EFT and Language Barriers

I spent two weeks of December traveling in Europe and visiting relatives. One fun evening, my German cousin asked me to show her my new "coaching technique" called EFT.

After a brief demonstration of the EFT tapping points, a trio of Mother, daughter and cousin started tapping on stress related issues.

As we were going through the EFT Basic Recipe sequence, I noticed my Mother's stress level on the issue at hand was dramatically decreasing with each round. However, my German speaking cousin still felt her concerns without any relief.

At first I thought -- "Ah geez, I'm way off base with her! Maybe I'm not saying the right tapping phrases." But then I noticed something else. Although an excellent English language speaker, I caught her look of confusion as we were tapping. It seemed the meanings of the phrases I was suggesting for each tapping point, weren't really sinking in and making sense to her.

And then it hit me. She was too busy translating the English into German for the verbal phrases to work for her.

So here's what I learned: If you're going to do EFT in English with someone, both parties must also THINK in English. My Mother, also a native German speaker, has lived in the USA for the past 26 years and has naturally developed her thinking processes in English, despite it being her second language. Meaning, she thinks to herself and even dreams in English.

Many of the thought processes I was phrasing during the tapping session were common and popular American-English idioms. Which, naturally, didn't make a lot of sense to my cousin who was trying to tranlsate them in her mind into German while tapping.

So if you're going to use EFT with someone, make sure they also THINK in the same language as you. It will be much more effective.

I hope this has been helpful!

Karin

P.S. Want to learn how to do EFT in German? Check out this site: eft-info.com