Why I Fell in Love with Art Based EFT Tapping
I was picking up the kids I nannied when I got a call from my artist friend.
She was connected to a summer camp that used creativity to bring meaning to teens. These high performing kids had the weight of the world (their parents) on their shoulders and she had been asked to bring art, dance, poetry, and hopefully some inner healing to their academic curriculum.
She asked, “Could you lead a tapping group in between their math lessons?”
Say no more.
The camp was in Beijing.
10 years ago, I was a Los Angeles nanny making the transition from EFT curious to EFT practitioner.
I saved my nanny pennies and attended about 6-8 EFT workshops in those first years: Always the same workshop and same PowerPoint, but something new to learn every time.
I’m a learn by doing kind of lady and watching the trainer lead others in sessions and then having to fumble my way through me own was the most impactful for me🤓
Unlike now, training were an ordeal: Fly to NY or Seattle or San Francisco + 5 nights at a hotel hotel + AC conference room and weird meals + learn 45 techniqies in 3 days and hopefully remember then all when a real client trusts you enough to pay you.
I wasn’t a therapist, but I was a newly minted EFT practitioner with the stamp of approval from the accredited trainers who were now very used to my face.
I didn’t have an advanced degree in Psychology but I had helped students with school stress, kids with parental pressure, parents with grief, friends with anger, clients with perfectionism, and self employed creatives dealing with self doubt …
I have a degree in journalism so I know how to ask good questions and how to get someone to show me versus tell me = better writing and better tapping.
I have teacher training from a fellowship called Teach for America so I know the fundamentals of leading a group.
When she presented the idea of tapping with a group of tweens and teens I jumped depsote the risks.
I got a friend to cover my work, took my 2k of savings and bought my ticket to China… nervous… but overly confident that I could lead a powerful group… even though I didn’t speak Mandarin and they didn’t speak English.
I asked the Beijing based teachers what the kids struggled with most.
School and parent pressure.
Anger.
Comparison.
The teachers were skeptical.
“They’ll never share their feelings in a group. They won’t say it in front of each other! Maybe American kids, but no, not here.”
I thought back to a grief group I attended as a kid where we made memory boxes for our loved ones. We drew faces filled with the scary voices in our head. We scribbled our feelings on cardboard.
I don’t think I spoke one word in that group, but I shared so much.
A lightbulb went off: What if we tapped as we made art?
Introverts could keep their hands busy.
Bold souls could share if they wanted.
Everyone would have an outlet: art and writing.
What happened that summer changed my life.
When a kid is given a safe outlet to share their story, they will surprise you.
When they tap on that story in a language you both share (creativity) they will blow your mind.
The first exercise I led at the summer camp (via a translator) was to paint a notecard with how they felt about something that upset them.
I gave them 5 minutes to free paint.
They filled their notecards with messy emotions.
Then I led them in an exercise I now teach my students.
Do you want to see what a kid can do when they learn to tap on their pain in a safe way?
They cut and collage that pain into something beautiful.
Echos peacock collage after cutting up her grief.
Echo, a quiet sophomore, had lost her mom that year. She filled her notecard with black and red emotional pain(t).
After the exercise, the black vortex of grief transformed into the image of a peacock, a metaphor Echo’s mom used to remind her: Even if you can’t see it, beauty is there, maybe dragging behind you, waiting to reveal or strut its stuff when you least expect it.
Or this senior student, who cut up her anger and said to my translator: “The trials have given me wisdom in my eyes 😭”
Look what a mind can do when given a tool that reminds them,
“You are more than your
Sadness
Pain
Anger
Fear
Doubt.”
As I gather my supplies for this year’s training, I think about the students I taught when I was far less qualified:
They remind me it’s not about me.
It’s about a tool that reconnects people to their own wisdom.
Their emotional freedom.
Emotional freedom is a power no one, no problem, no parent, can steal from them.
If you want to watch, learn and practice the evidence based yet creative EFT techniques that can give a child (or inner child) their power back, join the 2024 cohort before tomorrow’s early bird class.
Find details you need like bonus class times and topics, Level 1/2/3 biweekly call schedule, recording options, Ask Me Anything mentoring and private WhatsApp group on accredited certification page here.
Wisdom in me eyes