EmotionalBuzz

Announcing a new technique – Picture Tapping

The Picture Tapping technique is a new technique that is very easy to use, gentle, and particularly useful for addressing “global issues”. It requires an absolute minimum of practitioner input into the process, can be used on any issues where other Meridian Tapping Techniques are used but is particularly useful when working with clients who have difficulty getting specific, or clients who are jumping around from issue to issue, from aspect to aspect.

Over the past few years, a number of new meridian tapping techniques have been introduced that have taken the ground floor approach introduced by Gary Craig with his EFT Protocol and have extended it to make something extraordinarily powerful.

We use many of these different approaches on a daily basis in our practice and we get excellent results but over the last year, we have been developing and trialling a new way of using meridian tapping techniques. We have found this technique to be so powerful that we use it with almost all of our clients now. It has provided us with powerful insights into our clients’ subconscious minds, the writing on their walls and their core issues. Our clients love the process and as practitioners we find it can often give resolution to problems more effectively and less painfully than is possible with many other meridian tapping techniques. Other practitioners and some of our students who have helped us to trial the technique have also been impressed with the ease of resolution for issues which had previously been difficult.

This is particularly true when the issue is “global” or abstract in nature, or where the issue is known to have core events driving it, but those events are beyond memory. Of course, the technique can also be used on specific issues like aches and pains, fears and phobias and so forth.

We have used the words ‘practitioner’ and ‘client’ in this article to represent the person giving treatment and the person receiving treatment. However, please be aware that you can use the Picture Tapping technique on yourself with excellent results. In that case, the client and the practitioner are the same person.

The Picture Tapping technique is an add-on to conventional EFT or other meridian tapping techniques.

It is a way of using meridian Tapping along with the power of metaphor and the imagination, to release problems in a painless and indirect way. Because the Picture Tapping technique uses metaphor and symbols it often allows access to aspects, thoughts and memories that may be difficult to express either verbally or by using other modalities. Clients are frequently amazed and delighted at the way things are resolved and the connections between events and issues that are brought to light.

This technique is not a way of using meridian tapping with different words or a different tapping order. Instead, it uses a few well defined and simple phrases coupled with a very powerful concrete use of visual metaphor.

The Picture Tapping technique is particularly useful where the problem is very non-specific or ‘global’ in nature.

Frequently, the process will lead a client from a very global problem to the core event(s) that are driving that global problem. It also frequently happens that the driving core events behind any global issue are healed without having to consciously work with those events.

Examples of global problems that have been successfully resolved are:

• low self esteem
• depression
• generalised anxiety
• “my family situation”
• “my mother”
• “my money worries”
• “my blocks to success”
• “all the events that are behind this problem”
• “my resistance to letting go of the problem”
• “the karma from my past lives”
• writer’s block
• “not good enough”
• “something terrible is going to happen”
• and many more.

Picture Tapping Technique may also be used on:

• specific problems where the cause is known but the event is felt too keenly to be addressed directly. In this way it can be used instead of other disassociative techniques.
• specific physical problems. For example, this headache, this pain in my knee.
• specific emotional problems. For example, spider phobia, anger at my boss.
• specific problems that appear to be blocked and are resisting clearance using other methods.
• and so on.

The Picture Tapping technique may be used on any issue where conventional meridian tapping techniques are used. However, we can envisage situations where other techniques may be more efficient than the Picture Tapping technique. Some examples are acute pain from a recent injury or where a client has already entered a state of emotional overwhelm. In both of these cases a very rapid intervention is needed.

“Things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler” – Albert Einstein.

If a healing technique requires the practitioner to have the mental agility of Albert Einstein and the deductive powers of Sherlock Holmes then it is not a lot of use to anyone but a minute fraction of the population. Any healing modality must be simple and accessible to everyone if it is ever going to make an impact on the world.

This is why Gary Craig’s EFT has become such a worldwide phenomenon. The EFT basic recipe is so simple that it can be (and is) used by people from around the world of all ages from toddlers to the superannuated. In developing the Picture Tapping technique, we have followed this ethos as much as possible.

As we developed this technique, we wanted to simplify it as far as possible. We tried leaving out different parts of the technique to see if it still worked, and a strange thing happened. We found that the more we took out, the more effective the technique became!

We found that when the practitioner had an absolute minimum of original input into a Picture Tapping technique session, the results were far better, far more long lasting and a lot gentler than when the practitioner was creating reframes or trying to steer the session in a particular direction through use of techniques such as leading.

Testing is a large part of many traditional meridian tapping techniques. The Picture Tapping technique has a very user friendly way of testing. The resolution of issues is usually very apparent to both the practitioner and the client. Often, the only testing that is done is to ask the client if the issue is resolved yet, at an appropriate point. At the end of the session it is also a good idea to review the session to see if there is anything left of any of the issues, or if some new aspects have arisen.

This minimalist form of testing rips up the rule-book as far as many other conventional tapping techniques go. However, we have found that searching for issues and aspects and testing for clearance is unnecessary most of the time when using this technique because the existence of these potential problems is apparent to both the practitioner and the client as a part of the process.

Often, the most challenging part of using the Picture Tapping technique is to ‘get yourself out of the way’ and allow the client to generate their own reframes and cognitive shifts. Most experienced EFT practitioners are used to generating reframes on the fly, asking probing questions and searching for core issues, aspects, Writing on the Walls and the like. However, the rewards are very great when the client does this for themselves and makes the realisation that (for example) “Mummy was probably doing the only thing she could at that point” or that “yeah, it happened but it’s pointless letting it ruin the rest of my life”.

It seems that the reframes and cognitive shifts which the client generates spontaneously are far more profound than those suggested from elsewhere.

When using this technique it is not necessary for the practitioner to know any details of the issue being addressed.

In fact, the process often works better if the practitioner does not know any details of the issue, because there is less likelihood of the practitioner getting themselves in the way of the process.

Also, it is frequently useful to change the focus from the specific to the ‘global’. For example, to change the focus from “My arthritis pain in my knee” to “My resistance to letting go of this pain”, or “All the past events that have caused me to get this pain”. This can lead the client from a specific pain, to the global and then from there to the specific events behind the problem.

When an issue is being described verbally to another person (eg the practitioner), the client has to first of all put the feelings into words. This process inevitably means that at least something (and often a lot!) is lost in the translation. For an example of this, just try describing to someone what it feels like to be in love, or to feel depressed.

Once the description of the feeling has been given to the practitioner, the practitioner then filters that description through their own experience and judgements. Sometimes, vital clues are overlooked because a practitioner has no experience of a particular situation or emotion.

Sometimes a practitioner will focus in on one aspect of a situation because something similar had happened to them, and that aspect was the most important for the practitioner. In other words, the practitioner is getting in the way.

The Picture Tapping technique overcomes this problem because it removes the need to verbalise problems at all and it takes the practitioner’s interpretation out of the process.

Well, yes, it will usually clear all the aspects that are up and running at that time. Of course there may be aspects and related issues that are not addressed. However, once the running aspects and issues have been healed, any remaining aspects and/or related issues may then be brought to the surface to be dealt with in the same way.

The Picture Tapping technique:

• Is very simple
• Can be used on a wide range of issues but is particularly useful when addressing global issues and/or finding core issues that are driving the global issues
• Is a very gentle technique
• Does not rely on the practitioner to think up reframes, ask searching questions or perform mental gymnastics
• Requires the practitioner to have the minimum of input into the process (to get themselves out of the way!)
• Requires the practitioner to use a number of specific ‘clean language’ phrases and questions to the client
• Allows reframes, cognitive shifts, finding aspects and related issues all to be carried out by the client
• Minimises ‘leading’ or implanting of ideas from the practitioner into the clients mind.
• Gives increased ‘stick’ to the reframes and cognitive shifts that the client has generated simply because they come from within, and are not being imposed from outside the client’s model of the world.

Philip Davis and Christine Sutton will be giving a number of one-day training courses in this new technique starting in early 2010. For details contact Phil via his website or by email:

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