She was about six, her clothes torn, her long brown hair straggly, holding tightly to the hand of an aunt as the ER medics brought her mother in for treatment after a tornado over turned their trailer. I was on call at a local emergency room. As they took the mother into the emergency room the aunt turned to the child and knelt down beside her.
It was 1973, no one yet knew about EFT. But this scene with a terrified child and her aunt is vividly burned into my memory. “You’re scared”, the aunt said as she squatted down by the little girl. She then took the child’s head in her hands, kissed her gently and with her thumbs rubbed lightly around her eyes for a bit. She then stood and placed her hands on the child’s chest and back holding her steady as she repeated reassuringly, “You’re scared but you’re OK. Mommy’s going to get help now.” I watched as the child visibly began to calm. The aunt then sat down and took the child into her lap. She held her little hands in hers. At the time I was impressed only with the strong support the child had available to her. That’s at least one child we won’t see later in our mental health clinic, I thought to myself.
This was a classic example of how we daily use “special” EFT points to calm ourselves and others. The use of these points has been around since people began. We naturally comfort ourselves in many ways: scratching our head, putting our head in our hands, wringing our hands, holding someones hand, rubbing under our arms or under our eyes, or under our nose or chin… This child’s aunt intuitively used several points we now use with EFT. I teach my clients “Stealthy Tapping” so they can use the points anywhere and anytime. EFT points take advantage of the very natural ways we use our body to calm our emotions. Using the points in EFT is not really weird – we’ve used them all our lives.
