by Ann Adams First
published on Gary Craig's web site. Reedited
3/2011
After studying EFT (in 1999) for months and practicing on all
sorts of willing folks, I began teaching EFT to the kids at the
residential treatment program last week. We treat severely
emotionally disturbed kids age 7 - 17, with IQ from 60 to 130,
mostly on the lower end of the scale. I did modify EFT a little
bit..
I taught the children to call the karate point the "friendly
spot" as that is where you touch to shake hands to show you are
friendly. I used out-stretched arms rather than using the 0-10
intensity scale. Hands in a prayer position indicated no upset.
Kids, and some adults as well, seem to have a hard time with the
eyebrow point so I have the children use three fingers between
their eyebrows.
GC COMMENT: Good idea! This covers both eyebrow points--you
might even want to use 4 fingers to make sure.
Under the arm I labled the monkey spot which they got a kick out
of too! I used your fist to the chest idea for the collarbone
spot.
GC COMMENT: This refers to mildly thumping with one's fist at
the top of the breastbone about where a man would knot his tie.
This gets both collarbone points at once.
They all seemed to "get it" easily.
I would teach them first how to use EFT then I asked them to
teach it to their primary staff person. (Sort of an empowerment
thing, an empathy builder and self esteem as they could then be
useful to someone else. Plus it was a good review for staff.)
One of our most self absorbed children (what we call a primitive
personality) was working on her primary staff person's problem. I
wish I'd had a video of this very disturbed girl leading her
primary staff person through the process perfectly. We have been
working (slowly) to help this child develop empathy. When the staff
finally put her hands together the girl was delighted. "I did it!"
She said. (Meaningful to this story, as in spite of her narcissism,
she feels she can't do anything right.) I asked her how it felt to
help someone else. She just glowed as she said it felt
WONDERFUL!
ANN ADAMS can be reached at: EFT4PowerPoint.com