Catching a cold really sucks and getting the flu is a total nightmare. Can EFT be effective against these maladies? Preventing them or even chasing them off once we’re “coming down with a bug”? Definitely worth a shot!
Ounce of Prevention
Forgive me for telling you stuff you probably already know, but just in case you don’t…
Cold and flu germs really have only three portals into your body – mouth, nose & ears. Our own hands are the most likely delivery system, so hand washing (somewhat short of OCD levels) is obviously a good habit. Germs really hate warm soapy water.
But what if you’re around sick people, sneezing and coughing, and sending the germs airborne? Are you doomed? Not really – it takes three days or so for the nasties to get a foothold and build enough momentum to make you sick. And three days is plenty of time to wipe ‘em out.
Warm salt water – a neti-pot for the sinuses and gargling and mouth wash for the throat can do the trick. And I lay down and put a few drops of hydrogen peroxide in each ear if I’m feeling funky.
Of course, drinking hot tea (especially sans milk and sugar) helps flush any unwelcome guests down to the germ destroying inferno that is your stomach. Making this a regular habit just might keep you healthy through the season. Or not.
Let’s look at four other contributing Sick factors where EFT can really make a difference.
Sugar
From Halloween treats to pumpkin pie and Christmas candy, sugar seems to be an integral part of our cold weather celebrations. Aside from the obvious problems around gaining weight, sugar has a sneaky way of temporarily suppressing your immune system, making you way more susceptible to whatever germs are going around.
This is an area where EFT really shines. As irresistible as sweets may be, simple tapping can dramatically curb our cravings - often to the point where we simply don’t want them anymore. No will power required. Even very basic tapping can be surprisingly effective:
“Even though I have this craving for that candy cane/coffee cake/chocolate Santa/lemon meringue pie, I deeply love and completely accept myself”. If you haven’t learned tapping yet, here’s a link to my free EFT crash course.
Sadness
Here’s a quote I like: ‘The way to prevent illness is to inhabit your body’. Not sure who said that, but it seems spot on to me.
All of us have our ups and downs, right? But sometimes we can really hit bottom and get a bit stuck there. If our feeling is “get me the hell out of here” we might be checking out of our body on an energetic level. Nature abhors a vacuum, so we seem to be making room for other life forms to move in – nasty opportunistic ones like viruses.
Every time I’ve ever had a devastating flu, it followed this sort of ‘beam me up Scotty’ kind of emotional dip. It may be inevitable, going through bouts of sadness, but thanks to EFT we can beam ourselves up – hey, you can be our own Scotty!
If you’re feeling really down, it’s very helpful to have a tapping buddy, or work with a practitioner. But even just tapping alone on feeling glum can really shift things.
“Even though I have this sadness, even though I’m feeling lonely and discouraged, I deeply love and completely accept myself….”
My favorite trick here is to use a timer. Just set it for 5 or 10 minutes and keep tapping until it dings!
Stress
Do you get stressed out by the holidays? You’re in good company if you do.
Feelings of obligation and pressure, not to mention actual fatigue, can drain all the joy out of shopping, preparing a feast, doing the Christmas tree, you name it. For some of us financial anxiety gets thrown into the mix – we’re going to start off the New Year with a whopping credit card bill. Yikes.
Family gatherings can feel like a mine field of dangerous unresolved tensions. Or on the flip side, a lack of family and friends can bring on intense loneliness and feelings of missing out.
Stress is definitely NOT good for our health. The closer we edge toward Fight or Flight; the more energy gets re-allocated from our immune system to our arms & legs. This really does make it easier to get sick.
My EFT remedy for stress is to make a bullet list of all your big stressors, then tap on them one at a time. No need to worry about finding solutions – just focus on the negative feelings and get the intensity level as close to zero as possible.
“Even though there’s way too much to do and I feel so run down but everyone is counting on me to make Christmas dinner and it’s just going to be a mob scene at the store and it’s so dark out and I’m going to have to listen to Uncle Bob’s political jokes and keep my mouth shut and I feel guilty for wanting to tell them all to go to hell…I deeply love and completely accept myself!”
Symptoms
Prevention is best, but what if you’ve already come down with a cold or flu? All is not lost – it’s time to tap on your symptoms. Or if you’re really under the weather, perhaps get someone to tap on you!
It’s best to tap on each symptom one by one, headache, fever, chills, sore throat, stuffy sinuses, stomach pain, achy muscles, diarrhea. Start with your worst symptom.
Rate the intensity on our zero to ten scale and try to tap it down to zero, or as close as you can get. If you’re not sure what to say, try complaining! You feel awful, so go to town with it.
And while you’re at it, check for fear – one of the sneakiest symptoms. Fear of getting worse, of never getting better, fear of missing out, or letting someone down, of losing income or getting fired for too much sick time, that people will resent you, or fear of actually dying! Whatever fears you might have, tap them away!
When it comes to tapping on fear it’s a good idea to exaggerate to the point of absurdity. Really go for the jugular!
“Even though I ache all over and I’m so scared that I’m coming down with the flu and I’ll be in bed for a week, and I’ll miss too much work and I’ll probably lose my job and end up living on the street and it’s so cold out I’ll die of exposure and by the time I’m well enough to go shopping all the stores will be cleaned out and I won’t have good presents for anyone, I forgive myself for anything I might have done to bring this about – all that chocolate cake I ate Saturday night, letting myself get chilled on that walk in the park, I still choose to deeply love and completely accept myself…”
In Conclusion
Getting sick is NOT inevitable. I hope that you sail through the so-called “Cold and Flu Season” in vibrant health. Dust off that neti-pot, develop a mild hand washing compulsion and enjoy some good, creative tapping here and there – you’ve got it covered.
Copyright Rob Nelson 2019