Speaking Without Speaking
There are many facets to ‘working magically’ and so I want to explore two areas here… speaking without speaking and also expanding your understanding of EFW, looking at more advanced ways of applying your fundamental understanding.
Speaking without speaking… When we are sitting with clients, we need to be actively wishing them well, sending them positive messages tailored to their situations, wishing them what they need. It’s also important in this context to have our understanding of FACTS close to the surface of our consciousness. Our faith in ourselves and the process, our awe and appreciation in the role we have been given to play, the clarity that is needed to be able to apply the timing to our clients’ best advantage… and the crucial element of sincerity of heart, that cements this potent mix. All are essential companions of ‘speaking without speaking’.
The greatest gift we can give to another is good wishes. The greatest harm we can do to another is not to wish them well. Our thoughts are arguably the most potent forces in the universe, and what we do with them really matters.
Sadly, most of the time we are going about our day mindlessly… unaware of the potency of our thoughts. And because we are unaware of their potency, we are actually doing a lot of harm to ourselves and to others. Most of this is unintentional and so on the karmic scale the consequences are less than if we were intentionally causing harm. Intentional harm attracts greater negativity towards us and sadly towards those we are directing it towards, just as intentional, good energy directed at someone reverberates back to us in the same way.
This is why speaking without speaking is such powerful currency. This is a concept and activity that is closely aligned with that ancient truth, “speech is silver, silence is golden”. Silence is golden gives us a clue – that this is where the greatest work in the universe is done – behind the curtain of sound. Sadly, as humans, we think coming into sound is the most important and powerful thing, and that’s actually only true when we have spent time in silence. Otherwise so much out of what is coming out of our mouths belongs in the proverbial bin. I mean this in the energetic sense… it joins the toxic waste dump that is spinning around the world, which creates a negative vortex into which we are all drawn. The real reason the world is drowning is because of what we are not doing in silence, and what we are doing in silence. This is the paradox we need to understand.
What we are not doing is spending enough time in a place of respect and reverence. We are not spending enough time in a place of gratitude and appreciation. We are not spending enough time with kindness and compassion as our companions… And what the world is doing with the potential for silence, is spending far too much time complaining… blaming… drowning in guilt and shame… living in anger and revenge.
We are misusing silence and as a result of misusing silence, when we come into sound, that negative expression in our minds becomes a negative expression flowing through our lips. We are adding to the toxic waste dump of the world, and that toxic waste dump is what has us spiralling towards our own demise. People think global warming is our greatest threat… but that is the manifestation of our greatest threat…. the ‘noise of negativity’ in our minds is actually the most damaging force in the universe.
What we have been doing with our minds is doing the greatest damage in all four environments. Because our minds are hotting up, we are not ‘cool’, we are not in that place of tranquillity. We are not in a state of calmness. We are making the wrong decisions and choices. This is why we are slowly incinerating the world.
You can’t make a decision to cause harm when you are using silence in the right way, it is actually impossible to do that, just as you can’t do the right things when your mind is hot, when your mind is on fire with negativity.
Remember in the Story of Light, that beautiful summary explaining that something that is at its highest frequency is flickering like a candle. It is telling us the secret of energy, which is at its most vibrant, potent best, at its most beautiful, it is a flickering candle. When energy is at its lowest, most toxic, ugliest manifestation, it is like a raging inferno. This is what I mean by hot. The expenditure of energy is too great and as a result it consumes everything in its path. This is why the decisions and choices that we are making are destroying the world, as they are not emerging out of positive silence, which is the flickering candle. Global warming and the environmental tragedy we are facing are the consequences of how we are misusing silence.
Energy, at its highest frequency, is dissipating very slowly. It’s spending little of itself. And that ties in with the conservation principle, which is about not expending energy beyond our capacity, always having something in reserve. So, the flickering candle is a great analogy because it’s spending energy very conservatively, and that is the highest form of being.
We can see this principle in foods that are good for us where the energy from nutritious food is released slowly into our bodies. And the opposite is true. Foods that are not good for us cause an inferno. They are released at a fast rate, and they turn us into infernos in the process. This causes quantum dissonance and biological dysfunction.
So, if we now go back to considering the mind… when we have thoughts that are kind, grateful, generous, loving and compassionate, these thoughts are ‘flickering candle thoughts’. They share their energy in slow, gentle ways. They create a contagion, but not through an inferno because an inferno destroys everything in its path. When we are kind, generous, sweet, and loving, it’s like we are taking one candle and lighting another one from it. This is a really beautiful way to think of this process.
We now understand that what we are doing is taking our candle and lighting other candles… and we’re not going through the world as raging infernos. If we put this in the context of our entire philosophy at Reach, we have arrived at this point organically. It has been done very, very slowly. It has taken us 35 years to get to where we are, and it’s been done in that egoless way, honouring and being mindful of the laws of conservation, the dilution effect and cause and effect. When you live within these spiritual laws the universe supports your efforts because you are in alignment with the Force.
This is not about a personality, it’s not about an individual, it’s not about a messenger. It is about the message and that’s what makes us different, because the way the world currently is, we have got infernos raging throughout the globe. Wherever you look, there’s an inferno. That’s what social media is. That’s what most of the personalities out there are busy doing… ‘I have to be seen… I have to be noticed. I am only relevant if I’ve got five hundred friends on Facebook. I’m only relevant if my Instagram post is liked by a hundred people’. What this means is we are not treating silence with the reverence it deserves. The modern mind is full of noise and chaos, which means we are caught up in the triviality of sound… impressed by the unimpressive, persuaded by the next sound bite. We need to stand behind the curtain of sound and learn to become metaphysical magicians.
This is a nice introduction to ‘speaking without speaking’ because you can now see this is not a clever play on words, this is a profound and accurate description of a higher level of communicating. That said, at Reach we use alliteration a lot, and acronyms and things that make our messages memorable. This encourages association… it supports the client’s ability to commit the concepts to memory. It’s about how to make truth memorable. When we come into sound we need to make our sound useful, and if we think of our Reachisms, they’re very powerful. They summarise so much in a few words… which is the nature of wisdom. There are so many examples, but here are a few…
Focusing with faith. Faith has very little value if you’re not focussing it, if you’re not channelling it somewhere. The faith evaporates into the ether.
Miracles are made. If you’re not involved in your life, fully participating, then don’t expect miracles to turn up. We have to be co-creators.
Method matters most. This one is such a gem; nothing works properly unless you do it in the right way… in the right order, which is why so many of our efforts fail, because we are not sufficiently respecting this principle.
Our Reachisms are evidence of spending time in silence and then coming into sound with these valuable nuggets. This is something we need to be doing with our clients in the room.
The further you go up the ladder, the more evolved you become, through your own practice and experience. The more time you spend speaking without speaking, especially when you can see conversation isn’t working, (which is generally because the other person isn’t listening, or they’re too busy defending their position), the more you can make an impact in silence and alter the direction of the process.
Sometimes speaking without speaking is because the person isn’t ready for what you’re about to say… or need to say… so you sow the seeds for tomorrow. We live in a world of infinite possibilities and even though they may not be ready for what you’re saying today they could be tomorrow… and sometimes sowing the seeds, with tomorrow in mind, is the way to go.
This way of working is particularly important with people we find challenging, maybe even frustrating. Those who say the same things all the time, they complain about everyone, they don’t take responsibility, they’re too busy defending themselves, they’re too angry, they are busy being victims. These clients are the ones that are most likely to benefit from speaking without speaking, because you can see that sound isn’t working because of where they are. And it is important for us that we then don’t get frustrated about this. It’s really important with clients like this, not to lose our focus, because it is very easy to get caught up in their story. Practise saying to these clients those things that you would say, were they listening. You will find the more you do this in your mind, the more you’ll change the energy and the atmosphere in the room, and they tend to run out of steam, at which point some of what you’ve said in your mind can be said aloud.
This is great practice because it improves your focus and concentration and any time we are practising kindness, compassion and altruism, we are adorning our souls as well as those we are in connection with.
Let’s say you do this and the client still doesn’t listen. There is absolutely nothing lost. You have immersed yourself in grace and love because you have done the right thing… regardless of what they were doing.
Advanced ways of doing Emotional Freedom Work
Emotional Freedom Technique is built on sound principles and good foundations, but it doesn’t go far enough. There are a number of important ways in which EFW differs and is superior to EFT (this is covered in our handouts on this subject), but let’s talk about two things that really stand out…
1. The pause is as important as the phrase
This is so deep because it ties up with the value and importance of positive silence, stepping away from sound. Here we can see what we know from neuroscience that pause and silence lower brainwaves, engaging the parasympathetic nervous system, with this one act of honouring the pause as well as the phrase.
The pause is as important as the phrase, makes a world of difference, because when you say… “even though… I feel… overwhelmed… by anxiety… I deeply… and completely… love… and accept… myself…” you cannot help but go into trance, by punctuating each part of this sentence with the appropriate pause.
If we really honour the pause, and repeat the phrase 24 time (3 repetitions per tapping point) we would find that trance would be achieved by about halfway through because we’d be getting slower and slower with every point, which is imperceptible to the client… it’s just stretching it out… just as you do with breathwork. When you do breathwork, at its best, your exhalation is slightly increasing, the longer you go on.
When you are doing tapping too fast, as demonstrated in ‘fast EFT’, you are just engaging the conscious mind, and as we know, that is probably engaging five percent of our consciousness. It is just conscious mind activity, and you are keeping yourself in beta, possibly gamma (not where we are having unique and extraordinary experiences, but where the mind is too frenetic). You’re not dropping into alpha or theta which is where the magic is taking place. Remember the pause really is as important as the phrase.
When we are demonstrating EFW we need to give clients a slow, trance-inducing demonstration, because everyone does it far too fast, which is a reflection of the modern pace of life. We need to slow everyone down. We are trying to engage the sub and unconscious minds. We are trying to activate the preconscious mind. Otherwise, we are not reaching the parts we need to be speaking to. It really matters. This equally applies to mirror work and so any demonstration should follow the same principles because we are teaching people that this way of communicating with themselves is very powerful and reaches the sub and unconscious minds which is where the changes need to happen.
2. Method matters most
There is no point in saying it doesn’t work, when you are doing it wrong. Method matters most. The way that we are doing it at Reach, is synergistically. It is not being done anywhere else in this way. We have incorporated The Story of Health into this modality, making it a whole person approach.
Tapping is a beautiful form of communicating with ourselves and our cells and there should be a reverence and respect applied, which has been lost as it continues to be refined. Sadly, with every incarnation, it has become a technique rather than a healing philosophy. It’s now overpromising and underdelivering.
This is why we created something more beautiful and all-embracing, which we call Emotional Freedom Work. Work is the correct description because we have to put effort into something, to get something. Even eating costs us energy. There is energy being used when we are consuming what we eat. Every organ and system has to produce energy to help in the digestive process. And if we are eating sensibly and wisely, that debt is paid and what we are left with is a positive state of homeostasis. So, energy was needed in order to acquire the energy for life.
We find ourselves in a world today where we have arrogantly adopted the assumption, that we can get something for nothing. This means that we have a sense of entitlement that gets in our way.
At Reach we are saying, without apology, that you have to work to get what you want. You have to put effort in. No effort rightly intended is ever in vain. If we want things to happen, we have to invest in creating that thing.
I’d like to expand your understanding of our creation, Emotional Freedom Work, and say something more about all the key elements which makes our approach very different from EFT. Amongst the things I want to discuss are emotional accuracy, emotional evaluation, creative visualisation – where the client is invited to see in their mind the issue/concern that is disturbing them. Then there is the critical nature of the delivery, where we emphasise the importance of the pause and the phrase… all these elements need to be integrated into your practice because when one element is missing, that could be the difference between success and failure.
With regard to emotional accuracy, you invite the client to hold in their mind something sad or painful, which has caused them distress and in some way remains an obstacle to their progress. Using the SUDS scale (Subjective Units of Distress) we ask the question, how traumatic does the issue feel on a scale of 0 to 10. It’s important that this is the person’s own evaluation of how this feels.
It’s also important for the best results to invite the client to choose an example of that feeling that is as high up the scale as they can manage, preferably 8s, 9s or 10s because the worse it feels, the better the outcome. So don’t encourage something lower in emotional value (unless the client is too distressed), because it’s always good for the client to experience first-hand how their emotional reality can be changed relatively quickly by taking something distressing and desensitising it through tapping.
It’s useful to point out that you don’t want to worry too much about emotional accuracy at the outset, as long as you are in the general region of the feeling, because with each round, you’ll get there anyway. It’s not that you don’t need to check emotional accuracy but just don’t get bogged down in the mechanics of the process, let your client feel their way through it. You need to trust the process.
With regards to visualising the unresolved issue, the more the mind of the client can remain focused on the issue in question and any other elements related to it, the more the relevant emotions will make themselves known.
It doesn’t matter if they move between two or three things on the same theme… that’s fine, but if they are moving between that and something completely unconnected, then, for whatever reason, there is some avoidance, which could be healthy or unhealthy, so we have to make sure we are managing the process. What this means in practice is between each round when we check in with the client, to see where they are on the SUDS scale, at that point, we invite them as best they can to stay with the visualisation. Remember the best outcomes are achieved the higher the emotional intensity; but you have to work with the person’s capacity.
It is our responsibility to ensure clients leave with the best template to continue their practice, because they’re going to copy what has happened in the counselling session. Remember to point out to your client that it is an important part of the overall process that they practise what they have been invited to do in between sessions. This will usually be using a less intense version of what they have done with you in the room, unless you believe they are sufficiently stable enough to do what they have done with you. Most of the time I would only suggest you ask the client to focus on, “I deeply and completely love and accept myself” as a holding statement, to keep things ticking over nicely until the next session.
When the process is not hurried it takes a good 8-10 minutes to complete a round, and I am very often slowing the client down… I’m asking them to try to do it a little slower, to elongate the pauses, emphasising that this makes it more powerful.
The first round is often taking them through it mechanically, not overly focussing on the issue, but the real emphasis should be on getting the tapping points correct and managing the pace of it. We have to help the client understand that we are having a conversation with those things that we have been avoiding and are trying to resolve, and we can’t connect with those things if we’re not in the right bandwidth. Helping the client to activate their parasympathetic nervous system, helping them to slow down their brainwaves, experience trance, these are the things which will connect them to their pain, fear, anger etc.
Assuming all that I have outlined here has been done, all the checks and balances addressed, then you get into changing what we’re focussing on, on every point. To do this effectively you have to have worked out what the theme is, because there is always a theme and there are always other characters at play within the drama that that person is currently going through. If you haven’t worked all of this out it isn’t going to work, and the outcomes are not going to be as fruitful for the client.
So, by way of an example, if the person is overwhelmed by anxiety, the following affirmations may be used, and you can see how there is variation on the theme on every tapping point. For the purposes of clarification, I would initially say the affirmation, and then the client would repeat it three times. Then when we move to the next tapping point, and I would say the next affirmation and repeat this process until we’ve completed the full round. Here’s an illustration of what I mean:
“Even though I am crippled by anxiety, I deeply and completely love and accept myself” (spoken at a slow pace as I talked about earlier). This is repeated three times as usual.
“Even though I am anxious and afraid and I don’t know why, I deeply and completely love and accept myself”…
“Even though I am angry and afraid, I deeply and completely love and accept myself”…
“Even though I feel as though I am disappearing and unworthy, I deeply and completely love and accept myself”…
And so it goes on… what I am doing is incorporating into the process all the things I know about the person, things that they have spoken about, that they have expressed on the journey up to this point. I’m changing the affirmation on each point so that I am able to bring all the relevant elements into play. There will be an overlapping dimension to this, but there will be a clear theme throughout.
An important point to remember when advancing your EFW skills in this way is to make sure you don’t get too hooked up on the words I’ve used, those are just by way of example. What is really important is that you use all the knowledge you have accrued about your client and cleverly weave that into what it is you are asking them to focus on… this approach is more directive and is more expansive.
When we are saying the affirmation first, it’s important to remember that the real point of this is that you are pushing the boundaries of the work, you are taking the client further into their issue. This is often stuff where there has been some resistance or avoidance; or the client may not have even realised what you’re presenting was part of the issue.
From a practical perspective this is how it needs to be done, otherwise the person wouldn’t know what to focus on, so you’re taking the thinking aspect out of the process for them, so that the emotion remains front and centre.
This is very, powerful. It drops people into a completely new place. This is because you’re subtly ‘cornering’ them, you’re giving them nowhere to go and so new revelations occur which can take the work to a deeper level.
One of the gems worthy of note is whatever else is at play for the client, anxiety and fear are always hidden in the midst of their concerns. So, it’s worth remembering that these two will need some special attention. So, when probing, unsure of exactly what’s hidden in the dark recesses of the mind, you could pose questions such as:
Are you anxious or are you grieving?
Are you anxious or are you suffering with low self-esteem?
Are you anxious or you afraid no-one loves you?
There are endless possibilities here. You could ask ‘Are you anxious or (and then insert into the question the thing that is going on for that person)’. I have used anger just to illustrate the point that anger often masquerades as anxiety. As I said earlier, anxiety is always part of the symptomology. It represents what the client is not facing or saying and if we can stick with this emotion and dive deeper, wonderful things begin to occur.
The people who struggle with remembering the phrase, apart from when it’s simply new to them, are not really there, they are not really listening. It’s not a long phrase; these phrases are not hard to remember. This is all about the atmosphere you create in the room. I create an atmosphere as though we are in a synagogue or in a gurdwara or in a temple or a church. I’m making the vibration like that. I’m not leaving the vibration to be whatever it is in the room; I’m controlling it.
This is back to what I said about being behind the curtain of sound and using silence to change what is happening within sound. So, I create the feeling that we’re in a special and sacred place, and the tone, rhythm and delivery of the voice helps to set that up. When working with EFW in this way, you must remember the power of your voice – pace, tone and delivery all play their part. They can change the brainwave bandwidth your client is experiencing, which can elevate the whole experience. But remember, this is not going to happen in spite of you, it’s going to happen because of you.
When you get the pausing and phrasing right, the atmosphere cannot resist the magic of this because you’re calling on silence to be part of the dance within sound. We can change the atmosphere in the room with anyone as long as we remember what the rules are. And each time you repeat the phrase, you are consciously slowing it down to take your client further into their emotional abyss. Remember, the more the client’s emotions are intense, the more they will get relief.
It’s important to note that this more nuanced way of working would only be applied to someone where you believed, having worked with EFW before, they are ripe for this kind of intervention because this way of working is closer to darkroom work in terms of its potency, as it’s more paused and reflective and you are leading the client somewhere they might not always be ready to go. So, you don’t want to do that prematurely. Remember, strength over force every time.
Tapping using one word
There is some wisdom to be found in the expediency of ‘Fast EFT’. This relates to distilling the whole phrase (emotion) down to one word and avoiding the elongated version of ‘even though…’
When one word is used to replace the whole phrase, this has been arrived at through a skilful dissection of what the client has said in between each round, combined with your experience of the client, as well as what’s taking place in the room. All three things guide you to the most important emotions underpinning the client’s problem. Generally, the emotions you are focusing on all connect with one another, which makes them easier to recall. There is always a theme.
Now, on each point you are focusing on one word (emotion). That word, like the seed of a tree, holds everything within in. The client would then repeat that one word three times and then you would change the word on the next point and they would repeat the process, changing the word each time. For example:
On point 1, anxiety…
On point 2, fear…
On point 3, worry…
On point 4, Irrelevance… and so on.
After you have done two, possibly three rounds within the session, you invite the client to make a note of the emotions that were the focus of the session, so that they can replicate the process at home, as best they can. This may initially pose a challenge to remember eight words but it’s easier than you think to do it in practice, especially as the emotions tend to have a theme running through them. But if the client seems a little intimidated by the task, reduce the number to four or even just two (these should be the most powerful emotions), because they might succeed at the task better if they’re only having a reduced number to focus on.
Hopefully, this brief excursion through tapping and the way that we work with it, will help enhance your practice. The beauty of this way of working is that there is so much room to be person specific within the structure which always leads to the best outcomes.
N.B. If you are contemplating working in these more creative ways with EFW, to ensure best practice, always discuss what you are thinking of with your supervisor first.