I was introduced to the Hawaiian forgiveness practice of Ho’oponopono several years after I started practicing energy healing.
I was intrigued by the story around the practice used by Dr. Hew Len. He used the practice while working in an institution for the criminally insane.
No one wanted the job I did with the criminally insane. They were averaging about one psychologist a month. But I got asked. We had about 25-30 people. Half of them would be in shackles at the ankles or the wrists because they were dangerous. They could either kick you or slam you. Everyone would walk with their back toward the wall so that they wouldn’t get struck. They had no family visits. No one could leave the building. A year and a half later there was none of that. There were people going out on bus rides. Nobody in shackles. The level of medication dropped. What did I do? I worked on myself. I took 100% responsibility. – Dr Hew Len, Shamanic Wisdomkeepers
Dr. Hew Len would focus on the charts of each individual while doing the Ho’oponopono practice.
The practice is a simple mantra consisting of four phrases. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.
These four phrases accomplish the goal of “putting things right” which is the literal translation of Ho’oponopono.
When I first attempted this practice, I felt strong resistance to it in my energy and mental bodies.
With the “I’m sorry,” I noticed thoughts such as “I have nothing to be sorry about. I did nothing wrong. I shouldn’t have to apologize.”
With the “Forgive me,” thoughts like “He should be asking for forgiveness. I shouldn’t have to ask for it. Isn’t he getting away with it, if I ask” rose up.
By this time, I was not as attached to my thoughts. I noticed them and noticed the energy in my body that moved while these thoughts rose in my consciousness and the energy that moved as I released them. I noticed the anger, the pain, the fear.
Eventually, after repeating the phrases and allowing the energy to move and giving my thoughts permission to rise and release, my focus changed to thinking about myself and apologizing for getting caught in a trigger or apologizing for not speaking my truth. Thanking the situation for teaching me something. Calling up love for myself and for the other.
After doing this work, I knew that the practice allowed me to release many of the energetic attachments that I had concerning a particular situation or individual. Without releasing those attachments, I couldn’t get into a frame of mind that I could use to heal the situation and ultimately, heal myself.
Doing the work and releasing our attachments to blame, guilt, anger, or fear, also releases the other individuals so they can heal as well.
The work that we do for ourselves ripples to many others.
Creating a Ho’oponopono Pay It Forward thread, which I first saw used by a couple of my own teachers, allows us to practice non-attachment and to arrive at feelings of empathy, compassion, and love much faster because we are not attached to the situations others experience.
Similarly, we are able to benefit from the non-attachment that others feel when they do Ho’oponopono for us as they jump on the Pay It Forward thread and we become the recipients.
The practice of gifting Ho’oponopono to 10 other people creates a strong energetic thread and connections between the 10 people who connect virtually in a comment thread.
It’s a simple practice and we benefit both from giving and receiving.
Jump on the thread and keep it going by visiting it once a week or as often as you can.
Here is what you do:
Join the group Akashic Magic on Facebook by going here.
Find the Ho’oponopono thread.
1. Go to the end of the thread. Say the Ho’oponopono phrases for the LAST 10 people who commented on this thread.
2. Then add your comment: I paid it forward. This will get you in the queue for the next people to intend Ho’oponopono for you.
3. Come back daily to keep paying it forward so the beautiful energy of giving and receiving Ho’oponopono keeps building.
I am looking forward to creating this energetic chain with you!
One of the hallmarks of EFT is using the setup phrase effectively. What is this phrase? and Why is it so crucial?
This phrase consists of two parts. The first is acknowledging that our negative emotion or pain. The second is allowing ourselves to experience forgiveness and acceptance regardless of the negative emotion or pain.
The setup phrase is a variation of the following: Even though (negative emotion/ pain), I deeply and completely love, forgive, and accept myself. More on this in a bit.
Many people new to EFT and some EFT practitioners question the validity and helpfulness of focusing on the negative emotion. Isn’t our objective to get rid of negativity and the pain? The answer, of course, is Yes. But,recent research has revealed the power and benefit of negative emotions. In a recent article in the Scientific American titled Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being the author, Tori Rodriguez, argues that our culture’s bias toward positive thinking may not be a good thing. Rodriguez’s conclusions support the structure of our EFT setup phrase.
Negative emotion helps us evaluate and make sense
Personal growth and development and understanding of the self are directly tied to reflecting and confronting the adversities we face in our lives. Negative emotions and unpleasant feelings help us evaluate and make sense of the ups and downs we experience. A study by psychologist Jonathan M. Adler of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering and Hal E. Hershfield of New York University found that individuals who are able to process both the negative and positive emotions of a situation experienced more positive improvements after the unpleasant situation. The researchers concluded that “taking the good and the bad together may detoxify the bad experiences, allowing you to make meaning out of them in a way that supports psychological well-being.”
Suppressing negative emotion has opposite effect
Another study showed that suppressing negative emotion doesn’t make it go away. Instead those negative thoughts stay under the surface and are multiplied or rebound which increase stress and sabotages any possible progress. Rodriguez recommends that “instead of backing away from negative emotions, [we] accept them.” By accepting them, we decrease them.
The power of the negative in EFT
The setup phrase then accomplishes these two objectives: 1. we acknowledge the negative emotion and 2. by doing so, we can evaluate and make sense of it thereby removing its effect on us. Of course, we will not stay in the negative. Part of the EFT technique, used correctly, is to reframe (or make sense) of the negative into a positive. We cannot achieve the reframe, though, without first accomplishing the objective to ACKNOWLEDGE the reality of our emotion or sensation. When we acknowledge the emotion or feeling, we no longer resist and are able to release it.
We know we are releasing when the intensity of the emotion begins to lessen and when we begin to see the situation in a different way. For me, this reframing usually comes as a new thought about the situation; it feels like movement forward. The reframe involves a new awareness and a new feeling attached to the situation. The awareness can be both bodily and mental. We can feel the new perspective in our body. We feel differently, lighter. We also THINK differently.
Even though we use targeted tapping on the negative to release it, the objective is always to find our way to the positive. This turn to the positive will come naturally when the negative is released. Only by working through and releasing the negative can we then focus on the positive without the nagging feeling that we are not being completely truthful. The release of the negative makes our focus on the positive much more authentic and powerful.
My own journey with EFT began more than 10 years ago when I started researching methods to help me understand why I was so dissatisfied and unhappy.
What Led Me to EFT
I, for all intents and purposes, was a successful woman with a happy life (or at least, I should have been happy.) I had an ideal family–married, two kids, extended family all around and a brand new house. I was well educated–I received my BA from Yale University and an MA in English Literature. I was successful in my career–I had just made a move to a college to teach writing and I was quickly advancing in leadership roles.
Still, I felt immense dissatisfaction and extreme guilt for feeling dissatisfied. Thus, began my journey to discover what was wrong.
I discuss more about my journey in my forthcoming book, including relating the twists and turns and what seemed like dead-ends. For now, I’d like this series of blog posts to focus on how EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique, has been part of that journey.
It took me 10 years to truly understand the power of EFT and to gain the benefits from using it.
I learned about EFT by searching online for techniques to relieve stress. With the stresses of the my jobs–I was currently working a full-time job and a part-time job– and raising a family, I thought I needed to find ways to relieve my stress so I could feel better.
I found many articles discussing EFT and the many benefits people have experienced with it. Many of these articles were written by practitioners of EFT, including Gary Craig the founder of the EFT short-cut method. I read Gary Craig’s story and downloaded the EFT manual so that I could use the method on myself.
EFT Failed Me (or I failed EFT)
Despite all the stories that I had read about successful application, I didn’t find much relief. I thought tapping looked silly and for a long time I did not admit to anyone that I was exploring this method. I tapped on feeling silly while doing it which is something that Gary Craig recommended and still recommends. Still, I found no relief.
I thought about seeking out and working with a practitioner but the fees stopped me. How was I going to explain spending that much money on a therapy that seemed silly? What is a good idea to risk the money on something that might not work? After all, it had not worked when I tried on my own.
I was not only going to feel silly doing the tapping but also spending the money on it when it didn’t work.
I thought, “I’m smart and successful. I should be able to figure this out.”
I abandoned EFT before really giving it a try. But it kept calling me. I returned to it periodically when I remembered the stories of great successes or when I read another practitioner story but I still would not get results.
Western Medicine Failed Me
Instead, I turned to western medicine for more traditional forms of therapy for stress relief. This included visiting a psychologist, using cognitive and behavioral therapy, and taking anti-depressants. I tried exercise which only served to make me feel even more inadequate. I dieted, thinking that looking better would make me feel better about myself. I culled western culture for other forms of relief, including returning to my childhood religious community.
All my activities and my efforts produced no improvement. What was even worse, my sense of dissatisfaction was increasing. I was feeling more and more lost and confused.
My Realization: My Answer Can’t Come From Outside
The problem was that I was looking outside myself for the answer. Even when I considered EFT, I considered it as an external method that would help me get rid of my problem. Using it in that way would not have brought results.
It took changing the way I approached my dissatisfaction. The mind-shift was necessary to know that looking for external strategies would not work without first doing the internal work.
Believe me, I resisted this new knowledge. When I finally accepted the mind-shift, I returned to EFT with renewed enthusiasm.
In my next post, I discuss Trying and Failing with EFT and the mistakes that I was making. Now that I understand the method and am getting amazing results, I know what I was doing wrong. I cover that in the next post.
I recommend journaling as part of the EFT process to all my clients.
Why is journaling so important?
Capturing awareness
EFT is so powerful because it
collapses issues but also because it brings us to a new awareness.
EFT allows us to see a new perspective that had been previously blocked. That awareness or new perspective comes in the moment while we are tapping or can come after our tapping session is over.
Capturing awareness is an integral part of the learning process and helps to solidify that learning.
Patterns
Writing down what issues you are collapsing, what setup phrases you use, and what awareness develops is a good way to start to see patterns emerging. These patterns will be different for each individual but you will begin to notice different types of patterns:
what issues are related
what issues have similar types of feelings associated
what language is most effective
what time of day tapping is most effective
what techniques helps the issue to collapse at a faster rate.
Knowing these patterns will help you to know how you can use EFT in a more effective way for you personally.
Start journaling today. It is never too late to start.
What do you call yourself professionally? Do you have a title? Are you a coach, reiki healer, tarot reader….?
I’ve called myself a teacher, professor, coach, EFT practitioner, Akashic Records practitioner, success coach, soul alignment coach…and the list goes on.
But, I’ve been searching to find the “right” word for myself, a word that I felt like it “fit” what I was doing. I’ve been on this search since I started on this path of being an entrepreneur because in my last career as a teacher I didn’t get to choose what I called myself.
What I found, though, was the word did not exist. There was no word available to describe what I do which is a blend of many of my skills, talents, and interests.
So I made one up! That is why I call myself a Spiritual Techpreneur.
Because this term is not widely used, I feel like I need to explain what this means.
What is a spiritual techpreneur?
I define technology or “tech” as
knowledge put into practical use to solve problems or invent useful tools.
I am an entrepreneur and I work with other entrepreneurs.
I am a spiritual seeker and I work with other spiritual seekers.
I am also a tech junkie so I share this skills with others who want to learn more or who want support as they launch into the online business world.
So this is the essence of the name. A combination of all those elements of myself, what I do, and what I believe.
I am also a believer in quantum theory that says that we are all energy. We look solid only because the particles we are made of are moving so slow that we experience them as very dense and, therefore, solid.
But, we are not the only ones that are energy. Everything is energy. Our thoughts are energy. Our creations are energy. The objects we create are energy. And, everything we create carries our energetic imprint.
Just like our scent remains on our clothes long after we have worn them–sometimes even after several cycles in the wash–our energetic imprint remains part of our creations.
This is true for our videos and audios, but this is also true for the websites we create, the blog posts we write, the emails we send to our followers, the posts we create and comments we write in social media platforms.
As a Spiritual Techpreneur, I believe the following:
Computers are a technology. Language and writing are technologies. We all agree about this.
But, spiritual tools are also technologies. We can use them to improve what we do with computers and language in the online arena. We can use spiritual tools not only to create change in ourselves but also to consciously imbue our creations with the energy we want to share in the world.
I use both sets of technologies to help my clients, and I also teach my clients how to do use this tech for themselves.
I list some of the tech that I use below and I keep adding to the list any chance I get.
Computer Tech
Websites
Video
Audio
Image creation
Course creation
Membership sites
Course sites
Landing Pages
Spiritual Tech
Energy Clearing
Reiki
Akashic Records
EFT
Tarot
Lenormand
Pendulum
Spirit Guides
Shamanic Journeying
Want to know more about how I integrate technology and spirituality?
So what does it take to transform our prosperity and abundance flows?
The simple answer is that transformation is created using 3 different components.
Awareness
Healing
Action
First, we must be aware of gets in our way.
Why don’t things work for us? We may try something that someone else tries and they get results and we don’t. why is that?
Because everyone’s journey is different and you need to find information that is relevant to you and your soul’s journey.
My work with clients has taught me that awareness comes in two levels. We must develop awareness of two things. The first is what actions are we currently taking that are not supporting the creation of life we want.
Many times we know we have a block to receiving or to asking, but we don’t know what that block is or how to remove it.
Well, blocks are created in several ways. You could have created it, knowingly or unknowingly, by taking certain actions that ultimately led to the creation of this circumstance. The action could be something that was out of integrity or subscribing to a belief that goes against our divine nature.
Another cause of our blocks has nothing to do with this lifetime. It could be coming from a past lifetime or from an ancestral pattern.
First, it is important to determine what those blocks are. That is, to get that awareness.
The second component is healing.
When we talk about clearing your blocks, what we really mean is healing your soul. When you do general clearing, and you don’t know what you’re healing, you cannot be as effective.
Many times it takes that specificity and knowing the specifics to be able to get to the root of the issue.
If you are clearing and don’t have awareness, then you don’t know exactly what you are clearing. The clearing may work but may not be as powerful as it could be to help you create the life you want.
Can you clear without knowing what you cleared? Yes, definitely. But, because you didn’t have awareness, you may end up re-creating the block by taking the wrong action.
Awareness is critical. So the awareness component is important by targeting what needs to be healed.
The third component is action.
We do live in a physical world so to receive this abundance–this prosperous life we want to create for ourselves–we must take action.
Whether the action is a DOING action that means we are creating something or the action is receiving. We must be able to do both.
We do the healing then we can be more conscious of taking right action. We get to create the life we want.
The healing allows us to be open to receiving things, open to seeing possibility and potential.
We’re going to be open to synchronicity and what may seem like a coincidence. We will not as easily succumb to fear, doubt, and confusion.
We may be open to more luck and ease.
So these 3 components are very important for you to develop true prosperity and bring about that abundant life you want.
Whether prosperity for you means financial abundance, health and well-being, love and relationships that serve you, or creating a business that supports your dreams.
It doesn’t matter what type of prosperity you’re working towards, you have to work on ALL THREE components: awareness, healing, and action.
Just because I explained each above in a specific order, doesn’t mean that these components are independent of each other.
Awareness can bring healing which brings more awareness that allows us to take new action, etc. All are interrelated. Always working in tandem.
The most important element is to get started.
So which of these 3 components have you been focusing on?
Are you doing all three?
Many times doing this ourselves by ourselves keeps us spinning our wheels. We work and work and stay in the same place. Nothing changes.
Allowing someone else to help you on your journey, to hold space for you, to be an objective observer, to be a guide and truth-teller, to help you to gain awareness helps. Having someone to hold space as you process the healing, and to help you brainstorm and strategize new action is invaluable.
Many times doing it alone, we find that our efforts are hit and miss. Because for most blocks, there are certain things we cannot see. We put in effort, but it is mostly trial and error. The process takes longer.
Think about how you can seek assistance, who can help you, and how can benefit from someone else helping you on this journey.
If you’re interested in knowing how I can help you with my Prosperity Transformation Package, you can get more information here.
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This phrase consists of two parts. The first is acknowledging that our negative emotion or pain. The second is allowing ourselves to experience forgiveness and acceptance regardless of the negative emotion or pain.
I discuss more about my journey in my forthcoming book, including relating the twists and turns and what seemed like dead-ends. For now, I’d like this series of blog posts to focus on how EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique, has been part of that journey.
But, we are not the only ones that are energy. Everything is energy. Our thoughts are energy. Our creations are energy. The objects we create are energy. And, everything we create carries our energetic imprint.