Episode Description
Have you ever felt locked in a cycle of stress that you just can't seem to break free from? In this podcast episode, Theresa Lear Levine shares a technique that could be your key to emotional liberation.
As an EFT master practitioner and hypnotherapist, Theresa brings to light the transformative potential of the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) - a stress relief method that combines ancient Chinese acupressure and modern psychology to tap into our body's energy meridians.
Research has shown that EFT has a profound effect on anxiety and physical ailments. It can also help individuals navigate life's transitions with a sense of empowerment.
In the course of this discussion, Theresa peels back the layers of EFT tapping for emotional healing, demystifying the process and its impact. We explore how this technique can neutralize the emotional aftermath of traumatic experiences and lead to pathways of positive change. Through EFT Theresa demonstrates how we can engage our subconscious to manage emotions, especially during pivotal events like divorce.
Whether you're plagued by stress, overwhelm, or worry, EFT tapping offers a practical approach to overcoming your blocks and cultivating a sense of love, acceptance, and peace.
Show Notes
About Theresa
Theresa's battles with past traumas, high-functioning anxiety, and ADHD trapped her in a recurring Groundhog Day of dis-ease, distraction, and dissatisfaction. A transformative pivot came when exhaustion, insomnia, and the struggle to be present in her own abundantly blessed life broke her down.
Driven to embrace life's potential and achieve aligned success, Theresa delved into decoding her nervous system, the law of attraction, and the subconscious mind. Through Emotional Freedom Techniques, Hypnotherapy, and a fresh perspective on energy and manifestation, Theresa swiftly shed negative emotions and expanded her consciousness. This restoration brought back calm, clarity, and confidence that became a foundation of success.
Theresa’s Internationally best-selling book, "Becoming More Me: Tapping into Success - Subconscious Secrets of an ADHD Entrepreneurial Mom" , was born out of her passion to help other like-minded women on their quest to ditch anxiety, limiting beliefs, and past trauma.
Connect with Theresa
The best way to connect with Theresa is through Instagram at theresalearlevine or LinkedIn at Theresa Lear Levine. You can find out more about Theresa's services on her website at Theresa Lear Levine and explore her videos on her YouTube channel at Theresa Lear Levine. You can also listen to Theresa's podcast Becoming More Me and she welcomes you into her free community where she shares valuable resources and coaching at Becoming More Me Community.
Watch now!
You can also watch a tapping session with Karen and Theresa here.
Key Takeaways From This Episode with Theresa
- Theresa Lear Levine is an EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) master practitioner, hypnotherapist, and author of the book "Becoming More Me"
- EFT is based on ancient Chinese medicine principles combined with modern psychology and involves tapping on specific meridian points on the body while focusing on an issue or emotion to help release blockages and regulate the nervous system
- The tapping points include the side of the hand, top of the head, eyebrow, side of the eye, under the eye, under the nose, under the mouth, collarbone, and underarm
- EFT can help with managing emotions, reducing stress/anxiety, gaining clarity for decision-making, and accessing intuition
- It works by calming the amygdala (fear center) in the brain and increasing capacity to handle difficult emotions/situations
- EFT can be combined with therapy, but targets subconscious patterns that talk therapy may not reach and can be used for a wide range of issues like anxiety, trauma, decision-making, and life transitions
- For major decisions like divorce, EFT can help work through specific concerns like impact on kids, worthiness issues, boundaries, etc.
- Tapping can be done briefly (30 seconds) or for longer sessions (15-20 minutes)
- Theresa offers free resources including video guides and a community for learning EFT practices
BONUS VIDEO - LIVE EFT TAPPING SESSION with Theresa Lear Levine and Karen Covy
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Transcript
How to Use EFT to Unlock Your Subconscious Blocks with Theresa Lear Levine
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
eft, decision making, emotional healing
SPEAKERS
Karen Covy, Theresa Lear Levine
Karen Covy Host00:10
Hello and welcome to Off the Fence, a podcast where we deconstruct difficult decision-making so we can discover what keeps us stuck and, more importantly, how we can get unstuck and start making even tough decisions with confidence. I'm your host, Karen Covey, a former divorce lawyer, mediator and arbitrator, turned coach, author and entrepreneur. And now, without further ado, let's get on with the show.
With me today I have the pleasure of speaking with Theresa Lear Levine, and Theresa is an EFT master practitioner, hypnotherapist and the author of the internationally bestselling book Becoming More Me Tapping into Success Subconscious Secrets of an ADHD Entrepreneurial Mom. She's also the founder of Becoming More Me and the host of the Becoming More Me podcast.
01:08
Theresa's battles with past traumas, high functioning anxiety and ADHD had trapped her into a recurring groundhog day of dis-ease, distraction and dissatisfaction. Teresa discovered that by using the emotional freedom techniques, hypnotherapy and the law of attraction, she was able to decode her nervous system and start working with her subconscious mind. In doing so, Theresa swiftly shed her negative emotions and expanded her consciousness, bringing back calm, clarity and confidence into her life. Theresa now helps others do the same by implementing a unique and integrative approach to nervous system regulation, subconscious mind work, law of attraction and energy strategy. Theresa has coached and guided countless clients to triumph over their trauma, improve their relationship and navigate challenging life transitions such as death, divorce, parenting, sickness, marriage, moving and career changes. That is certainly a mouthful. Thank you so much, Theresa, for joining me.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest02:16
Oh, thank you for having me, Karen. It's a pleasure to be talking with you again.
Karen Covy Host02:20
I am so excited to be talking with you in this podcast format for a change, because I want to help bring people our listeners into the world of EFT tapping. So let's start by diving into what is that, because I know at this point it's kind of a thing, but a lot of people might have heard about it but not understand it. So what is EFT tapping and what does it do?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest02:49
Yeah, absolutely so. EFT stands for emotional freedom techniques and it's been around since the early nineties believe it or not, which I would like to think was yesterday, but apparently that's been over 30 years at this point. Yesterday, but apparently that's been over 30 years at this point. So, yikes, it's been around for a while and it is a beautiful kind of bringing together of ancient Chinese wisdom and modern day psychology and it works on the principle that any dis-ease that we're having, whether that is a physical pain or an emotional pain, is based in a blockage in our energy. And it has us tap literally using our fingertips, on these different main points in our body where energy tends to get blocked, while we're talking about the issue. And as we do that, it dissolves the issues and the energetic blockages in ways that I really couldn't understand or fathom until I tried it myself. And I think that you know when I tried it the first time, it was in group and it was it was I was sick right going into it, and I was working on anxiety with this group. And as I worked on the anxiety, not only did that shift immensely in a very short period of time, but the sickness I had been feeling, the chest congestion, the sinus congestion, the sore throat, the low energy all improved also. So that, to me, showed me one of the really cool things about EFT, which is known as borrowed benefits, where literally, because we're bringing our stress hormones down and re-regulating our nervous system, everything starts to change for the better, because when we lower stress, we have more capacity to have improved feelings in other places. And this is so relevant to things like divorce and decision making that you talk about, and it's also something that I don't think a lot of people look at from that perspective.
04:54
I know that for me, I didn't get really into using these techniques until like the last decade, and it wasn't that I wasn't aware of them before, but nobody had explained it in a way that made it relevant to my circumstances.
05:08
I would see people using emotional freedom techniques or hypnotherapy or other things for things like PTSD, from being off at the war or something you know, and it was like I don't have any experience with that, I've never been to war, I'm just like trying to, you know, take care of my babies and, you know, nurture my marriage and my businesses and just thrive in this world, and I just didn't see how it applied to me, or I would see Olympic athletes or NFL players on the sidelines tapping and I would see these techniques being used and I'm like this is like so advanced, like this isn't. I'm not trying to, you know, run a marathon even. I'm just trying to like thrive in life here. So it didn't make sense until I started using it on everyday things and realized how everything was interconnected and how this could literally be applied to every place where I'd ever gotten in my own way.
Karen Covy Host05:57
That is. First of all. This is fascinating. I've never heard EFT explained quite in this way before, so thank you for that. But the connection that it has to Chinese medicine, okay, I admit I know a little, if at all. Does EFT relate to all of that? The energy meridians and acupuncture?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest06:31
It relates to it completely.
A lot of people don't understand the meridian system, so I don't usually even bring it up, but that is the system through which our energetic life force flows if you were to ever go have acupuncture done ancient Chinese medicine based they're going to be inserting those acupuncture needles into the different meridians and the places where that energy for whatever they're treating becomes blocked.
06:56
Now the main points for emotional freedom techniques boil down to only like nine main points that get used when we have hundreds, if not thousands, of these different places on our body that are meridian endpoints or places where we can unblock the energy. But what they found after years of doing really complicated algorithms for getting through issues, was that these points are all that are needed for a full energetic overhaul and breaking through whatever issues we bring to them. So, yeah, it's completely related to you know the meridians and the same sorts of places that you would access on your body if you were going for acupuncture or even a deep tissue massage or something that most of us have experienced like that.
Karen Covy Host07:39
So if I'm getting this, instead of like sticking a needle into the appropriate energy point, which is what acupuncture is based on, you're tapping on that point which I don't know. Just as a person who is not really nuts about needles, that sounds way more appealing to me.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest07:59
It does to most people. And also if like me cause I am, it's funny because I really don't like needles I'm one of those people that kind of like I get giddy now, like when I go to have like blood drawn or something like it's just like. I kind of just like laugh and look away. It's like this nervous reaction. But I've gotten so much better and I actually do go for acupuncture myself regularly. Now I have a homeopathic doctor that does injections on my body now that I'm just I'm cool with all of it. But you know what I use to get cool with it. I use EFT. So it's an amazing way to overcome fears and phobias like needles, like spiders, like all those common everyday things. So it's just another way we can apply it.
Karen Covy Host08:39
Okay, so I get that you're tapping on certain points. Can you explain to the listeners how EFT works, Like, are you just tapping anywhere you want on your body or you just do? You look like a crazy person. Are there certain specific points? Is there a sequence that you tap here and here and here? However, that is you know, tell us about that.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest09:02
Yes, so, and I'm going to share a resource where people can actually see this in action at the end. So, just if you're not following along audibly with this and understanding it, please know there are video resources coming where you can see this in action and, more importantly, I encourage you to do it along with me and the videos, because it's one thing to see it, it's one thing to cognitively understand something, but this is transformation on a nervous system level. So, yes, the main points that we use with EFT are the side of our hand, which is known as the karate chop point, and we tap that with the opposite hand, the top of our head, our eyebrow, which is like where the hair on our eyebrow near our nose begins, the side of our eye, underneath of our eye, underneath of our eye, underneath of our eye, underneath of our nose, underneath of our mouth, our collarbone and then under our arm. Those are the it'll solve anything points that, when used together, work just like miraculously well and they target the places where we may have gotten energetically blocked.
10:01
You know, sometimes things happen to people and there's no energetic blockage formed. You know, let's take the example of. You know, you got bit by a dog when you were young and now you're afraid of dogs. There's plenty of people out there that are not afraid of dogs and plenty of people that are not afraid of them and also got bit, you know. But for that particular person who now has that fear, there became this way that the energy did not move through them normally after that event or something that's associated with it. So by focusing on the negative aspect, this fear of dogs, fear of being bitten, fear of losing life or limb or whatever it might be, while we tap on this point, we can release what that blockage is and suddenly have more neutrality toward dogs and, you know, being around them and opening up to the possibility of maybe even befriending them or just not caring.
Karen Covy Host10:53
So you said you know you tap on the sides of your hand, under your arms. Does it matter which hand do? Different hands do different things. Different sides of the body have different significance or importance.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest11:06
You know, I mean we could get into like some really like nitpicky stuff there and say that, like, certain sides of the body are more related to male or female incidences or this or that. But at the end of the day, no, it really doesn't matter if you're, if you prefer the left hand or the right hand, and some of these points we have to have, like the eyebrow point, you can tap them both at the same time. You can tap one, you can tap the other. It really doesn't matter a whole lot. What matters is that you're using the right points, you're not hurting yourself tapping. That's what some people think. You know, maybe if I tap harder it'll go faster. No, we don't want to give ourselves black eyes or bruising or anything else. It's comfortable tapping and that we're addressing the issue and not trying to get to the other side too quickly.
11:54
Sometimes I think people want to jump to the positive. We have this toxic positivity around us so much these days where everybody just wants us to get over it, move on. Why can't we just look at the upside and be happy? But, and especially when we're related to things with big decision-making, life transitions and divorce, we need to honor the pain and the actual feelings that we're having, because those are what need to move in order for us to genuinely feel better and be able to introduce what we want into our life and have it be able to take root. Otherwise, we're just, you know, planting it amongst the weeds and it will be taken over.
Karen Covy Host12:29
So, if I'm hearing you right, it's really the key is integrating both the focus on whatever problem you want to solve, or question you want answered, or whatever with the tapping. You're not just tapping to tap, or are you?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest12:47
No, ultimately, if you were doing a traditional round of tapping which I'm going to do one with you after we're done recording and that will be shared with your listeners you're going to find one issue that you want to focus on not 100 issues at one time, but be specific and dial in a little bit and then you're going to start on the not 100 issues at one time, but be specific and dial in a little bit. And then you're going to start on the side of your hand and let's say you're up against some big decision or, you know, you're having a lot of emotions related to the divorce that you're going through. You might say something like even though I don't know what to do next in my life and I feel like I'm really at this crazy crossroads, I want to love, accept and forgive myself. And you're saying that while you're tapping on the side of your hand and that's setting up the round for the intention and the issue that you're going to be handling you say something like that three times on the side of your hand and then you start moving to the top of the head. The eyebrow points down, basically from the top to the bottom. So from the eyebrow, the head, eyebrow, side of the eye under the eye, under the nose, under the mouth, collarbone, arm under the arm. That's from the top of your body downward. And you're going through those points while you're talking about what's happening.
14:00
So you know, you might just say all these emotions, I just don't know what to do next. I can't sleep at night. I feel like I'm never going to be able to make this decision and I don't know what to do and just let it all flow. If you've got things to say I mean, if this is a divorce thing, you might have things to say about the other that is involved Let them flow. This is not about being politically correct or nice. This is about expressing what you're truly feeling at the moment, so that those feelings can transform into something better. And if we don't give those feelings a voice, they're just going to get suppressed and they're going to turn into something else that we don't want.
Karen Covy Host14:37
So is it just about, like saying, for example, I feel anxious or I feel I'm upset, I'm angry, like naming the emotion. Or is it better to ask a question Like what do I do about this? Or, you know, does that make sense?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest14:55
It's all like nothing's off the table there. So I love asking what would it take questions during tapping rounds, because those questions signal our subconscious mind to get on board and find an answer. You know, like what would it take for me to be able to make this decision? What would it take for me to show up differently in, you know, mediation or meetings with the lawyer, or whatever the case may be? What would it take Then, once we've asked that question, we're, as we're tapping, we're regulating the nervous system around it and we're also inviting our subconscious mind to look for answers to that even while we're sleeping.
Karen Covy Host15:32
So just for the listeners who are a little bit leery of woo-woo, let's put it that way because it sounds like there is some basis in ancient Chinese medicine. Medicine for all of the tapping techniques that so to me. To my mind, that brings it out of the Wu world and more into, you know, scientific world, a modern world. But how does it? You keep saying that it down-regulates the nervous system. Do you know how it does that? How does that work?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest16:07
Yeah, so well, first of all, it's about the way that it works with your brain. So when we're in talk therapy or like traditional coaching, we're working more with, like, the frontal lobes of the brain and we can understand a lot of things like cognitively, rationally, logically, that kind of thing, but that doesn't mean that we actually approach them that way. So when we're using EFT tapping, we bypass that and we go right to the amygdala, that little tiny almond-shaped part of our brain that is all to do with fight, flight, freeze, flee, fawn, all of those Fs that F it all up for us. So we get to go right there and calm it so we can get out of that fight or flight or whatever else. And that actually brings in real rationality and a new perspective on things and that's very scientific, the way that it does. That allows us to to bypass that and it allows us to become more. It increases our capacity for different things. You know, if we look at our nervous system like a bucket and we only have so much capacity for the frustration or the fear or the uncertainty or whatever else, it allows us to increase the capacity that we have to handle those things and to handle them with more ease and kind of flow and everything else. So it's very grounding and I'm trying to think what else I want to contribute there. But those are a couple of ways that it works scientifically and I mean it's completely based in science.
17:50
Gary Craig, who created EFT, was not super woo, so you know, but I personally love that we can bring the woo into it. So I like that. We can use it in both ways. But I have worked with people who are very like not woo and we can. We can keep it totally straight to. But I have worked with people who are very like not woo and we can. We can keep it totally straight too, yeah, and not bring any of it in there.
18:09
But that's no fun, honestly, If I'm going to, if I'm going to like speak to like my favorite clients. They're not the ones that don't want to go there.
Karen Covy Host18:16
Yeah, no, I, I totally get it. But you know, in my world there I have people in both camps. I have people. I mean, usually if you dig a lot, if you dig under the surface, there's a little woo in almost everybody and in some people there's a lot of woo. So I can do woo, I can do not woo. But for those people who would question the technique and not use it simply because they would say this isn't scientifically grounded, I don't want to. You know, like this is hogwash, I'm not going there. I want to provide them with the rational reasons for why this might be worth a try.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest18:57
Yeah, yeah, well, and I guess you also asked me about the actual nervous system and I think I didn't get to that part, which is that you know, obviously we have, you know, our autonomic nervous system, which I think I didn't get to that part, which is that you know, obviously we have, you know, our autonomic nervous system, which is like that central nervous system, it's that unconscious control center for the body, and there we have our sympathetic and our parasympathetic nervous systems, which are, you know, interconnected and that's what helps us to maintain, like homeostasis, that stability, that equilibrium, that balance with our psychological and our physiological states. And then we have the sympathetic nervous system and this is what responds to the stress and the urgent stuff that happens in our lives when we're, you know, you know, after all, the, you know the commotion that the sympathetic nervous system deals with. We have that parasympathetic nervous system and that's what aids in our recovery. So it gets activated when we engage in relaxing activities and this could be tapping could also be things like yoga, meditation, breath work. This is what's going to help with our actual, like our tissue repair, our digestion, even our immune system.
20:12
So when we regulate the nervous system, which is what EFT tapping does. It's also what and we're not really talking about this specifically but it's also how we work with the subconscious mind and hypnotherapy. It's also very regulating. At its core is the ability to move flexibly between these different states of arousal and response to stressors. So this is crucial when we're trying to make big decisions that oftentimes spike the stress, spike the cortisol, get us in an ungrounded or dysregulated place. To have tools to bring us back Obviously we're always in our body, but a lot of times in our body we're very disembodied and to kind of bring it all back together and allow us to make better decisions, more rational choices and, honestly, just to be at choice and not at the beck and call of whatever it is our nervous system is trying to get us to do because it's freaked out.
Karen Covy Host21:08
Yeah, I, you know, in the work that I do, a lot of people are struggling at a decision point. And to what you've said before, it's they're not even admitting that they're at a decision point, right, because their emotions are so up and down, like. So let's make this concrete, talking about the decision about whether to stay married, work on your marriage or leave right To get a divorce. And that is a huge decision and one that keeps people in a twist. In my experience, for years and years and years, right, um and so when somebody's in that place, their, their emotions are all up and down, right, it's one minute, it's, I can't do this anymore, that's it, I'm done, whether it's because of an argument or just one more thing, or what have you. And then you go to bed, you're like that's it, I'm done.
22:01
Tomorrow I'm going to look into a divorce. You get up in the morning, you look at your kids and you're like, no, no, I can't do that. And it's back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. And meanwhile people are riding the emotional roller coaster of the back and forth. So let's say that's the situation that you're in, like you're trying to figure out should I really get a divorce. Is this going to blow up the family and screw up my kids and, you know, is this going to be a bad decision that I regret, or is this going to be the best thing that I ever did, and I might as well. I know it's not going to be fun, but let's bite the bullet sooner rather than later. So that's the headspace that a person is in. How would somebody in that space or in any other similar space I'm just using this as an example how would somebody who's in that headspace use tapping to help them figure out the answer for them?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest22:54
Well, my guidance when I'm working with people would be to use it on whatever feels like the most disrupting factor at that moment. So if they're worried about the kids the most, then you do a round on, even though I don't know how this is going to affect my kids and I don't even know if I can stand to look into it. I love accept and forgive myself, whatever the emotion is. That's most bothersome at the moment. Tackle that one and just see where it goes. There's always going to be something that's kind of left. You always want to kind of measure your charge too, like you see how charged up you are about it on a scale of zero to 10, where 10 is the most and zero is the least. Write down your number, you do the tapping around and then you see what changes.
23:38
But I think with big decisions it also really helps when people have somebody like you or somebody like me that can hold space for the bigger issues. When somebody is going through divorce, I want to really look at the history and the patterns and the things that keep showing up, so that I can help them to break through those, so that they don't recreate them wherever they're headed next, even if it's just in relationship with themselves. I want to look at that worthiness issues, the not enoughness, the codependency, the other stuff, and rewire that. And that is not something that most people who are going through that emotional roller coaster of divorce have the capacity to navigate on their own. So you know, just being honest there, most people don't have the ability to ride that roller coaster and figure out how to navigate it well without some guidance 100%.
Karen Covy Host24:32
But let me just play devil's advocate for a moment. The things that you were describing and dealing with those emotions, that's also something that therapists do. So how does EFT work with therapy? Or does it like should you do one or the other, or both at the same time? How does that all fit together?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest24:52
Most people that come to work with me have done talk therapy and they are in that groundhog day of unwanted outcomes. Talk therapy, again, it's frontal lobe based and, while we can make certain breakthroughs there, the things that are subconscious patterns, the things that are subconscious patterns, the things that we took on when we were sponging everything up as children and taking it in like it was fact, even though it might have been the beliefs or experiences of our caregivers, our parents, our neighbors, whoever was in our life at that time those things are much deeper than what can be unwound and reconfigured with talk therapy. So, you know, and EFT works fast. You know, I mean, we are an impatient society of people and a lot of my clients are, you know, ADHD entrepreneurs. So we have a totally different level of impatience to and also dysregulation and lack of focus. So we want things that work fast.
25:48
Right, I always say I mean, even if you're just doing talk therapy, adding in the act of tapping one single point, like this collarbone point right here while you're talking, is going to help you to regulate your nervous system while you're talking and it may prevent you from having to have the same conversation again. So, yeah, you get more mileage out of the time that you're going to have the same conversation again. So, yeah, you get more mileage out of the time that you're going to spend more transformation and a greater ripple effect into the other areas of your life. Plus, I mean, subconscious reprogramming is just, it's invaluable, because you cannot battle that with the conscious mind.
Karen Covy Host26:23
So what I hear you saying is, even when you're in therapy, you would be tapping on your collarbone and talking about whatever it is that you're talking about, right? Yes?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest26:34
Yeah, I know a lot of people like to do talk therapy. I actually have a whole resource in my free community my better therapy checklist that people are welcome to go grab and it's like 10 different things that you can do in whatever therapy you're currently doing or whatever self-help you're guiding yourself through. That will increase its results.
Karen Covy Host26:52
That's awesome. I mean that sounds. I mean, who wouldn't want to increase results of whatever you're doing? Because, theoretically, anywhere you're doing it to get results? Exactly so. But how does it all right? So that's how the tapping helps you regulate your emotions. But what about a decision? What if you're trying to decide between this or that? Whatever the decision is, it could be marriage, divorce, although that's not necessarily a binary decision. Most people think it is right. Do I stay married or get a divorce? Do I, you know, take this road or that road, this job or that job? When you're facing some sort of a decision, what's the most effective way to use tapping to give you clarity on what the answer is for you?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest27:41
I think most people don't know what an aligned decision looks like for them because they are really out of touch with their own intuition and their own gut. So a lot of what I like to do, in conjunction with whatever we're working on specifically, is to increase our intuitive capabilities and properties, because when we can know that a decision is aligned, we feel it. It's a feeling. The best and the worst things that are ever going to happen to us in our lives are all feelings. That's all they boil down to. So when you can get in touch with what you're actually feeling when you look at a decision, you're going to start understanding if that's aligned or not. But most people, especially when we're going through those big dysregulating decisions, are not embodied and grounded in a place where they can actually go.
28:38
Okay, when I think about this decision, it feels horrible, and when I think about that decision it feels slightly better. Maybe I start walking in that direction a little bit and see what I find when I step a little bit more into that decision. Maybe I'm not making the decision yet, just kind of leaning towards a certain direction and seeing how it feels. But it requires development of your intuition and your gut instincts, and so many of us have just forfeited those, especially when we're coming out of relationships that are not amazing. Yeah, so we've given up boundaries. We're maybe people pleasing. We don't know whether the feeling that we're having or the idea that we're having is ours or someone else's. There's so many different things to navigate there, but the thing that's going to allow the tapping that you're doing, or the hypnosis that you're doing to come through the most is developing your own sense of self, and intuition.
Karen Covy Host29:30
Okay, so let me just again interject here, because a lot of people, rightly or wrongly, associate intuition with a female skill right Only women, you know. You've heard women's intuition. Well, it's like guys don't have any. Is that true?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest29:45
No, we all have intuition. I think that, yes, we all have intuition and it all has the potential to be equally cultivated. I think that because it involves stepping into feeling things and again, it's all stereotypical stuff here to stereotype that men don't want to feel as much as women or whatever else. It's not true. And even if they don't want to feel, they still are. They're just suppressing perhaps a little bit more. So I think men suppress their intuition a little bit more or they try to make their decisions from more of a rational, logical place instead of an embodied place. But that doesn't mean that that's not available to them and that they're not capable of cultivating it and making more intuitively guided decisions.
30:39
And sometimes people would think intuitive is like woo-woo kind of stuff too. But literally sometimes we're talking just about like the gut. And the gut is our second brain, which is actually our first brain because it was developed before the other brain and it is closer to the root of the nervous system. A lot of our thinking happens there and it can be as simple as just what's happening in my gut right now when I think about this decision. It doesn't have to be this woo-woo connecting with your spirit guides kind of thing Fun, but it doesn't have to be in order to understand whether you're connected in to more of your power in making that decision.
Karen Covy Host31:19
I think this is brilliant because I always, you know, when I'm working with a client who's really struggling to make a decision, what I can tell them is, when it's right, when you get to the point of being ready to let go of the struggle, to move past the struggle and actually get to that decision point, you'll know, you just feel it, and I spoke with an intuitive on the podcast a few weeks ago who was saying the exact same thing. That intuition was just being in tune with your feelings. When you think about it was she described it in a very similar way that you did. And when you think about making decision X, you feel one way. And when you think about making decision Y making it a different way you feel either lighter or heavier. It's a different feeling. And what people want to get to, and what I want to help people get to, is that place of knowing where you just whether you like what the decision is or you don't you just know this is the right thing for me to do at this point.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest32:28
Yeah, and if not knowing, then at least accepting. You know, and that's what's at the heart of every round of EFT, that setup statement that I started to say is coming to love, acceptance and forgiveness in a genuine way, and maybe you don't know the answer, but coming to the place where you understand that there is no wrong decision that you could ever possibly make. Everything is going to just take you to the next place that you're intended to be. So it might not be knowing as much as it is trusting, and that trust is self-trust that in most people, has not yet been cultivated.
Karen Covy Host33:09
Okay, but let me. I got to jump in and play devil's advocate here.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest33:13
Go for it, Karen. I love this discussion. I love your lawyer brain.
Karen Covy Host33:19
It will be with me till the day I die. It's just too ingrained.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest33:23
And my mom always said I should have been a lawyer because I apparently have a bit of that brain, but I never cultivated it in school.
Karen Covy Host33:29
See, well, we'll work on that here. Okay, go for it what you got. So you're saying, okay, you're trying to get to the place where it's, you know you feel that it's the right decision for you, or I can't remember how you phrased it a second ago. But what if you're thinking, yeah, but what about my kids? What am I doing to my kids? Because that's a place, anyone who's a parent, who is trying to decide what to do with a relationship, struggles because they're worried about their kids. So isn't this selfish?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest34:07
The hair just stood up my arms. I just recorded an entire solo podcast for my show about selfishness this morning and the positive side of it and how we've all been conditioned into. You know, feeling like selfishness is such a horrible thing. I think we need to show our kids how to be more selfish if I'm being completely honest and how to take care of ourselves in that, and I mean so often that selfishness shows up in our boundaries and in our letting go of pleasing people, and I think that if we can love our kids through whatever decisions that we decide to make, that is the best any of us can ever do.
34:49
And also, we are all going to mess up our kids Like just end of the day, like that is just the plain and simple truth.
34:55
We are all going to do something that just messes them up, like we cannot keep them in pristine, perfect, in the box condition and no matter how hard we try, there are complex things that are going to happen and the best that we can do is to walk the walk with them, to even express like I can't tell you how many conversations I have with my kids where I'm like you know, this just might not be the best or I just I don't know how this is going to affect you, but I do know that I love you and I'm here to help you work it out.
35:21
And you know, whatever I mean, we're all human. We're just as human as our kids and we make mistakes. They're going to make mistakes. We're just here to walk each other home and make the best of it and, yeah, we're probably going to leave some marks on our kids with divorce, even in the best circumstances and the best way that it could possibly play out. And we just have to do the best that we can and define that love, acceptance and forgiveness for the things we choose along the way.
Karen Covy Host35:51
Why you keep coming back to love, acceptance, forgiveness. Why those three things?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest35:58
Because those things, when you can genuinely cultivate them, everything gets better. Those are the things where, if you genuinely feel that for the situation or the dis-ease or the pain, you no longer have the situation, the dis-ease or the pain.
Karen Covy Host36:18
Like you're managing it or you no longer have it.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest36:22
Well, the relationship to it would totally be different. So it would not be what it started out as being.
Karen Covy Host36:28
Interesting. So let's before I let you go, I have to get a little bit more granular. You mentioned different tapping points. You go from the top to the bottom, so can you just explain how it would work. Like you ask a question or you focus on an emotion or a feeling and you start tapping and how long do you like? Is this 10 minutes, an hour, two hours, like? How long do you do this? How does it all work?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest37:03
Yes, so yeah, and this is stuff that's very beautifully explained in the resource that I'm going to give your listeners, because it's one of those like see in action kind of things. But you can do a tapping session that takes 30 seconds. You can do a tapping session that takes 15, 20 minutes. It really depends on how detailed you want to be or how much time that you have.
37:21
You know, I mean, it could literally be as simple like, let's say, anxiety, overwhelm, those kind of some typical things that we're seeing usually in these difficult decision making situations. You know, it could be like. You know, side of the hand, even though I have this anxiety, I want to love, accept and forgive myself Even though I have this anxiety. I want to love, accept and forgive myself. Even though I have this anxiety, I want to love, accept and forgive myself. Top of the head, this anxiety, and you're focusing on the anxiety while you're doing this, this anxiety on the eyebrow Side of the eye, this anxiety, focusing in on it, you know, and feeling what it is, but only saying this anxiety and moving from point to point three times through.
Karen Covy Host38:02
And for those who are listening and don't have the benefit of seeing us, while you were saying that you were, actually you were taking the fingers of one hand, tapping on the side of the other hand and tapping on the top of your head, tapping on your cheekbones or under your eyes by your eyes, on your collarbone.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest38:19
And this is why the resource is so helpful with the videos, because literally in every one of 70 videos in this on different topics, so I'm sure your listeners can find something that relates to them and we're going to do something totally relevant you and I that'll be in there. But every video has tips for how to personalize things, how to make it your own, how to get the most mileage out of it for you. So if you're really like curious, how does this work and how do I like get granular with it and apply it to my life, that is really where you want to dig into these. You know these video segments that are between like eight and 20 minutes long. They're easy and you can tap along and you can start getting that benefit of regulating your nervous system, you know immediately.
Karen Covy Host38:57
I love this. Thank you so much, first of all, for sharing these resources, and I will also. You and I are going to do a tapping session, which I'm a little nervous about got to tell you. But I'm going to do this. You know, everything you want is on the other side of your ear, so I'm going to do this
Theresa Lear Levine Guest
I might make you cry, We'll see.
Karen Covy Host
Oh no, Well, you know what I have made plenty of people cry in my day. So that would be kind of poetic justice. So what I'll do is I will link that as a bonus episode or bonus part of this episode, you know, in the, to the podcast and to the YouTube video, so people can see it if they want. If you don't want to watch it, you don't have to. So this is going to be awesome. But I also I don't know in some of the work that I do, like I see people going through the court system, right, so, and there is very little that is more stressful than that, because you feel like everything you care about is on the line and there you are either on the witness stand or you're at a deposition, or you're at a hearing or you're in some place that where the stakes are really high and you feel emotional but you want to regulate yourself. Is there a way that somebody could use tapping kind of without anyone noticing that they were tapping?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest40:23
Absolutely so this does come great and handy in this situation. Or like if you have, like if you're flying and you don't people seeing you on the plane, or whatever you can. Actually, you can either this is the easiest. There's a few ways to do it, but they're harder to show in an audible situation like this. So the one that I would say would be to visualize the tapping. So if you're able to close your eyes, great. If not, visualize that you are tapping your fingers of your one hand on the karate chop point on the other.
40:53
And you know, you can hear countless stories of how people visualize a thing and then it, you know, happens, and that's literally just evidence that thoughts become things and that any look around the room that you're in, anything that's in it, was once a thought before it became the physical thing.
41:24
Same with visualizing the tapping. Do I think it is as potent? Not quite, but I do think it's helpful. And another one that I can't really show you on audio but you can tap the sides of your fingers, like where the nail bed meets the side of your finger with your thumb, and those are all meridian endpoints that are really helpful and you can just sequence through that you can do this with your hand in your pocket and nobody would know, while you're thinking about the issue, and it will definitely bring you more calm, clarity and confidence in the situation and, of course, combine that with some good deep breaths. We all forget to breathe most days until I used to go through the day and I'd get like five o'clock and I'd finally take a good deep breath and I was like I've been missing out on this all day long and it's available to us 24 seven.
42:11
Just take a nice deep inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth and imagine all that stuff that you're freaking out about just flying out your mouth with the breath and going away.
Karen Covy Host42:22
That sounds amazing, and I think from what you're saying too, because I think of the physicality of a courtroom or, especially if you're on Zoom court, you could be tapping the side of your hand, like under the table, and nobody would know. So I love this. I think these are really useful tools for anybody, especially someone who's dealing with big decisions and big emotions. So thank you so much for all of this. I really appreciate your time. I appreciate the resources. Can you tell people where they can find all these resources and where they can find you?
Theresa Lear Levine Guest43:04
Absolutely, I'd be happy to. So the best place to find me is probably on Instagram. That's where I hang out the most. I am at Teresa Lear Levine there and if you go on there and you DM me Karen's name DM me Karen Covey I will hook you up with the tapping session that we're going to be doing after this. I will also grant you entrance to my amazing free community, where I house over $10,000 worth of actionable and transformative resources, including that better therapy checklist that I mentioned earlier, things that are going to aid in the regulation of your nervous system and the rewiring of your subconscious mind, and I will also give you a generous discount should you choose to move forward and do any work with me.
Karen Covy Host43:46
That sounds amazing, but before I let you go now you just opened up a whole nother question about what is this community? Tell me more about that and then I'll let you go, I promise.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest43:56
Yeah, I have a free community. I built it on a platform called Skool S-K-O-O-L. I used to have like a Facebook community or whatever, but now, like, the distraction and everything on there can be kind of intense, especially for people I'm dealing with that have problems with distraction. So there's no unwanted advertisements or anything else happening in this community. It's just literally there's a classroom in there. I do free coaching in there every week. I put up a topic on Monday and on Friday I deliver the coaching that's been requested and there's amazing resources in the classroom and there's also a lot of awesome people in there that are looking for probably similar transformation to you, and our best healing and transformation is done in community and in relationship. So it's a place to get started there.
Karen Covy Host44:38
That sounds awesome. So is it kind of like if I understand it's kind of like a Facebook group where people can ask questions, give answers, step in, get you know, get access to the resources, that kind of thing.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest44:51
Exactly. It's just not on Facebook, because I love Instagram and I'm there more and I find that people on Instagram don't want to be on Facebook. So I built it in a neutral community where even people who don't love social media can get the Skool app. They can be on there, they can get whatever notifications they do or don't want about what are going on in the group and they can be there as they choose to be, when they choose to be.
Karen Covy Host45:15
Teresa. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and sharing access to your community and for those who are listening or who are watching. I really encourage you, if you want to, even if you want to just dip your toe into the tapping world and see if it works for you, I mean, why not? It's a great tool, and so I really encourage you to look for Theresa, join her community, figure out what this is all about. If it doesn't work for you, fine it doesn't work for you, but if it does, from what I am hearing, it could be life-changing.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest
It can't hurt.
Karen Covy Host
Yeah, Theresa, thank you so very much. And for those of you who are out there listening or watching, if you like this conversation, if you want to hear more of it, please do me a big favor. Give the episode a thumbs up like subscribe, and I look forward to seeing you again next time.
Theresa Lear Levine Guest
Thanks for having me, Karen.
Karen Covy Host
My pleasure.
