Background
My background includes:
- undergraduate degree from Allegheny College in Meadville, PA with a major in Psychology and minors in Biology and Writing;
- certification with Cheff Therapeutic Riding Center in Augusta, MI as a head instructor for mentally and physically handicapped horseback riders;
- development and leading of classes and guided meditation on intuitive connection with animals and nature;
- authoring twenty articles on this intuitive connection published in a local magazine;
- study and application of Tellington TTouch, Bach Flower Remedies, Tai Chi and Reiki;
- extensive study of "clicker training," an animal training approach based on a "language" of auditory signaling and positive reinforcement;
- work as a private trainer with families having behavioral difficulties with their pets;
- 25 years of personal growth work, meditation, and study of the mind/body connection.
Above is the short version of the skills and strengths I bring to my EFT work.
Below is the story of the development of those things and of how my path led to EFT.
Teaching therapeutic horseback riding lays the foundation
My senior thesis in college was on the subject of pet-facilitated therapy, and two years after graduation I became certified to teach therapeutic horseback riding. Therapeutic riding programs were few in the mid-1980's but I had the great good fortune to find a job in my own area with a program run by Allegheny Valley School of Coraopolis, PA.
I fell in love with something unexpected during my years with AVS: the challenge and thrill of communicating on other than the standard verbal level with the 50 mentally handicapped riders in our program. The program closed several years after I was hired but during that time I expanded my communication skills tremendously.
Developing rapport with each student was essential so that encouragement and individualized lesson plans were genuinely motivating. Every rider's comprehension and verbal skills were unique and many had physical disabilities. Creating a successful experience with each one, each day, often depended on letting go of left-brain processing, tuning into a deeper level of empathic listening, and responding from that "listening space." This laid the foundation for a confident relationship with my inner, intuitive guidance.
Following that beginning I pursued various avenues involving intuitive connection with animals and nature, and began to share with and teach people about this connection.
Energy work and further teaching
Studying and using therapeutic touch with animals in the form of Tellington TTouch and Reiki honed my intuition. Working with Bach Flower remedies, meditating, practicing Tai Chi and learning about the human energy field further developed my experience with energy-work modalities.
Developing and teaching classes about our deep inner connection with animals and nature satisfied my love of sharing these things with people. Between 1997 and 2004 I wrote twenty articles on this subject that were published in the Pittsburgh-based mind-body-spirit magazine Point of Light.
Biggest surprise
One of the most important and surprising assets on my path to EFT is twenty years' experience with an animal training method called clicker training, pioneered in the 1960's by Karen Pryor.
A clicker trainer first teaches an animal (let's say Jet the cat) that when he hears a signal (typically a "click" sound made with a small device) he will receive something he likes (typically a food treat).
Following that, the trainer observes Jet's behavior, clicking when he does something desirable. Each click says, in essence, "yes, that thing you just did." After each click, Jet receives a treat. He learns that he can "get clicked" by repeating certain behaviors and starts to do them purposefully. Mistakes are ignored and Jet's behavior is gradually shaped in the desired direction with a plan of selectively applied clicks. "Mechanical" clicker training is a marvelously effective way to both train an animal and to end up with an animal that loves being trained.
"Intuitive" clicker training involves moving out of left-brain analysis of what and when to click and slipping into a state of such attentive observation and listening that the clicker-language pours forth, with clicks, treats and behavior changes happening so smoothly that teaching a complex behavior looks effortless.
The trainer is "listening" with eyes and intuition to every nuance of change in the flow of what is happening, and minor glitches in the process are perceived and adjusted for so quickly that to an observer those glitches are rarely visible.
Doing clicker training over a 20-year span with my own animals, in an animal shelter setting, and in private, in-home training consultations created a deep feeling for this rich, subtle, intuitive flow of listening and back-and-forth communication, a feeling which I would find invaluable in my EFT work.
Bridge to EFT
In the fall of 2006 I was introduced by a psychotherapist friend to meridian tapping, via a book that outlined a separate tapping sequence for each of a long list of emotions. I tried the technique and found it amazingly effective. But it was cumbersome, with much juggling of book and flipping of pages to look up different tapping sequences while working through layers of emotion related to a single issue.
In late 2007 an old friend from my earlier days at the animal shelter said "oh yes, I heard about that tapping stuff - I thought it was called EFT and I heard you could do it with animals." That chance comment changed my life - it sent me to EFT founder Gary Craig's website.
I began serious study of EFT in January of 2008. I learned how Gary had combined all the many tapping sequences into one simple, elegant procedure, and in a short time knew that I wanted to become an EFT practitioner. It felt to me like an old friend. I tried it on myself for everything under the sun and the speed with which things changed astonished me much of the time. I also encountered many times when persistence was needed, and that taught me very valuable things, too.
Intuitive EFT parallels work with animals
When I first began using EFT with others I was hesitant, simply because the procedure looks so strange. But once each session began I'd find myself "in the flow" that I had become so familiar with in my animal work, as communication, tapping, adjustments, and following my intuition unfolded. I absolutely loved the process, and feedback from those I worked with was strongly positive.
I studied Gary Craig's library of training dvds and materials intensively and applied EFT with one person after another, working my way toward the certification exam-eligibility requirement of doing one-on-one work with at least 100 people. With each new layer of learning and understanding I fell more in love with EFT; with every new time it brought someone relief my heart swelled with gratitude. Passing the challenging certification exam was a thrill.
Personal significance
Finding EFT has been immensely important to me personally. During the thirty years covered by all of the above I had been persistently pursuing my own personal and spiritual growth. Intent on recognizing and acknowledging my human weaknesses, fears, defensiveness and emotional wounds ever more clearly, I sought the wisdom and grace to allow forgiveness, healing and change.
Through that process I became comfortable with various energy-working approaches and with the concept that my body is, energetically speaking, a mirror of my mind and emotions. I also became thoroughly familiar with the function of the subconscious mind, which EFT so effortlessly accesses. The apparent ability of a tool as elegantly simple as EFT to simultaneously access and balance at the level of mind, emotion, body and energy field continues to astound me. EFT is now a precious part of my personal growth work and my own life journey.
Community Service
One of the things that strongly drew me to EFT was that it can be shared
so easily with others and people can do it for themselves. Early in my EFT study I had a vision of
bringing it to the animal shelters in my area, to help with the
heartache experienced daily by staff and volunteers intent on providing
help to animals in need.
That vision is now becoming reality. I am in the midst of creating a
volunteer arrangement with one of the city animal shelters
in Pittsburgh to provide EFT to their staff and volunteers, with a second shelter also interested. My hope is to expand this work until there is a
network of understanding of how EFT can support the efforts of the
animal sheltering community.
Answered prayer
In EFT I found the answer to a simple prayer I had made at the change of the Millennium. Thinking about the momentous nature of the calendar change that was about to occur I asked myself what, if I could have one wish, I would summon for my life and for my world.
After quiet reflection I said to myself, "Miracles - I wish for miracles to appear at every turn, miracles for anyone, for everyone, everywhere, at anytime. Big miracles, small miracles. I wish for a world made bright with miracles."
In EFT, a self-help process that is simple to learn yet has such far-reaching effectiveness with so many things, it feels like I have found just that. Unknown to me at the time I said that prayer, Gary Craig and EFT practitioners were already sowing miracle-seeds around the globe. It just took me a while to get the news!
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