The TFT Foundation is very pleased with the growing roster of international film festivals at which its documentary, “From Trauma to Peace,” is being shown. For information about these festivals, click here…and then on the festival logos.
Tag: thought field therapy
TFT Trauma Relief Helps Woman Move Arm for First Time
The Power of our Beliefs
Just a few months ago I treated one of the most interesting cases of a cure by TFT. It really amazed me, even though I have watched so many cures by TFT.
She was one of the students in my last Algorithm training, let’s call her “Ana”.
Ana had a limitation on the movement of her left arm since she was born. She could move the right arm perfectly but had only limited movement of her left arm.
As she was talking to me about this and some others things she wanted to treat, she mentioned that she had had a very difficult birth. Her mother had to have a cesarean birth in an emergency, without any anesthesia…
She was born premature and was very fragile. She had a problem that the doctors had to stifle all her chest and left arm for six month.
Ana got better and survived but she had this permanent limitation on the movements on her left arm.
When she told me that it just reminded me of the story of circus elephants when babies they are tied by one of the hind legs with a chain to a wooden pole attached to the ground.
The babies elephants try to escape, but they are not yet strong enough to break loose, then eventually end up quitting and never try to escape …
As adults, these circus elephants could very easily break the chain, but because they have developed the belief that they cannot, they just do not escape their shackles.
By this time, I diagnosed with Voice Technology and applied with her two specific tapping sequences, one for the trauma of her birth and the other for the trauma of being unable to move her arm when Ana was just a Baby. She didn’t have the conscious memory of that but she knew it happened as he mother told her, so, I just asked her to think about it the way she normally thinks about it.
After just a few repetitions of these sequences, Ana started to move her arm a little bit better. Then we repeated it some more times, it was around 8 times total.
I asked her to close her eyes and imagine she was moving both arms totally and freely.
She said it was difficult, so we did the sequences again while she was trying to imagine she was moving both arms perfectly in her mind first.
Ana said she could now move them both in her mind!
So I asked her that still with her eyes closed to start moving physically her arms, just the way she was imagining at that time and much to my surprise she started to move it perfectly and freely!
Then I asked Ana to keep moving her arms and just open her eyes and she was very surprised to see she was moving her left arm totally and fully with absolutely no limitation in her movements! We were both very moved and emotional at that moment!
I told Ana the stories about the circus elephants. She understood and was really amazed at how TFT could easily help her to free her mind and her body!
For me it was one of the most beautiful experiences I ever had as a therapist and even after years working and teaching TFT I still got passionate about what it is able to transform in people’s lives!
With joy and love to be able to be sharing this healing tool in Brazil, Leandro
PS It is my dream and goal to found my own non-profit (NGO) in 2017, so I have to make money for that. I am inspired by the work of TFT Foundation, and it will be dedicated to my mother. Until I have conditions to found my NGO, I am training other NGO volunteers with the trauma and pain algorithm, so they can use it with the people they already help. My goal is to train one NGO group each month.
Excerpted from “Tapping for Humanity,” Summer 2015
Continue reading “TFT Trauma Relief Helps Woman Move Arm for First Time”
TFT Documentary in Japanese
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49yfisBDlxc
I’m very pleased to announce that Ayame Morikawa, MD, PhD, MBA (Chairperson, Japanese Association for TFT) has added Japanese sub-titles to the TFT Foundation-sponsored film “From Trauma to Peace.” She has begun adding short segments of the film to YouTube. Please share this first one with any Japanese-speaking friends, family, and/or colleagues you may have.
Relieving PTSD in Israel with TFT
By Howard Robson, MD, TFT-Adv*
Chairman, TFT Foundation UK
In August we were deployed to Jerusalem together with Suzanne Connolly from the USA, to provide diagnostic training to a group of academic psychologists. Training took place at the Herzog Hospital Israel Centre for the treatment of Psychotrauma, including participants from other areas of Israel.
The psychology team there are now undertaking a study assessing the benefits of TFT for treating the many who have suffered psychological trauma in Israel.
During the training, we were able to treat a few patients who consented to attend the group for treatment with TFT. The volunteers included a married couple with long standing PTSD who had been fortunate to survive a suicide bombing, and had been attending the psychologists with little benefit for several years.
They were treated in separate rooms, one half of the trainees treated the husband and the other half treated the wife. We joined the two groups together to evaluate he result of treatment. The smiles and the laughter said it all. The husband invited the men to dance, as is the custom, his wife just smiled and laughed while watching the men celebrating.
Three days later they returned to the centre to tell us how TFT had changed their lives. The lady had taken a bus (which she had never done since the bombing) to visit her sister, to whom she had given TFT treatment with great success. We often wonder how many more people have received treatment from her.
Excerpted from “Update from the TFT UK Foundation” in”Tapping for Humanity,” Spring 2015
*In May, 2014, Dr. Robson was named Humanitarian of the Year at the ACEP conference
Urgent Plea for Rwanda Mourning Period
By Joanne Callahan, MBA:
Celestin Mitabu, TFT Kigali Trainer and Director of Rwandan Orphans Project is leading national Radio programs, where even a Rwandan Ambassador called in for help. He is working tirelessly to share TFT Trauma Relief with his country. He has trained University students, the Red Cross teams and many others to assist with the monumental task of healing during the commemoration 100 days.
He urgently needs the funds to continue this work for the last half of the mourning period. Just look at the pictures to see all he’s doing to share healing with TFT.
We have a pledge of three, up to $500, donations for matching funds. Please help us raise the matching $1500 to send to him. He has the first ever national radio shows to teach TFT, is the first one to train Red Cross volunteers and is training teams of university students to help their fellow Rwandans. The people benefitting include the handicapped, the orphans, the prisoners, and families everywhere.
Click here to DONATE. If 100 us each gave $15 we would have the full $3000 needed to continue this healing through the last 50 days of the mourning period. Anyone contributing over $25 will receive a copy of the DVD, From Trauma to Peace. There is no better way to share the healing power of TFT.
Effects of Trauma on Children’s Brains
The following article is from Sound Medicine News, February 3, 2015, and demonstrates the profound benefits an effective trauma relief therapy like TFT can have on the life of a child who has been traumatized:
Childhood Trauma Leads to Brains Wired for Fear
Last week, a report by the University of San Diego School of Law found that about 686,000 children were victims of abuse and neglect in 2013. Traumatic childhood events can lead to mental health and behavioral problems later in life, explains psychiatrist and traumatic stress expert Bessel van der Kolk, author of the recently published book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.
Children’s brains are literally shaped by traumatic experiences, which can lead to problems with anger, addiction, and even criminal activity in adulthood, says van der Kolk. Sound Medicine’s Barbara Lewis spoke with him about his book.
Sound Medicine: Can psychologically traumatic events change the physical structure of the brain?
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk: Yes, they can change the connections and activations in the brain. They shape the brain.
The human brain is a social organ that is shaped by experience, and that is shaped in order to respond to the experience that you’re having. So particularly earlier in life, if you’re in a constant state of terror; your brain is shaped to be on alert for danger, and to try to make those terrible feelings go away.
The brain gets very confused. And that leads to problems with excessive anger, excessive shutting down, and doing things like taking drugs to make yourself feel better. These things are almost always the result of having a brain that is set to feel in danger and fear.
As you grow up an get a more stable brain, these early traumatic events can still cause changes that make you hyper-alert to danger, and hypo-alert to the pleasures of everyday life.
SM: So are you saying that a child’s brain is much more malleable than an adult brain?
BK: A child’s brain is virtually nonexistent. It’s being shaped by experience. So yes, it’s extremely malleable.
SM: What is the mechanism by which traumatic events change the brain?
BK: The brain is formed by feedback from the environment. It’s a profoundly relational part of our body.
In a healthy developmental environment, your brain gets to feel a sense of pleasure, engagement, and exploration. Your brain opens up to learn, to see things, to accumulate information, to form friendships.
But if you’re in an orphanage for example, and you’re not touched or seen, whole parts of your brain barely develop; and so you become an adult who is out of it, who cannot connect with other people, who cannot feel a sense of self, a sense of pleasure. If you run into nothing but danger and fear, your brain gets stuck on just protecting itself from danger and fear.
SM: Does trauma have a very different effect on children compared to adults?
BK: Yes, because of developmental issues. If you’re an adult and life’s been good to you, and then something bad happens, that sort of injures a little piece of the whole structure. But toxic stress in childhood from abandonment or chronic violence has pervasive effects on the capacity to pay attention, to learn, to see where other people are coming from, and it really creates havoc with the whole social environment.
And it leads to criminality, and drug addiction, and chronic illness, and people going to prison, and repetition of the trauma on the next generation.