◼ Emotional Freedom Technique (commonly called Tapping). Described as emotional acupuncture, tapping involves speaking about emotions, events, and beliefs while physically tapping on acupressure points on the head and torso. It has been shown to dramatically reduce symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, and depression. EFT helps us rewire our stress response to triggers so that we can live in greater joy and contentment.

◼ Biofield Tuning. Did you know that we have an electromagnetic field that extends 5-6 feet around our bodies? This sound healing modality uses tuning forks in the biofield around our body in order to resolve areas of dissonance within the field and bring greater coherence and flow to ourselves. Past experiences, emotions, and thought patterns that exist in our biofields as “noise” can be brought back into coherence with the body. Essentially, the vibration of the tuning forks helps our bodies tune themselves into a more harmonious state that promotes healing and wellbeing. Just as a piano tuner brings each string into the best frequency to harmonize with others, so this method brings our biofield into a more harmonious frequency that helps us release physical and emotional stresses.

◼ Eden Energy Medicine. This expansive methodology encompasses nine energy systems in our bodies, including our meridians (what acupuncturists use), our chakras (energy centers along the spine), our lymphatic system (key to immunity and removing toxins), our electrical systems (important for neurological health), and more. Through simple exercises and daily practices, we can balance our energy systems to help our organs, hormones, and emotions work together in greater harmony. I integrate Eden Energy exercises into my sessions to address specific needs identified by clients.

◼ Transformational Coaching. Through compassionate questioning and intuitive dialogue, we collaborate to articulate your goals, assess your challenges, and create strategies for success. This conversation is about listening to your highest self and fulfilling your life’s purpose.

◼ Personal Fitness Training. A holistic wellness plan includes attention to the way we move our bodies on a daily basis. As you’re progressing toward your physical and emotional goals, I can work with you to design some basic movement routines that will promote strength, balance, and resilience.

◼ Coaching is a collaborative, creative partnership in which the coach provides a framework for the client to meet their own goals. Coaches do not diagnose or treat any form of illness. Instead, coaches collaborate with the client to set goals and to create a pathway to meet those goals. In the form of coaching that I practice, I am focusing on holistic, embodied wellness that incorporates emotional, physical, and mental energies for a transformational experience that goes beyond behavior or leadership style. Sometimes I will use the term “functional health” or “functional medicine” to describe strategies that look at the root causes of health and wellness rather than focusing on symptoms. Our physical, emotional, and mental selves are intertwined, and all of them are part of our overall energy body. A disturbance or lack of harmony in any area can lead to symptoms or distress in another area. Through these forms of coaching, we’re going under the surface to see what beliefs or energetic blockages may be causing emotional or physical challenges.

◼ I have always been the consummate learner, someone who seeks greater meaning and understanding in everything I do. From an early age, I have always loved teaching, even attending a special high school program for future teachers in my home state. In college, I was drawn to study literature because reading and discussing literature helps us understand what it means to be human and how to search for meaning in the most difficult circumstances. I completed my Ph.D. in literature in order to teach at the college level and share this journey with others. In fact, my dissertation focused on women’s trauma and the way that women characters in certain plays resisted the norms of their culture, and how that resistance manifested in their bodies. Without knowing it, I was laying the groundwork for my journey ahead.

◼ My path in higher education led me quickly into leadership positions, largely working with graduate students and programs (master’s and doctoral levels). By gaining familiarity with many disciplines outside of my home field, I learned about all the ways that research helps us create new knowledge and extend human capacity.

◼ After twenty years in a university setting, I felt called to broaden my reach into a different area. I became fascinated with functional medicine and ways that we can support the body’s health and self-healing. I felt compelled to help people in a different way, but I didn’t know how until I was first introduced to energy work through Eden Energy Medicine and Emotional Freedom Technique. As soon as I learned about these modalities that harmonized the body’s own energies for emotional and physical transformation, I knew with certainty what my next steps were, and I immediately enrolled in certification programs to become a practitioner.

◼ Although this work appears to be a significant departure from my career in higher education, I see it as complementary. Over the last twenty years, I have been teaching and coaching students and faculty in graduate programs to extend knowledge and stretch what we know about the world. I have been a coach, mentor, and friend to many colleagues while working on large, interdisciplinary projects that spanned the university. Now, I embrace new tools and methods to support leaders in fulfilling their own life mission. By helping people to reveal their own innate power, I aim to accelerate change in the world.

◼ One way of reprogramming the stress response is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), commonly called “tapping.” EFT combines a physical action of tapping on specific body points while recalling the stressful event, emotion, or bodily sensation and reframing that event through self-acceptance. EFT is often referred to as emotional acupuncture because the tapping points on the body are on energy pathways called meridians, the same pathways that acupuncturists use when they are placing needles on clients. With EFT, luckily, no needles are involved! Lightly tapping on specific points on the face and torso while recalling the negative event signals the nervous system that it’s ok to relax.

◼ That technique may sound counterintuitive. After all, we’re often told to think positively and keep a stiff upper lip. EFT works precisely because it does the opposite; the technique gives us the opportunity to articulate exactly what we’re stressed about while the physical tapping deprograms the fight/flight/freeze response at the same time. Then we reframe the event and our emotion by voicing self-acceptance rather than self-judgment.

◼ If this approach still seems odd, the research behind it demonstrates its effectiveness. One area in which this technique has proven effective is in treating the symptoms of PTSD. Many people suffer from PTSD, both from experiences of war and life events that were too difficult for us to process at the time. Doctors working with veterans found that traditional talk therapy was not enough to help with the effects of PTSD. Simply talking about traumatic events would trigger the client and escalate the symptoms rather than relieving them. From that experience, several psychologists started experimenting with physical techniques involving specific breathing patterns, eye movements, and tapping on the body. If you are familiar with EMDR—eye movement desensitization and reprocessing—a technique that relies on specific eye movements while recalling a traumatic event, then you are already familiar with the underlying mechanism of EFT. Like the eye movements in EMDR, the tapping in EFT releases the stress program associated with that event and replaces it with positive appreciation of oneself. The results are amazingly good, ranging from reduction in PTSD symptoms to changes in gene expression related to stress. Another similar study of healthcare workers suffering from anxiety and depression also reported a 45% decrease in their symptoms after two hours of EFT.

Energy medicine is an approach that involves balancing and restoring your body’s natural energies for the purposes of increasing your vitality, strengthening your mental capacities, and optimizing your health. The form I use draws from Donna Eden and her book Energy Medicine.

Roots. The techniques you will be experiencing and learning trace back to ancient healing and spiritual traditions such as yoga, tai chi, and acupuncture. The variety I use and teach is thoroughly modern and does not require adherence to any particular set of beliefs or practices. The core concept is that your personal well-being and effectiveness are directly related to the state of your body’s energies.

Your Body’s Energies. Einstein’s famous formula, E = mc2, changed the course of physics and of history by showing that matter is a form of energy. Our bodies are comprised of molecules that are in constant motion and that are continually being influenced by outside forces. The medical profession measures electromagnetic fields with devices such as EKGs, EEGs, and MRIs. The vital role these energies play in our everyday health and well-being is well established. Scientists from a range of disciplines are now introducing concepts such as “force fields” and “subtle energies” to explain a range of empirical observations. Subtle energies are called “subtle” because they are not easily detectable and scientists have not been able to develop instruments to measure them reliably. Nonetheless, people throughout history and across cultures have described seeing or feeling subtle energies.

Enhancing Your Body’s Energies. You may have heard about subtle energy through terms such as the “life force,” “chi,” “meridians,” “chakras,” “biofields,” or “auras.” In many healing traditions, the “life force,” the animating power whose presence defines life and whose absence defines death, is understood as a form of subtle energy. Eastern cultures, in particular, have studied such energies for millennia and have successfully applied their understanding for enhancing both physical and emotional health. Systems designed to influence the body’s subtle energies include yoga, Reiki, acupuncture, acupressure, tai chi, therapeutic touch, and energy medicine, to name just a few. Many hospitals in the United States now include such methods to help with the healing of a variety of conditions.

Energy Medicine Techniques. The techniques I will be using and teaching you are based on the premise that by promoting balance and flow in the body’s electromagnetic and subtle energies, health and well-being are enhanced. The techniques may involve the use of certain postures or movements or touching, holding, pressing on, tracing, or circling over specified areas of the skin. They move, balance, enhance, and restore the body’s energies. I may also employ a procedure called “energy testing” where I apply light pressure to your outstretched arm, sometimes while you or I place a hand on another area of your body. I may also teach you how to test yourself with these procedures. This is a way of assessing how your energies are flowing through specific areas of your body and may help us identify the techniques that will be most beneficial for you. The methods we will be using lend themselves to highly individualized applications in the session as well as to self-care at home.

Although energy medicine uses the term “medicine,” it does not imply that energy medicine practitioners are practicing medicine in the same way as doctors, nurses, or other medical professionals. Energy medicine is a term used by many training programs that teach people how to assess and correct for energy imbalances in the body, including those techniques used in Biofield Tuning, Eden Energy Medicine, and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).

Energy medicine is not a substitute for the diagnosis and/or treatment of medical or mental health conditions by a licensed health-care professional. If you have a disorder that has been diagnosed by a licensed medical or mental health professional or a condition that should be evaluated by a licensed health professional, my services should be used only in conjunction with your obtaining that care.

I do not diagnose or treat medical or mental health disorders, nor am I trained or licensed to do so. Energy medicine, sound healing, EFT, and similar techniques attempt to optimize the body’s overall health and vitality, but they are not to be used instead of appropriate care from a licensed professional.

Besides the fact that these techniques do not diagnose or treat illness, another difference between my services and typical visits to a medical doctor is that effective energy work requires your active involvement between sessions. Our sessions will establish energy patterns that optimize body, mind, and spirit. Reinforcing these new patterns through the practice of energy exercises at home will reinforce, maintain, and extend the benefits you receive in the sessions.

The coaching techniques that I practice help to bring disturbed energies back to a state of balance and harmony. These corrections will generally consist of various forms of light or deeper touch and of movement of my hands within your body’s energy field.

If we are working together in person and you are uncomfortable with being touched or with any of the procedures being used, please tell me immediately and I will instantly stop.

While the methods I use and teach are gentle and considered noninvasive, it is possible that physical or emotional aftereffects may occur after your energies have been stimulated and adjusted. In some instances, deeper pressure is used to move energies that may be blocked or congested in a particular area of the body, and this may cause some pain or discomfort. Dizziness, nausea, and anxiety are relatively unusual but not unheard of side effects to energy work. If any procedure is disquieting or leads to discomfort, please tell me at once. I will instantly stop if you request me to do so and can often provide a technique to counter the discomfort.