Tapping into Wellness: Uncover the Secrets of the Emotional Freedom Technique with Lauren Fonvielle

In this episode we get curious about:

• Lauren Fonville's expertise in the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).
• An explanation of EFT or Tapping, including its benefits like stress and anxiety reduction.
• Personal experiences with tapping from both the host and guest.
• The scientific basis behind EFT, including its effects on cortisol levels and brain function.
• How tapping can complement other practices like meditation.
• Real-life client stories demonstrating the efficacy of tapping.
• Practical tips for incorporating tapping into everyday situations.

Learn more about our guest, Lauren Fonvielle:

Free Offering: Reduce Anxiety, Stress & Chronic Pain: Intro to EFT Tapping Masterclass

Another Free Offering: Tapping Into Business Success Free Live Tapping Group

Website: Mindshift With Lauren | Emotional Freedom Technique Practitioner | Delaware, USA - FREE Masterclass!

YouTube: Lauren Fonvielle

FB: Lauren Fonvielle

IG: Instagram (@laurenic0le)

LI: Lauren Fonvielle’s profile

Learn more about Laurin Wittig...

Bio: Laurin Wittig is an intuitive healer, spirituality mentor, founder of HeartLight Wellness and the Heartlight Wise Women Circles, host of the Curiously Wise: Practical Spirituality in Action podcast, channel of The Circle of Light, and an award-winning author. Laurin is also a co-facilitator of the Triple Goddess Women’s Circle.

Laurin’s own journey from bad health to great health on a non-traditional path awakened many of her own healing gifts, and illuminated a passion to assist others to travel their paths in this lifetime with less pain, and deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them, bringing them to a place of greater ease, and joy. 

Heartlight Wellness: Healing the light within you!

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Credits:

Audio Engineer: Sam Wittig

Music: Where the Light Is by Lemon Music Studio

Photography & Design: Asha McLaughlin/Tej Art

Copyright 2024 Laurin Wittig

Interview with Lauren Fonvielle

That's just how they're feeling. And as we continue to tap, it's like, we're trying to get more specific and more specific. Like, it's going down into a funnel. So the more specific you can get, the better. So it could be if you're feeling this. Where do you feel this anxiety in your, in your body? And you know, maybe you say in my neck and my shoulders, I feel this tightness in my neck and my shoulders.

And then we could do around on, even though I feel this tightness in my neck and my shoulders, I love and accept myself.

She's really an expert in a particular area. So let me read you her bio. So, Lauren is an integrative energy practitioner specializing in the Emotional Freedom Technique, also known as Tapping, to help her clients reduce stress and anxiety and overcoming limiting beliefs. She guides her clients on a journey of self-healing to break through obstacles, physical, mental, or emotional, that are keeping them stuck in llife and business.

Welcome to Curiously Wise, Lauren.

Lauren: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation with

So, could you just tell us what it is, and sort of how you came to be a practitioner of it?

Lauren: Yeah, sure. So, tapping is this process of gently tapping on certain points of the body while simultaneously acknowledging the emotions that you are feeling. And it is a practice that can help with a wide variety of conditions. You named a few of them that I listed in my bio as helping to reduce anxiety and stress.

But it can, it can also help you overcome physical pain, reducing that physical pain. It can help you with limiting beliefs. So thoughts like I'm not good enough or who am I to do this? It can help you to shift your perspective. So you start to. Think differently and feel differently. So how does it do that?

And then that added component of speaking out loud, acknowledging how we're feeling is really important as well. I think particularly as, as women, we can think the same thoughts over and over and over again. And there can be real power in saying it out loud and doing so it can. Begin to create some distance from it.

And so, when I was introduced to that, and really began to feel not only a physical difference, but emotionally different, I thought, okay, I still don't fully understand what exactly is happening in my brain. That is allowing me to feel so much better. But something's happening and that was enough for me to really keep that curiosity going and continue to explore it and tap and work with a practitioner of my own.

And then eventually I decided to go on to get certified. So I can share it with other people.

Laurin: I think that's how so many of us come to, to be healers of whatever variety it's because we needed the help. And that's how we found it was in these alternative areas. It's certainly now I did, I did experience acupuncture and herbology with a Chinese doctor first, but I have had amazing help from people who do alternative therapies.

And so it is, I like that aspect because I think it's so important for women to learn to say what they need to say.

Lauren: Yes. Yes, we, we do. I mean, and, and when. And when we don't acknowledge how we're feeling, which I think is more common than not, right? We, we, so as, as human beings, we don't like feeling uncomfortable feelings, sad, angry, frustrated, overwhelmed. We don't enjoy those feelings. We don't like talking about feeling that way.

And while that works in the short term. Over time, all that stuffing that you've been doing is going to build up to a point where it's going to come out in some way. And sometimes that comes out physically with, with pain. And I think people can relate to feeling really stressed and overwhelmed and then feeling that physically in their body.

But it's not just with stress. It's with, it's with any emotion that you really are not allowing yourself to, to feel and sit in. And tapping is a beautiful, gentle way of. Allowing you to do that, showing you how to do that.

Laurin: yeah. Yeah. I find so much of the pain that my clients come with is it's based on emotions. And it's emotions that are stuck in the body and that so often creates not just pain, but can create disease.

And so I am a big proponent of exploring what you're interested in, what catches your catches your attention or what keeps showing up in your world, right? Like I, I. I can't tell you how, how into the signs I am, right? So if you are, you know, if you see a movie that that mentions tapping, right? And then a friend happens to mention it in conversation, and then you randomly come across an article about it.

Laurin: Yeah. And I, I think you're right. There's a lot of us out there that do different things that are, you know, that are healers and we under that umbrella. But I think there's so many of us because different people need different people. So, so yeah, don't feel if you go out and you, you go to your best friends, you know, acupuncturist or, or tapping in straight, you know, person healer.

I don't even, I have the right, right words for that today. But if it doesn't work for you, don't give up. Just know that one wasn't for me, or at least it's not for me right now. And, and then watch the signs because somebody else will be brought to you

Lauren: right. When the student is ready, the teacher arrives.

So, but I know that, you know, some of the science behind this

Lauren: Yeah.

Laurin: and yes, talk about that.

Lauren: tapping on these points has shown to reduce the cortisol levels in the body. So cortisol is the stress hormone and that I see. Since we're doing this on on YouTube, I want to do this demo that I like to show. So this is called the hand model. So if you I'm, I'm taking my fist here, and my thumb is inside my, my fist.

And if we pretend that my fist is my brain, and the knuckles here is the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain that, makes the decisions, right? So information comes up the brainstem to the prefrontal cortex where we make those decisions. Now, when you are really stressed out, really overwhelmed, or when you're some, if you're somebody that's dealing with chronic pain, what happens is the information comes up the brainstem, but the amygdala, we're going to pretend that's my thumb.

However, when we're talking about chronic anxiety, chronic stress, chronic pain, this This amygdala is firing all the time and cortisol is constantly running through the body. So now when information tries to come up to get to that prefrontal cortex, it cannot access that part of the brain. So that's like those situations where you might be so overwhelmed or so stressed out.

You may even say to yourself, I can't even think straight right now. And you literally can't because you can't access that part of the brain that makes those good sound decisions. So when you're tapping, what's happening is a message is being sent to the amygdala and it's saying, Hey, amygdala this isn't a life or death situation.

And I mean, I think we all want to be in a place where we're thinking, thinking clearly and making decisions from, from that calm space, as opposed to making decisions when we're frantic and overwhelmed and can't think straight.

Laurin: Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I love that, that fist analogy or metaphor, whatever you want to call it. It makes so much sense to me. And, and I know some of this stuff, but that just, it's such a clear picture of it. And it reminds me that I, there was a time in my life, not too many years ago, just before the pandemic or end of my mom's life.

But tapping probably would have been a lot quicker.

Lauren: Yeah. So especially for those, I think, you know, if you're someone which sounds like you were, you probably had a meditation practice before all of that was going on. Right. So it was easy, easy for you to go to that tool. But I mean, I've had a lot of people that come to me that struggle with meditating that say, you know, I can't, I can't meditate.

Right? Like, I'm worried about my mom. I'm worried about my dad taking care of my mom. I'm worried about what they're eating if they're, you know, whatever it is, whatever you're worried about, you're just, it's kind of like you're a way of I don't know, a form of catharsis as far as like, just, just blurting it out, saying whatever it is, just like letting it, letting it flow.

And I feel like that process, you know, it's not going to make those thoughts disappear by any means, but I do feel like it helps to, well, I like to think of it as almost like sweeping the thoughts. To the sides, right? If we think of the monkey mind as the thoughts like whizzing back and forth through the mind and and the active tapping helps to kind of just like sweep them over to the side so that I can have a little bit of space in here and just breathe and be and and settle down a little bit.

Lauren: The somatic part of it, there's something about the somatic part of it, because you're having to do several things at the same time. You're having to, you know, focus on where, where you're tapping, especially when you're first getting started. You know, you're focusing on where you're tapping. You're focusing on how you're feeling.

You're focusing on the words that that you're saying. All of that, I think, helps too with that, like, sweeping of everything else. Yeah, there's something, there's something just about, like, even just the tapping and breathing, that in itself can, can help you, I think, simply because it is lowering that cortisol level.

It

Laurin: it's something I'm not very good at because I like to live up in my head and, and above that, but but bringing the body in helps to ground us as well. It's, it's hard to ground if you're not connected to your body, you know, in a good way. So there's that aspect of it.

That was funny. I, I've never been one to like worry about that stuff, and just bringing the body in because if you're only living, as I have a habit of doing of living in, you know, from your neck up, there's a whole lot of goodness that can happen if we're nice to our bodies and helping them move. Even in that gentle tapping, there's movement, there's motion, it's moving things, there's vibrations going out through your very watery body.

And you know, they, the vibrations are very easy to move through your body. And it feels good, just that little bit of motion, even it feels good. And that also helps calm the brain because you start to activate some of the feel good

Lauren: Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm.

But so I think that's a really interesting thing that I hadn't thought about tapping is that is somatic. It is actually getting the body involved in releasing the emotions.

Lauren: Yeah. And a lot of the time, you know, like we were talking about before, we feel these things physically in our body. And so it, it really is a beautiful way of, of cultivating that relationship between the mind and the body. Like, oh, I'm, and maybe it starts with I have this tension in, or tightness in my chest, and you just think, oh, it's tightness in my chest.

And then the other thing is, is that. We have all of these experiences from our past, and those experiences have emotions attached to them. And perhaps there was a time where we didn't have the tools to process things that happened to us, whether, you know, whether it was like a big trauma, or even a little little traumas that I think we all experience throughout our lives and.

And that type of thing can also build up and you don't even realize it. And so, you know, maybe having a boss snap at you and say something to you and it just sets you off, right? Like you're, it's a trigger and you're, you know, fuming mad or who knows, maybe you say something you can't take back or whatever the case may be.

Laurin: the trigger that set you off.

Lauren: to, yeah, like peel back those layers and identify some of those things, hold space for them so that we can let them go and release them.

And I'm, I'm one to think that, like, when we're able to do that and we're able to release things that aren't serving us, now we've created this internal space and we can choose what we want to fill that up with, you know, we can call in the emotions that, that we want and and that can be very helpful too.

Laurin: Yeah. That's making space to, to have a choice about how you react.

Lauren: Mm hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. But I'm going to choose just to keep my boundaries in place. And to allow that irritation, you know, that a little bit of anger to get processed to, I'm going to, I'm going to acknowledge it, but I'm not going to blast somebody else with it. I'm not going to react to it. I'm going to choose how to act and it was nice for me because that's a lesson I've been trying to learn.

But it is, there's a space that happens when you do that healing work. That releasing of those energies that don't serve you. I love that. I use that term myself. And they may have served you very well in the past. You know, there are things that there's places that we are in our lives where we put those.

Acknowledging them, like you say, I like to say, You can get rid of the pain, but you get to keep the wisdom,

Lauren: hmm. Mm

Laurin: you know, so it's getting rid of the stuff that hurts, but keeping all the wisdom you learned from that. And and so that's that spaciousness is so it's freeing. It is. It's a lightness that comes that you, you start to notice.

I just don't feel like I'm carrying around a load of stuff. I didn't even know I was carrying around anymore

That, that, that is all, that's all you really need. And it helps to lighten it, and then you can physically see it on somebody's body.

Laurin: yeah, yeah. I've definitely had that experience too. It is nice, especially if you're dealing with, with really older, really deep trauma to have someone like us. To, to create a safe space for that to happen, you know, yeah. And so I, I do, I do think that some, some of the, I know the work that I did in my early on my journey, I needed somebody else to be there to help me understand it and, and, and process it, you know,

Or, you know, when, when somebody's like, when we're going through a sequence of tapping, and then I, you know, I kind of notice, like just, I don't know, like the wheels are turning, like, something's going on. They're thinking about, so I can tell that you're thinking about something. What's, you know, what's coming to mind, you know, and things that a lot of the time people would kind of brush away as, oh, that's not related to this, like, this random quote, unquote thought that I, that I'm having isn't related to why I'm feeling this way in this moment.

Yeah,

You've obviously worked a lot with clients with this. And yourself. So have you got, like, maybe something that all of us have to deal with that you've had a client where you've seen that change and tell us a little bit about your part of that process, you know, how, how did you help them?

Lauren: I mean, you know, I think one that one that comes to mind is, is a client that came with pain in her pain in her shoulder and she had done all sorts of things to try and figure out what was going on. She had all types of scans and tests and chiropractor and massage and it was just an on an ongoing pain.

All this pain in my shoulder and we keep going around and I'm just continually like asking her questions and asking her if the sensation is, is changing. And at one point she says, it feels like I'm being strangled. And those words just kind of like blurted out. And she's like, I've never said that before.

She was, she was surprised by the fact that she had said that. And then And then we, so we were tapping on those words. Well, how long has this pain been going on? Like, and, you know several years and, and I was like, was anything going on in your life when that pain started? She had just left her, left her husband, and there they were in courts fighting over the kids and there was all this stuff.

Well, with her childhood and not being safe, it wasn't safe for her to speak up and say what she needed as a child. And so that's what she carried into her adulthood. And, you know, it was impacting her in the workplace and ultimately. After holding space for these things that happened in her past, she was able to really step into her power and and set the boundaries and say what she needed to say.

Laurin: Yeah. Yeah. It's still surprises me how good we are at hiding things in our body that we don't want to deal with. And the body keeps talking to you until you have no choice.

Lauren: That's the truth. Yeah. No, I always like to say if we don't listen when our body whispers, we're going to be forced to hear her scream. Nobody wants that.

Laurin: no, nobody wants that. Nope. Absolutely not. I So if someone were to look at my questions here, well, can you walk us through like a sample of a tapping that you would do with a client?

I'm feeling so stressed all of the stress. I'm feeling really anxious and saying that repeatedly as we do the 1st round of tapping at least. And so people will say. we tapping in the bad thing? No, no, no, that's not what we're doing. We are acknowledging how we are actually feeling. This is a practice that meets you where you are.

So it's the opposite of what some others might do, might do or say as far as like, okay, I'm feeling really anxious. I acknowledge that I'm going to go to the opposite end of the spectrum and say a positive affirmation of, like, I feel light and free. Right? Like, you can say that, but that's not how you're feeling.

So, maybe you're not going to get to that place of, like, I feel light and airy today, you know, but maybe it's like, I'm I'm moving through, or I'm acknowledging this anxiety. I've gotten through anxiety in the past. I trust that I'm going to get through it again, you know. With this, maybe that's the more positive thought for the, for the day.

So I just wanted to preface it with, with that, because sometimes people are like, why are we saying the negative over and over?

Laurin: I've, I've heard, I've seen that too. Okay.

Lauren: it's it's really just to acknowledge how you're feeling. And as you're doing that, other thoughts are probably going to come in and that's okay. You know, that's a good thing.

So I'll say it and then I'll ask you to repeat it and be my echo. All right, so, and do you, did you want to do it on anxiety and stress? Does that work?

Laurin: Sure. Yeah. That's a good one for everybody.

Lauren: So even though I'm feeling anxious and stressed.

Laurin: Even though I'm feeling anxious and stressed,

Lauren: I love and accept myself.

Laurin: I love and accept myself.

Lauren: Even though I'm feeling really anxious and stressed right now,

Laurin: Even though I'm feeling really anxious and stressed right now,

Lauren: that's just what I'm dealing with.

Laurin: that's just what I'm dealing with.

Lauren: Even though I'm feeling really anxious and stressed,

Laurin: Even though I'm feeling really anxious and stressed,

Lauren: It's okay and I'm okay.

Laurin: It's okay and I'm okay.

Lauren: Coming to the top of the head. I'm feeling really anxious and stressed.

Lauren: And then we'll come to the eyebrows. anxious and stressed.

Laurin: Really anxious and stressed.

Lauren: Sides of the eyes. All of this anxiety.

Laurin: All of this anxiety.

Lauren: Under the eyes. All this anxiety and stress.

Laurin: All of this anxiety and stress.

Lauren: Under the nose. I've been carrying all this anxiety and stress.

Laurin: I've been carrying all this anxiety and stress.

Lauren: the chin crease. I've been carrying all of this anxiety and stress

Laurin: I've been carrying all this anxiety and stress.

Lauren: onto the collarbone. I'm feeling so anxious and stressed.

Laurin: I'm feeling so anxious and stressed.

Lauren: And then under the arm about the center of the bra strap on the side of the body, all of this anxiety and stress.

Lauren: And then the back of the hand between the pinky and the ring finger, I'm feeling all this anxiety and stress.

Laurin: I'm feeling all this anxiety and stress.

Lauren: And then pause right there and take a nice deep breath in and let it go. And so typically when we start, I forgot to say it in the beginning, we, we would gauge it on a scale of 0 to 10 with how anxious and stressed you're feeling. And then as we continue to move through the practice, we continue to check in.

And so as the practitioner, it's my job to ask you. Questions as we go through the go through the process, and so sometimes it's pretty global a topic as anxiety and stress. Right? And the idea is we can tap we can tap on just feeling anxious and stress. Some people might not even know why they're feeling anxious and stress there.

And then we could do around on, even though I feel this tightness in my neck and my shoulders, I love and accept myself. And so you that setup statement is acknowledging whatever the issue is. And then with something positive at the end and you just continue to go through that. You continue to focus on whatever the next thought or feeling is in the body.

And, and, and one thing will reveal the next and will reveal the next. And so you never know necessarily where it's going to go. And I think that's one of the things that I love about it. And Yeah, that's that's the beginning of it.

Laurin: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's a great, just a little demo for it because it really is just you're tapping in certain places on, on your body. I had not, I didn't know about the one on the back of the hand.

Laurin: Oh yeah.

Lauren: like tapping is, you know. It's just not comfortable. So you can always just apply light pressure, or you can gently massage the points too.

So, you know, that's always an option too, just applying like light pressure or like gently, gently massaging. So listening to your body, sometimes there's certain points. That people don't like, you know, I'm working with a woman right now who the, the side of the, the body point, it, it makes her uncomfortable every time.

You can skip over points. You don't, you know, don't do anything that really makes you uncomfortable or causes pain or anything like that. So listen to your body. There's no wrong way of doing this at all.

Laurin: So is there a reason that you do the specific sequence of tapping that, that is involved?

Right? Another common one is the, is the collarbone points. And so maybe it's just bringing one hand to your, your chest and you know, it's

Laurin: I do that a lot actually.

Lauren: That's a common one for a lot of people and, you know, our bodies are just so wise. So a lot of the time we do things that we don't even realize we're doing or helping us.

So if you squeeze at the nail bed on any finger on the sides of the finger, so just, I take my index finger and my thumb and just squeeze at the base of the nail on any, any finger, and it just looks like you're fidgeting, right? So you could be At a board meeting, have your hands under the table and just taking some deep breaths and squeezing these points now and remembering that every time we're doing it, it's sending that message to the amygdala saying, hey, you don't need to be firing right now.

You don't need to be sending all that cortisol and slowly. It reduces the cortisol. So even just squeezing the points. Taking some deep breaths is going to help to calm you in the moment. And then, you know, obviously if something is happening, that is that, that that's bothering you, it's something that you're going to want to put words to later on and really get rid of, but it can be very helpful, you know, if you're in a doctor's office and you know, the doctor's trying to talk to you.

Laurin: That's fascinating. All right. Okay. I think you've answered all my questions. So tell the listeners and the viewers where they can find you if they would like to, to learn more or work with you.

Lauren: Yeah. So my website is mind shift with Lauren. com. And I do have a free masterclass, which you can access. And that talks more about the science guide you through a whole practice. And you can access that by going to mind shift with Lauren. com forward slash masterclass. And then I am on Instagram and social media.

You can on Instagram, my handle is Lauren Nicole. But you can, if you just type in mind shift with Lauren, I'll pop up there as well.

Lauren: Yeah, I offer a free monthly tapping group. I, I market it towards entrepreneurs. However, it's really open to anyone. So if you're dealing with stress and your anxiety, just in your life in general, and you want to tap in real time and connect with other people that are, you know, dealing with things in life.

It's a free class that I offer the first Thursday of every month at 11 a. m. Eastern and we meet on zoom. And I, I often find that there's a lot of synchronicities with the people that show up for that class and whatever it is that they're they're facing or dealing with in their life. Other people in that in that space have either gone through it in the past or dealing with it right now.

And it's a, it's a beautiful community that we've kind of cultivated over that.

Lauren: Yeah.

Laurin: I love it. Okay. Well, I want to thank you for being here and sharing your expertise with us today. Cause this is something that I know when I first heard about it, I was like, what the heck? What are they talking about? Hitting themselves on the outside. And I pooh poohed it for a long time, but then slowly it sort of kept, like you said, it kept coming back to me and I was finally went, okay, let me look into this a little deeper.

Lauren: Yeah, awesome. No, you're not alone. I mean, I thought it was weird when I was first introduced to it too. So,

Laurin: Yeah, I will say that connecting, I didn't know that the points you're tapping are the ends of the meridians. And so that one point for me started to make it make a lot more sense about how it works to me. So at that, cause, cause I've had acupuncture. All right, friends, I'm glad that you have joined us today.

So if you can bring this kind of practice in, it's going to, it's going to improve your life in many ways. And it's a very practical thing. You can squeeze your fingertips in a meeting, which is a perfect example of practical spirituality. I need a little energetic help here. All right, I will see you next time on Curiously Wise, and in the meantime, I invite you to stay curious.

Have a great day.

Head over to my website at HeartlightJoy.com. Until next time. I'm Laurin. Wittig stay curious.