The thought of an emotionally free world terrifies me. I don’t want to be hugged by a weeping stranger in the street; I don’t want people to tell me exactly how they feel – that can’t ever end well. If the Jim Carrey film Liar, Liar taught us anything, it’s that petty lies and self denial might not be pretty, but it’s what makes the world go round. So it is with some trepidation that I meet trained therapist Houry Pappins to find out more about Emotional Freedom Therapy (EFT).
It isn’t long before I’m sitting (un)comfortably. ‘You’re sat in a Biomat chair,’ Houry tells me, and hands me a leaflet which explains that the chair contains negative far infrared rays, negative ions and amethyst quartz. If at this point I was told it contained monkey feathers, I wouldn’t have been shocked, but holding my scepticism in check, I ask her how she discovered this technique.
Houry was born in the UK to Armenian parents, hence the rather deep, sultry English accent. She has lived in Abu Dhabi for 42 years, pinballing from one high rise building to another, sandwiched between the two R’s of HR and PR until she came to a ‘crisis point’ in her career. It was then that she reached out to alternative therapy, first returning to the UK to study the technique of reiki, then turning to EFT.
The therapy cannot be practised as a business in the UAE; it isn’t officially recognised, so you won’t find it in any spa or health centre. It has roots in Taoist teachings and reiki, largely in the sense that it taps into the body’s meridian lines. According to Chinese medicine, these lines are conduits for energy. The theory is that a negative emotion is a blockage in this energy, thus the repeated tapping on vital points generates a kinetic force that is believed to essentially jump-start the body – like a kind of spiritual drain cleaner.
As a slightly emotionally stunted male (or normal man), this was never going to be easy. I am asked to divulge a negative emotion I wish to free myself from. Eventually I come up with ‘a fear of change’ – I’m somewhat stuck in my ways and cite my terror at moving from England to the UAE as an example.
First, Houry taps the back of her hand, encouraging me to do the same. I do, and as I begin she starts to ‘phrase’ my problem: ‘Even though I’m fearful of change,’ she says (I am urged to repeat), ‘I deeply and completely accept myself (I repeat, hesitantly)’. Houry rephrases it again: ‘Even though I hate change, I loathe change (I repeat), I deeply and completely accept myself (I repeat)’. In doing so, she taps different parts of her body: first the back of her hand, then the head, eyebrows, under the eyes, above the lips, all the while uttering variations of the original phrase.
The effect is almost hypnotic; and to end, she rounds the process off with the gamut, a series of head and eye rolling movements, followed by an exaggerated deep breath, which I am urged to mimic.
‘So?’ she enquires. The technique is supposed to bring corresponding emotions to the surface in order to get to the root of the issue. In reality I simply blanked, content to give my mind a rest and just follow the leader (Simon Says: ‘Engage in positive self-reinforcement’).
The process can also bring up physical pain, I’m told, a correlative to a deeper emotional one. True enough, I do feel a dull ache in my shoulder – although I have just been sat on a bus for two hours and there are crystals in my chair. No matter: we work through the process again (‘Even though I feel this dull pain…’), then get down to the business of tackling my hatred of large crowds, meeting new people, and bizarrely, procrastination.
Each time I am urged to ‘deeply and completely accept myself’, even if I can’t help feeling that a laissez-faire attitude to my shortcomings is hardly the answer. The point, though, seems to be aimed at lightly ridiculing these flaws, thus loosening their grip on me, and Houry is genuinely entertaining as she minimises my faults to dusty insignificance.
The result is calming, if only because Houry’s soothing voice has that effect. However, I don’t feel noticeably freer: I expected to be able to empathise through brick walls, or reduce people to tears through just one gaze, but that’s not how it works. EFT is fundamentally a conditioning process; the tapping just distracts the mind, allowing the positive words to seep in.
Such techniques are reinforced through time, so after just one session I can hardly expect to scale the heights of the emotional supermen. I also found it difficult; it turns out that I’m just not prepared to share all my faults with strangers. Maybe emotional freedom comes at a cost: you must expose your best concealed flaws to the world. I’m just not sure that it’s one I’m willing to pay.
To find out more about Emotional Freedom Therapy contact Houry Pappins on pappins@eim.ae
