As a psychotherapist I usually work with people, not animals. But a while ago, a woman whose horse was traumatized during a move in a storm asked me for help. I used EFT Tapping instead of her with her, which healed her horse of all trauma symptoms in just a couple of hours.
How does EFT tapping work?
EFT Tapping (or Emotional Freedom Techniques) is used most often in humans to alleviate many types of problems, from the effects of stress and trauma, phobias, physical pain and illness, and many other things. It works by focusing on events or patterns of events that are emotionally charged while simultaneously tapping on specific acupuncture meridian end points. Typically, the EFT practitioner shows the client where to EFT tap and the client taps on themselves at the same time. Using information, sentences, and words the client uses to describe a painful event, for example, the EFT practitioner has the client say sentences that bring emotional charge. Often this helps the burden lessen or disappear and the client is calm even when thinking about the painful event.
EFT Surrogate Tapping
However, when the “client” is an infant, very young child, or is unable to participate in this protocol, it is possible to use what is called “surrogate tapping.” One way to do this is to have a person close to the person who experienced the painful event tap on themselves as if they were the traumatized person.
It started with a scary move
My client had moved from state to state, and her seven horses, including a stallion, were transported in a large horse trailer and arrived at their new destination around midnight on a foggy, moonless night.
The guides put the stallion in a corral next to the pasture where the other horses would be unloaded. After the other six horses were released to pasture, one of the mares jumped over the 5-foot horse fence and was injured going through barbed wire and cactus. Three others also jumped over the fence. The stallion, having witnessed all this, was restless in his corral, calling frantically for the other horses. After this, the stallion was stabled on another property for a while and, upon reuniting with his herd, began to show signs of trauma.
He paced back and forth at his post and called loudly. He became especially agitated whenever the other horses, which had been let out into a larger yard, strayed farther from him. The woman explained that she, as a stallion, felt responsible for her well-being. Before all this happened, he had been the horse she rode most often. However, after the trauma, whenever she tried to mount him, he refused to leave the stable area near the other horses. Once, when she forced him to leave the area, he threatened to rear up and became uncontrollable on the ground. He became dangerous to handle every time he left his barn or barn. This behavior continued for more than eight months. The woman’s despair over the situation was so great that she asked me to help her with EFT; she would try anything, she said.
EFT Surrogate Tapping
The woman was very sad and discouraged. We began by tapping on these feelings, as well as his frustrated hopes of developing a community of riding partners, his fear that he would never be able to ride any of his horses again, as they were all having some type of difficulty. This took about ½ hour.
We then moved to sit outside the stallion’s stable. He made the woman “be” the stud. We go through every intense bit of the night of her arrival. As she continued to play the stallion, we used EFT Tapping on each visual memory and emotion that arose. We then tapped on anything that was intense since then: the other horses pulling away from him, the woman trying to pull him away from the other horses, etc. In her stud role, the woman felt very clearly what he had felt. It’s amazing how that works: when we put ourselves in the role of another, even an animal, we often DO experience what the other has experienced. This took around 45 minutes.
Once she had tapped on all of this, the woman entered the stallion’s barn. She had learned a few horse acupuncture points, which she had used for several months, with little success. She tapped on those points at her station. Where he normally would have been very agitated, he was already quite calm and he let her rub and pat him.
We then herded the stallion into a corral somewhat away from the other horses. Usually when she put him in this pen he would get quite agitated, pacing and yelling loudly. She walked calmly for a while and then faced the other horses, pacing a bit. I asked him to tap on her acupuncture points as he guided her to speak out loud about her remaining fears for her safety: “Even though you are still afraid when the mares are far from you”; “even if you care about them”; “even though you still feel bad about not being able to protect them” etc. After a couple of rounds, she completely relaxed. He walked leisurely around the corral, stopping to graze on the grass. He seemed to have finally found the peace of mind that he had lost almost a year before.
The stallion remained quiet for the rest of his life, and the woman lived many happy hours riding him.
