Emotional Freedom Technique and Safe Conversations: Self-Care Isn’t Selfish Series Continues
“Imagine your problem is to find a book in a dark, cluttered basement. You cannot see clearly, and you keep banging your head. If you focus on the problem, you may try to protect your head and squint harder as you keep searching through every box. If you focus on the solution, you can pause, find the light switch and turn on the light so that you can see everything clearly. And then you find the book.” -Deepok Chopra
Two more webinars in the series “Self-Care Isn’t Selfish” were held in December and January, organized by WFWP West Coast Chapters. There were around 20 participants attending each webinar with more people watching the recordings. The idea behind this webinar series started when a group of coaches trained by Hilde Wiemann, Generational Healing, who are also members of WFWP felt inspired to combine their healing work with the vision of WFWP—Women working together to establish a culture of heart in the family, community, nation, and world in order to achieve genuine and sustainable peace under God.
Following the format established in the first online seminar held in October, each one opened with a short meditation to help us become present within ourselves and the moment at hand. There are so many sources for relaxing meditations now but we really like Insight Timer https://insighttimer.com/ which is available through an app as well as a website. We experienced one by Sarah Blondin at our recent webinar entitled “Learning to Surrender.”
December’s webinar was entitled “Part 2:Real Love and Emotional Freedom Technique. A key point that we discussed is that we cannot outsource self-care and self-love. Learning to make time for ourselves is incredibly challenging and putting ourselves last is a lifelong habit for most women. However, connecting to our divine essence and seeing ourselves as daughters of God can help us make the needed changes.
The presenter for this webinar, Myrna Lapres. shared an analogy that was given by Deepok Chopra:
Imagine your problem is to find a book in a dark, cluttered basement. You cannot see clearly, and you keep banging your head. If you focus on the problem, you may try to protect your head and squint harder as you keep searching through every box. If you focus on the solution, you can pause, find the light switch and turn on the light so that you can see everything clearly. And then you find the book.
We need to begin by shining the light for ourselves. We often disengage from our story to protect ourselves from the many conflicts, disappointments, and failures we have experienced. If we recognize the opportunity to be awakened to the areas that need our attention, we can move towards growth and healing.
Using concepts from Real Love by Dr. Greg Baer, we explored areas and habits in our lives that block us from recognizing, giving and receiving unconditional love. In trying to protect ourselves from getting hurt, we often use methods that Real Love calls Getting and Protecting Behaviors. These include lying (not being honest or telling only part of the truth), attacking others, acting like a victim, clinging and running away from the problem (giving the silent treatment, leaving, using drugs/alcohol/binging/gaming/food/shopping/etc. to try to escape.)
Learning to recognize behaviors that don’t support growth and change is an important beginning place. Participants had an opportunity to share in breakout rooms what they recognized about their own Getting and Protecting Behaviors that they would like to begin to change. Some of them share with the whole group how liberating it felt to be able to talk honestly with someone about their fears, pain and habits.
RoseAnn Kennett continued to teach us about Emotional Freedom Technique or tapping, a method to help us acknowledge emotions that come up and find ways to calm ourselves in order to move on. We watched this short introductory video by Jessica Ortner about tapping https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPqGjcxoPS8&t=13s. There are many other resources available here: https://www.thetappingsolution.com/.
January’s webinar was an introduction to Safe Conversations. Myrna Lapres, a certified Safe Conversations facilitator, shared her own experience of learning and experiencing the tools in her relationships. Ms. Lapres capably lead us through the steps or goals of the webinar:
Learn how to listen to understand instead of listening to respond
Realize the role empathy places in creating connection and understanding
Begin to realize how the past impacts our current relationships
Discover mirroring as a way to help the other person feel heard
Practice listening and sending appreciations in breakout rooms
After the breakout rooms, participants shared how using the guided script felt awkward but they could see the value of using it to keep on track. One person shared that it was a new concept for them that “Our past experiences impact our current relationships.” Another shared that she was interested to learn about the new research about the brain—how we can learn to create safety in our conversations so we can stay in our higher brain where connection and empathy can happen.
You can watch the recordings of the webinars here:
December: https://youtu.be/oKFEwubQr_g
January: https://youtu.be/uXkW30CGTE4
The next in the series “Self-Care Isn’t Selfish” is on February 12, 1-2:30 pm PST. The guest presenter will be Miyuki Pollman, Energy Practitioner and Educator. Learn exercises that balance physical, emotion and mental energy.
Register here: https://tinyurl.com/4h95p9k3.
Members of our organizing group serve as MC’s and presenters. We are also coaches. If you would like to contact any of us, here is our information.
Donna Avey--Family Coach and Community Resources Specialist,
avey@gci.net Phone/text 907-301-4421
Liisa Freystaetter--Parent Possibility Coach
Coachliisa100@gmail.com Text: 754-234-4479
RoseAnn Kennett—Emotional Freedom Technique and Personal/Relationship Coaching, coachroseann@gmail.com
Myrna Lapres, Family and Relationship Coach
coachmyrnalapres@gmail.com