Emotional Freedom Technique
for Inflammation, Oppression, Toxicity, and Trauma
Sun October 15and Sun November 12, 12-2 PM ET
Pay what you can - suggested donation $25 per class
All welcome - please come whether or not you can pay
A quarter of the proceeds will go to Tewa Women United and Deep Medicine Circle
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Hosted by the Alexander Technique Liberation Project
Facilitated by Moriah Williams
Organized by Renee Schneider
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[Image: Sprouting happy moss. Photo by Gambar rika sari on Canva.]
Hello and welcome to folks who are curious about our power to contribute to healing for ourselves and the collective in the face of intense physical, emotional, ecological, and sociopolitical stressors, and to explore possibilities for meaning and joy.
Part 1 will have a more detailed intro to EFT and variations. If you are only attending Part 2, there will be a brief intro to tapping and variations at the beginning of the workshop. It will also be possible to get the recordings and transcript of Part 1 after September 10 if you would like to review it.
Who Is This Workshop For?
This is a workshop for folks who experience inflammation - which is more or less all of us these days - especially folks who experience oppression, trauma, and ecological hazards. This class and the next are intended to offer some foundational tapping skills and ways of approaching healing in contexts that often feel overwhelming. This is also a workshop for practitioners, movement participants, and anyone who is interested in gaining more skills to support clients, friends, or community. It can feel overwhelming to work with people with chronic conditions, and it can be difficult to know how to offer meaningful support. Do you want to reconnect with your own power? Are you tired of fighting against yourself for the sake of systems that do not care about your well-being? Do you want to explore what might be in the way of rooting deeply in the earth in a way that is mutually nourishing? Do you want validation and beholding for how difficult it feels to manage embodiment? Do you want a space to explore what frameworks make sense to you about the imbalances in our lives and possible ways to address them? Do you crave witness that deeply trusts in your healing potency? It’s okay if any or all of these sound impossible to you right now - if they sound good, if any of this resonates or feels true inside you, this might be a workshop for you. You might already know this workshop is for you. This event description is probably longer than average - don’t feel you need to read through everything. I’m going into some detail for folks who want to have more of a sense of the framing and content. Also the folks who just enjoy information - I see you.
What Is Emotional Freedom Technique?
Emotional Freedom Technique, or Tapping, is a simple, effective community-care and self-care tool which combines stimulating acupoints while working with conceptual frameworks, emotional issues, life patterns, past events, words, song, imagination, and more, which supports us in reconnecting with our innate life force and capacity for healing. EFT is based on the meridian system in Traditional East Asian Medicine. Folks indigenous to Turtle Island also have traditions of acupressure/acupuncture that work with the flow of our energy pathways. In the 1980s Emotional Freedom Technique was developed based off of work using the meridians to heal phobias, which was then expanded and simplified into the tapping protocols we currently use as a way to make healing easily accessed and shared by lay people. This workshop is in the spirit of innate health and community care found both in these older systems and the intention of EFT. Because the stimulation of acupressure points helps restore balance, and because the verbal/cognitive/felt sense aspects of EFT are about reconnecting our distressed and isolated parts with larger and more supportive truths, in my experience EFT tends to be a stabilizing modality which is appropriate for community care. It is also easily shared and innately flexible, so it can be a great support in people’s empowered experience of healing. There is a large and growing body of public access EFT material, and there is also a large and growing body of research for those who find empirical findings to be supportive and clarifying.
Why Include Variations?
For a lot of folks the basic EFT protocol becomes more accessible over time, as they heal trauma patterns, increase range of motion and capacity for intensity and healing, and feel more at home in their bodies. This varies from person to person, though, and EFT is about starting where you are. The fundamental principles and techniques of EFT are so potentially liberating that the aim is for tapping to be accessible for as many folks as possible. Touching a sequence of points on your body can be difficult for folks who have sensory sensitivities, difficulty with intensity, discomfort with range of motion, fatigue, brain fog or dementia, dysphoria, autoimmune, boundary injuries, medical or care trauma and so on that are often part of chronic issues. This is why we’ll be spending time in the introduction on a lot of possible modifications to access the healing potential found in the principles of tapping.
The Dilemma of Inflammation
Inflammation is our body’s way of attempting to tend to what is wrong. It can have so many roots - physical and emotional injuries, inequality and safety threats, intergenerational trauma, environmental racism, ecological disaster, imbalances of toxins and microbes, poverty, war, dominant culture’s absolute failure to respect children, the epidemic of loneliness, estrangement from our bodies and nature, adapting by suppression of our emotions and innate wisdom, and so many others. When we deal with chronic stressors, inflammatory processes can become out of balance and harmful to our health. For many of us, these pressures are really difficult to keep up with and stay in balance in our being and relating. The more marginalized we are, the more pressures we face, and the fewer supports we tend to have access to. This class and the next are intended to offer some foundational tapping skills and ways of approaching healing in regard to inflammation. Any chronic issue by nature has a lot of layers, and also a lot of doorways. Some layers move easily, and some less so. I don’t know what your path is with healing. These issues develop their depth over time, and building our capacity for health asks us for curiosity, nuance, and vulnerability. My aim is to offer a variety of approaches, questions, and a place of spaciousness and support to reimagine our relationship to inflammation, healing, and power.
Intention for this Workshop
I hope this workshop can support you in affirming your perceptions and expanding what feels possible relative to healing inflammation and its roots and consequences. In my experience, both for myself and with clients and friends, EFT can be a robust support for: -Energy flow -Affirming and allowing our authentic emotional states and the information they are giving us -Releasing sometimes lifelong patterns of internal conflict that free us up for more ease and connection -Changing how we are treating ourselves, healing self-hatred, being curious about who we are -Healing the ways that we abandon ourselves and our perceptions in the face of pervasive pain and harm -Sense of self-trust and presence in approaching difficult things -Easing inflammation -Recognizing and releasing internalized oppression that we turn against ourselves -Healing loneliness -Reimagining the kind of world we want to live in and nourishing ourselves for how we want to show up in it I am curious about where the openings are for you, where are the openings for us collectively. My hope is that these workshops will offer you some good questions to ask and some inspiration to find or make what you need in your own journey of healing.
Themes We Will Explore
These are all general themes for discussion and/or tapping - we may dive into some topics more than others. Especially because this is tender and expansive material, we will do a lot of temp checks and focus on presence and experience rather than checking off the list. Anything on this list that we don’t get to in class will show up in the EFT Youtube library at some point, and I will also be offering a more in-depth tapping series on this topic. -Tapping intro and overview -Building a supportive container for healing -Consent and safety -Inner experience and tending our creature selves -Power, structure, perception and our relation to the whole -Possibilities for healing
Limits of This Workshop and Containment
This workshop will focus on possibilities for some basic validation, stabilization, and relief, while also beginning to map some frameworks and considerations around working supportively with inflammation. This class doesn’t offer everything - EFT is not a substitute for other essential components of care such as sufficient medical care and stable housing. It obviously doesn’t singlehandedly heal oppression, environmental racism, capitalism, ecocide, the pattern of boundary violations that are intrinsic to colonialist ways of perceiving and relating, or any of the other reasons for inflammation. I don’t know what is possible for you relative to healing, now or in the future, and it’s not possible to make claims about specific outcomes regarding EFT and accessibility variations. I’m also very aware that there are aspects of this topic, for example historical trauma, childhood trauma, racism, mass incarceration, etc., which require more trust and container-building than the context of this intro workshop - or I might just not be the right person or it might not be the right environment to accompany you through specific issues. I deeply appreciate the online workshop I attended with Dr. Kesha Fikes where she prefaced the workshop with saying that this is not a community, we don’t have community agreements, we don’t have a history of trust and relationship together; this is a webinar. This is why I’m also offering other spaces for connection and other kinds of materials and supports (see Further Tapping Information and Support and Class Handouts below). Also know that, while these workshops can’t begin to meet the needs that we all have around inflammation, I am really here for the enormity of pain, oppression, and exclusion you may have experienced around this issue, and the depth of meaning and importance of your life process.
Format
This workshop format is a combination of presentation, discussion, and explorations of EFT and variations. There will be a lot of opportunities to share (openly or anonymously) about your own challenges, sticking points, patterns, internalized self-talk, desires, when it comes to the different aspects we will be tapping on together. Chronic conditions, trauma, toxicity, and oppression all create deprivation, but EFT is not scarce. Your innate healing capacity is not scarce. Please go at your own pace during the workshop and after. Also remember you can seek out additional support from a practitioner or someone you are close to. You won’t be missing out on anything if you decide to sit out parts, or review the recording in small pieces over time. Your healing is monumental, and worth honoring.
Accessibility
There are multiple options for each exploration, and attendees are encouraged to modify or diverge from the material as they wish. These workshops are meant to raise questions and support you in how you want to engage with the material, and contribute your own perspectives and wisdom. Attendees can participate with video on or off, can speak, participate in the chat, or on Padlet. Your presence is also valuable if you prefer to engage internally and process at your own pace. Meetings will be closed captioned, and recordings, slides, and other materials will be available for further exploration. Please contact the organizer if you have other access needs.
Further Tapping Information and Support
There are a lot of free tapping resources, including groups, recordings, and free booklets and papers. I will be offering free monthly open houses for tapping and other healing tools the day after each class, and I am creating a free EFT
Youtube library on this class topic.
For folks who are interested I will feature some short individual tapping sessions on Youtube (the intention is to record them for the channel but if you want to record one there is always the option to veto uploading it after the fact). Contact Moriah if you are interested in being part of the youtube series.
Class Handouts
These are some tapping guides I have created, as well as some public domain information that I have modified. These are free to all. You can share them as you wish. I’m always adding to these.
These are not homework - engage with them in whatever way is supportive for you.
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Intro to EFT and Variations for Accessibility
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Some Useful Tapping Phrases and Approaches
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What Doors Can Open: Equity and Healing Explorations - Series Schedule
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October 15 (note: third Sunday)
Emotional Freedom Technique for Inflammation, Oppression, Toxicity, and Trauma Part 1
November 12
Emotional Freedom Technique for Inflammation, Oppression, Toxicity, and Trauma Part 2
December 10
Trans 101: An Intro to Varieties of Trans Issues and Ways of Being
January 21, 2024 (note: third Sunday)
Exploring Gender: Introspection and Play for All
February 11, 2024
Care for Autistic Folks: Considerations for Clients and Practitioners
March 10, 2024
Supporting Marginalized People in Community: Cultivating Healthy Containers
April 14, 2024
Supporting Marginalized People in Healing Work: For Clients and Practitioners
May 12, 2024
Making Home-made Homeopathic Remedies for Trees
[Image: Tabby cat looking out a barn doorway with curiosity. Text: "What Doors Can Open: Equity and Healing Explorations, A monthly pay what you can workshop on various topics, 2nd(ish) Sundays 12-2 PM ET Beginning October 15, Hosted by the Alexander Technique Liberation Project, Facilitated by Moriah Williams, Organized by Renee Schneider, moriahjwilliams.com photo: edenexposed on Canva"]
About the Host
The AT Liberation Project is an open network of Alexander Technique teachers, trainees and students who have come together to examine inequity and injustice in our community’s history, to educate ourselves on topics of inclusion, equity and social justice, and to create a more welcoming AT community for ourselves and those who may have been excluded from our work in the past.
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We seek to question language, paradigms, and practices within the Alexander Technique which cause harm and limit inclusion, and develop those which foster social justice and belonging.
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[Image: Alexander Technique Liberation Project logo, with brightly colored overlapping shapes that look like flower petals or leaves, with the letters ATLP at the bottom.]
About the Facilitator
Moriah Williams (pronouns: q/surprise me) is a holistic practitioner, writer, and portal witch who works with folks who are interested in exploring body-based, sociopolitical, and/or spiritual and nature-based aspects of healing. Moriah practices Ortho-Bionomy®*, Cranial Sacral Therapy, Emotional Freedom Technique, Animal Communication, and q is a NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM®)-Informed Professional with an Embodied Social Justice Certificate. Moriah is a white autistic genderqueer person who has healed from chronic illness, who has special interests in birds, spiders, liminality, and the spiritual function of humor. Moriah has presented workshops for numerous organizations, including: TruHap Positive Psychology Center, (Un)occupy Albuquerque and Kalpulli Izkalli's Medicine for the People, Multicultural Efforts to end Sexual Assault (MESA), The Alternatives Conference, the Optimal Aging Conference, the Society of Ortho-Bionomy International,Inc., and q has been a panelist for Southwestern College's Disability, Bias, and Access panel. *Ortho-Bionomy® is a trademark of the Society of Ortho-Bionomy International, Inc., and is used with permission.
Instagram, TikTok, and other social media: @mjwintuitive
Youtube tapping library @transverseprocess
Phone, WhatsApp, and Telegram: +1 505-577-0479
[Image: Photo of Moriah, a white genderqueer autistic person, smiling at the camera in front of a stucco wall. The tail of Pumpkin T. Monkeypants, an orange tabby, is photobombing the picture from Moriah's lap.]
Read more about How This Workshop Came About and my relationship with the material
My own improvement from a number of chronic issues has been successful due to Moriah’s compassionate intuitive healing practice. My ptsd symptoms and other related issues such as my level of inflammation, allergies, anxiety, sleep dysregulation, and mood fluctuations have been significantly reduced. I deeply appreciate Moriah’s work with me and the many benefits I’ve experienced. ~ Bill N.