si dawson

experiments in self-improvement

Category: healing

December 16, 2008

The Map’n’Tap – clearing complex issues

A lot of times trying to heal something can be a bit crazy. Often there are so many things that seem relevant that it’s almost impossible to know where to start, let alone where to go from there.

So, what to do, what to do?

What I’ve found works well is to mind-map the issue out, and then tap your way through the map.

What’s a mind map? Well, there’s a ton of ways of doing them, but the simplest is just to write whatever-issue-it-is in the middle of the page, then just draw lines out from there to anything else that pops into mind while thinking about the issue.

From there you then think about each of those things, and draw lines outward, just connecting each thought to any others that pop up.

(I have a couple of examples below)

This has a lot of benefits:

  1. Rather than having to come up with everything in one go, you can just spit bits out as they come to you
  2. Once something is written down, you can drop it from your mind rather than having to hold everything in short-term memory
  3. By focussing on each sub-issue in turn, it’s much easier to find subtle, smaller related facts that may otherwise have been lost – often I’ve found a core issue right at the root of things only after tracing through 4 or 5 links
  4. Roughly speaking, the closer in to the centre of the page, the more significant something is.

Number 4 is important, because in terms of tapping (or whatever healing method works for you), you can then start from the outside in. In the examples below, just follow the red arrows. You tap/heal the ‘leaves’ right on the outside of the map, then slowly work your way into the middle. At each point, you don’t have any related issues getting in the way or slowing things up – either because what you’re healing is right on the edge, or because all the smaller, related issues have already been healed.

This also really helps with the need to be specific, in order for tapping to work well.

Now with some issues the maps will come out stupidly simple:

map_simple.jpg

And sometimes they’re an absolute mess:

map_complex.jpg

(Yeah, these have both been blurred to heck & back. The details aren’t really important, just the relative messiness)

It really doesn’t matter too much how you do them, if you want to draw instead of write, or anything. It’s your head, so your stuff. You’re not doing it for anyone else.

The really interesting thing is – once you’ve cleared one map, you can redo it, and often completely different stuff will come up. By clearing off that outer layer of gunk, you can see/feel your way to deeper things, things that you previously wouldn’t have been able to see for all the mess at the higher level.

It’s a nifty tool. I’ve done TONS of these things in the last few weeks – and combined with finger tapping, even the most complex one I’m usually completely cleared in maybe 20 minutes. When I can look at a phrase or bubble & feel like it just doesn’t matter any more, then I just move inwards, nice & simple. Eventually I’ll be healing the centre item directly, and it generally just collapses & clears with ease.

As an approach it works a treat. It’s swiftly become my favourite tool for understanding & clearing complex issues.

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    November 22, 2008

    How To Tap All Day (& Not Look Like A Nutcase)

    EFT is a pretty useful tool. The only downside is that whacking yourself in the face in public tends to make you look a bit crazy.

    And we don’t want that, right?

    Now, you can tap with your mind – focus on each point in turn, and simply imagine the tapping process – & that does work pretty well, but here’s another way.

    I picked this up from EFT down under – a couple of local blokes with international renown. I thoroughly recommend downloading their free report (it’s all of about 4 pages long) – tons of good info in there.

    Anyway, not trying to steal their thunder, but this technique is super useful so I just had to spread it a bit further. How simple is it? Well, you just whack your thumb against the edge of each of your fingers in turn – 5 to 10 times on each finger – just between the tip & first knuckle. Keep looping around to your heart’s content! Like this:

    giant_sky_hands.jpg
    Fear my giant sky hands! fear! feeeeaarr!

    Of course, you have (I hope) two hands, so for even more impact, you can do it on both hands at once.

    How does this compare to regular tapping? Well, I’ve found that if I’m shifting something big or complicated, then regular tapping kicks slightly more ass, but this is super useful, and effective about 80% of the time. A lot of times this has already shifted enough that I only have to tap one of the “regular” points in order to clear the bigger stuff anyway.

    The other big advantage – because it’s the kind of thing you can just do in the background while you’re doing anything else, it is really useful for clearing out a ton of those niggly background thoughts. You know, the kind of noise that just jiggles around, but isn’t necessarily big enough to really put your finger on (umm). After a day of doing this – just a few loops now and then when I remembered, without focussing on anything in particular, I felt a ton of background noise disappearing. Funniest thing was, I couldn’t even figure out what I’d lost, just that things were clearer, & I felt a lot calmer.

    I also find that because I can tap much faster with my fingers, I can cycle through a lot quicker, so I’m shifting things much much faster too.

    Since this style of tapping is so unintrusive, it’s the kind of thing you can idly do while you’re on a bus, walking down the street, writing with the other hand, whatever. Best of all, without anyone really noticing, or getting yourself chucked in the loony bin.

    It’s super handy. Heh, as it were.

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      November 10, 2008

      The 4 Most Powerful Phrases In The World

      I read a while back about a therapist in Hawaii who practised something called Ho’oponopono (took me weeks to learn how to spell that reliably).

      Annnnyway, the way the story goes, this therapist, Dr Len went to work at an ultra hardcore insane asylum. The staff turnover rate was crazy high, and the patients were so violent that most of them were pretty much shackled up. Not a nice place.

      So, Dr Len starts working there, and never sees a single patient. He just sits in his office, all day every day. After a few months, the shackled patients were being allowed to walk around freely. Others were coming off their medication. Staff absenteeism & turnover dropped to zero. After three years, all the patients had left & the place closed down.

      Yes, an asylum for violent & criminally insane patients closed down because everyone was healed & there was no-one left to treat!

      Needless to say, this pretty much got my attention. What the hell was Dr Len actually doing in his office?

      Well, he looked at the patient’s files, looked within himself to see how he created that person’s illness, and then healed himself. As he healed himself, the patients got better.

      No, I didn’t mis-type that. He healed himself, and the patients got better. You can read more about Dr Len here.

      The next question, of course, is how did he heal himself? Actually, it was very simple. He just looked at what needed healing inside himself, and said four things (the basis of Ho’oponopono), over and over:

      • I’m Sorry.
      • Please Forgive Me.
      • Thank You
      • I Love You

      So imagine my surprise when I was recently reading “The True Power of Water” by Masaru Emoto. You may remember Emoto (what a great name!) – he wraps bottles of water with words, and then photographs the crystals that develop (or don’t).

      Given that we’re 70% water, I figure it’s probably worth paying a little attention to what he has to say on the subject.

      Now, Emoto has spent decades trying different words, different languages, all to see the effect they have on water. His basic discovery is that negative words (whether written down, sung, or thought at the water) result in ugly looking water, whereas positive words result in beautiful looking water structures.

      Which I guess also means that whatever we’re bombarding ourselves with is more than just affecting our brains, it’s actively changing 70% of our physical bodies.

      The really interesting thing though?

      Guess what the single most beautiful crystal he ever found was.

      water_love_gratitude.jpg

      The water that was wrapped in words for “Love” & “Gratitude”. That’s right – I Love You, & Thank You – or two of the magic four phrases from Ho’oponopono.

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        September 24, 2008

        Sweat The Small Stuff

        I had a weird dream last night. So, as usual, I tapped on it.

        Thing is, I could feel that while it was helping, it wasn’t really getting to the root of the problem. In my dream, I dunno, I was in this weird war zone – kindof. I had a gun, there were people out to get me – all of them, it seemed. Very odd. When I woke things weren’t very clear, so I was struggling a bit to connect with it.

        So, I did what I often do – pulled up a text editor, cleared my mind, and just started typing. Whatever popped in my head I wrote down – particularly the stupid stuff. Almost like automatic writing, I suppose. Meditating around the subject would do the same thing, but this way I have a record.

        Here’s what popped out:

        WHY IS EVERYONE STILL OUT TO GET ME? [nice big header to keep me focussed]

        • or hurt me
        • or make things difficult for me
        • or trip me up

        And a little lightbulb came on in my head “trip me up”? WtF? That’s.. odd.

        Perhaps unsurprisingly, a very specific incident came to mind. When I was 7, running along in school, some random kid sitting next to the path stuck his foot out & tripped me up – just for laughs, I think. I grazed my hands & got a bit upset.

        On the scale of things, how big is this, I mean. Really? Getting tripped up at school? It’s ridiculous. I know people that have been caught in the middle of mass murders. Killed dozens of people in wars. Been repeatedly raped for years. That’s trauma. Getting tripped up? It’s so trivial it’s laughable.

        And yet.

        I started tapping on this, and the picture started to open out.

        child_ant.jpg
        pic by jeaniepaul

        The thing that’s important to remember is this: What’s tiny to an adult is gigantic to a child. Also, at that age, we have very little experience & our brains haven’t even finished developing yet (they don’t until our early 20’s).

        You can pretty much guarantee that we will interpret things in a way that is both wrong, and childish, to our adult brains. However, we never stop & reassess these situations. Even as adults, we take these childish interpretations, and they become our truth. Our core beliefs. The basis for our lives.

        For me, this innocuous situation left me with the beliefs that:

        • I couldn’t trust anyone
        • Everyone was ‘out to get me’

        This trust issue is something that’s been niggling me for years now – and of course caused problems in every relationship, intimate, business, or otherwise, that I’ve ever been in. However, until now, I haven’t really been able to see below the surface.

        Could it all stem from that one silly incident? Now, there was another kid who tripped me up on my birthday once (same school, boy oh boy). But those two incidents combined together? Sure. Definitely.

        It’s ridiculous, looking back as an adult, to see such a forgettable incident causing such long term damage, and yet this sort of thing happens all the time.

        There is no incident too small. Remember, we were children then, we saw things in a childish way. If we’re looking to heal ourselves, it’s important to pay particular attention to the kinds of things that as an adult we now see as trivial. If we still remember them, they’re still in our consciousness, in our awareness. So they’re significant, no matter how they might look now. In fact, a good rule of thumb is – the sillier & more trivial it seems, the more important it really is.

        After all, if an event is really that trivial, why have we bothered to remember it all these years?

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          September 17, 2008

          Bacon, Bagels & Noodles

          A week or so ago I got rid of my final cooked food addiction… or so I thought.

          I’d been reading a really interesting thread on Give It To Me Raw about being addicted to cooked food. At the time I was eating all raw.. except for going out for hot chips, ohhh, 2 or 3 times a week.

          *scratches head* What the hell was up with that?

          Well, it turns out that potatoes (and wheat) have a similar effect on the brain to mild opiates – ie, they cause a slight distancing from your current concerns. At the time I had been feeling some heavy emotions coming up, and had been fearful of dealing with them (no, I hadn’t thought about just tapping out the fear *slaps forehead*), so of course I was instinctively gravitating to potatoes in order to quell those emotions & keep myself ‘safe’.

          Keeping me safe, & making me feel good being the primary aim of all these sorts of automatic behaviours – it’s just the “little us” inside, our minds, trying to protect us. The irony, of course, is that typically the behaviours actually worsen the situation, they just feel like they help.

          So, once I tapped out using chips to numb myself, voila! Last cooked food addiction! I am now perfect & worthy of adoration, green smoothies all round!! (for the humour deprived, I’m joking.. oh, except for the smoothies, they rock, please, have one, you’ll feel much better).

          Ok, where was I? Oh yes, hot chips.

          So, that was well and good. Back on the wagon I go, and sure enough, start feeling awesome again, bouncing around the room Russian cossack dancing to Billy Holiday and so on, as I am wont to do.

          If there’s one thing I’ve learned on this food journey, starting way back with that insane juice feast, it’s that a lot (all?) of the time we crave or feel drawn to a specific food – and particularly those we’ve had a lot of in the past – it’s not the food we’re drawn to. It’s the emotional feeling we attach to that food. Occasionally there are biochemical drivers, of course, but emotional attachment is definitely the major one.

          Since the great hot chip realisation of 2008, I’ve had the chance to see this in detail with three more separate foods (the alert readers among you will already have a good idea what they are).

          Bacon
          bacon.jpg
          pic by Bobby Stokes (note the opiate bread+hashbrowns too, always a bonus)

          After a recent mild financial setback, I had a definite desire to go out for a cooked breakfast. Ok, no big deal, being raw (for me, at least) is about eating whatever-the-hell-you-want, but being conscious about why. That’s what’s important, not necessarily what I shove in my gob.

          After a bit of thought, I realised – it wasn’t the rest of the breakfast that mattered, it was really all about the bacon. Why? Well when I was growing up, we didn’t have bacon very often – with 8 kids, that’s a LOT of bacon, and it’s pretty expensive stuff. So, at some level I associated bacon with wealth – it was my ‘wealthy food’, as it were. I’d eat it, and feel wealthy.

          Like so many things, in hindsight, this is both amusing & kinda ridiculous.

          Of course, breaking this connection was as simple as tapping it out (2mins, done). Now I’m still free to enjoy bacon, if I choose, but it won’t be because of some illusory feeling I ascribe to the mythical powers of the fried pig!

          Noodles
          2min_noodle.jpg
          pic by サンドラ (These are the fancy ones, we only dreamt of these)

          I’ve always enjoyed noodles, and even discovered a great little place here in Melbourne that makes their own noodles on the premises. It’s super cool – you can actually watch the chef in the window swinging them around. I just love that kind of thing. Oh, plus it’s super cheap – always an unexpected bonus with great food. Ironically I discovered this place only after I decided to seriously up my raw food intake. Hehe ewps.

          Of course, I do realise that noodles are in the flour+water=glue-in-my-belly food group – not particularly easy to digest & will tend to make me sleepy as my body fights to digest it.

          What’s taken me much longer to realise is the emotional association I had with noodles. I didn’t twig to this until I was in the supermarket downstairs watching a guy building a gargantuan stack of 25c packets of instant noodles.

          This took me back in a flash to a time over a decade ago, living with my little brother Rob in a dilapidated place in the centre of a town described by the CEO of Glaxo Wellcome as “the arse end of the universe” (Glaxo was founded there). We were basically living off the cheapest of the cheap of the horrid little packets of two minute noodles at the time. We used to wait until there was a sale, then go and fill up an entire shopping trolley of the things at discounted prices.

          Ahh, good times.

          *cough*

          Anyway, got rid of THAT connection. Still love my brother, can live without the deep fried flour+god knows what else.

          Bagels
          bagel.jpg
          pic by sionfullana (no, my sister is not Asian, but I do like the size of that bagel)

          Bagels were more interesting. I never ate them until my sister Ruth went to the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. She came back and raved to me about how good they were – even just eaten plain.

          So of course there was the association. Hanging out with her, having bagels together. Definitely a positive connection there.

          There was a little more to it though. When I was working in London, at a particularly productive time in my life, I used to have bagels for breakfast every morning – with an orange juice (see? health conscious!). So as well as the association with her, I’d also connected them with being productive. Since I love being productive, if I wanted to feel that way, I would have a bagel.

          This sounds like lunacy, and in a way it is, but this is the way our minds work.

          The result
          So what does breaking these connections achieve? Well, several things:

          1. Eating those foods won’t pump my brain with endorphins or whatever-other-chemicals are created by the emotional connection I’ve made
          2. I don’t feel compelled to eat those foods when what I actually want is the emotional feeling
          3. I’m still completely free to eat them, if I want, and enjoy them for what they are as foods – unclouded by anything else I’ve attached to them.

          Stopping to look at it – what’s more healthy? Missing my sister, and eating a bagel to remind me of good times hanging out together, or missing my sister & picking up the phone to tell her I love her?

          If I really must, I can always eat a bagel while I call her – it won’t be the first time she’s heard me talking with my mouth full. That way she gets the love AND an earful of bagel – the perfect solution!

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