I watched a Louise Hay´s interview where she talked about her experience with EFT (Emotion Freedom Technique, where you touch the meridians to deal with emotional states), driven by the need to heal a pain in the neck. A 10-minute video that led me to several insights.

First of all in this video, Louise Hay, a healer, puts herself in the position of a patient. She recognizes that the pain in her neck meant that something had not yet been completely forgiven (a violence her stepfather had committed against her, holding her by the neck), and looked for help. Even with all the inner work she does, there were still things to be worked out at the age of 90.

When the therapist asked why she thought that problem had escalated at that point in life, she replied, “Maybe I just found another way to punish myself. Being punished, for me, was a way of living.”

Second, she did not seek any rational explanation as to why the technique works: she simply trusted that if the technique involves touching the body, then it was sending a message for the body to heal, and she knew that through the body it would heal an emotion, a pattern or even a karma.

And in the end, when the therapist shared with her the use of EFT for procrastination, she suggested that when we do not feel like doing what’s necessary, we can look in the mirror and ask, “What do I want to do then?”

I have done this exercise and it is miraculous: my wisdom guides me to what really deserves my attention at that moment (it might just be a little walk) and then either I come back with renewed will, or what I did not want to do ends up solving itself without my help.

For me this little question contains so much: trust in the Universe and in my Self, detachment from the result, not wanting to control everything, to accept what is, to be present. And finally, in asking this question, Louise Hay becomes a therapist again. It is a perfect representation of the roles we assume in life.

We, as therapists, sometimes think that we are expected to be perfect, not to be sick, not to fail in our quest. But the truth is that if we are incarnated, we are still learning until the last minute. That does not make us “less” of therapists. On the contrary, when we learn that lesson, we have one more tool to help others.