This article is reprinted by permission from Well Being Journal, a bimonthly magazine of health and well being sold nationwide in stores and by subscription.

Emotional Freedom From Stress

By CJ Puotinen

Most patients who visit urologists recite their symptoms, undergo lab tests, and receive a prescription or two. Those visiting Los Angeles urologist Eric Robins, M.D., often get something extra—a lesson in tapping key acupuncture points. To their surprise, this simple addition to conventional therapy clears up recurring infections, chronic pain, and other symptoms. The procedure is called Emotional Freedom Techniques, or EFT, and Dr. Robins says it strengthens his patients’ immune systems, improves their overall health, and reduces stress and anxiety.

“Whenever someone has a chronic or recurring problem,” he explains, “I ask about anything, including emotional issues, that might affect the condition. Most physicians shy away from asking personal questions because it’s like opening a Pandora’s box—suddenly you have a dozen problems instead of just one. But I’m convinced that’s where the answers are.”

Not only do physicians avoid such personal conversations, he laments, but so do most psychiatrists. “Psychiatrists are primarily interested in psychopharmacology these days. Most don’t get involved with the patient’s past traumas. Instead, they treat abnormalities in the patient’s brain chemistry. I think that’s treating the effect, not the cause.”

Eric Robins, MD, endorses EFT In most medical practices, says Dr. Robins, the largest single expense is the cost of prescription drugs. “We’re not going to become a healthier nation by taking more drugs,” he says. “I’m convinced that more than 80 or 85 percent of our illnesses are simply the result of how we store and process stress. It’s a well-known fact that most patients going to a primary care physician’s office have functional medical problems, which means they have genuine symptoms, but their exams, lab tests, and x-rays can’t find anything wrong. These people aren’t crazy, they’re perfectly sane, but their symptoms are not the result of an external cause. They’re the result of how they hold stress in their bodies, and stored stress interferes with their energy flow. This contributes to everything from back pain and arthritis to bladder infections and susceptibility to colds and flu.”

Dr. Robins encourages patients to look beyond their lab test results. “The best advice I can give any patient,” he says, “is to go beyond the medical diagnosis and ask what stresses, traumas, and issues might be interfering with their health and well-being.”

He did this in January 2005 when a 53-year-old woman who underwent knee replacement surgery developed urinary retention requiring a Foley catheter. Despite numerous attempts to remove it in the three months that followed, the patient was unable to void urine on her own.

Because the catheter was beginning to erode her urethra, the patient was scheduled for surgery. But during her pre-op visit, Dr. Robins wondered if depression or other emotional factors might be interfering with the function of her bladder.

She answered that stress from the previous October, when her husband was hospitalized and almost died, might be a contributing factor. “Even though we were talking in a busy medical clinic with many distractions,” says Dr. Robins, “I taught her EFT and guided her through 10 minutes of tapping. We then filled the patient’s bladder with water, her catheter was removed, and she voided just fine. Five days later she was still doing well, making the surgery unnecessary. Her symptoms never returned.”

Dr. Robins is convinced that almost all functional and chronic disorders—including infections, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, migraine headaches, hypertension, and chronic fatigue syndrome—are caused by stress. “I’ve found EFT to be particularly effective in clearing the physical manifestations of stress and past traumas,” he says. “It’s the perfect complement to conventional medicine. Again and again I find that patients with chronic pain have unresolved emotional issues or anger that’s tied to past traumas. Stress and negative emotions aren’t just in our heads, they are stored in our bodies, often in skeletal or smooth muscles. It’s hard for blood to flow through chronically tensed muscles.”

This model, he explains, agrees with the theories of John Sarno, M.D., professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University in New York City and author of the best-selling Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection and other books. Dr. Sarno treats patients not with drugs or surgery but with anger management.

“He sees some of the worse chronic pain patients in the world,” says Dr. Robins. “Most have been in pain for 10 to 30 years despite surgeries, epidural injections, and years of physical therapy. He shows them that, despite what they’ve been told, their herniated disc, degenerative disc disease, osteoarthritis, or old injury is not the cause of their pain. If you examine any cross-section of the public, you’ll find many people who have even worse conditions, yet they are completely free from pain. You can see herniated discs, osteoarthritis, and similar problems in their x-rays and other tests, but they don’t have pain. Dr. Sarno teaches his patients that the true cause of their pain is anger and that when they let go of the anger, their pain will disappear. He consistently produces a cure rate that’s close to 70 percent in terms of pain and function, and an additional 15 percent are much improved.”

Dr. Robins considers EFT the most effective, fastest-acting anger management technique available. “Like most doctors, I’m always in a hurry,” he says. “If I can teach EFT to a patient in just a few minutes and completely resolve not only chronic symptoms but their underlying cause, that’s terrific. In fact, it’s phenomenal. Nothing in the pharmaceutical world comes close.”

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT): A New Moment in Science
© Copyright 2003 by Christopher Hegarty, Ph.D., D.D.; USA
(Explore Issue: Volume 13, Number 1)

I Imagine for a moment a healing modality that, in less than 10 years, has become a highly valued method of more than five thousand medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, chiropractors, acupuncturists, nurses and other members of the healing professions in dozens of countries. Imagine further that no surgery, drugs or equipment are needed.

There is such a healing modality, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT).

Practitioners worldwide have marveled at its simplicity, elegance and rapid means of healing. It has been clinically effective in thousands of cases for physical symptoms, trauma, stress, anxiety, fears, depression, addictive cravings, children’s issues and more.

Even in the hands of most newcomers, it often achieves either noticeable improvement or complete cessation of the client’s problem. For those practitioners who learn the advanced work, there are much higher success rates. Many skilled practitioners get measurable results over 80% of the time. In addition, the process is often rapid, long lasting and gentle and sometimes works when nothing else will.

For more than 10 years I have both witnessed, and used, acupuncture meridian methods as part of an integrated healing process that has proven valuable.. There are too many proven successes to ignore the results. (See What health care practitioners around the world say about EFT at the end of this article.) A very important book giving scientific validation in this field is Science and Human Transformation: Subtle Energies, Intentionality and Consciousness, by Stanford professor William A. Tiller, Ph.D. (ISBN: 09642637-4-2).

The potential within these procedures is so far-reaching that we may have reached “a new moment in science.” While there are several useful techniques in this field, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is clearly the leader.

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Praise for EFT from a Buddhist Monk

Hi Everyone,

I recently received this copy of a message sent to an email list by a Buddhist Monk from Sri Lanka. You might be interested in how he holds EFT in such high esteem. This is very unusual praise from a source such as this and thus you may wish to share it with your friends and religious leaders. Gary Craig.

By Nyanasanti Bhikkhu

Dear Friends...

I have been given a real gift recently, and I want to share it with all of you. It is simply one of the most powerful healing and transformational tools I have ever encountered (after meditation).

It is called EFT, (Emotional Freedom Technique). It is deceptively simple to learn and apply, but the results are simply stunning. Emotional and physical healings occur in a manner which is fascinating ... unbelievable even. EFT is based on a very different understanding of why negative emotions are caused in our lives. It's probably going to challenge some beliefs and assumptions that you have (just as it did for me) ... but the results are unmistakable. This stuff really works ... I've tried it on myself and others in my monastery with results that are too good to believe.

I'll warn you though, EFT is perhaps one of the strangest / funniest looking procedures you'll ever see. When first encountered it seems ridiculous ... until you try it and see for yourself how beautifully it resolves the most complex of psychological / emotional, and even physical problems.

I'm amazed at how I got this gift -- and it is REALLY such a GIFT! -- here in a remote monastery in Sri Lanka. A senior monk returned from abroad and brought along the complete DVD set of EFT teachings. I'm truly grateful to him for sharing them with me and giving me a chance to learn this teaching. One way to show that gratitude is perhaps to spread the word about EFT.

This is very likely a tool I'll be using for the rest of my life. In all my years of learning various meditation techniques, studying healing systems, self-development methods, plus the wide array of methodologies I've been exposed to during my training in Psychology and Human Resources Management ... I've never come across anything as potent as EFT for rapidly diffusing complex emotional problems and associated physical issues. In fact for dealing with specific emotional issues (e.g. phobias, addictions, grief etc.) it's probably a more appropriate tool than meditation.

PS: It's somewhat unusual for a Buddhist monk to be recommending a transformational tool that wasn't explicitly taught by the Buddha. I venture to do so only because I've found that EFT has the potential to significantly reduce psychological and physical suffering. It does not promise Nirvana or Enlightenment (at least I don't think so!). It does promise freedom from debilitating negative tendencies ... and delivers fast! And to that extent perhaps it is congruent with the Buddha's teachings that aim at the complete ending of all suffering.

Nyanasanti Bhikkhu

December 2007
Volume 20, Number 11

By Eric Wargo

“I can’t express anger. I grow a tumor instead.”
—Woody Allen

You live in a majorly stressed out world. You’re never very far from a ringing cell phone or a guilt-inducing laptop. Traffic makes you flip out. And as if stressing out over lines, health, your job, your grades, or global terrorism wasn’t enough, along comes the APS Observer with one more thing in your life to stress out over: Stress.

Stress, to put it bluntly, is bad for you. It can kill you, in fact. Medicine used to be skeptical that the mind could have a direct effect on the body, but any doubt of that has, alas, gone the way of the dinosaur or the relaxing weekend. Study after study now reveals that stress causes deterioration in everything from your gums to your heart and can make you more susceptible to everything from the common cold to cancer. The mind-body connection is real, and it is powerful, and thanks to new research crossing the disciplines of psychology, medicine, neuroscience, and genetics, the mechanisms underlying the connection are rapidly becoming understood.

Axis Powers
The first clues to the link between stress and health were provided in the 1930s by Hans Selye, the first scientist to apply the word “stress”— then simply an engineering term — to the strains experienced by living organisms in their struggles to adapt and cope with changing environments. One of Selye’s major discoveries was that the stress hormone cortisol had a long-term effect on the health of rats. Cortisol has been considered one of the main culprits in the stress-illness connection, although it plays a necessary role in helping us cope with threats.

When an animal perceives danger, a system called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (or HPA) axis kicks into gear: A chain reaction of endocrine signals beginning in the hypothalamus results in the release of various hormones — most notably epinephrine (“adrenaline”), norepinephrine, and cortisol — from the adrenal glands above each kidney. These hormones boost heart rate, increase respiration, and increase the availability of glucose (cellular fuel) in the blood, thereby enabling the famous “fight or flight” reaction. Because these responses take a lot of energy, cortisol simultaneously tells other costly physical processes — including digestion, reproduction, physical growth, and some aspects of the immune system — to shut or slow down.

The HPA axis is a self-regulating (homeostatic) mechanism, a lot like a thermostat. Stress hormones act back upon the hypothalamus to inhibit production of more signaling chemicals, thus causing less stress hormones to be released down the line. When occasions to fight or flee are infrequent and threats pass quickly, the body’s stress thermostat adjusts accordingly: Cortisol levels return to baseline (it takes 40-60 minutes), the intestines resume digesting food, the sex organs kick back into gear, and the immune system resumes fighting infections. But problems occur when stresses don’t let up — or when, for various reasons, the brain continually perceives stress even if it isn’t really there.

Danger! Danger!
Stress begins with the perception of danger by the brain, and it appears that continued stress can actually bias the brain to perceive more danger by altering brain structures such as the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and amygdala, which govern the perception of and response to threat. Prolonged exposure to cortisol inhibits the growth of new neurons in the mPFC, an area that ordinarily acts to inhibit the HPA axis, and can cause increased growth of the amygdala, the portion of the brain that controls fear and other emotional responses. The end result is heightened expectation of and attention to threats in the environment (see Fox et al., 2007).

Stress hormones also inhibit neuron growth in parts of the hippocampus, a brain area essential in forming new memories. In this way, stress results in memory impairments and impairs the brain’s ability to put emotional memories in context (Sapolsky, 1994). Think of it this way: Too much stress and you forget not to be stressed out. These brain changes are thought by some researchers to be at the heart of the link between stress and depression — one of stress’s most devastating health consequences — as well as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The best known of stress’s health impacts are on the heart. The idea that stress directly causes coronary heart disease has been around since the 1950s; although once controversial (or thought to be mediated solely by behavioral responses like smoking or overeating), the direct stress-cardiac link is now well-documented by many studies. For instance, men who faced chronic stresses at work or at home ran a 30 percent higher likelihood of dying over the course of a nine-year study; in another study, individuals reporting neglect, abuse, or other stressors in childhood were over three times as likely as nonstressed individuals to develop heart disease in adulthood (Miller & Blackwell, 2006).

Stress appears to be cumulative. Although when we think of stressors we might think of big things like abuse, illness, divorce, grieving, or getting fired, it is now known that the little things — traffic, workplace politics, noisy neighbors, a long line at the bank — can add up and have a similar impact on our well-being and our health. People who report more minor irritants in their lives also have more mental and physical health problems than those who encounter fewer hassles (Almeida, 2005). And recent research shows that PTSD may be the result of stressors adding up like building blocks, remodeling the plastic brain in a cumulative rather than a once-and-for-all fashion (Kolassa and Elbert, 2007).

To designate the cumulative wear and tear on physical systems due to long-term overactivation of the stress response, Rockefeller University neuroendocrinologist Bruce McEwen (1998) developed the concept of “allostatic load.” Studies showing serious health consequences of allostatic load on the rest of the body’s systems are numerous and growing. Besides heart disease, PTSD, and depression, chronic stress has been linked to ailments as diverse as intestinal problems, gum disease, erectile dysfunction, adult-onset diabetes, growth problems, and even cancer. Chronic rises in stress hormones have been shown to accelerate the growth of precancerous cells and tumors; they also lower the body’s resistance to HIV and cancer-causing viruses like human papilloma virus (the precursor to cervical cancer in women; see Antoni & Lutgendorf, 2007).

Adding insult to injury, stress may even have a self-perpetuating effect. Depression and heart disease, for example, are not only the results of stress, but also causes of (more) stress. Consequently, the chronically stressed body can appear less like a thermostat than like a wailing speaker placed too close to a microphone — a feedback loop in which the stress response goes out of control, hastening physical decline with age.

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Antidepressants Are No Better Than Placebos

depression, antidepressants Antidepressant drugs, including the best-selling Prozac, simply do not work as advertised, according to a comprehensive review by U.S. and Canadian researchers.

After examining all data available for the drugs -- including clinical trials that manufacturers did not publish at the time -- it was found that patients taking the drugs improved just as much as those taking placebo pills. The only exception was among severely depressed patients, who improved slightly more on the drugs than the placebos.

This study is unique in that it is the first time a study has been done using a full set of data for the antidepressants Prozac, Seroxat, Effexor, and Serzone.

"Using complete data sets (including unpublished data) and a substantially larger data set of this type than has been previously reported, we find the overall effect of new-generation antidepressant medication is below recommended criteria for clinical significance," the authors wrote.
Sources:

The Guardian February 26, 2008

It’s been known for years that placebos, or sugar pills, work just as well as antidepressants, but it is still amazing what comes out when you are actually able to see the whole picture. In this case, after the researchers got their hands on all of those unpublished studies (by taking advantage of freedom of information rules from the Food and Drug Administration) it came out that antidepressant drugs don’t work.

They don’t work. Yet, they are being prescribed to 118 million Americans each year -- and the four most commonly prescribed are also three of those that this study found to be just as effective as popping a sugar pill: Prozac, Effexor and Serzone (Paxil is the fourth).

Now, here’s something to think about: there are 118 million prescriptions for these drugs each year, yet, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, depression affects approximately 14.8 million American adults in any given year.

Who is receiving the 100+ million doses of “extra” antidepressants? People with pain, people with anxiety, people who want to quit smoking, people with sleep problems, fibromyalgia, overreactive bladders, and even some people who simply want to lose weight.

In short, there are large numbers of people who are taking these drugs, and paying for these drugs, for wildly different problems, when perhaps a simple tool that they already possess could do the same thing, for free, a sugar pill. But what would work even better is to use another solution that is also free: your mind.

Can Depression be Treated With Your Mind?

Depression is a serious illness and one that clearly needs to be addressed, as it is the cause of loads of pain and suffering. But the reason why some people experience benefits after taking an antidepressant drugs is not, as this study proves, because of the drug itself. It is because the person believed that the pill would work.

This is why, when given a sugar pill, it is possible to experience relief from a wide range of symptoms, as long as you believe the pill will help you.

This placebo effect has, in fact, been proven to be real in one of the most prestigious journals in the world, Science.

Most doctors only superficially acknowledge the power of placebo and do not even begin to fully utilize the power that it represents.

Your subconscious mind is basically neutral. It will implement just about any command that you continuously feed it and sincerely believe in. This concept is explained very clearly in this great video on The New Biology, but the bottom line is that if you believe something will heal you, then there’s a good chance, even a 100 percent chance, that it will.

So, why spend money on an antidepressant that has potentially dangerous side effects, when you can use your mind instead?

To do this, I suggest using an energy psychology tool such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). For serious problems such as depression, it would be prudent to contact a health care professional who is trained in the technique.

Emotional Freedom Techniques

Where emotional relief brings physical health

Often works where nothing else will

EFT Article published in the Well Being Journal

Praise for EFT from a Buddhist Monk

SOME PARTICULAR TRAITS OF THE PAIN BODY by Luis Angel Diaz

Emotional Freedom Techniques Where emotional relief brings physical health Often works where nothing else will

EFT Article published in the Well Being Journal

Praise for EFT from a Buddhist Monk

SOME PARTICULAR TRAITS OF THE PAIN BODY by Luis Angel Diaz

Emotional Freedom Techniques

Where emotional relief brings physical health

Often works where nothing else will