Group Focus on a Physical Ailment
Reported by John Hartung, Psy.D.
My patient had barely survived the tsunami wave that took the lives of several of her family members and many of her friends. In the hospital following the disaster, her recovery from most of injuries was rapid, except for numbness in her foot that severely limited her mobility. Now, nine months later, October 2005, she was reporting to me that she was still having difficulty walking, and this interfered with her ability to work. Her physician was so frustrated with her lack of progress that he had recently recommended surgery, more out of desperation than medical justification. After nearly a year, it was clear that things were not improving on their own. While the doctor wasn’t particularly hopeful that tapping some seemingly random points on the patient’s skin was going to affect her mobility, he agreed to let her try an energy psychology session to see if it might make a difference.
The treatment was carried out in the context of an energy psychology training I was providing to some 20 caregivers at a tsunami site along the shores of the Indian Ocean in Sri Lanka. I asked my patient, who was also one of the trainees (many of the trainees had been directly and profoundly impacted by the tsunami), if we could do her treatment in front of the 20 trainees, and she said we could. I explained that we would start by using energy psychology to work with the emotional upset that is inevitably related to physical symptoms.
I asked her to measure the numbness in her foot on a self-report scale. She noted that it was at a maximum. She had no feeling whatsoever in her right foot, up through her ankle, and halfway up her calf. I then asked her to identify any traumatic memories associated with the tsunami. Several extremely sad memories were immediately accessible, and they responded readily to a combination of energy psychology techniques, first the Tapas posture, and then EFT. Within minutes, she was feeling much better emotionally, but she reported that the numbness in her foot remained. I then tried a variety of other energy interventions to help with the numbness, but to no avail.
About three quarters of an hour had passed. Even though I had explained to the group that if one energy psychology strategy does not produce the desired outcome we try another, I was beginning to feel frustrated, and I thought my trainees were as well. I then acknowledged that I might not be able to help her on this day. One method I’d not tried, however, was to utilize the group to attempt to help shift her energies, a phenomenon reported by numerous practitioners.
I asked the group if they would be interested in becoming more active by doing an experiment where they would offer healing to their colleague from where they were sitting. A discussion of the power of intention and the concept of distant healing ensued. It was lively, and they unanimously agreed to participate. The woman thanked them in advance.
While she sat quietly with her eyes closed, I asked all of the members of the course to hold the Tapas posture for several minutes while sending what they defined as love and positive intention to the woman. We repeated this for several more minutes. I then asked her to stand, walk, and tell us what she noticed. She said she had begun to feel sensation in her calf and ankle. We continued, with her sitting as the rest of the group tapped the EFT points, again while thinking in positive ways about the woman. After several more minutes, she reported more feeling in her foot. We continued for another 10 minutes. Each new exercise was a repeat of something I had already tried with her, so the additional component, and apparently the active one, was the increased intentional energy from the group, plus the awareness of the woman that she was being treated not by one but by 20-some “therapists.” She ended her session by walking, stretching, and laughing, and she seemed totally credible when she said she could feel about 90% of the sensation she was able to feel prior to the tsunami.
Given the impoverished explanations available for why this approach might have had such a dramatic effect with a very stubborn ailment, it seemed appropriate, at this point in the training, to turn over to the group the challenge of trying to account for what they had just witnessed (and produced?). It was a rich discussion. While no one seems to have a scientifically defensible explanation of why such a treatment would work, reports of such healings are too numerous to ignore.
Although the nature of the connection between body and mind remains a mystery, the connection itself is continuously highlighted in energy psychology treatments. Persons who ask for help to resolve an upsetting emotion often report that physical aches and strains are relieved after an energy psychology session, and those who want to reduce chronic pain (whether or not a medical cause can be found) may discover that they need to revisit a traumatic memory before their pain decreases. A new term, “bodymind,” has been suggested to reflect the growing recognition of this fundamental interconnectedness, though explanations for how the body and mind actually communicate lag far behind the clinical practice of therapists working in this area.
John Hartung, Psy.D., a psychologist in private practice in Colorado Springs, C0, is affiliated with the Colorado School of Professional Psychology and the Center for Creative Leadership. Author of two books on energy psychology (Energy Psychology & EMDR and Reaching Further), he is Chair of the Humanitarian Committee of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology. He may be contacted via [email protected].
