By Steve Wells

On Christmas Day two years ago my father had a heart attack and passed away.  Due to the holiday, his funeral had to be delayed by about a week and I was due to give the eulogy on behalf of my family.  The trouble was that every time I thought about what I might like to say, I started to cry.  Having done lots of EFT in my life up to this time, I was no longer so scared of experiencing or showing my emotions, and I didn’t mind if others saw me cry.  

However, I did want to be able to say what I wanted to say, and pay tribute to my father’s life and achievements in a fitting manner.  Due to the intensity of the emotions that even thinking of doing the eulogy provoked in me, I became concerned that I wouldn’t be able to do much more than stand there and blubber the whole time.

Each day, when I went for my morning walk, I thought through what I might say in the eulogy.  As I did so, I tapped continually on the EFT points, while I walked down the street sobbing away, tears streaming down my cheeks.  In the main I was oblivious to anyone who may or may not be passing by, and remained focused on my own thoughts and feelings.  There was no need to repeat a reminder phrase or focus on what to say, I was well and truly “tuned in” to my sad, intense feelings the whole time.

One day as I walked along tapping, I felt a massive amount of grief and sadness move through my body like a wave.  As it passed through some incredible memories and insights leaped into my mind, and I was hit with a rush of many different feelings simultaneously.  Along with the grief and sadness, came joy, and pride, and wonder, even excitement.  

The best I can describe it is, the best and the worst, together.  I suddenly realized that my grief was a gift, and that as the tapping was helping the grief wave to move through my body, the emotional energy package or wave or whatever it was, was informing me, helping me to come to terms with who I was, where I was and where I had came from.  As my mind moved easily through various memories from my life I suddenly had some incredible new insights into my role and my father’s relationship to me, and my father’s life in general.  I began to see him and myself in a new light.  In a way when I look back now I realize that I finally started to grow up.  Incredible that it took my Dad’s passing to help me to do this.

As I walked and tapped, and in the same instant as this multiple emotional mixture hit me all at once, I had another realization: I was going to be alright when I did the eulogy.  I realized that if I allowed it to, and didn’t try to stop it, any grief waves that came would just pass through like this one was.  All I had to do was stand there and allow it to pass, and then I could continue with my tribute.  And that is exactly what happened.

Over the next several days of walking and tapping I put together a very fitting tribute, to my father’s life and when it came time to deliver that tribute I was able to do so just as I had wished, and acknowledge my father’s wonderful life and contribution.  I know he would have been proud of what I said and who I was while saying it.  On the day I stood at the podium and faced the emotion and the situation that was, allowed it to wash over me and through me, and I was not afraid.  I felt more than ever that my father was with me that day, and we were finally in accord.

Since that time I have had other similar experiences (almost all resulting from a period of tapping) which have taught me the true value of our negative emotions.  In fact, I now believe this is one of the real meanings of emotional freedom.  Not freedom FROM emotion, but freedom of emotion - freedom to be moved by emotion and to allow emotion to flow and inform us - and not to have to try to prevent it from doing so.

Emotion might be seen as an energy packet, a useful piece of information we need to process in order to deal with situations that happen to us and to allow us to move on in our lives.  When the emotional energy packet moves through us and we process it successfully we are informed and enlightened and empowered to deal with what is.  When it gets stuck or we refuse to accept it, face it or deal with it, then our perspectives and awareness freeze too.

By refusing to go through the emotional doorway we consign ourselves to the level of being fearful of our own experiencing.  The great power of wonderful Energy Techniques like EFT is that they can help to facilitate this emotional processing, and lead us to new levels of insight and personal development.

Steve Wells