Level one and two EFT tapping training at Esalen

Monarch butterflies, dolphins, coffee... and a peek at what it looks like when someone's not ready

This published work is for informational purposes and should not be relied upon as medical, psychological, coaching, or other professional advice of any kind or nature.  Enjoy my full disclaimer for more information!

(When we left our story in the last post, I’d just made a young student acquaintance and run away from her Esalen instructor who thought it was impossible to have satisfying sexual encounters if you were in a relationship. Picture a cartoon dust cloud left behind me.)

I'm so grateful that I got to spend my 26 hours of class time that week with my instructor, Gwyneth Moss, and my dozen or so unassuming, easy-to-coexist-with classmates. We were all women, except for a father and his adult son, who were both cut from a very beautiful and kind cloth that still feels pretty rare. 

Gwyneth was from Britain and had become a Master EFT practitioner in one of the first cohorts to study with Gary Craig (the inventor of EFT). She put us at our ease and started us tapping immediately. Realizing how much of the 26 hours I'd be physically tapping, I immediately vowed to myself that I would not switch away from my dominant hand... I think I made it to Thursday. 

This class combined Level 1 and 2 of Gary Craig's original "gold standard" tapping training. First you learn the points, of course. Then you learn the Constricted Breathing Technique:

—Rate how deeply you can breathe (in the "plus is good range," like, I can only breathe in to an 8 out of 10)

— and then tap the side of your hand with your setup statement (even though I can only breathe in to an 8, I truly and deeply accept myself)

— and then tap the main points with your problem statement (I can only breathe in to an 8).

Gwyneth didn't end the exercise until we could all breathe in to a 10.

I didn't realize it then, but I was learning something about tappers: we LOVE to get all the way through a problem! 

Level 1 and Level 2 training take you methodically through basic tapping, all the way through problems of greater and greater complexity. Most traumas have a story, right? Well, the bread-and-butter of tapping is the Tell The Story Technique, where you take a 3-5 minute segment of your trauma story and tap with it — second-by-second if you have to — until each second of the story has an intensity of zero. It can take several rounds of tapping to do this.

Is your story so horrible you don't want to say it out loud (or traumatize the listener)? Later, we learned The Movie Technique, which is the same as Tell The Story, except that the practitioner asks you to go "frame by frame" and does not need to actually know the what frames you’re looking at in the story, just where you are in the 3-5 minute "movie" of it. 

Can't even tolerate the idea of looking at the movie of your trauma yourself? Welcome to The Sneaking Around Technique, where you put your memory in a box on a shelf in your mind, and just guess how much intensity is in there. (Even though this box probably has a 10 of intensity in it, I truly and deeply accept myself.)

A real bonus for me was that Gwyneth was British.

I truly and deeply love and accept myself is very Californian, she said. In Britain we have stiff upper lips and say,"I'm okay" or "I'm all right!" 

This was my first hint that energy medicine techniques are meant to be adapted to the situation. Thank you, Gwyneth!

The week wore on in illuminating ways. My meeting room sleeping floor space was shared with three other people. None of us ever said a word to the other. One of them was a man in his early 30s who was taking the Horrible Sexy Class with my young friend and the terrifying teacher. Every morning, he would get to the bathroom first and do the Kegel Pee: on! off! on! off! on! off! on! off!

I was so bummed out. I did not want these biological facts. I pretended to be asleep when he came out of the bathroom.

None of us ever said a word to the other! 

The coffee at breakfast was amazing. I would bring my mug out to the stone wall at the misty cliffside, watching the otters play. The weather was pristine: cool in the 60s, with blue skies. The food: tasty. And I slept like a boss who had been knocked out in the 15th round. 

This was more information about energy work: When you move energy, it's like you've done exercise, and sometimes that makes you sleep like you walked 20 miles. 

A cautionary tale I hadn't expected emerged mid-week.

Esalen is (or at least, was, it costs hundreds of dollars just to pass the gates right now so I haven't been back), a very run down, old-smelling, gorgeously situated place with a deep history. The first history is the First People's history, but all I know about that is that the Google reviews complain that Esalen likes to talk about how cool and great the First Peoples are but still won't let them in unless they pay hundreds or dollars like the rest of us. The second history of Esalen, in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, is that it was a place for unconventional thinkers to go think and talk to each other. 

Do you know what that means? Plenty of good stuff. And gurus. 

Midweek at Esalen, I got one of my first hints that I might be more sensitive to guru-vibes than is strictly convenient. Sure, I've had more anxiety, of more types, than I might hope. If you had a mouse run through some colorful paint — I envision purple — and then run and frisk all over the text of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, you'd have a great idea of the diagnoses I've qualified for in my interesting time on this earth. Some people are just anxious, right? 

Note: I've got a lot of off-book things I'm still working on as of this writing, but none of it falls under the category of anxiety. Almost everything I work with these days is in the category of WTF?!

So, I'm at Esalen, tapping, sleeping hard, and watching my friend in the Sexy Class spiral farther and farther into the abyss at mealtimes. Pretty typical for a California woo-woo experience. But mid-week, I woke up, and the world felt kind of... gummy.

I got my coffee, felt okay during the tapping class, but ate lunch in a daze. I'd been driving my little rental car to a trailhead nearby to hike up into the redwoods on breaks, but this day I drifted, slow as molasses, around the beautiful Esalen grounds like I was a swampy ghost. 

WTF is going on? This can't be right! I said to myself. 

And it came to me: I'd gotten guru on me. Motherf*cker. 

I dragged myself to my car. I got to the trailhead. I headed up the trail, alone, saying, out loud, F*ck off! F*ck off! F*ck off! 

In less than 5 minutes, I felt clear and bright. 

For the rest of the week, when I could feel that cloying, precious, heavy, gooey feeling coming on, I told it to F*ck offf! And it did.

What I took away: Gurus aren't good for me. I need to use my own will to say what is allowed. 

And the rest of the week was an idyll of coffee, otters, dolphins, monarch butterflies, and tapping through every training section whether I was the "client" in the dyad or not (tapping has a "borrowing benefits" effect if you tap on yourself while someone else is tapping on their problem in front of you).

Tapping approaches all problems neutrally. What's your intensity, 0-10? If you feel bad because your kindergarten teacher made fun of your shoes, or because you killed someone in a war, the process is exactly the same. What's your intensity, 0-10?

But I did learn in an early dyad that not everyone is ready to tap on the thing that is bothering them. The first day, I was paired with a woman to take turns to "Tell The Story" of something that gave us a problematically negative intensity.

She was tapping on how annoying some girls were — in her neighborhood? at work? I don't remember — and suddenly, she realized that the reason she found those girls so annoying was because of deep, painful insecurities she had about herself. 

I'm not doing this, she said. 

And she didn't just stop our tapping dyad. She dropped out of the class entirely and just stayed in her (real, with a bed) room at Esalen as a guest.

I saw her later at a meal, and she said she was fine, enjoying her vacation. But I learned. 

It's not always time to work on something. 

And another thing I learned, toward the end of training, was about the felt difference in the construction of different energetic blocks. 

I'd gotten rid of a bee phobia in 5 minutes, no problem, remember? But: Bees are not especially fraught for me. I don't have a lot of beliefs about myself, or the world, or my value, related to bees. Bees are simple.

Every person in class was able to volunteer to work with the instructor as part of the training, while the rest of us tapped on ourselves to "borrow benefits." It was the last full day that I made my move and volunteered to take a demonstration spot. 

I forget what technique we were supposed to be demonstrating, but Gwyneth was a master and I think we covered extra ground: We were working on the helplessness I felt when I was supposed to deliver two children to two different soccer fields that were miles apart at the exact same time; which led deeper down to what I'd been told in childhood were the correct rules for behavior; which led still deeper to my intense desire to be alive and do things that brought me the feeling of being alive.

I always have been one who, when forced into a situation that could be seen as incredibly good — like my great job at an engineering company, or my superlatively wholesome life driving my kids to sports practice — could feel a deep and abiding existential despair. It's not convenient, but it's true.

And in that tapping session, my intensity was so high, and was felt so physically by me, that it might have been the first time in my life that I'd validated my real experience.

We tapped and tapped, Gwyneth running me through the paces like an enthusiastic track coach. And then, as I knew this demonstration had to end and we still tapped, I felt a seismic sliding in my heart, as if a huge piece of stone had cut away from a cliff inside me and fallen into freedom. 

There was still a lot of cliff there! But I could feel, in my actual body, that something was different. 

The very last day of training, I had lunch with the girl I'd met the first night who was in the Very Sexy Class.

I was glowing. I felt transformed. I'd learned so much! 

She was green and sickly. She looked nauseous. She could barely form words. 

There's just so much... to unpack... she said, almost in a whisper.

And I mean, sure, probably there is, right? But be careful how you proceed. Don't unpack more than you can fruitfully work with in a day! And then pack the rest back up for later. Respect your ability and what's appropriate for you. 

And don't dig into stuff just because someone told you you should, not unless it feels appropriate and right for you. 

Sometimes, the right time will be later, and you'll do it then. Perfect.

And other times, a guru or authority figure will be pressing you to do something that's wrong for you — and maybe it’s because they innocently believe wrongly about your reality, or maybe it’s because they just love power and being a freakin’ guru.

Always check within yourself for your next steps, and listen to what you learn.