This week I tap my food cravings away
We modern humans do some mighty weird stuff in our efforts to make life more endurable. Take laughter clubs. Or Reiki. Or foil-wrap body masks. Or this weird thing I saw a guy do on the beach where he dive-bombed into the sand and rolled around like a baby, over and over. A sort of new-age capoeira…definitely, weird.
My Dad likes to remind me how weird we are, proclaiming in his day he never bloody stood on his bloody head to find focus. “We just bloody got on with it.” Yeah, Dad, but in your day you didn’t make life inordinately messy and complicated for yourself. We do. Ergo, we stand on our heads to undo the damage.
Up there in the mix of mighty weird stuff is tapping. Have you seen someone tapping? It’s bonkers. It involves tapping your face and repeating out loud highly personal statements about one’s current dysfunctional state of being.
Also called EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), tapping could very easily be walloped with the Entirely Ludicrous and Self-Indulgent stamp. But I wouldn’t, now I’ve tried it. Several leading psychologists in America and Australia have recognised, through research and practise, that it is highly effective for treating stress and emotion-based issues. In short, it moves you on without the wallowing.
There’s also something very gentle and generous about the practice. It doesn’t cost big bucks – you can learn how to do it online (just Google it). And EFT practitioners seem to be a very relaxed bunch who discourage codependence. Brett Porter, the open-hearted and very committed guy who taught me, invites me to text when I feel like doing a session. Only if I feel like it. And we do the session on Skype.
So you know, Brett teaches the process around the country, but if you’re interested in trying it to deal with food cravings and over-eating you should definitely try the Food Craving and Tapping Program (CDs and DVDs) he put together with Dr Peta Stapleton at Griffith University – $149 and you can buy it online.
Tapping works a little like acupressure, but you administer it yourself by tapping a sequence of eight points on your face and torso that correspond to the endpoints of your body’s energy meridians.