Death Vows

These are strong beliefs where the person either casually or empathically, made a vow that they did not want to live. A vow is a belief that is a promise. It generally has emotion associated with it and can take on a life of its own. Examples of such vows are, “I would rather die, than live.” or “I want to kill myself.” Death vows can emerge during peak emotional experiences where the person feels trapped or that there is no other way out. What I have also found, that when death vows are made, generally the person does not mean it. In the heat of the moment the words just spontaneously emerge either as inner self talk or directed outwardly.

Un-forgiveness

An inability to forgive is linked to cancer. There is a difference between lip service forgiveness and true heart felt forgiveness. True forgiveness comes from within, and it occurs naturally when the past hurt or disappointment is released. When we find it in our hearts to whole-heartedly forgive ourselves and others, it creates an opening that unlocks a sense of peace, health and wholeness. Holding onto unforgiveness means that emotions such as anger, frustration and resentment fester beneath the surface and keep cortisol and adrenaline elevated, depleting natural killer cells which is one of the body’s defence mechanism against cancer cells replicating. You can read more about the healing power of forgiveness here.

Suppressed anger

Keeping any negative emotion suppressed can be harmful to health. It is toxic to the body, just like swallowing back down one’s own vomit. In a study conducted on 796 men and women, what was found was that those who bottled up their anger died from either heart disease or cancer. With anger, it is not always as simple as just express it. If anger is projected onto others it can be hurtful and sever relationships irrevocably. In addition, in my private practice I notice in the case of suppressed anger there are also beliefs and vows in place that prevent anger from being expressed. There is usually an early memory of parents fighting or anger being projected onto the child that makes the child decide, “Anger is bad, I must not get angry.” In fact the vow is so strong that the person would rather die, than risk getting angry.

The above 3 are the most significant emotional patterns that can cause cancer.

Other factors that could have an influence:

1. Low self esteem; not wanting to put oneself first; serving others first
2. Being overly critical; constantly beating oneself up; being harsh with self

In closing, while I have noticed these themes in my private practice and during the seminars I conduct, I will stay this: Everyone is unique and different and each person has their own story and life challenges. Who gets cancer and why, I really have no idea. I do as guided moment to moment as a channel.

Also read » 4 wonderfully simple ways to cultivate unconditional self-love

My top 3 tips to overcome these patterns are…

1. Uncover any death vows and find the healing method of choice to clear them from the root cause. My preferred method is The Journey which I have also used to clear my own cancer-related death vows

2. Releasing anger – You will have to work on consciously letting go of all the pent up anger accumulated over the years. Tantrum tapping can help you do that. The image below explains how it is done.
3. Forgiveness – First release the past hurt and pain and then forgiveness emerges automatically

The post An NLP expert talks about the possible emotional causes of cancer appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

The most important difference is the belief system used behind each of these techniques. Apart from this, the process is slightly different as well. When I created FEFT, I started off with EFT, but after years of study and research, added my own touch to the process. I gradually developed an entirely new system, that I called FasterEFT.

EFT versus FasterEFT

EFT is an Energy Healing Modality. The core belief in EFT is that a disruption in the body’s energy system is the cause of all negative emotions. The tapping points used in EFT are used to balance out that energy, so as to create harmony again. FasterEFT, on the other hand, is based on neurology and biology.

The core belief in FasterEFT is rooted in neuroscience. It believes that there is no disruption in the energy system, and that everything is working as it should, according to the beliefs we hold within our subconscious mind. If we believe that it’s noble to be poor, we will have thoughts supporting that belief and we will successfully take actions that correspond to that belief.

In FasterEFT, the tapping on the energy points is used to disrupt the signal between the brain and the major organs responsible for creating the feelings associated with a particular thought. It deals with changing the neural pathways in the neocortex of the brain while we are actually tapping, literally changing our brain.

FasterEFT operates from an understanding that thoughts and memories stored within the subconscious mind are responsible for every decision we take. Once these memories are recorded within the mind, they are used as references to react to our external environment. Simply put, once you keep thinking or doing something over and over again, whether positive or negative, it becomes a habit, and eventually an automatic response. We learn to walk, drive, ride a bicycle etc. because we’ve performed these actions so many times that it’s become ingrained in our brains.

Whereas, regular EFT believes that negative emotions are not caused by negative memories but by an energy disruption in the body. So the key difference between regular EFT and FasterEFT is that FasterEFT believes on changing the memories held within the subconscious mind, through neurological and biological processes, while regular EFT works on balancing the body’s energy system.

The difference in processes

EFT

In EFT, tapping is done on nine acupuncture points. This includes a set up point and the whole process includes a set up phrase which is used while tapping. Then there are rounds of tapping on the other eight points, using a “reminder phrase” which is designed specifically to keep your focus on the problem you are addressing. This process is then repeated until the issue or feeling is resolved. There are more acupuncture points that are used for more complex problems.

FasterEFT

The FasterEFT tapping process manipulates only five acupuncture points. The process starts off with you noticing that you have a problem, through how you feel—anxious, sad, depressed, angry, hurt etc.—and by noticing associated memories. This is the aiming process which focuses on the problems held within the subconscious mind. Then, the tapping is done on four meridian points that are connected to the major organs that produce the chemicals that cause the emotions you feel when thinking about a certain problem/memory.

While using FasterEFT, you focus on the feeling of your fingers against your skin and not on the problem. This is known as De-fractionation. While tapping, you repeat the phrase “Let it go” or “It’s safe to let it go”. You then grab your wrist, which is the meridian points for several other major organs, take a deep breath, blow it out and say, “Peace”, and think about a memory or thought that makes you feel good.

This switching between feeling the problem and then taking your focus off of it, is a powerful process and causes a disruption in the subconscious programming of your mind. In effect, you are re-wiring your brain to think another way by breaking the chain of negative reactions you have to certain stimuli.

This process is repeated until the feeling or memory that bothered you doesn’t bother you any more. Or until the memory ‘flips’. Memory flipping simply means that the memory that caused you pain before, now no longer holds the same emotional value. So when you think of that painful memory, you don’t feel hurt, angry or sad. The neuroplasticity of the brain allows you to think about that particular incident without triggering the same negative reaction within you.

For more details on how and why FasterEFT works, read: The REAL Cause of All Your Problems! or watch FasterEFT Video 167

The post Try Faster EFT to rewire your brain for health, happiness and success appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Unconditional self-love is not just a concept, it is a reality. The truth is, to love unconditionally, you need to dive deep into the ‘self’ and do the inner work of unconditional acceptance. To heal the past, allow and accept it the way it is, free from all judgment and expectation.

Loving unconditionally

In reality, unconditional love makes life effortless. It can release stress in a millisecond. When you give up the story of expectation, blame, fear and control, it can be experienced in every moment, no matter what is transpiring on the outside.

My journey to unconditional love started with the question—how do I love all of me?

It was only when I hit rock-bottom that I was ready to go within. Soon, I learnt over 200 methods of alternate therapy and wellness and now, I teach others how to be free from the past and live in the moment. The secret to health, happiness and peace is unconditional self-love.

4 Ways to Master the Art of Self-love

Below are some of the keys to mastering the art of loving yourself unconditionally:

1. Love and accept even in the face of stress

One of my greatest teachers of unconditional love has been my mother. I recall an incident when I was 13 years old and hormonal. My mother walked into my bedroom to just say hello to me, an innocent hello. Yet my response was in the language of rage and anger, “I hate you mom. Leave me alone. Go away!”

My mother looked at me with so much love, it extinguished all else. She did not utter a word, she left the room leaving me consumed in her love. She is an example of unconditional love. Even at the face of her daughter towering her rage at her, she still exuded love. Mom knew in her heart of hearts that her daughter was going through some pain on the inside and it was being projected outwardly. For many years, I felt guilty and sad of having spoken to my mom in a language that took control of me in the spur of a moment. I did not have the courage to go up to her and say sorry. And yet, when I learnt to love and accept myself fully, I had the humility to be seek her forgiveness and, most importantly, forgive myself.

Love tip 1 »

To love and accept at the face of stress, breathe in and out and say to yourself, “Even though I am stressed out, I still choose to love and accept myself fully. I am love. I am love. I am love.” Breathe in and out again.

2. Love yourself just the way you are

My body has been one of my teachers of unconditional love. After the age of 13, I started to increase in size and began to gather puppy fat, which grew into an excess of 30kg over the years. I became tired, lethargic, angry, sad and alone. I was at war with my body and whenever I looked in the mirror, I used to abuse myself internally and say really nasty things to myself about my body—you are ugly, I hate you, I do not like you, you are so fat, nobody loves you. Meanwhile, I was eating healthy and had a regular exercise routine, and yet not even 0.01kg of my weight shifted. How could it, when I was holding onto all the weight? Only when I truly accepted myself for just being the way I was that my weight finally began to leave my body.

Love tip 2 »

To love yourself, look at yourself in the mirror and say out loud, while tapping slightly below your collar bone, “Even though I have judged you and verbally abused you, I am so sorry, please forgive me. I deeply and profoundly love and accept you, just the way you are.”

3. Stay strong in self-love, even when triggered from the outside

Our greatest teachers of unconditional love are the ones closest to us—our loved ones, significant other, children, parents, family, bosses and work colleagues—those we interact with on a day-to-day basis and those who know exactly which buttons to press and how to trigger us. Unconditional love is about developing inner confidence and staying strong within, no matter what is transpiring on the outside. We ought to realise that the other person is just operating from their frame or model of the world and it is not personal.

Love tip 3 »

When triggered, breathe and stand on the ground and say out loud, “I release you now. I release this trigger. I am safe. I am strong. I choose to be confident in myself. I am love.”

4. First self, then others

Heart-break, separation/divorce, job loss or grief can be great springboards to open to self love. Hurt hurts, loss creates loss and separation is like being ripped from the illusion of ‘safety’ to the truth of who I really am.

A patient of mine came to see me about an issue in her personal life where she had met someone whom she considered to be her soul mate and had the most exhilarating 10 days of her life with. She was sucked into a fairy tale romance and had a single-minded focus on her beloved. Then, suddenly, it broke and she broke inwardly with it. Every single day, she would come home from work and lock herself in her bedroom and cry uncontrollably. She could not get him out of her mind and she became stuck in a vortex of grief, loss, separation, anxiety, anger and despair.

Even when confronted with all that pain and trauma, she still found it in her heart to do the inner work. To go within and to empty out all the pain and to accept it… and him. Eventually, through the process work, she had a spontaneous opening into unconditional love and the veil of physical and romantic love stripped away. The past addiction to being needed and cared for disappeared and all that remained was unconditional self love and acceptance.

Love tip 4 »

For self-love, get present to this moment and just breathe. Just this moment. Breathe in and out and notice who you really are.

Loving yourself unconditionally involves separating yourself from the illusion and coming home to ‘Self’, free from judgment and expectation in total and complete allowance and acceptance of what is.

The post 4 Simple Ways to Cultivate Unconditional Self-love appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Personality to presence

The inner child is a personality within us. A personality is created by the mind to get something. For example, the ‘star child’ personality gets created when a child realises that the only way it can get the attention or love of its parents is by winning in a competitive environment or shining in a particular skill. Here the mind map is: achievement = love and attention. When seen in awareness, your personality is just a set of mind maps with filters that you use to view the world. A mind map limits you from fully experiencing life; your entire effort and energy is spent running after what this personality needs, but you never seem to find it outside yourself. By reaching the point of creation of this personality, you discover that point in time when an incident created a belief that you have an unmet need and the corresponding realisation that you are not enough to meet that need by yourself.

Once seen for what it is—just an unmet need—acceptance is natural. As a result, the personality loses its hold on your emotions and dissolves, leaving a divine child behind. The divine or the magical child is in fact just an essence. It is a presence that naturally arises, uninhibited in the absence of a personality. It simply exists and seeks nothing.

This journey from the wounded child to the divine child is made through the following stages:

Retrieval → Emotional catharsis of the ‘original pain’ → Understanding the unmet need → Physically meeting the need → Re-parenting

5 techniques to help heal your inner child

1. Regressive guided meditations to recover the inner child

This is the first step in the healing process. Through a guided meditation, you regress to the point where you lost touch with your inner child. During the meditation, you retrieve that child from your subconscious into your conscious mind to begin the healing process.

2. Non-dominant hand writing or drawing

In this technique you consciously address the child within you regarding a particular problem, situation or feeling, by writing the questions with your dominant hand, and then allowing your non-dominant hand to move on paper in the way it wants to, without filtering. This hand channels the energy of your inner child. It can give very specific answers, draw, bring out emotions and can also trigger body aches, pains or symptoms that reveal the state of your inner child. This technique can also be used to channel higher awareness from one’s essence.

3. Art therapy

Some issues are so deeply locked into the psyche that words are not enough to fully honour and feel the emotion. These deep imprints release through hands-on work. Working with clay, mud, paints, crayons, water, paper, drums and through body movement or dance allows the body to have a cathartic experience and transform the emotion.

4. Voice dialogue or role play

To keep the wounded inner child in place there are strong sub-personalities attached to it and they must be addressed as a ‘critical’ self, ‘perfectionist’ self and so on. These are the underlying energies that will jump in and re-create that self, even if you heal the wounded child within. Voice dialoguing is similar to doing a conscious role play by allowing each of these sub-personalities their space to voice themselves as if they were individuals. This has to be done in the presence of what is called the ‘Aware Ego’. The Aware Ego is the conscious interrogator within the person. It comes from a non-judgmental place of pure observation. It is the space of understanding within us where we join the dots about the needs of the different personalities. In my experience, it helps to give ‘props’ to these personalities to allow you to fully embody that personality, such as a red lipstick to the ‘compulsive seducer’ who acts out sexually or a stick to the ‘inner patriarch’. These roles are often archetypal and therefore their personalities can be recreated very intuitively.

5. EFT [Emotional Freedom Technique]

Tapping, as this is popularly called, is highly effective in allowing emotion to surface at a bodily level. Tapping as part of inner child healing is specifically speaking in first person as the wounded child itself, and voicing your feelings and thoughts as if you were going through the traumatic situation in that moment. Spontaneous visualisation might also happen during this process and deeper memories can come up as you go through the EFT rounds. It is necessary that you keep tapping through every layer until you get a bodily experience of light.

Inner parenting

However wonderful, cathartic, deep and life-transforming your inner child healing is, all this beautiful energy could easily and very soon get swept away with old thought patterns if you as an inner parent do not take responsibility of your inner child.

While the techniques mentioned above dominantly employ the subconscious, inner parenting requires your conscious mind to be involved in deciding how you want to channel the creativity, sensitivity, awareness and insights your inner child is giving you. The very reason one gets into inner child healing is unaware parenting. If you fall back into old habits with a more open, vulnerable and fragile inner child self with no masks and no defences; you will attract even more intense wounds and might even completely shut down. Therefore, don’t expect wonders if you are not consciously parenting your inner child.

Taking ownership of your inner child fully includes talking to your inner child through affirmations, words of comfort and encouragement and proactively changing your actions to meet the needs of your inner child. Enforce your authority by being firm and disciplining your inner child by seeing through the falsity of the core beliefs it is holding on to. This is the only way to sustain the energy of your transformation from breaking out of your wounds.

Inner child healing is not a pill that can be popped; it won’t set things right after you go through a fixed number of sessions. It requires constant self-awareness and is therefore not for ‘spiritual shoppers’. This work can go on for a lifetime. For those who have seen life’s magic, experienced through the divine inner child, the journey into every layer of oneself becomes more and more fascinating until one emerges as the hero.

The post Set your inner child free appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

“They knew how serious our mother’s condition was, they knew I was all alone there and in need of help. They should have come to help us. They didn’t even pick up the phone and call!” Tina said angrily. She had always helped them when they were in need, and when it was their turn, they had forgotten her. She felt betrayed.

She was so traumatised by this dreadful experience that she hasn’t left her mother and grandmother’s side since—not taking a single vacation in eight years. Instead, Tina has lived with a constant fear of either of them getting sick again, and has taken on a lot of their responsibility by herself.

Our emotional baggage becomes heavier as we get older and we are able to do and be less than when we were younger

Because of all this, she also hasn’t been able to tie the knot. Well-educated, successful, pretty and young, there has been no shortage of suitors for Tina. But her fear of living away from her mother and grandmother has sabotaged her attempts to commit to a relationship. This intense internal conflict between her desires and equally intense fears have added to her high levels of frustration. In a way, Tina has been stuck in a prison of her own making for eight long years.

Voluntary confinement

Each one of us has a self-made prison that limits our life experiences. The walls of this prison are made of painful memories, fears, feelings of inadequacy and ignorance. Sometimes we are unable to express ourselves because of bad memories or fears. For example, why do we say ”yes” when we really want to say “no”? We do that usually when we are afraid, perhaps, of confrontation. We are often unable to even try to grab an opportunity because we are trapped in our prison. Our emotional baggage becomes heavier as we get older and we are able to do and be less than when we were younger.

Let us say that we are all born with an empty trunk or box on our heads [I know that seems bizarre, but humour me for a minute]. These trunks collect our emotional baggage in the form of rocks. Over time we unknowingly collect more and more emotional baggage and our trunks get heavier. As children, with empty trunks, we have so much energy that it is hard for us to sit still. The heavier our trunk gets, the slower we can run, the lesser we can walk, the lesser we can remember—a time comes when we get tired even when we aren’t doing anything at all.

Imagine what would happen if, while you were walking with your heavy trunk, a few big rocks fell out. Wouldn’t you automatically start walking faster? Imagine waking up every morning with more energy than you have had in years! You will be able to effortlessly do more, you will feel more capable and confident, your focus will be sharper, and you will be more alert and less fearful – just like you were a decade or two ago. That is what Emotional Freedom Techniques [EFT] can do for you.

Imagine what would happen if, while you were walking with your heavy trunk, a few big rocks fell out

Keep that energy flowing

EFT is an easy-to-use technique that clears away blocked energy in your body. It is based on the discovery that all painful emotions are a result of energy blocks. Every painful emotion is an indicator of an energy block. EFT heals pain by clearing these energy blocks. It therefore always works at the root cause of the pain. The clearer your energy is, the better your perspective and the more empowered you feel. Healing through EFT is done by tapping with one’s fingers on the energy points on the body. These exact points are also used in acupressure and acupuncture. Acupressure and acupuncture work mainly on physical issues but EFT’s transformative power lies in its ability to erase emotional and mental pain. When there’s no pain left, there’s nothing left to manage!

EFT works faster than most forms of healing available to us currently, and is certainly much faster than counselling. There are profound benefits to clearing blocked emotions—illnesses heal, mysterious aches and pains vanish, weight loss occurs, relationships improve, and so do bank balances. Now you’re really interested, aren’t you?

Setting yourself free

My client Tina was sceptical of EFT at first but became eager when we finally started tapping for her emotional pain. Twenty minutes into the healing she looked up at me and said “You know… in the past eight years all that those guys [her relatives] have done is collect rent on the property I set up for them, and get drunk every evening. They haven’t done anything with their lives in these past eight years. How could I have expected anything more from them?” This seemed to me like she was, in her own way, starting to let go.

“I am not wasting another minute of my life thinking about my relatives. I am going on a holiday!” A few sessions later, she took a two-week holiday with her old friends in Mumbai. A year later she had made it as far as London. She had even managed to find love. In her words, she was in an “amazing relationship with an amazing guy”.

Spiritual revival

In Tina’s case, we could identify her painful emotions around an incident and permanently ‘erased’ them with EFT. This clearly released a lot of blocked energy within her and re-awakened a sense of well-being within her—a feeling important for any healthy, happy adult.

EFT can free you of just about everything you want freedom from, whether you learn it yourself or seek the help of an experienced EFT practitioner. In the meantime, you can stop adding new rocks to your trunk by feeling your pain, instead of suppressing it. The next time you feel anger or hurt well up within you, just close your eyes and go into your body. You will be able to feel this pain in your body. Focus on it until it dissipates. And when it does, you would have successfully destroyed the new rock before it gets stored in your trunk forever!

To know more, watch this talk I have at a TEDx Delhi event.

The post EFT: Tapping away the pain appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.