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Serious Diseases

Asthma Relief

First day at school apprehension, separation anxiety and an asthma attack.

Important Note: This article was written prior to 2010 and is now outdated. Please use my newest advancement, Optimal EFT. It is more efficient, more powerful and clearly explained in my free e-book, The Unseen Therapist™.  Best wishes, Gary

Hi Everyone,

Please notice Dr. Mankinen's use of "surrogate tapping" in instances #2 and #3 below. This is one of many reports we have regarding the successful use of this technique.

Hugs, Gary


by Richard Mankinen, PhD

Dear Gary:

My regular practice of psychotherapy is with adults and adolescents so the "examples" with children are from my "gifts" to the children of my friends.

1. A five year-old in my neighborhood was raising all kinds of very anxious and worried questions of the "What if....?" variety regarding his first venture to preschool the next day. He was obviously very concerned and troubled. I asked him to tap under his eye without further explanation. He did. The questions continued but were of the typical little boy type that can drive us to distraction, the kind that are powered by enthusiasm, interest and excitement.

GC COMMENT: this is the type of subtle cognitive shift that we see repeatedly with these procedures]. He seemed oblivious to the tapping he had done, but several weeks later when I was visiting again, he came up to me and said while demonstrating, "I'm still tapping."

2. The same child has historically had a terrible time with separation from his mother, particularly when Mom is going out of town. Really terrible screaming, crying, begging episodes. That fact came up in casual conversation with Mom who was concerned because of an impending trip.

With permission, I asked the child to let me "borrow his energy" and pretend I was he. Using muscle testing performed by Mom I confirmed that I had assumed the role of surrogate for the child and in the same manner checked for and treated any reversals that might have existed. Then I did the EFT tapping on "my anxiety about Mom going away" (or something similar), had Mom muscle test me to confirm my level of anxiety. Once it had dropped to zero, I called the child who had been playing in the next room to return and gave him back his energy. And that was that. Later his mother reported that he observed her packing her suitcase and made some acknowledging statement that she was going away. When the actual departure time came he was calm about it. Perhaps a bit of maturing since the previous time Mom left, but my money is on the EFT (or maybe some secret under-eye tapping by him.

3. The final example involved a child who had spent much of the night in the ER trying to get an asthma attack under control. I believe this child is four years old. I had come by the home that morning. The child was having breakfast and both his cold symptoms and his clearly asthmatic wheezing were quite obvious. I asked his father if it was OK to tap on the asthma and again used a surrogate procedure asking the child if it was OK for me to "be him" for a little while. He agreed and continued to eat his cereal and watch TV seemingly oblivious of me. Here again, I had Dad muscle test me to verify my assumed identity as the child, to clear any conditions that might interfere with treatment and to check for levels of distress. Then I did standard EFT (full) with focusing phrase "my asthma" until my muscle-tested stress level was zero. Then I told the child that "I'm not you anymore." After about 30 seconds he spontaneously said, "I feel better." His wheezing, while not totally absent, was about 20% what it had been. The next morning it was gone entirely.

I don't know if it has returned or not.

Gary, I hope these are useful. Given the fact that these were "gifts" or acts of good will on my part there is no backup documentation (e.g., progress notes) and I am reporting from memory so that the process might not be exactly as reported here, but very close.

Sincerely,

Richard Mankinen, Ph.D.

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