By Angela Treat Lyon

I'm an American artist living in New Zealand, currently in the position of Artist in Residence at the local museum art gallery. I've spent a lifetime in the realm of art, developing sculpture and painting to the point that I finally can say something of what I feel through them. I am also an ordained minister and life coach, and I have trained in the metaphysical and healing arts, from rebirthing and past life regression to hypnotherapy, Druid Dreaming and channeling to Philipino psychic surgery, esoteric HUNA and other ethnic studies, Holographic Repatterning, Brain Balancing and Neural Integration, NLP, the Avatar courses, as well as various communication and mediation skills and techniques.

I mention all this in order to say that, in all my life, with all the various discipline and modalities I have studied, esoteric or not, Emotional Fredom Therapy (EFT) is the one technique I have gotten the very most out of in the very shortest time. I am awestruck.

So I thought I'd write and tell you about a few very striking breakthroughs I have experienced in only the past 3 weeks -

1) I have had some of the most horrendous experiences at the dentist - from experiencing the shock of having had the wrong tooth pulled out to multiple root canals done all at once with ineffective novacain to sexual abuse in the chair when I was a young girl. Needless to say, it has been a bit of a struggle to get myself to the dentist for anything at all.

I lost a filling 2 years ago - I finally made up my mind to have it taken care of last week. That's how bad it was - I just DID NOT want to go.

I couldn't get to sleep the night before I was to go - lying in bed sweating, heart beating, not able to breathe - in such a state of panic, in fact, that I forgot about EFT, which I had been assiduously applying to every other aspect of my life for the last 3 weeks since I had learned about it.

Finally, at 3 a.m., my mind cleared enough that I remembered EFT, and I did about five rounds of "even though...."s: I can't remember what to say, I don't know what to say, I'm panicking, I can't sleep, and I'm never safe in the world.

After that last one, which seemed like the root issue, I slept soundly and got up at 8 with no feeling of having lost hours of sleep and energy to panic whatsoever.

Everything went well until he appeared with the Long Needle. My heart flew out of my mouth and ran out down the street, with my mind right after it - I was a quivering blob of jelly in the chair, mindless and feeling like I was about to die. All my being knew was that here was a man who was traumatizing and attacking me, and I was trapped in this chair. My mouth was frozen open with a constricted gag at the back of my throat. My hands were so tight on the arms of the chair I was surprised I didn't break them off.

BUT - this time I remembered there was something I could do, even though that was all I knew - I once again couldn't remember what to do or say, and I thrashed about with what was left of my mind until I finally, in desperation, said quite loudly (internally that is), "I can't remember what to say, YOU do it."

And it did. Whatever IT is, it did it. In 2 seconds flat, I was calm as could be, my mind was back, serene and calm, and my heart had returned to its normal place within my chest, at a normal heart rate. I was astounded. From that moment on, the rest of the visit was fine, no more trauma, no more pain or perceived about-to-be pain. At all. Healing happened that quickly.

And what is really cool is that the perceived trauma and attack ideas were gone, replaced with a complete reframe, that "this man is actually doing me a service."

2) Another experience concerns allergic reaction. I had a near-fatal bout with heavy metals starting 12 years ago that took several years to work itself out. The cleansing process was intense and very painful, and eventually included the purging of material from vaccinations and environmental poisons that I had been exposed to over the years as well as the metals (cadmium, mostly - I was told it was from 2nd hand smoke - my parents smoked like chimneys). My kidneys took a beating, as did my liver and adrenals, and as a consequence, my health was trash and I still break out in terrible rashes if I eat or even smell certain substances or foods (like tomatoes, potatoes, or wheat, or modern perfumes, hairspray, enamel paints or gasoline fumes).

This time, I had had a little wheat that was in a soup a friend had made. In the middle of the night I awoke to swollen, burning, histamine-filled, rash-covered hands. The rash itches so terribly that they MUST be scratched or insanity is soon to follow. But then, if you scratch enough to relieve it, it suddenly stings like crazy, even bleeds, and the next day the hands and/or feet are swollen to the point of being balloons affixed to the ends of the arms, useless and painful for a minimum of three days.

This time, remembering my dentist experience, I was prepared! I said, even though I am having this reaction, I.... and so on - it only took about 6 rounds before I could actually feel the swelling start to go down. I did about 10 rounds in all, covering some lingering stuff and the swelling went down, the itch completely subsided, and I went right back to sleep.

3) Today as I was painting our front door with enamel paint, the swelling and itching tried to come, and I immediately started EFT by saying, "even though I am painting with this enamel paint and am afraid I will react, I ...." and within about a minute it was gone.

This is such a fabulous thing. I can't tell you the hours I have spent dealing with hands and feet too swollen to even think about using them, much less wanting to feel them. Hours crying and frustrated and in pain. Having to avoid favorite foods, having to ask friends to not to use wheat, sugar, dairy, etc. in any food they gave me. Having to avoid fumes and paints and such. I even lost a friend because her perfume was so strong it literally made me choke - I gagged every time I was around her. Bummer.

Having this amazing tool doesn't mean not be careful, by any means, but it does mean I can deal with what comes to me. The feeling of helpless/hopeless has left, the life-long depression has almost gone, the hatred for my life is gone and there is a new horizon in front of me where there was darkness and an angry, sad, constricted future before.

When I first started using EFT, my mind was so foggy that I couldn't remember much of the protocol past the PR stage. I'd get to the end of it, and then forget what I was doing. Eventually I just did the chest-tap with the even-though statements. (finally I figured out that I could tap for remembering the statements....)

That alone was enough - it got me present and dealing with Now, and it allowed me to go deeper and deeper to get at the yeah-buts. And it has allowed me to really - REALLY - accept me. As I am, here and now, no-one else's opinion matters.

I had to fight with it - I didn't want to accept myself, I couldn't, I hated myself, I hated myself hating myself, and so on - but at the end a wave of something light and soft went through me and all that fight was gone. And the constant fogginess is being replaced with clarity. (That alone would be worth the whole thing. After years of people telling me I ought to take drugs for the depression, now I can say I'm so very glad I didn't.)

What's happening now is that when I get to the end of a hard issue, there is a new thing that happens. Here's a good one to illustrate:

Tonight I was looking at how I have hidden out behind my artwork since I was a kid and I realized it was that I felt unimportant to my family. I think I most likely started hiding behind it to give myself something to do, something in which to be involved to be able to say I'm busy when I want to be left alone (and too hurt to ask for inclusion), and something to say hey look at this, aren't I good? Aren't I important to you? Don't you love me?

Hard to admit that to myself. When I realized that I was of no importance to them I cried and cried. Then I tapped on it - only the chest PR points - I couldn't get myself to do the full round - but it only took two rounds of "even though I am devastated that I am of no importance to my family" to go from a 10 to a 0. At the end of the session I finally got to the place where I could say, hey! I'm bloody 56 years old! Do I REALLY NEED their approval??????

Now here's what is new: when I got to zero, there was such a lightness and calm sense of space and possibility inside and all around me that I lay there just feeling it - it was an expansion, a fillingness, a lightness, a NEWness that I had never felt before. THIS is what I have been waiting for for how long? THIS is what freedom is: a completely new awareness of self and possibility in self that had never before existed or been available, a brand new state of mind.

I believe it really is true what Harry Palmer, the creator of the Avatar course, says: "All possibilities of reality exist simultaneously". Imagine what we can be, do and have when we realize that we truly are creating our reality, our experience, at every moment, at every choice. Imagine how easy it really is to slip from one reality to the next, just by making the choice to choose, to be present and to converse with what is happening inside ourselves at the very moment we would ordinarily slip into Old Pattern. Awesome.

EFT is awesome. I bless you and thank you...

Love to you -

Angela Treat Lyon

atlyonnz@netscape.net

Now to work on the "starving artist" syndrome -