by Amy B. Scher
Step 2: Repeat The Sweep Verbiage— Simply repeat the following script slowly, taking breaks if you feel like you need time to process (yawn, take a deep breath, etc.). Make sure you do not rush through this, as you need to do it in a way that feels inviting and safe to the subconscious mind.
Even though I have this _______ (state the belief), I acknowledge it’s no longer working for me.
I give my subconscious full permission to help me clear it, from all of my cells in all of my body, permanently and completely.
I am now free to thank it for serving me in the past.
I am now free to release all resistances to letting it go.
I am now free to release all ideas that I need this in order to stay safe.
I am now free to release all ideas that I need it for any reason.
I am now free to release all feelings that I don’t deserve to release it.
I am now free to release all conscious and subconscious causes for this belief.
I am now free to release all conscious and subconscious reasons for holding on to it.
I am now free to release all harmful patterns, emotions, and memories connected to it.
I am now free to release all generational or past-life energies keeping it stuck.
All of my being is healing and clearing this energy now, including any stress response stored in my cells.
Healing, healing, healing.
Clearing, clearing, clearing.
It is now time to install _______ (insert a belief that is the opposite of whatever you just released; for example, if the belief was “I am too damaged to heal,” you could install “I am perfectly able to heal.”).
Installing, installing, installing.
Installing, installing, installing.
And so it is done.
When you are finished, take a few big, deep breaths.
Step 3: Check In— It’s a good idea to use your muscle testing to confirm that you cleared the belief completely. Simply state the belief again, in its original form, and see whether your body still resonates with it (and needs a little more work) or it’s no longer true for you (wahoo!).
If, for some reason, the belief didn’t clear completely, don’t be alarmed. You can just repeat The Sweep again and retest. This process can take a few times of slow, deliberate intention and focus. Alternatively, you can move on to use Chakra Tapping, which you’ll learn next. This will help you continue clearing the layers. Each belief will be different and will clear differently, too.
Tip: The Sweep can also be used effectively for clearing layers of energy contributing to symptoms. You might want to experiment with this. Instead of inserting a belief into the verbiage, you might use something like this: Even though I have this _______ (insert symptom, fear, emotion, or anything else), I acknowledge it’s no longer working for me. Then revise the wording to fit your specific focus. I use this technique to clear pretty much everything, whether it be a certain emotion I’m feeling strongly in the moment or a thought that feels stuck in my head.
Chakra Tapping
Chakras, the spinning energy centers in the body, hold old stories and experiences in their energies. Their energies are directly tied to early childhood programming and conditioning, which makes them a great access point into harmful beliefs.
During my own healing, I started off using Emotional Freedom Technique to clear beliefs. This worked quite well. However, as I discovered more about the chakras and how they hold our energetic history within them, I began to explore using them to clear beliefs. Remember, beliefs are really just old stories, usually from earlier in our lives.
With this connection between beliefs and the chakra system in mind, I wondered if it might make sense to tap directly on the chakras instead of using EFT tapping points, which are associated with the meridian system. I tried it, and voilà! I fell in love. I felt like I often got a deeper clearing than with EFT while also giving those ever-so-important chakras some attention too. We’re going to use a very similar process to what you learned for EFT, but we’ll tap on chakra points to address the chakra system instead. Easy!
Chakra Review and Tapping Points
We covered the chakras in Chapter Six , but let’s briefly review them as a reminder of how these old stories might have found energetic homes in various places in your body. For each chakra that we review here, I’ve also added its tapping point so you’ll know exactly where to tap for this technique in order to clear.
Crown (Seventh) Chakra— Located on the top of the head, the crown chakra symbolizes spirituality and your connection to a higher power. It is tied to the energy of knowing you can trust life, that you are being taken care of and guided. The focus of the crown chakra is to help you connect with your purpose in life and your connection to a higher source. Tapping Point: top of the head.
Third Eye or Brow (Six th) Chakra— This chakra is located directly between the eyebrows. It represents intuition, imagination, reflection, and the ability to see things for what or how they are (interpretation). Its focus is vision and inner guidance. Tapping Point: in between the eyebrows (be extra gentle with this point).
Throat (Fifth) Chakra— Located in the center of the throat, this chakra is about expression, communication, and truth. Its focus is communication and expression. Tapping Point: front of the throat.
Heart (Fourth) Chakra— The heart chakra is located in the center of your chest. It is linked to love, intimacy, forgiveness, and the ability to send and receive love. It’s also responsible for your heart’s desires and helping you manifest those desires. Its focus is love, relationships, and inner healing. Tapping Point: in the middle of the chest, at your heart’s center.
Solar Plexus (Third) Chakra— The solar plexus chakra, located just below the sternum, governs your sense of personal power, including your personal choices and actions in the world. Its energy is tied to self-confidence, self-esteem, and a feeling of being in control of your life. It stores your judgments and opinions about the world and yourself. Its focus is personal power and a positive mentality. Tapping Point: right under the sternum at your solar plexus.
Sacral (Second) Chakra— The sacral chakra, also referred to as the womb chakra, is located in the pelvis behind the navel. It relates to your creativity and feelings and is also linked to childlike joy. It represents sexuality and is tied closely to your stories and conditioning from childhood. Its focus is feelings, creativity, and joy. Tapping Point: just below the belly button.
Root (First) Chakra— The root chakra is located at the base of the spine. It represents your feelings of safety and survival. It’s connected to early childhood beliefs, money, and identity. It deals with issues of abandonment, unworthiness, and insecurity. Its focus is safety, security, and survival. Tapping Point: lower sacrum or top of your thighs. (Using flat hands to gently slap your thighs, pretend you are continuously motioning for a puppy to come sit on your lap.)
After creating and using a set-up statement, which I’ll walk you through again, you’re going to tap through all of the previous points. Starting at the top of your head, you’re going to tap and talk about the belief in as much detail as possible. If you discovered earlier through muscle testing that you needed to identify and clear a specific unprocessed experience, you should have flipped back to Chapter Seven and done that. You can just work with the belief itself now.
As you go through this process, just pretend you’re telling me, or your best friend, about the belief. Tell us how the belief makes you feel, memories you recall that may be connected to it, where you feel it in your body, and whatever else comes to mind. This will be familiar to you from the process of Emotional Freedom Technique that you already learned.
Note: If this is a generational belief, talk about where you think it came from, how it makes you feel, and any other details that spontaneously come up. Guessing and pondering out loud will work quite well for this process.
Step 1: Create a Set-Up Statement— Just as with Emotional Freedom
Technique, we’re going to start by creating a set-up statement. Remember, the set-up statement has two parts.
Even though _______ (state the experience), I _______ (insert a positive idea).
For the first part, you will simply insert the belief. For the second part, you will insert any positive statement to balance the set-up. You are essentially telling yourself that even though something bad happened (first part), there is a positive, too (second part).
First part of statement: Even though _______ (state the belief), …
Second part of statement: … , I _______ (insert a positive idea).
As a reminder, here are some positive ideas you could use for the second part of the set-up statement:
• I completely love and accept myself.
• I can relax now.
• I am okay anyway.
• I choose to release it.
• I give my subconscious permission to let it go now.
Here’s an example belief that I took from that long list earlier in this chapter:
I’ll end up alone if I heal (people only stick around because I’m sick).
The full set-up statement for this belief could be:
Even though I’ll end up alone if I heal, I choose to release it anyway.
Step 2: Use Your Set-Up Statement While Tapping the Karate Chop Point— Now you’ll continuously tap on the karate chop point while saying the full set-up statement three times.
Step 3: Tap Through the Rest of the Points— Next, you’re going to simply tap through the rest of the chakra points and talk about the belief. You can use a mix of stating the belief, talking about how you feel about it, wondering aloud how you might have gotten it, and more. This is essentially a bit of improv!
The simple goal is to focus on this belief so we can bring up the energy and clear it. It’s okay to temporarily focus on the belief; it will not get embedded in your system just by acknowledging it. In fact, this is essential to releasing it. The words you use are not at all important for this first round. You just need to talk about it and bring it up.
To show you how this could go, let’s use the example belief of I’ll end up alone if I heal. Here is what that might look like:
Round 1
Top of head: I might end up alone.
Third eye: I haven’t taken care of myself in so long, I don’t remember how!
Throat: If no one helps me, I’ll just get sick again.
Heart: It reminds me of when I turned eighteen and Mom said, “You’re on your own!”
Solar plexus: I’m so frustrated that this is keeping me from healing.
Belly button: But I believe that if I get better, people will just ditch me.
Top of thighs: Part of me really believes I can’t take care of myself.
Rounds 2, 3, and 4
Now you are going to repeat what you did in round 1 for several more rounds. Just like the venting process we used in EFT, you’re essentially doing the same thing here. It’s okay, and sometimes even beneficial, not to use the same exact words and phrases from the first round. Just go with whatever comes up naturally.
Step 4: Break— Take a tapping break and a few deep breaths. Yawn or sigh if you need to. This little bit of time will help your body process the energy and release it fully.
Step 5: Last (5th) Round— Finally, you want to tap through the points one more time while stating a positive affirmation that you’d like to take in. This should ideally oppose the energy of what you just cleared. Example: It’s safe to heal now. Alternatively, you can use the phrase healing at each tapping point.
Step 6: Check In— You may very well have cleared the belief by now. Using muscle testing, simply state the belief again in its original form, and see whether your body still resonates with it (meaning it’s still there) or if it’s no longer true for you (meaning it’s cleared).
If it is clear, then you can high-five yourself now. If not, that’s okay too, as it often takes some persistence. You can repeat the chakra-tapping process a few more times. If you’re comfortable with muscle testing, you can make it easy for yourself and ask your body what technique would be best to repeat for full clearing, The Sweep or Chakra Tapping. Once I got confident with muscle testing, this became an essential part of my process: asking my body just what technique would be most beneficial for me instead of guessing. I do that in client sessions now, too.
Tip: Chakra Tapping and Emotional Freedom Technique can often be interchangeable. Both techniques are great, one working with the meridian system and the other with the chakra system. It’s a fun exercise to play around with alternating these to see what works best for you, and when.
You can tap on chakras to move any type of stagnant energy. Just use gentle tapping for several minutes on any chakra that you feel might be blocked, according to what you learned in Chapter Six .
A Final Note on Harmful Beliefs
While we’ve been focusing on clearing harmful beliefs that directly oppose your healing goals, there is another type of belief I’d like to point out. This type of belief, while maybe not in direct opposition to your healing, can cause enough of a stress reaction in your body that it is hindering it. That means your stressful relationship with or reaction to this type of belief is not beneficial for you.
Here are some examples of these types of beliefs:
• Mom loves my brother more than me.
• I’ll always be behind with my career.
• I’m stupid.
• I’ll always be alone.
• Everyone always excludes me.
• I am damaged.
• I am always left behind.
• I am always last.
• If I feel my feelings, I’ll die.
• If I feel my feelings, I’ll never be happy again.
• I’m only safe when others are happy.
• I need permission to be who I really am.
• Something bad will happen if I express my feelings.
Do you see how believing these things wouldn’t be conducive to creating a healing environment? These types of beliefs may not create the same type of healing self-sabotage that we’ve been focusing on so far, but they are definitely not beneficial. Even if the belief is actually factual at the moment, such as “I don’t make enough money,” using the technique to clear the stress reaction around that belief will do wonders for you.
Remember, your reality is directly linked to your beliefs, so it can seem like a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg scenario as to what came first—but changing one can change the other! We are in a constant energy dance with the universe, always co-creating. Our beliefs are an incredible part of that dance. A great exercise in finding non-beneficial beliefs is to take a hard look at your reality. Because our reality is a reflection of our beliefs, we can easily find what we believe just by looking at our lives. If your reality is that you don’t have enough money or love, you might have a belief that “there isn’t enough to go around” or “I’ll always be poor.” If it feels like nothing goes right for you, you may have the belief that “good things happen to everyone except me.” In other words, if you see a certain pattern show up in your reality, you may have the belief to match it.
I want to share one final story with you to demonstrate how clearing beliefs can really transform your well-being for the long haul.
When I came back from India after nine weeks of stem cells, I was pumped with messages from my doctors that became beliefs for me, causing great stress. They kept telling me that if I caught a cold or the flu, did “too much,” ate sugar, or was under any stress, I would relapse. This is a very common statement or belief associated with Lyme disease. However, this became a stress in and of itself for me. I can’t handle stress. I’ll get sick if I catch a cold. Relapse is inevitable.
I am sure, knowing what I know now, that those beliefs affected my physical body. I now know this, though. Once you do the inner work and strengthen your being at a core level, which includes changing your r
eactions to stress (remember, the stress isn’t the issue; it’s your relationship with it), you will not be the fragile person you might have felt to be before. It’s essential to update your mental records about these types of inner dialogue and beliefs so that you do not continue to perpetuate a pattern that is no longer true or necessary for you.
After I healed completely using energy therapy, I went through many difficult experiences in my life, including the death of several family members in a very short time period. But I was okay anyway. My system remained in balance because of all the work I had done. I made sure to acknowledge and process difficult emotions as they arose, and I didn’t hold the belief that these experiences would take me down. I am convinced this is why I never relapsed even during some of the most challenging times of my life.
My response to these types of experiences had totally changed from the days when I was perhaps an inch away from sliding backward at all times, and so did the belief that this would become my reality. You’re well on your way to that freedom, too. Just keep in mind always that you can be okay no matter what.
[contents]
12 . Desonta Holder, “Health: Beware Negative Self-Fulfilling Prophecy,” The Seattle Times , January 2, 2008, http://seattletimes.com/html/health/2004101546_fearofdying02.html.
13 . Raine Sihvonen, MD, et al., “Arthroscopic Partial Meniscectomy versus Sham Surgery for a Degenerative Meniscal Tear,” New England Journal of Medicine Vol. 369, No. 26 (Dec. 26, 2013): 2515–2524, www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1305189.
14 . Bruce H. Lipton, PhD. The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, and Miracles (Santa Rosa, CA: Mountain of Love/Elite Books, 2005), p. 111.
Chapter Nine
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Transform Unhealthy
Emotional Patterns
You will find that it is necessary to let things go;