February 2015 Newsletter

Hello, and a fantastic February to you!
Welcome, or welcome back, to my newsletter. The photo of me above was in my first newsletter, exactly a year ago, and I'm using it again to commemorate the anniversary. It also says to me though there is still snow here in NY, it is getting lighter and brighter every day, plenty of reason to be optimistic about what's coming.

Today's issue has 2 articles, the first on making sense of a scary dream. The second is about the SUDS scale and how to use it to make your EFT session more effective. Enjoy!

For people who don't pay much attention to their dreams, a scary dream may be the first one they notice. Unfortunately, this experience can be so upsetting, they might resolve to ignore their dreams completely, and blame the dream on something spicy they ate the night before! To me, dreams are just one more source of information from the environment. By ignoring them you'll also be missing the wisdom and guidance they bring. Often a "bad dream" is shouting a message at you because you haven't heard the earlier whispers. Does that dream monster remind you of your abusive boss? Maybe it's time to look for another job!

Once this dream message was deciphered, the woman relaxed. She made a plan to talk to her husband about managing his stress, and starting on a simple exercise program. We're afraid when we don't understand and we feel out of control, like a frightened child. Your scary dream is trying to tell you something it thinks you need to know. Take the time to decode what the dream is saying.

To read about my recent personal experience of working with a frightening dream, click here.

If you're interested in exploring your own dreams with me, scary or not, consider a Dream Coaching session. I'd love to work with you.

When doing EFT "by the book", we check the SUDS level before and after each round of tapping. SUDS is simply an acronym for Subjective Units of Distress Scale. That is, on a scale from 1 to 10, how upset are you about the situation? After tapping, we check the SUDS again on the same issue. Novice tappers often start jumping around from item to item, then wonder why they're not making headway. It's more effective to remain on a single topic until the SUDS is low enough on that. Then you can move on to something different. Ideally, in EFT we focus on an issue as a target, check the SUDS for it, then tap and the SUDS gets lower. However, sometimes the SUDS doesn't budge. This usually means we're not being specific enough, maybe tapping on "this pain in my knee" instead of "this burning pain like a knife in the middle of my right knee joint, which is keeping me from exercising and making me get fat!". The more specific we can be, the more our energetic focus is on the issue, and the more progress we can make at lowering its intensity.

If you're so upset you're sobbing, or ready to scream, don't worry about your SUDS. It is clearly very high, like the poor fellow in the image above. Start tapping whether you have a SUDS or not. It's a helpful tool, not a requirement!

If you're unfamiliar with EFT, you'll find a brief overview here, so you can learn more about it.

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Please send me your questions and comments
Let me know what you've wondered about concerning vision or dreams or EFT. I'll be glad to write a short article addressing that topic. Thank you to those who have sent me questions, or see a question you asked me in a private session written about here. You're helping many other people! Enjoy these fine beginning days of February. I'll write again in a week or so. Take care!