It was the winter of 2014, late February, it had been a long and particularly rough winter that year and I knew from past experience, spring was still a long way away… if it ever came, with the occasional snow shower in April, there is really no such thing as spring in Chicago.
As a mother of an 8 and 6 year old at that time, February felt especially painful because there is only so much one can do with young children cooped up in the house all day and all night. All of our nerves were a little shot. My kids were quick to get irritable with each other and fight over toys, the tv, you name it. I was eager to find anything to soothe myself and distract from the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped by the cold and snow. I don’t recall now, exactly how I found out about the Tapping World Summit but I became aware that it was going on late in February and I thought to myself this might be a great thing to check out in the midst of this dreary time. I had heard of the Emotional Freedom Technique aka ‘EFT Tapping’, before and I knew it was a mind/body technique that practitioners in the mental health field were starting to report startlingly good results with, but I did not know much more than that.
On day 1 of the summit, I tuned in and listened to the instructions of how to tap and then jumped right into the first webinar. Each one covered a particular topic, like reducing negative thinking for example, and as listeners, we were asked to tap along with the host and guest speaker for each lesson. Now here’s where it got interesting for me- the daily presentations were ONLY available for free for 24 hours, so it forced me to carve out time to listen to one each day. They were about an hour long and there were always two offered daily so I picked the one that appealed to me the most and committed to fitting it somehow. I listened while I made dinner, drove in the car, folded laundry- anytime I could think of. After a couple of days, I was feeling really hooked on these webinars. I could tell something was starting to feel better inside of me. So I sometimes even managed to listen to BOTH of the presentations in a day. But like the clock striking midnight for Cinderella I knew that, at 8pm every night, the lessons switched over to two more topics so I felt great urgency to get through them in 24 hours! The listening became my constant companion for 10 days.
On the last evening of the summit, I was cleaning up from dinner and my kids asked if they could go out and play in the snow. Now, normally I would have said, “of course not, it’s already dark out and it’s a school night” and I would have been thinking about how annoying it would be to put all their snow gear on, only to have to take it off again and wash it all a short time later. But for some reason, like a woman possessed by a zen master, I found myself saying, “sure that sounds fun”.
I proceeded to make myself a cup of tea and geared all three of us up, head to toe, and went out into the cold dark night. They immediately began jumping and playing around in the snow, throwing snowballs and trying to stuff snow down each others backs, as only little rambunctious boys will do. I felt a vague but distant sense that normally I would be shouting at them to “cut that out” and “stop torturing your brother” but I simply had no urge to do so. Instead, I just sat on my front porch swing and gently rocked back and forth, swaying with a pleasant rhythm. I watched them playing, and because I had not tried to interfere they eventually decided to change from the snow stuffing game to more collaborative games that had them both giggling, throwing up snow in the air and rolling around in delight. As I sat there, a smile spread across my lips and my heart warmed at the sight, of their little hat covered heads tossed back in laugher. I held my tea cupped between my two gloved hands keeping them cozy. My eyes were drawn to the white steam contrasted against the dark backdrop, slowly rising out of the mug, curling and dancing up in a slow delicate pirouette, and disappearing into the night’s sky. My attention then drifted out beyond the steam to the few quiet snowflakes slowly drifting down from above, lightly falling, with a gentle peace. So slowly they floated down, I felt as if I could almost see each flakes’ beautiful fractal pattern as they fell.
I was completely present and immersed in the moment. I felt profound peace and happiness…
Sitting in the cold…. and in the dark…
And it suddenly hit me with a jolt so strong that I sat up straight, sloshing some of my tea over the side, and I thought, “Oh my gosh this is that TAPPING thing making me feel this way!!!!!!”
Never before in my life had I actually enjoyed taking my kids out to play in the snow! So I knew it was an actual miracle I was experiencing. At that moment, I knew in just 10 days, tapping had completely transformed my life.