The
Right Place at the Right Time
by Jenny
Edwards, Ph.D., TFTdx.
When I first heard about Thought Field Therapy, I knew that I wanted to learn it
for my work in Africa. I give seminars there, and thought that people there
would benefit from knowing a rapid way to eliminate trauma, physical pain,
anxiety, addictions, phobias, and all of the other areas that Thought Field
Therapy addresses. I didn’t know just how much it might be needed.
In
July, 1997, I received an invitation to conduct a two-week training sponsored by
the Carmelite Community in Nairobi from August 3-14, 1998. I would be working
with priests, nuns, brothers, students, counselors, educators, social workers,
and others involved in helping professions. I accepted with pleasure, and made
plans to teach a number of topics that had been requested, as well as a section
on Thought Field Therapy.
The
bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi occurred the morning of Friday, August 7.
We were in the training at the time, which was about 25 minutes away from
downtown Nairobi. Only during the afternoon did we begin to realize the
devastation and the extent of the bombing.
All
weekend, the Sisters in the training were at the hospitals serving people. Other
activities had been scheduled for me, so I went along according to plan. On
Monday, people in the training were starting to question Thought Field Therapy.
We were just getting into the training, as it was one of several topics being
addressed in the two-week seminar. They reasoned that, after all, people had
just been in a bombing. Surely Thought Field Therapy wasn’t powerful enough to
help people with trauma that severe. I knew that I had to and wanted to go to
the hospital and work with bombing victims.
The
Sisters were going to the hospital after the training was over at 1:00 PM, and
agreed to take me with them. As we went through police road blocks on the way
there, I began to realize the severity of the situation. We arrived at Kenyatta
Hospital and went directly to the wards. Doubts began to surface.
Sure, I knew that Thought Field Therapy worked; however, these people had been
in a bombing the previous Friday. Would it work with them? As I followed the
Sisters from ward to ward, I asked myself questions like, "Who do you think you
are?" "Fools rush in." "What if it doesn’t work?"
In
many of the wards that we visited, people’s faces were filled with stitches.
Eyes were bandaged. It would be unthinkable to ask them to tap on their eyebrows
and under their eyes. [Note: In such cases there are equivalent points on the
toes. RC] We went from ward to ward. The Sisters seemed to know what to do.
Obviously, they had done this before. I thought I would just follow them around;
however, I was praying and asking for direction. With whom, if anyone, should I
use Thought Field Therapy?
We
finally came to a ward in which people had mainly lower body injuries. I went up
to a woman lying on her bed, staring into space, and began talking with her. She
was in a great deal of pain - a "10." Her shoes had been blown off by the
bombing, and she had walked out. She had a lot of glass in her feet, among other
injuries, and was on strong pain medication. Since her injuries weren’t quite as
severe as others, the doctors hadn’t had a chance to work with her yet. After
building rapport, I said timidly, "I have some-thing that MIGHT help you. I’m
not sure if it will work. It would involve tapping on these particular places on
your body (I showed her), and would take about five minutes. I’m willing to try,
if you would like me to." She said, "I’ll do anything. I’m in so much pain. I
also keep thinking that a bomb will explode any minute in the hospital. I know
that it’s probably not going to happen; however, I can’t get the thought out of
my mind!"
I
decided to work with the pain first. After tapping the pain algorithm, the SUD
came down from a "10" to a "5;" however, it wouldn’t go any lower, even after
tapping for reversal. It occurred to me that we needed to tap for trauma before
the pain would go any lower. Of course, the trauma was a "10," and it came down
to a "0" immediately. After that, we tapped again for pain, and it readily went
down to a "0."
She
blinked her eyes and looked at me, a little bewildered. She said, "I’ve played
the pictures of what happened the day of the bombing over and over in my mind,
almost without stopping, since Friday. It’s really strange, but I’m not doing
that any more. I think that I’ll be able to get to sleep tonight." Then she
looked straight at me, smiled, and said, "God saved me for a reason." "Yes, He
did," I said. I told her that the pain probably would return, and wrote out what
she could do when it did. I told her that the trauma probably wouldn’t return;
however, if it did, the directions were there for her to follow (including
Psychological Reversal).
About that time, the Sister came to me and said, "The woman in the bed across
the way says she wants to be healed, too." I went over to her. She was just
staring into space. Her arm was bandaged, and her hand was limp. After talking
with her for a few minutes, I asked her if it would hurt if she tapped on the
hand that was limp. She said it might hurt a little; however, it would be worth
it in order to be able to experience the changes that she had just seen the
woman in the bed across the way experience. She was "10" on both trauma and
pain. I decided to work on trauma first. It came down fairly quickly to a "0,"
with no Psychological Reversal.
Then, we worked on the pain, which had already gone down to an "8" after working
on the trauma. As she tapped, it went down to "0," too. She was moving her hand
all around, color was restored to her face, and she was smiling and laughing. I
wrote down what we had done. Her husband, who had been watching, asked the
Sister if it might help his neck pain. She said, "Of course." By now, the first
woman was sitting up for the first time since the bombing, eating dinner and
talking with her husband. They were smiling and laughing. Her husband told the
Sister that usually she panicked when it was time for him to leave at night
because she didn’t want to be alone, for fear a bomb might explode. He reported
that this evening, for a change, she felt fine about his leaving, and told him
that she would see him the next day.
She
then told the Sister that she had been on extremely high and frequent doses of
pain medication, and was planning to use the tapping to lessen the amount and
frequency of the doses. Then, I went to talk with a third woman in the ward. She
was staring into space. I tried to build rapport; however, it was difficult. I
made the determination that perhaps I wasn’t supposed to work with her. The next
day, the Sister said that the third woman had later told her, "Why did she heal
the other two and she didn’t heal me?"
The
Sister’s response was, "She wrote down what she did for the other two. Ask them
to work with you." The next day in the training, the Sisters shared what had
happened in the hospital. People were amazed, and as I did demonstrations with
people in the training around their trauma related to the bombing, they became
believers and launched into the practice sessions with vigor. Furthermore, they
sent their friends with extremely difficult cases to me to work with in the
afternoons for the rest of the week. I also had the opportunity to introduce TFT
to therapists at a local counseling center. They were planning to follow up by
ordering materials from Dr.Callahan.
Yes, I knew that I was supposed to share Thought Field Therapy with people in my
seminar in Nairobi. I didn’t know just how timely the training would be.
For More Information Contact:
TFT HEALING CLINIC AND TRAINING
3 BEACON ROAD PARKERVILLE, PERTH , WESTERN AUSTRALIA 6081
Tel: +61892954726
FAX: +61892954726
Internet:
regina_tft@hotmail.com
