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Tap-tap-tapping into the body's intelligence
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Our bodies have a highly sophisticated intelligence. The cells in every system in our bodies communicate constantly with each other to ensure our survival, but psychological and physical trauma, or simply the long-term effects of everyday stress, can cause these systems to malfunction, making us more susceptible to health and emotional problems.
Can we undo this damage, clear out the accumulation of stress and trauma that our bodies hold? We can, says New Yorker, Laura Hames, a certified practitioner of BodyTalk, a non-invasive therapy that utilizes biofeedback and a series of tapping and eye movements to promote healing and well being.
Laura first heard about BodyTalk after her close friend, a New York City Rockette, who suffered through months of debilitating back spasms, was reportedly cured after a single BodyTalk session. Laura, a certified Pilates and dance instructor with a BA in Dance and Theater Performance, quickly realized BodyTalk was the natural next step for her.
Through the use of a “muscle-testing” biofeedback technique, a BodyTalk practitioner communicates with the body, identifies where there are imbalances or discord, and then, through a series of tapping on the head (stimulating the brain) and sternum (stimulating the heart), signals the body to "rebalance" those areas.
One analogy is that of a computer that no longer responds quickly to a command; instead it freezes, or is otherwise slow and ineffective as a result of various processes, or the computer's "memory", becoming clogged with corrupted or useless files. Essentially, BodyTalk is meant to act as a re-boot for your body and mind – a purging of your physiological, psychological and energetic "cache”.
To give me a first-hand BodyTalk experience, Laura invited me to have a session with her. At her apartment, while sipping fresh ginger tea, she explained that tapping the top of the head stimulates both sides of the brain simultaneously so they can work together to better empower the body’s innate ability to heal. By stimulating the heart, the life center, the body is signaled to "record" the improved flow of healing energies, thus imprinting the rebalance in its cellular memory.
Laura was careful to point out that she doesn't consider herself a healer or even label herself as spiritual. Doing so, she believes, implies that there are others who are not spiritual, or that there is ultimately a distinction that separates her from others. This non-dual philosophy is at the core of Body Talk's effectiveness, where, as Laura said, the innate intelligence, or consciousness, of the body is accessed for energetic healing.
The consciousness of the body? I didn't understand. Was she really "talking" to the body or connecting with a higher consciousness? Laura smiled. “It’s all consciousness. It's all connected." When both sides of our brain are aligned, she affirmed, our body works most efficiently as a bridge to consciousness.
Before we got started with the session, Laura had me fill out an extensive questionnaire about my health and emotional state. But what I didn't tell her (or write down) was that I'd been experiencing severe writer’s block while working on my creative projects, missing self-imposed deadlines and procrastinating.
Shortly into the session, Laura said, "Your imagination needs to warm up slowly." That got my attention. I often felt a distracting icy chill when sitting down to write, causing me to bundle up or make hot tea, abandoning my keyboard. I was vaguely aware that my growing intolerance for cold was becoming a problem. Fear, Laura said, is a cold emotion.
There's a Buddhist adage that it's not wise to get a drink at the first sign of thirst, food at the first hunger pang, or to seek heat at the first chill. Instead one should sit with the uncomfortable feeling, or "suffering". To battle my writer's block, I realized, I needed push through that cold.
The session continued with Laura leading me through bilateral eye movements while asking me to recall painful or uncomfortable memories. She continuously "tapped out my cortices" to help process or clear the associated emotion, occasionally asking questions based on the feedback my body was giving her.
She mentioned that "subtle hearing energies were distorting my inner voice". I was intrigued because just the day before, while feeling stressed about lagging behind in writing projects, I heard a faint but distinct ringing in my ears. Once again, Laura's words "rang" true.
At one point, Laura picked up that I had a phobia "of my imagination" left over from childhood. It's true that as a child I struggled not to think about "scary" things, fearing they might somehow manifest and harm me or my family. Was my mind still trying to distract me from delving into my imagination in a misguided act of self preservation? Despite the fact that I write supernatural fiction and a blog on the paranormal, I had to admit, that old fear still lingered. Laura had picked up on another very specific - and private – truth.
After the session, it was hard to say if my new insights were due to the specifics of BodyTalk or the simple act of lying back and having Laura focus her attention and intuition toward me with a healing intention, and me, in turn, being open to that process. But if the effect was a better understanding of what was holding me back and how to overcome it – did it even matter?
At home after my session, I did some research on the web to discover if the fundamentals of Body Talk were rooted in established therapies. I found a wealth of information on books and associations concerning the health benefits of "tapping" based on ancient principles of acupuncture and modern kinesiology as well as eye-movement therapy.
One such therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), involves instructing the client to briefly focus on emotional triggers and personal beliefs while concentrating on coordinated eye movements and external stimuli, like auditory tones or tapping. EMDR clients reportedly gain deeper insights and are able to alter destructive memory associations. EDMR is recommended to treat trauma by the Department of Defense/Department of Veterans Affairs, the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, the Departments of Health of both Northern Ireland and Israel, and The American Psychiatric Association.
Laura will tell you that she doesn't tell her clients anything they don’t already know on some level; she only assists in opening their eyes (or ears) to their own ever-present awareness. As a client wrote in the testimonial section of her website, to work with Laura is to be given the chance to look in a mirror and see the truer part of yourself.
To make an appointment for a BodyTalk session with Laura Hames, visit her website.
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