Emotional Freedom

Mind

April 05, 2009

freedom_eft

Michelle Hardwick Tells Us How EFT Can Change One's Life

Michelle Hardwick has been an energy healer for over ten years, combining Hypnotherapy, Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). She spent two years working with kids in a New Zealand intermediate school helping them overcome fears, increase confidence and resolve suicidal tendencies. She was one of New Zealand's leading EFT trainers and has brought the popular EFT training courses to Hong Kong. Today she is based in Wales, but travels the world to do workshops and consultations. She talks to The Source Asia about how EFT has not only transformed her clients' lives but also her own.

How has EFT changed your life?
It allowed me to be free of a lot of fear, anxiety and self-doubt. By removing my inner obstacles, it allowed me to change how I worked with people. EFT really freed me and helped me become a better person and therapist.

What were you doing before you started EFT?
I was doing hypnosis and hypnotherapy, and then I added NLP. Hypnosis was very powerful, but I felt it wasn't enough. I was getting more and more difficult clients, and I just felt like I didn't have enough tools.

How do you fuse the three healing modalities?
I start with EFT. That is to clear all old emotions, any stuck feeling, pain or whatever the person is dealing with. EFT is probably the fastest thing I've ever witnessed to shift that. If there is a set program or a set pattern in the mind, I use NLP to break that pattern. It works on the neurons in the brain, and it works with language. NLP is based on how successful people are. They have a model or a map of the world, and when you find out what that map is, then you (even though you don't have that map) can actually use that same map to get successful or to achieve results. It's a strategic way to get success. First of all I find out what map they're using. If it's a map of failure, we figure out how they're actually navigating this map of failure, and then we take it and change it to a map of success.

So how exactly does that change take place?
We change it through working with language and the brain. I get them to think about certain situations, for example something that makes them feel angry. Then you tune into that, and you can change how that actually sounds, looks or feels in your mind. By changing that you empower yourself. Whatever it is is reduced to nothing and then you can strengthen the self-belief or the positive about yourself. NLP also works with timelines. When people are stuck in a trauma, like the lady I've worked with today. All her past was stuck in her heart. So she couldn't move forward because every time she thought about moving forward all her past was just "here". So I used EFT and NLP together to work with the past and to clear and release it, and then we placed the past behind her, so she could move on. A lot of people can't see the future, because they're so stuck in the past. So after a change like this, people can start to make plans, they can start to dream again and have successes.

Can't you also change that with EFT?
Absolutely, it's just another process, another tool. If the person doesn't have any self-esteem or self-confidence, I start with a new blue print for confidence. That's what I do with hypnosis and hypnotherapy. If you've never had one, then how can you possibly suddenly be confident?

With the hypnotherapy we also go into the past. So we may go into childhood and maybe to a really positive time when they felt amazing, and they can build upon that. Or we can go into the womb and see how they felt in the womb. It just depends on what the person needs. It's all tailor-made.

How would you describe EFT in a few words?
It's an emotional form of acupuncture. So you're working on releasing the emotions by using stress release points. But rather than just being a body process, you're actually engaging the mind as well. So it's a mind-body technique. The ultimate gain is power and peace. So once you've let go of all that stuff you come back into balance. It's fast and effective. It really gets to the root cause quickly, whereas in hypnosis it might take a couple of sessions.

Are there side effects?
Sometimes the person can get flooding, where the repressed emotions are on their way up and being released. That's not scary, it's more like the body and mind are saying, "Finally we're letting this old stuff go!"

Why would you recommend EFT over another technique?
It's effective, and I'm teaching the person as we do the session. So it actually empowers them. They're not dependent on me to have a session. Once they've learnt the technique, they can do it themselves.

michell_hardwick

Why did you choose to be a practitioner?
I was in the hotel industry for more than 20 years. So I was in a stressed environment for many years, and it was having a negative effect on my health. I was in Hawaii, and I had gone for a Huna treatment and the guy said to me, "If you carry on, you will have a tumour in your stomach." It was a wake-up call. So I started to look for more alternative ways to deal with the stress. That's when I began training in hypnotherapy.

What are the most common things people come to see you for?
Mainly unresolved emotions, trauma from the past, physical pain, phobias, fears, panic, addictive habits.

What about smokers who want to quit? How good are the results?
Very good. There's quite a lot involved in that, because it's not just the habit, there are also the emotions and the addiction. I would recommend a lot of strategies for them to actually change that. They would be working with an emergency craving strategy. There's a short cut they can use, with only three acu points. I would get them to change what they do. If they have a coffee and a cigarette, I would get them to go for orange juice, which has no connection. So you're breaking all the links throughout the day. Often in a session I would get them to bring in a cigarette, to bring in the wine or whatever it is they're dealing with, so we break all of the links associated with, such as smell, taste, touch. They all trigger the response.

You've trained with EFT founder Gary Craig. What was your experience?
He was amazing and just so inspiring, giving and gentle. There were 16 practitioners in his home for a week. Five days we tapped through the whole day. That was in 2003. There were advanced practitioners from all around the world. He was trying out one of the techniques, so we were almost like guinea pigs. It was the "borrowing benefits" technique. When you're doing EFT in a group, usually you have one person in the front and everybody else is tapping. So everybody gets the benefit of that even though they're actually tapping for that person and not on their own issue. You don't need to do therapy on every single person in a group. You can just do it on one.

Gary Craig does much work with psychological reversals. How do you approach those?
It's like a self-sabotage. So when people are working towards a goal and they realise that they are just backtracking the whole time, then there is some resistance within that. It's underpinning the change, and often it's fear of change or fear of the unknown.

If you can't get to the root cause with EFT, would you use hypnosis?
I would use NLP or hypnosis. What we can do is find out from the unconscious why they're not allowing themselves to heal. Really, it's just a block to heal. If all parts of them are congruent, they make the change like that. But if there's a part or two that's not, that believe that it's safer to hold on... this particular belief was set up maybe in childhood, and it was a solution at that time. But now it's become a problem.

What plans do you have?
I'm looking at setting up week-long retreats, getting someone from a medical field, working with the emotions, yoga for a week. So it's like a combination of mind, body, spirit and emotions. I'm going to be doing a Yoga and EFT retreat in Wales in August, and another one in China at the end of April. When you do yoga all the emotions come up, and when you clear the blocking emotions with EFT you can open up so much quicker.

I also do one day courses in the corporate field, addressing stress, anger and self-esteem. I also work with people who are unemployed, to build their confidence, so they are able to join the workforce, because a lot of them don't have the confidence to go for an interview.

Do you have any tips to share?
You can download a free self-hypnosis leaflet (on the hypnosis page) from my website. There's also a free document called the ABC of EFT (on the EFT page). That shows how to do EFT. Then there's also lots of youtube videos, including one that shows you how to deal with cravings using EFT.

Do you have any tips on what to tap on?
I usually make a list. Write down what you're feeling. "I'm feeling angry. I'm feeling tired. I'm feeling upset about so and so", and then use those acupressure points and just tap on all of those things that you're feeling.

Isn't that too generic?
You can also tap on "I'm feeling angry, because so and so...", "so and so happened at work". Make it more specific about how you're feeling or what is irritating you at that time, what is making you sad etc. Write a list and then go through it using the technique. If you got a headache, you can write "I've got this headache, and it feels like this in my head, and I'm frustrated because I'm not feeling well, and it's limiting me...". Basically just tap on those pressure points and it will dissipate. It is really powerful, because you're working with major stress release points. Each point is linked to different emotions. When I facilitate the EFT Practitioner Level 2 Training, we actually go through all those points and look at how it's linked to the emotions.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?
Seeing people blossom, instead of being burdened, people who can't even leave the house are having a job... also when I worked with the kids in the school in New Zealand. I was there for two years. Kids were slipping notes underneath my door saying, "I'm suicidal. Can you please help me." Many of them were dealing with their parents separating, and they didn't know how to cope with it. But the kids became so confident, it was like day and night. I feel very humble when I see that change, and you see people who've never been able to have a relationship, and they blossom in a relationship, or they've been fifth generation of beneficiary and they get a job. It's truly amazing. They are the ones who really do the work. I'm just like a guide. But they're leading the way and they're taking me to wherever they feel comfortable to go.

What's your motto?
"Follow your bliss", I love that one and use it all the time. Another funny one is, "If you have skeletons in your closet, at least teach them to dance".

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