TAT – Tapas Acupressure Technique

Tapas Fleming, the creator of TAT, is an acupuncturist who specialized in allergy desensitizing using a complex series of acupuncture treatments.  One day, she had the inspiration to try special points on the head instead of the usual series of acupuncture treatments and to her surprise they worked.  Not only did they work as well as the other acupuncture treatments, but also she found that she often only needed only one session to cure her patients!  She then decided to teach people a specific acupressure hand position to be placed on the head since this method was just as successful.

During one of her early sessions in which she cleared a patient of a salt allergy, the patient shared with her that the emotional baggage from childhood sexual abuse had also cleared at the same time.  This was incredibly surprising since this patient had already been in therapy for a long time without being able to let go of the emotional trauma.  Apparently as a child, she was given a bag of salty potato chips after the abuse and somehow the body wired the entire experience as “bad”.  Tapas realized after this experience that her technique, named TAT, could effectively release all types of emotional trauma.  The beauty about this technique is that the person doesn’t have to re-experience the trauma in order to let it go.

What I like about TAT is that you can neutralize a whole situation all at once without having to specify one emotion at a time.  In addition, generational traumas may also be healed without needing to know the exact traumas that have transpired.  You don’t need to “know” the cause of why you feel the way you do, only that you wish to heal it.  The nine step procedure is easy and gentle and can readily be learned.  Only do TAT for approximately 20 minutes a day as it is very powerful therapy.  For a free copy of Tapas Fleming’s How to do TAT booklet, go to www.TATLife.com and click on the banner.

TAT pose with the hands is as follows.  With one hand, place the index and fourth finger tips above the inner corner of the eyes (Bladder 1) and the third finger on the third eye point (GV 24.5) and with the other hand, cup the base of the skull (see figure below).  Check out this video for an example of how to do TAT: http://youtu.be/-rDF_qUntDg.

Tapping and TAT may seem very foreign to you if you’ve never been exposed to energy psychology.  When I went through medical school, I loved doing psychotherapy with my patients.  I was natural at it probably because I learned to be a good listener while consoling my depressed mother when I was a young girl.  People need to feel heard and validated to some extent, so counseling and psychotherapy are of value.  The difference between doing psychotherapy and using energy psychology tools is that the former may not actually resolve any of the negative feelings, and in some cases, serves to perpetuate them. 

Energy psychology, on the other hand, is about releasing old stored negative emotions or trauma that have been stuck in your energy field and are preventing you from moving forward and healing.  From what I’ve experienced in my practice, it only takes minutes to take someone’s traumatic emotions from an intensity level of “10” to a “1”, even if these emotions have been present for decades.  Counseling alone, in my experience, was never that efficient.

Both Tapping and TAT are very effective.  Try them both and see which one resonates with you more.  With tapping, it works best if you can be very specific about what you are tapping about, but I find that it is very quick and I can do it even while I’m in the middle of something else like driving.  I prefer doing TAT just before bed, when I have some quiet time, because it takes me a little longer.

 

The Emotion Code

So far we’ve focused on the emotional baggage you have become aware of, but what about emotional baggage that lies deep in your subconscious and that you are not aware of?  According to Dr. Bradley Nelson, author of The Emotion Code, healthy emotional processing occurs when we can feel emotions come and go.  However, some emotions get trapped when our ability to process them is inadequate or overwhelmed.  Dr. Nelson discovered that trapped emotional energies become lodged in the body during intense emotional events.  These energies or "trapped emotions" end up distorting the normal energy field of the body and thus result in physical pain, congestion of the acupuncture system, and disease, as well as leading to other common conditions such as depression, anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, self sabotage and so on.

Trapped emotions are not necessarily the sole cause of your body pain, but they may be.  In the very least, if they are trapped, they can contribute to your chronic pain.  The Emotion Code is a process by which you can determine what trapped emotions you may have and quickly neutralize them.  The Eastern-based process uses the body’s intuitive system via muscle testing.  Muscle testing is a procedure first taught by holistic chiropractors, but is now used by many healthcare professionals and lay people alike to utilize the body’s intuitive guidance system to make health choices.

I have found that in cases of chronic pain, trapped emotions are invariably involved even if they are not the initial cause of the pain condition.  Sometimes weak or susceptible areas of your body become reservoirs for trapped emotions that wouldn’t otherwise be trapped in healthy tissue.  Even if doing the Emotion Code procedure does not release the pain, at least you can increase your chances of healing chronic pain by removing an energetic block to healing.

Tim came into the office with pain in his rib.  It began mysteriously right after his father died.  He used LifeWave patches and acupuncture and with each treatment the pain subsided only to return again between treatments.  Confused, Tim sought another cause of his non-healing pain.  I decided to use the Emotion Code on Tim after he revealed to me that this pain only began when his father died.  Using the Emotion Code, we asked his body whether there were trapped emotions contributing to his rib pain.  The answer was “yes”.  He had apparently absorbed two negative emotions from his mother when he was a baby. 

When I released Tim’s first trapped emotion, I asked if he could feel anything.  He said, “Yes”, then turned and sat down with his head in his hands.  I was worried that he was going to vomit, but instead his body shuddered in a flow of sobs.  Allowing this release for a few minutes, Tim sat up and was ready to release the next emotion.  The experience was interesting for both of us since I was still fairly new at using the Emotion Code at the time.  Almost immediately after releasing the first emotion, the pain in his rib practically vanished.  Even though the emotions trapped in Tim’s rib related to his mother, not to his father, it was clear that releasing these trapped emotions helped ease the pain.

When we use the Emotion Code, we assess and release trapped emotions one at a time.  For whatever reason, Dr. Nelson has determined that the subconscious mind will release emotions in this pattern.  You can ask your subconscious whether there is a trapped emotion related to your chronic painful body part that can be released now.  If the answer is no, that either means that you do not have a trapped emotion in that painful body part or that your subconscious is not ready to release one.  If the answer is yes, you can then follow Dr. Nelson’s emotion code chart (see Figure 5) to ascertain the exact trapped emotion via muscle testing.  Once you determine the emotion, then you can release it easily using an energetic or magnetic device such as a magnet, by sweeping it over the Governing Vessel acupuncture meridian. 

Dr. Nelson’s book and video course has clear instructions about how to use muscle testing on yourself and on others to determine trapped emotions as well as how to release them.  In addition to releasing trapped emotions in chronic pain areas, you may wish to search for trapped emotions in your heart wall.  A heart wall is an energetic protection that our subconscious builds around our heart.  Heart walls start being built when we are extremely young or even before we are born.  Children easily absorb emotions from their parents.  That is why it is so important for parents to cleanse their own trapped emotions so that they do not inadvertently pass along generational trapped emotions to their children. 

Heart walls are made up of trapped emotions and can be made of any material that your subconscious deems strong and impermeable.  Although they were made to protect your vulnerable heart, their presence may cost you the ability to truly enjoy your life to the fullest according to Dr. Nelson.  Trapped emotions in your heart wall may prevent you from experiencing happy and fulfilling relationships because your perceptions will be tainted by trapped emotions.  To learn Dr. Nelson’s Emotion Code, go to www.KarenKan.com/Emotion.