without moving your head.
Hum two seconds of a song (such as “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “Happy Birthday”).
Count rapidly from 1 to 5.
Hum two seconds of a song again.
Repeat the Sequence: Tap on the twelve points and the KC point while saying your Reminder Phrase.
That’s it—the Full Basic Recipe. Now measure your progress on the 0-10 scale. How does your shoulder pain feel now? If it is completely gone, down to 0, you need do no more on this symptom. For illustration’s sake, let’s say your pain has dropped from an 8 to a 3. Your shoulders feel somewhat better, but the pain is still there. Do another round of the Full Basic Recipe, using slightly modified language.
Adjusted Setup: Tap on the Karate Chop point or rub the Sore Spot while saying:
Even though I still have some shoulder pain, I fully and completely accept myself.
Even though I still have some shoulder pain, I fully and completely accept myself.
Even though I still have some shoulder pain, I fully and completely accept myself.
The Sequence: Tap on the twelve points and the Karate Chop point while saying your modified Reminder Phrase: This remaining shoulder pain.
9 Gamut Procedure: Tap the Gamut point while doing the following:
Repeat the Sequence: Tap on the twelve points and the KC point while saying your modified Reminder Phrase: This remaining shoulder pain.
Rate your pain on the SUD scale again. If you are still not at a 0, tap through the Full Basic Recipe again.
Tapping directly on physical pain, as we did in the example here, is the easiest way to learn EFT. It is important to note, however, that EFT is most effective when you address the emotional components of your physical pain, or any other problem. You may be able to tap your pain down to the lower numbers on the SUD scale simply by doing tapping rounds on the pain, but getting your number to 0 may require using EFT to uncover and clear the emotional aspects of your pain. The basics are the same.
You now have the tools you need to use EFT to address any symptom or aspect of your fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, Lyme disease, or other autoimmune conditions.
4
Tapping for Fibromyalgia as a
Spiritual Energy Imbalance
by Rue Anne Hass, MA, EFT Founding Master
There is often a deeper truth underlying fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, which makes successful treatment of these conditions using conventional medicine difficult or even unlikely. The process of EFT can help you uncover that truth.
In the realm of traditional Chinese medicine, the medical system in which acupuncture is a primary technique, fibromyalgia could be called a “disharmony of the spirit.” Think about this phrase as you read the following descriptions of two “typical” fibromyalgia sufferers:*
Eight years ago, Tammy worked as an office manager and had three young children. Then her husband died, and her children began to have problems adjusting at school. A single working mother with a stressful job, Tammy would lie awake at night worrying about her situation. “My sleep went off first,” she recalled. “I’d never had trouble falling asleep before, but I would lie awake night after night, thinking about my kids and my job, and it seemed that I never had a deep, sound sleep, even if I dozed off. After a while I would wake up in the morning feeling stiff all over and extremely tired. When I went to see my doctor he gave me an antidepressant, but it didn’t work, plus I gained weight.” Gradually, Tammy’s condition worsened.
Sheila is an elementary school teacher. Six years ago, her twenty-four-year marriage ended in a bitter divorce. Four years ago, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. She had multiple complaints: fatigue, depression, muscle aches, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome, and poor memory. She always woke up between 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., feeling restless and remembering a lot of dreams. She has always driven herself to excel in her work, but, these days, she is finding it very stressful and often thinks that she can’t handle it anymore.
Both Tammy and Sheila were in pain and having trouble sleeping. Tammy was mostly worried, whereas Sheila’s emotional tone contained more anger. Both had responded to the life conditions that befell them by tightening up inside. Acupuncturists say, “Wherever there is pain, there is no free flow of energy. Where there is no pain, there is free flow of energy.” Perhaps Tammy and Sheila’s inner tightness, which interferes with energy flow, led to the development of their fibromyalgia symptoms.
At the deepest level, however, I believe that both Tammy and Sheila were experiencing a disharmony of spirit, a constriction of their self-expression, the natural free flow of energy in the body, mind, and spirit.
Three Different Perspectives on Fibromyalgia
Conventional Medical Perspective
Fibromyalgia is a syndrome diagnosis (many different recurring symptoms under one name).
Fibromyalgia is a complex nervous system pain disorder (shows up in many ways in the nervous system).
Abnormal brain activity starts with a trigger but does not return to normal when the trigger is no longer present. The trigger may be repeated over time. This brain response may be adaptive for protection.
The sensitive temperament is able to regulate physical and emotional responses only when there is very low stimulation in the person’s environment.
Psychospiritual Perspective
Chronic emotional and physical pain is obstructed spiritual energy, a constriction of the heart, reflected as pain in the body.
Some of the essential qualities of spirit are love, expansiveness, generosity, creativity, imagination, possibility, openness, growth, flow, and purpose.
A sensitive person may feel unable to fully express his or her true self in what feels like a harsh, critical, wounding world.
As a result of life traumas, a sensitive person may eventually respond by constricting his or her whole being around a thought: “I can’t express what I really feel, I can’t be who I really am, I am not good enough. In order to matter or have significance, in order to have inner peace, and in order to justify taking care of myself, I must be ill.”
Energy Psychology Perspective
In EFT and other energy methods, we are working with the energy meridian system as described by traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
Fibromyalgia is a Western diagnosis that has been used to label a condition that can manifest in TCM as several different patterns of imbalance. When we approach a problem energetically, we are engaging with a specific pattern that is manifesting in the body, without trying to label it as a diagnosis.
Emotions like sadness and anger constrict the flow of energy (qi or chi) in our bodies, which can cause blockages and imbalance in body and organ systems. Lack of free flow can present as pain. The body can become ill.
Fibromyalgia could be called an interruption in a particularly sensitive person’s electrical system resulting from emotional trauma.
Repeated experiences of stress or trauma can disrupt the energy system and restrict the flow of life, limiting access to our capacity to think and act and make choices.
If, over time, we repress the emotions (sadness, anger, fear) that arise in response to our traumatic experiences, the disruption in the electrical system is likely to show up as pain and dis-ease in the body.
In TCM, the Heart is called the master of the organs. The Heart houses the Spirit. Clearing the disruption with energy techniques can clear the pain, change thought, change behavior, and open the Heart, resulting in healing.
These three ways of describing fibromyalgia are different ways of describing an obstruction or a tightening—the “not-free-flow”—that is happening throughout the body-mind-spirit system.
The “pain of the spirit” means to me that the person is restricting the free flow of his or her life expression. In the case of the earlier examples, Tammy is constricting around worry and fear, and Sheila is constricting around anger.
Pain in the physical body can be a signal that we have been holding worry, fear, and anger inside for a long time.
Fibromyalgia as a Disharmony of Spirit
My colleague Dr. Nancy Selfridge, with whom I taught classes on fibromyalgia, has said, “Doctors don’t know what to do with their fibro patients. Physicians hate to be unsuccessful, and they are almost always unsuccessful when they try to heal fibromyalgia with conventional medicine.”
While fibromyalgia is puzzling to medical science, it makes perfect spiritual sense.
There is a quality of energy or presence that each of us carries with us throughout our days. That energy, as it expresses through us in ways unique to each of us, has the capacity to form empowering, nourishing, cocreative, and liberating connections.
I believe that, as humans, we are open flowing systems, capable of drawing in and transforming energy from the infinite into the particular. Our actions and our choices form our individual bodies and lives. We are also able to flow our own energy from ourselves into the infinite.
Often, however, we hold within ourselves smaller “systems” of energy that are more closed than open. This diminishes the open flow of our energy. The overall effect is that we feel isolated, separated, and alienated from the cosmos around us.
When we have a wound, a memory, a rigid habit, a restrictive belief, it is as if we constrict ourselves around it. Like the grain of sand in an oyster, these “particles” of ourselves are where we become less flowing, less open, more self-protective, or even self-denying. In the very act of living each day, we run into situations that can cause such constrictions.
But suppose we are constricted around being ourselves? Suppose we view the very idea of being a self, of being a unique person—of being a person at all—as a condition of separation and constriction? Suppose I feel shame, for instance, about being a human being, or about deserving to take up space in the world. Or suppose that I struggle with having a physical body with its passions, appetites, instincts, fleshiness, and so on. Then I cease to be as open a system as I might be. The flow of life energy, of light, of power within me is diminished. At that point, all the other ways I create constriction and obstructions in my life become that much more powerful, that much more difficult to work with.
In the same way, when for some reason we feel alienated from ourselves, or that our “self” is a condition of, or a reason for, constriction, it is like a metaphysical attack of asthma. If this feeling is denied or “stuffed” so we don’t have to feel it, it can show up in the body as pain.
