By Angela Treat Lyon

I recently went to a trade show at the invitation of a friend ("Sandi") whose company had a booth there. It was Saturday afternoon, long lines of people at each booth, kids running around untended, and the folks at Sandi's booth looked as if they'd been worn down to the last threads of sanity. She took me aside and asked me if I'd do an impromptu session behind the scenes with her manager. I said sure.

She introduced me to "Karen," a short, dynamic looking woman of about 50 who looked as if she'd have apoplexy in about three seconds if she wasn't defused. We went behind the screen that separated the back end of the booth from the customer side, and she asked me what it was I was going to do. I told her that I would like to know in general what was up before I did anything, just to see if it was appropriate for me to help, or if she needed something else. Karen smiled and appreciated that, and simply said that she was hopping mad and couldn't stand it one more minute.

I told her that I could help her soften the intensity of the feelings she had at the moment by using a little meridian therapy, since Sandi had told me Karen was familiar with acupressure. And I said what we were going to do was a little like that, combined with specific phrases and using only a few points.

Her face was flushed with that right-at-surface red color that you get when you're about to pop, so I wanted to get to it right off. I showed her the karate chop point and had her just strike that as we both made grrrrrrrrrr sounds, and saying (without the even though), "I'm so mad! I'm so furious! I can hardly stand it!" We did that for about one or two minutes. She took a big breath and stood a little straighter. Phase One complete. Her face lost the blotchy look.

Then we started tapping the face points, saying,
I'm so MAD!
I'm so p--- off at xxxxxx
Those -------s!
I'm furious!
I can't stand it!

We did about two rounds, very quietly - but with great intent - so others couldn't hear, and she relaxed a bit more.

I asked her where on a scale of zero to ten she might rate her feelings. She blew up! "I can't stand that! It makes me madder than I already am! I don't want to do this if that's what I have to do!" And she started to walk off.

Whoa! That was a surprise. So instead of running after her, I just quietly said, "OK, that's fine, I can understand that. I wonder what would happen if we concentrated on transforming the energy and intensity to creative energy instead of focusing on the anger?" Which, of course, was what we were doing anyway, but I wanted to reframe it without making her wrong or trying to convince her to do anything she didn't want to do.

She liked that. She moved back next to me again. "Yeah! That's exactly what I'd like to do!," she said. So I asked her what she was so angry about, and if we could incorporate it into the tapping.

Karen was upset about having had to not only organize the booth for the company, and that they had told her only ten days before the show that they had chosen her to do it. It was an international show with some pretty big big-wigs, radio coverage, and all the hoopla to go along. The pressure was enormous.

Karen had not only had to organize and publicize it, but they had told her that "it would be a good idea if you were there," after she had told them she'd prepared the people running the booth to run it and then close it down by themselves. She'd been looking forward to a couple well-deserved days off, and now she had to be there from 8am to 9pm, with no breaks.

I'd be mad, too! But - she said she didn't want to talk about any of her bosses or managers, or that she didn't stand up fer herself in taking her time off, or the fact that she was afraid she'd lose her job if she objected. She just wanted to focus on the energy.

Fine! That's what it's about anyway, right? I asked her if she was tight or knotted up or in any way strained or in pain in her body - as if it wasn't obvious how her shoulders were up to her ears, and her belly was all tight!

She said she had a huge ball of energy in her belly. Since she didn't want to talk about the "negative," we just tapped like this:

I'm letting go now.
I'm letting go of my negative energy now.
I'm choosing to transform this energy into creative power
I'm choosing to focus on my abilities and intentions
I'm choosing to transform anything I don't like into creative energy
I'm choosing to be alive and awake and to have fun even when it
looks hard

We did that for about five or six rounds. Her shoulders relaxed and came down out of her ears, her belly looked relaxed, her feet looked like they were grounded instead of wanting to run away, she'd stopped trembling and her color was great. She gave a huge sigh twice, and her voice became full and soft instead of strained and hysterical.

She told me the knot in her belly was now warm and felt like a "supportive sun," and that her headache was gone (I hadn't even known know she had one!), and that she wasn't angry anymore. And that she knew that what she was experiencing was because of her own choices and that she'd go over them again later and see what she could do to prevent this from happening again.

All in all, it took us less than ten minutes to do this little relief session, and yet if we hadn't, she was so physicaly undone that I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that she'd had either a stroke or a heart attack by day's end.

It was a surprise to not go into the so-called negative phrases, but it was easy to see that if I tried to keep going the way we ordinarily do sessions, she'd have bolted. It was more important to defuse the intensity before she imploded and hurt herself, so I just followed her lead. We got results that pleased her and worked for her and her mind/body. That's what we want, no?

Aloha -

Angela Treat Lyon