EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques®)

EFT is based on the idea that all emotional discomfort orginates from a disturbance of the body's energetic flow. Potentially, whenever a person experiences something negative, the body's energy flow is disrupted so that whenever they think about the incident in the future, or if an incident occurs that is similar to or reminds them of the original incident, the same kind of disruption occurs and leads to emotional discomfort and often even physical problems.

The technique involves recalling specific incidents of discomfort, feeling the intensity of the related emotions, using a setup affirmation, and tapping on various points on the body which correspond to the Chinese meridians. For unknown reasons, this technique allegedly consistently reduces the intensity of the emotions surrounding original incidents so that the person no longer feels the same intensity of emotions about past experiences. It has reportedly helped millions of people overcome depression, fears, phobias, and insecurity, as well as helped people overcome various types of physical problems such as, for example, pain, blood pressure problems, and tinnitus.

imagining color for peace of mind...

The original of the above image can be found at: http://4colorvision.com/dynamics/mechanism.htm

I changed it slightly, because the original image had a funny greyish dot in the middle of the white, so I put a little bit of white over it. I like using this image stretched out as my computer desktop image.

Anyway, the reason I looked for such an image was to help me with something that's relatively new in my life - a kind of walking meditation I do on my way to and from lunch at work or whenever I have a chance to walk somewhere. It is a way to clear my mind of any negativity for awhile and makes me feel very energized and positive. I imagine the purest colors possible in the following order: red, orange, yellow, green, sky blue, indigo, violet. These colors correspond to the seven chakras, so I also imagine them in the places of the chakras as I go along. For the heart chakra, which is green, I also imagine a beautiful warm rose pink color, like a flower, and sometimes I imagine gold after violet.

It occurred to me to try doing this after reading about color meditation in a book. The book described a sitting meditation, but since I really hate sitting in one place for any length of time unless I'm forced to do so (e.g., long airplane, bus or train trip), it occurred to me one day to try doing color meditation while walking.

I like it that I can do this imagining while I'm going somewhere and that the effects have been only positive - I feel better, and people I pass often smile at and/or stop to talk to me.

In the process of looking for a color image to help me with this exercise, I learned that color blindness is more common in men, that most human beings have trichromatic color vision (meaning they perceive color in three channels), and that about ten percent of women have an extra channel for perceiving color giving them tetrachromatic color vision. For more info on tetrachromaticity, see:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06256/721190-114.stm