Dear Friends,
Today's interview is with course author Marcella Friel. We are speaking with her about her course Lose Emotional and Physical Weight with Tapping. Tapping has become so popular over this last decade because it is easy and it works. As you read this interview, you will see how passionate Marcella is about teaching tapping and the wonderful results people can expect.
Madisyn Taylor: Briefly explain what tapping is and how the process can help us heal emotional wounds and lose weight.
Marcella Friel: Tapping goes by a lot of names: Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Meridian Tapping, and others. The simplest way to think about it is as a form of emotional acupuncture. EFT was developed by a man named Gary Craig. He discovered that when we fingertip-tap on points at or near the ends of certain acupuncture meridians while recalling stressful situations, the tapping acts as a circuit breaker on the stress signal and diffuses its trigger. Even after all these years practicing tapping, I continue to be amazed by how quickly it can work. For example, I worked with a woman who was seriously addicted to diet soda. She had cases of it stockpiled in her garage. She knew she had to give it up, but at the same time, she was extremely defensive about letting it go. When we explored the emotional roots of her struggle, we found a little girl running away from her dad's abuse. That little girl loaded up a wagon with donuts and soda, the only food she had. After some very deep tapping, the adult client was able to soothe and reassure her younger self and let her know that she wasn't alone in dealing with her dad. Not everyone has such dramatic results right off the bat, but I do have the privilege of seeing many people make quantum shifts resolving their emotional eating, bingeing, and sugar addiction. When people resolve the emotional distress surrounding those core traumas, it's easier for both the body and the psyche to release the body weight that no longer serves them.
MT: In lesson five you start people on the "heroine's journey." What is this, and how does it apply to this work?
MF: To be honest, I have no idea how the heroine's journey became a part of my work. I love Joseph Campbell, and about two years ago I rewatched his interview series with Bill Moyers. I began thinking about my clients and students, and this phrase popped into my mind: "All acts of healing are acts of heroism." I began to explore what that meant. When a woman who has struggled with her food habits and body hatred seeks to go way beyond restrictive dieting and punitive exercise and heal her wounds at the soul level, she is a heroine on an archetypal journey. That journey demands that she disabuse herself of society's harshest judgments of her, along with her own internalized shame. This is no small task. Truly, I stand in awe of these women. These are the bravest and most beautiful women I know.
The heroine's journey begins with a calling, a tremendous feeling of dissatisfaction or crisis that sparks the need for deep transformation. Here the heroine has to summon the courage to heed her inner voice and embark on the journey. Then the heroine has to find her mentor who has walked the path before her. When she says yes to the mentor, she begins the adventure and encounters allies, adversaries, temptations, and ordeals, which eventually lead her into the abyss. I call it "the blessing of the dark mother." It's a terrifying, disorienting space, but it's ultimately the birthplace of profound, unconditional self-love, regardless of the number on the scale. Once the heroine has truly anchored in this love, she is free to live her life as a transformed woman and share the merit of her healing with her tribe, and, if she chooses, mentor the next heroine who needs her wisdom. I find that for women who feel so much shame, thinking of themselves as a heroine on a journey is such an empowerment. It gives them permission to make friends with their shadow side in a way that more conventional healing modalities don't allow.
MT: A course like this really is a journey - from understanding our triggers to confronting and healing core beliefs. Why is the journey so important?
MF: The journey is important because the journey is the teacher. It's through the journey that the deepest healing occurs. So many women blame themselves for their failed diets. From the point of view of the heroine's journey, so-called failure is part of the adventure. Failures are actually stepping-stones to success, but it's hard to realize this if you don't make the journey. Why is healing core beliefs important? If we don't heal our beliefs, none of the other healing we do has a chance to stick. Let's look at obsession, for example. We can become obsessed with eating sugar. We can become equally obsessed with avoiding it. In my opinion, this is one of the many reasons diets don't work. Restricting a trigger food just transfers the obsession from indulgence to abstinence. The point is to get out of the obsession altogether. What drives that obsession? Beliefs: "I'm not worthy," "I can't have," "I don't deserve," and so on. When you try to impose a diet over these kinds of beliefs, it's like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing. When, on the other hand, women use tapping to relieve the guilt and shame associated with those beliefs, the obsession vanishes. They naturally turn to wiser food choices. They stop stepping on the scale 10 times a day. All that freed-up energy begins to flow into creative outlets of expression. The weight releases itself when it's ready - or it doesn't - and it's no big deal either way.
MT: Everybody is tapping these days. It has become very popular. I really love that it is easy to do and available to just about everybody. Do you use tapping in your own life to heal?
MF: All the time! I've had an amazing journey with tapping. I was introduced to it through my hairdresser. She has such a generous heart. In addition to her hairdressing work, she also does tapping with people who have facial disfiguring to help them heal the trauma and stigma of that and discover their true beauty. She does gorgeous work, and one day when I went in for a haircut, she said, "Hey, I'm learning this new thing called EFT. Wanna try it?" Within five minutes, I was hooked. Something I had been holding onto for years just went poof! After that, I became a client of a wonderful EFT practitioner for three years, which was pivotal in my life. As I mentioned in one of the early talks in the course, I've been through heavy-duty trauma. I had a talk therapist years ago who would just put her head in her hands when I told her some of the stuff I've been through. There's still healing work to be done around all of it, for sure, but I don't feel the shame or guilt or low self-esteem that I once did. My stomach doesn't go into knots when I think about it or talk about it. None of the other healing modalities that I've been involved with over the years has given me the breakthroughs that tapping has. I am living a life today that I never would have imagined was possible, and I feel so deeply privileged to watch my students and clients do that as well.
MT: Toward the end of the course you teach about one of the last phases of the journey, which is being witnessed as having changed. I find this to be very important and powerful when somebody has come out the other side of their journey to be acknowledged and witnessed for the work that has been done, to be seen. Talk to me about this important step.
MF: I once heard a tapping practitioner and success coach say, "One of the deepest needs we have as human beings is to remain consistent in how we are identified in the eyes of other people." That's when I realized how crucial it is to the healing path not just to develop your inner congruence but also to learn how to stand in the space of being a healed person inside your tribe. Who are you in the family system if you're no longer "the chubby one"? How does your relationship with your mother change when you lovingly and firmly set the boundary that she is no longer allowed to comment on your body? How do you handle walking into your workplace and having everyone witness how beautiful you look? This is such an important part of the journey to address because without the skills to traverse this terrain, it's easy to run for cover and erase all the progress you've made.
MT: What can students expect from this course?
MF:"The content is a mix of tapping exercises - including a how-to video, talks and guided meditations, and it takes students through the heroine's journey that I outlined earlier. I routinely receive feedback from women all over the world about how transformative this course has been for them, which just makes my heart sing! One day, I discovered in my mailbox a handwritten note from a lovely heroine in Ohio who had just completed the course. She said, "I feel, for I believe the first time in my life, free of food bondage. I don't have the nonstop fixation on food anymore - nor the body hatred." That just brought me to tears.
MT: Can men take this course too?
MF: Yes, even though this course focuses on the heroine's journey and is in a strong feminine voice, it is absolutely appropriate for both genders.
As women, we are vessels by nature. We are conditioned to hold and contain the pain of others while bypassing our deeper truth. When others harm us, we are conditioned to believe it's somehow our fault. If there's no way to release those emotions and beliefs, we harm ourselves with substances such as food. While we look to diets and exercise to heal our food and body weight problems, those interventions will never be fully effective if we don't heal the emotions and beliefs that drive us to eat in ways that do not serve our highest good. The main tool you will use throughout this course is a powerful stress-release tool called Tapping (also known as Emotional Freedom Techniques, or EFT) that will re-pattern your neurology and make more room for acceptance and peace. Tapping is a gentle yet effective practice that reduces the emotional impact of memories and incidents that trigger stress. Tapping combines coaching techniques with acupressure in the form of light fingertip tapping on acupuncture points. The tapping acts as a circuit breaker on the electromagnetic signal of the stress and diffuses its emotional trigger. The 21 lessons in this course include audio recordings and essays on forgiveness-related topics as well as potent writing and contemplation exercises.
Starting today, you will receive a new lesson every day for 3 weeks (total of 21 lessons). Each lesson is yours to keep and you'll be able to refer back to it whenever you want. And if you miss a lesson or are too busy to get to it that day, each lesson will conveniently remain in your account so you won't have to search for it when you're ready to get back to it.
We are offering this course with the option of selecting how much you want to pay. No matter how much you pay, you'll be getting the same course as everybody else. We simply trust that people are honest and will support the author of the course with whatever they can afford. And if you are not 100% satisfied, we will refund your money.
Thank you, Marcella, for sharing your heart and your work with us today.
I will admit to you that when I first heard of tapping years ago I assumed it was another New Age gimmick where somebody was just trying to make a fast buck. Like with most things, I had to give it a chance using proper guidance rather than making up my own version of it. In this course, you learn how to perform tapping the right way and with a sense of purpose. Until next time.
Be well,
Madisyn Taylor
Cofounder, Editor-in-Chief
DailyOM
