EFT for Stress - Thank you Dr. Sarno!

By Lisabeth Gutierrez, AAMET Certified Advanced EFT Practitioner

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The foundation of my EFT practice is stress reduction. We all know how much stress we are under every day. Stress depletes our energy affecting our quality of life in many ways. You feel tense and anxious, constantly under pressure. You can’t sleep at night. You have chronic pain in your body. You feel angry or frustrated with yourself and others. These stress responses, along with lots of others, contribute to your daily stress creating a vicious cycle of pressure on your system. It also stands in the way of living the way you want to live and that is how EFT can help.

I didn't always see stress as the underpinning of EFT. My clients were the first ones to let me in on this secret. They would, for example, clear their craving for chocolate and mention that, by the way, their anxiety had diminished, too. It didn't take too many of these reports to get my attention. Ever since I have been reading up on stress and the physical and emotional toll it takes on us.

That's where Dr. John Sarno comes in. Working at the New York University Hospital for many years, he became interested in back pain. Dr. Sarno is one of those rare clinicians that takes a mind/body perspective on human health (Check out his new book, The Divided Mind). He realized that the pain was often caused by psychological factors and started treating patients accordingly. Guess what? He is able to help people who have found no relief from conventional physicians. He has also broadened the range of diseases that he believes are psychosomatic, psychologically based, but expressed through physical symptoms.

Now lots of people get upset at this idea. They even walk out on Dr. Sarno from time to time at what they feel is the suggestion that their pain is "all in their head". But they are missing the point. That's not what psychosomatic illness is. It's real, not imaginary. The pain is real. The suffering is real, and the consequences in your life are very real. The pain is just not caused by a mechanical or chemical malfunction. It's the result of physiological stress. When we take an energy perspective this makes total sense, energy is being sucked away from your body by all that stress. Your body is doing the best that it can to cope under stressful circumstances. That is causing you pain.

Dr. Sarno also believes that our symptoms will return in the same place in the body or a different place until the root issue that causes the stress is cleared. A patient may get relief from back pain and have a frozen shoulder a year later. To that end he sends patients for talk therapy. I wish he used energy therapies like EFT, too. They are perfect for addressing core issues and they don't take months or years to work. By clearing out the core emotional issue by accessing the body, techniques like EFT are fast ways to help relieve pain AND make sure it doesn't have to reappear.

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Author's Bio:

Lisabeth Gutiérrez is a stress educator with over twenty years of experience in adult education and personal development.  A graduate of Rutgers University and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, she has lived and taught in Latin America, Asia, and the US. Lisabeth holds certificates from two multi-disciplinary health programs: Harvard Medical School’s Certificate in the Clinical Training in Mind Body Medicine and the University of Rhode Island/RI Geriatric Education Center’s Certificate in the Interdisciplinary Practice of Geriatrics.

She received AAMET Advanced EFT Practitioner Certification under the training of two EFT masters in London, England and is a Certified Hypnotist with the National Guild of Hypnotists. She maintains a private practice and offers workshops for organizations including All That Matters, the National Fibromyalgia Association, South County Hospital, and other non-profit groups. A perpetual learner, Lisabeth continues to further her study of the psychosocial aspects of stress, health and wellbeing through coursework and participation in professional organizations including Integrative Medicine at Brown Medical School. She is also an active volunteer with Home and Hospice Care of Rhode Island.

Lisabeth lives in Wakefield, Rhode Island, with her husband, two daughters, and six - yes, it’s true – six dogs.

1 Comment

Dave
Posted March 04, 2010 11:53 AM

How wonderful to see you promote Dr. Sarno - he got me started - rather, reading his Healing Back Pain over a decade ago got me started - on a mind-body path that has ended in many forms of energy psychology. Like you I'm certified in clinical hypnosis & in EFT - but not (yet) through AAMET - and am disappointed (like you) that John Sarno [still] refers folks to talk therapy. You'd have thought he'd find MTT a "natural fit.

Thank you for taking time and attention to write for our benefit.

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