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Using the Body for Inner Healing: EFT
with Mitch Gainey
Growing up in an evangelical church, Mitch Gainey had some powerful experiences of the divine. However, coming into his identity as a gay man didn’t leave him much room outside of the attempts to “pray the gay away.” Today Mitch will share his story of emerging from the shame he had internalized to the freedom he found on his path to healing.
Much of that healing journey happened in and through his body, ultimately resulting in Mitch becoming a coach and counselor himself. We’ll talk about one of his favorite embodied practices, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, also known as tapping), and how this practice taps into your body’s hardwiring so it can process, integrate, and ultimately heal itself.
To learn more about Mitch’s work, visit www.mitchgainey.com.
Keywords and Tags:
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)
Tapping for Healing
Trauma-Informed Healing
Somatic Therapy
LGBTQ+ Spirituality
Inner Healing and Growth
Personal Transformation
Authenticity and Self-Discovery
Religious Trauma
LGBTQ+ Acceptance
Books:
00;00;07;03 - 00;00;35;27
Kelly Deutsch
Welcome to Spiritual Wanderlust, where we explore our interior life in search of the sacred. Many of us will travel the whole world to find ourselves but here will follow those longings within to our spiritual and emotional landscapes. In each episode, we'll talk with inspiring guests, contemplative teachers, embodiment experts, neuropsychologists and mystics with a blend of ancient wisdom and modern science, along with a healthy dash of mischief.
00;00;36;10 - 00;00;43;14
Kelly Deutsch
Will deep dove into divine intimacy and what it means to behold. I'm your host, Kelly Deutsch.
00;00;54;10 - 00;01;25;02
Kelly Deutsch
Hi, everyone. Kelly Deutsch here and today have joining me, Mitch Gainey. And Mitch is a coach and a counselor who focuses on the transpersonal and the somatic, which for any of you who have focused on embodiment and other things or have started working on your inner work, I think this is going to be a really fun conversation. And Mitch, I'm really excited to have you, too, because I love your back story and I think there's a lot of people who resonate with the path that you've taken.
00;01;25;02 - 00;01;33;16
Kelly Deutsch
And so I'd love if you tell us a little bit about about your story starting from you know, your Pentecostal roots to where you are now.
00;01;33;22 - 00;01;58;26
Mitch Gainey
Yeah, well, thanks for having me, Kelly. Yeah, a little bit about my background. So I actually started off about I think Mom took us to church when I was about three years old and we went to the Anglican Church, very kind of small. The local Anglican or I think it's like the Episcopalian Church similar in the States. Very mainstream, very evangelical.
00;01;59;11 - 00;02;27;22
Mitch Gainey
And I was kind of captivated by this concept of God. And I remember there was a screen that we would have the little projector to put the songs up on. And I was convinced because everyone faced the direction and sang there that God and Jesus in the Holy Spirit obviously lived behind that projection screen. Very disappointed during the tea break when I picked up behind and and it wasn't there, but so I kind of grew up in that particular environment.
00;02;27;23 - 00;02;57;15
Mitch Gainey
But even at a young age, I had this very strong questioning and curiosity of, Well, there's got to be something real. It's got to be something experiential to this. Like, it can't just be concepts and words, like if God is real or this thing that we call God is real. Surely there must be like a felt dimension to it or a, you know, lived experience of it, other than just people coming together and saying, we believe this.
00;02;58;18 - 00;03;24;19
Mitch Gainey
And so then when I was about 13, 14, went to high school, started reading all of these things, the Bible about miracles, titles and prophecy. I was like, What's this stuff? I want this stuff. And so annoyed all of my teachers about Christian school that I went to asking them questions. And then I think I stumbled across Benny Hinn on morning television.
00;03;24;21 - 00;03;55;20
Mitch Gainey
I was like, Whoa, what is this? How somehow convinced my mum to go and buy me one of these books and then found out that there was a charismatic Pentecostal church down the road from where we just moved. And I'd heard about the Charismatics and Pentecostals, but had been told by the church that I grew up and that they were bad and they were wrong, and they had bad theology and they worshiped the Holy Spirit and all types of things.
00;03;55;20 - 00;04;33;06
Mitch Gainey
And I just kind of was like, Okay, cool about But Curiosity got the better of me, and I went along to this Pentecostal church, which had like a history of revival and all of that stuff, and was just absolutely captivated by it. Like that kind of static worship. And, you know, I went to the youth group and they've got like the dark room of the light and the very emotional music and I felt thing was I felt a weight Satanists in the room.
00;04;33;06 - 00;04;56;15
Mitch Gainey
I felt something stirring in my heart and I watched people cry when they got prayed for and and then I had this experience where they laid hands on me and out of my tongue, out of my mouth, poured forth tongue. I was like, what the heck is this?
00;04;58;29 - 00;05;26;13
Mitch Gainey
And yeah, just went through the stage at about 13, 14, I think where I was just captivated by this sense of what I called the presence of God at the time. There was a sense of closeness and intimacy with this love. And even as a young guy, I would kind of be in Mark's class and I hate Mexico's never good at math.
00;05;26;13 - 00;06;05;19
Mitch Gainey
So it was probably just disassociated that, yeah, I would just kind of be absorbed in this contemplative kind of state of just being in my heart and sensing this presence. And I would walk and talk with God and that was a big formative part of my life. And, and pretty important for a kid that already felt a little bit on the outside I was already kind of having the inklings that there was something not quite right about how I was formed or or something along those lines.
00;06;07;07 - 00;06;53;12
Mitch Gainey
But I kind of really threw myself into it, into church and got more and more involved. And then it became very much part of my identity and probably some of the more unhealthy sides of that kind of movement crept in just the kind of day, the guilt and the shame the legalism about is right, wrong. And you know, as a 14 year old, I should be spending 4 hours praying each night and not watching television because the television was bad and and alongside that journey of this deep longing for God has expressed in that particular tradition was this growing sense of, Oh, crap, I think I'm gay crap.
00;06;53;29 - 00;07;21;00
Mitch Gainey
And so they were really good, healthy mix. Kelly that did really well for my mental health for many, many years of kind of trying to push that down and suppress that. And you you know, the nights crying and begging God to take it away from me Yeah. And it kind of reached a peak in my very early twenties.
00;07;21;00 - 00;07;50;26
Mitch Gainey
I'd gone and worked for a church in the UK for about a year, which is, again, a very powerful time of my life. Where I experienced things that I'm still kind of unpacking good, powerful healing things and this growing disconnect between, oh, there's a there's a part of me not welcome here or there's a part of me that's bad and I can't seem to get rid of it.
00;07;51;13 - 00;08;22;02
Mitch Gainey
And God doesn't seem to be healing me from it. So I must be doing something wrong though, which really turned into something wrong with me, which all reached big pop in. I was at one of the festivals. Middle of worship is like 10,000 people around me in this big tent. We're all praying and worshiping and I was like, God, I just want to deal with whatever this block is.
00;08;22;22 - 00;08;54;08
Mitch Gainey
And I had to devise horrendous horrific panic attack of my life who and not knowing what a panic attack was and being a very good charismatic, I obviously assumed, Oh, I'm manifesting a demon oh no. Oh. So I got taken outside and very gently prayed for and a very lovely woman just was like three try breathing and managed to calm me down.
00;08;55;27 - 00;09;12;24
Mitch Gainey
And it was probably a moment where I felt after I'd kind of calmed down and discharged all of that stress from my body. I again just had this moment where I kind of sunk into some quietness that I hadn't been able to reach for a while.
00;09;15;21 - 00;09;38;26
Mitch Gainey
And I sensed this voice, this relationship, whatever we want to label that we basically said, Do you trust me to deal with this? You do you trust me to start unpacking this? And of course, at the time I went, oh, that means I've got to start confronting this so that God can heal me.
00;09;41;06 - 00;10;15;01
Mitch Gainey
And so I started doing some counseling with a church member who promised me that God was going to heal me very quickly. And then found out a few months later that he had a a reputation had been caught again for convincing young men around my age to have naked counseling sessions. I missed out on that one. Thankfully, and so a lot of anger and rage came up and around that.
00;10;15;01 - 00;11;09;06
Mitch Gainey
And I decided to tell the pastor of the church that I was going to back in Australia, which again started this process of kind of Christian prayer counseling, not as extreme as some of the exodus stuff, but still a process to try and pray the gay way out of me my mental health just plummeted. I was very unwell and unhealthy for many years and all through that time, though, I kept whenever I would manage to find a place of quiet and calm within me and I would sense back into that place that something within me that I might call God or I just was always met with grace and I was always met with and was
00;11;09;06 - 00;11;19;05
Mitch Gainey
always met with this I don't care. Like, I don't care how like, do you love yourself? Can you love yourself? Can you accept yourself?
00;11;22;01 - 00;11;31;16
Mitch Gainey
And so that started this process of going, well, I'm feeling and sensing this. And honestly, it's the only thing that's making me want to stay alive. Right now.
00;11;33;21 - 00;12;19;17
Mitch Gainey
And my interactions with the established evangelical church that I was a part of was having much the opposite impact to me where I was going. I don't know how I can keep this going. I don't know how long I can carry this and survive through it. I lost a lot of weight. I was taking big goals during the day just to like not have to think and yeah, really went through this process of going back, like, I'm going to have to if I'm if I am to live, if I am to survive, I am going to have to learn to trust with this.
00;12;20;11 - 00;13;08;22
Mitch Gainey
And that is terrifying. That's scary because what if I get it wrong? I go to hell at the end of it. All, but there's this impulse towards life here. And surely if God is love and then that's the direction I'm going That kind of threw me into studying counseling and therapy, which every good counseling therapist would tell you that we all study studied because we're actually trying to fix ourselves first and understand our own pain and working with young people, experiencing homelessness and people from war and torture backgrounds and starting to learn all about trauma and trauma in the body.
00;13;08;22 - 00;13;37;00
Mitch Gainey
And yeah, I kind of just have been on this journey for the last ten years or so of studying more about how our experiences shape us and gets lodged in our body and our brain and how they can practice and, and how our religious upbringings or our spiritual experiences can be traumatizing and then going, Okay, well, how do we how do we heal that?
00;13;37;00 - 00;14;08;26
Mitch Gainey
How do we renegotiate that? And what does it look like to not just approach life, but imagine spirituality from the head, but actually meeting all of those painful contracts to places in us seeing what happens when we meet them with compassion and they kind of heal or metabolize or whatever language you want to use there. And then what what's left afterwards, what what's present there?
00;14;08;26 - 00;14;35;00
Mitch Gainey
And what I tend to find more and more is more than I made my fears. The more that I do my work. And I, I look at some of those painful things in my life and, and heal or meet them at that quiet still places what's underneath and being of an axis that more and more so that's something that I'm really curious about in life is that was good.
00;14;35;00 - 00;14;54;29
Mitch Gainey
And what I grew up with and it taught me some powerful things. So what does it look like to take the stress and the pain, the unhelpful stories away from that so that I can continue to live in that forward? Living forward, leading impulse towards life. And what do you like to create spaces like that for others?
00;14;56;07 - 00;15;21;26
Kelly Deutsch
I think what really strikes me about that really beautiful and vulnerable story is how much pain and difficulty there is yet how much peace and presence you're able to offer today. You know, in that just every time you you turn inward and you're like, yes, in that quiet still place, it's like, I feel like I'm brought into that with you.
00;15;22;14 - 00;15;43;10
Kelly Deutsch
And I'm curious how that transition happened, you know, and I know we're talking a lot about healing trauma and the like, working with a pain that's lodged in your body. And yeah. What did that process look like for you? Because obviously that that doesn't happen for any of us overnight. You know, where we go from, just.
00;15;43;11 - 00;15;45;11
Mitch Gainey
Someone just prayed for me, Kelly, and.
00;15;46;18 - 00;15;47;21
Kelly Deutsch
It was a miracle.
00;15;48;15 - 00;15;49;14
Mitch Gainey
It was a miracle.
00;15;52;01 - 00;15;53;18
Mitch Gainey
Yeah. What a great question.
00;15;56;08 - 00;16;12;17
Mitch Gainey
It you know what? It's it's it's kind of the opposite of I think, saying it death by a thousand tiny cuts. It was kind of like healing by a thousand tiny little touches or Band-Aids or whatever it was.
00;16;14;25 - 00;16;26;18
Mitch Gainey
As much as there was this and I'm very honest about this as much as there was this part of me that was like, I want to die. Like, I'm so weighed down my mind was so messed up.
00;16;28;27 - 00;16;33;02
Mitch Gainey
I feel horrible in my body. That was electricity in my body all of the time.
00;16;36;02 - 00;16;51;22
Mitch Gainey
There was just this little glimmer that was like, there's got to be something more than that. So I kept leaning into that and I was honestly just willing to do whatever it took to feel better and to be better.
00;16;54;04 - 00;17;12;01
Mitch Gainey
And I think a part of my a part of my early healing was probably trying things that I'd always been interested in. You know, I was told was bad that I wasn't allowed to do. So I remember I went to my first Reiki session and I was like, I'm going to go to help get a go to help me.
00;17;12;01 - 00;17;37;07
Mitch Gainey
Jesus, I'm so sorry. Protect me, but do this. And as this lovely woman just held space to me, she didn't say much. She kind of put on some, like, chilled music, put a hands on my shoulders, and I just felt this calm or showed me. And I was like, Oh, this kind of feels like when someone I trusted you to pray for me and kind of feel the stillness unsettledness.
00;17;37;07 - 00;18;04;10
Mitch Gainey
So maybe it's not bad. And so I think that was the big issue for me was I followed my curiosity around what's what's actually happening. Like, what do I experience when I do this thing? Does it feel good or bad to me rather than what I've been told And the other thing was being really curious about all the others.
00;18;05;02 - 00;18;18;18
Mitch Gainey
What's your experience of life and how do you experience this and how do you make sense of this and how there's a different perspective on your a really good, kind, healthy person that you don't believe this? Oh, that's interesting.
00;18;20;22 - 00;18;49;03
Mitch Gainey
And then the other thing was just lots and lots of therapy. Yeah. And then I am a big advocate. What? I am a therapist. But I just think what a gift to give yourself to say I'm going to pay someone or find someone for free of this free counseling in your area. Who isn't like deeply invested in my life and who can just literally sit there and listen to me process, ask really good questions like you were doing.
00;18;49;03 - 00;19;17;26
Mitch Gainey
Now, Kelly, and and help me make sense of things. And then that kind of went in this semantic direction for me. So working more directly with the body and those there's a few reasons for that was I'm a fairly heady person and fairly intellectual, and I became that way in order to kind of protect myself from the chaos inside my body and my world falling and falling apart in front of me.
00;19;19;03 - 00;19;42;11
Mitch Gainey
And so I could talk myself out of feeling anything or not really having to address things. I could rationalize it. And so having someone very gently lead me to. And what do you feel is this talk about this particular pain? Like I really am, but also I was lost I was going through all of this. I was working with young people experiencing homelessness.
00;19;43;28 - 00;20;10;29
Mitch Gainey
And again, like I just would always sense this deep well of compassion when I would meet some fairly challenging young people and again, there was curiosity there of which is talking about your story doesn't seem to be helping you. So there's got to be another it's got to be something that actually brings change and healing and shifting. So, so what is that?
00;20;11;24 - 00;20;45;14
Mitch Gainey
I'm sorry again. And following that curiosity, I kind of found somatic work and emotional freedom techniques and focusing and then started having these moments where emotions would come up and I would be able to hold them sometimes well, sometimes not so well and then again afterwards, they would be this, oh, to feel safe in my body. Oh, I can, I can come here and then life without them and my stuff would get triggered again and I'd be back up in my head and freeze it and out of my body.
00;20;45;14 - 00;21;09;29
Mitch Gainey
And I would go through the process again. And even last night I was I was sitting down kind of my little meditation prayer spot, tapping away, going at what fear is here right now, like, what am I scared of? Like, what judgments have I got? Or Where am I feeling that in my body? The tears are coming. Then again, at the end of it, that was just that I'm okay.
00;21;10;21 - 00;21;24;29
Mitch Gainey
I don't understand anything that's going on in the in the world, but I like that. So, yeah, I think that's that's really been it. I was dogged in my pursuit of healing wholeness because I believed it was possible.
00;21;25;13 - 00;21;46;11
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. And I, I feel like that's such a common experience for those of us who are on a path of inner healing. Or inner work or, you know, spiritual growth and maturity is especially when we start to become aware of those various traumas and things like that, that I mean, let us know in the comments below if your experience has been different.
00;21;46;11 - 00;22;17;25
Kelly Deutsch
But I found that the vast majority of people found that for trauma talk therapy is just not effective. You know, you can talk about it a lot, and sometimes that can kind of loosen up some areas. But I've never found that that really resolves things. And so being able to find something that is more somatic since all of our, you know, modern research in the past decade is showing how much it effects our nervous system and just sits lodged in our very muscles in the ways that we carry ourselves and respond to reality.
00;22;18;05 - 00;22;39;20
Kelly Deutsch
So I find that really interesting. And I know that you know, an interest that we share, you know, the neuroscience and the embodied and healing. And I'm curious if you would share with us what what emotional freedom technique looks like, which is also called tapping for those of you who haven't heard of EFT. So like what is that?
00;22;39;20 - 00;22;44;02
Kelly Deutsch
And how does it work and why should we be interested in it?
00;22;44;20 - 00;23;19;19
Mitch Gainey
Yeah, safety or emotional freedom techniques or tapping. It's been around it's been around for a while now, and it's based off traditional Chinese medicine, acupressure points, which is kind of how it was discovered where essentially a lady's name was. Roger Callahan was the kind of founder, Discoverer had a client who had a water phobia. So I think she'd had an experience when she was younger where she almost drowned or something like that.
00;23;20;05 - 00;23;51;03
Mitch Gainey
This intense fear of water and she'd been seeing rejection for months and months and talk therapy and and nothing was really shifting. And Roger actually had a pool right near his office. So she was constantly being treated and he'd started studying acupressure and acupuncture. And there was a particular point on the face, I think it was here that was associated with fear.
00;23;52;00 - 00;24;11;28
Mitch Gainey
And so he was like one of those therapists my wants me to like I'm really into my right. Let's try, let's just try this. And he said, hey, look, just while are you talking to me about this, I'm just going to get you to tap on this point here. And so she was talking about the water phobia, just tapping on this particular acupressure point.
00;24;13;02 - 00;24;35;26
Mitch Gainey
And the story goes that she kind of had this big yawn she cried a little bit as a little shiver, and then she just went, I don't think I'm scared of water anymore. He was like, Okay, that's nice. Like of course, until she literally got up, ran out of his office and dived into his pool fully clothed and started swimming around being like, I'm not afraid of it.
00;24;35;26 - 00;25;03;00
Mitch Gainey
I'm not afraid of it. And Roger went, Huh? Must be something in this. And so he developed a thing called thought field therapy. Which was is beautiful. It's it's recognized in the States on, I think, your version of Medicare or whatever you guys call it over that and then a engineer came along, Gary Craig, who was like, well, this is all very complicated.
00;25;03;00 - 00;25;28;29
Mitch Gainey
We can put this in a very succinct system and so he kind of took thoughtful therapy, developed into emotional framing techniques. But what we think. So I work a lot with Dr. Peter Stapleton who is one of the world's leading researchers in this area. Her area of specialty was working with people with eating disorders. I began this curiosity of around just talking about it and shifting.
00;25;28;29 - 00;26;04;04
Mitch Gainey
There's got to be something more here. But what we think happens is when you think of a particular situation or you're triggered by something so with this woman water. So whenever she saw the waterfall of water, the amygdala would fire off that fight or flight center in our brain, floods the body with the stress hormones. Your rational thinking social brain starts to shut down the part of your brain that processes language, starts to shut down, which is why talk therapy isn't always helpful.
00;26;04;21 - 00;26;37;17
Mitch Gainey
Hippocampus records the memories in really strange ways. And basically you're in this, you're in a stress response and you're going to react out of that space. And somehow they found that if you could very gently expose someone to what their particular trigger was. So this woman, it was water for me. It might be you know, maybe I had a conversation with a family member yesterday, and I just finding myself really irked about it.
00;26;38;04 - 00;27;01;22
Mitch Gainey
So as I think about that, I notice the intensity in my body again. Okay. So there's some fear here. We found that as you exposed yourself to that fear and you touched on certain pressure points in the body, which are not in traditional Chinese medicine, the what happens is a signal kind of gets sent back to the amygdala to calm down.
00;27;03;01 - 00;27;30;26
Mitch Gainey
And as you keep doing it and as you met with presence, the as the amygdala calms down the rest of the brain and the nervous system, which is designed to be in safety and wholeness and designed to be able to regulate itself, can complete the process. It can complete the fear or that anger response. And the chemicals is now body.
00;27;30;26 - 00;27;58;23
Mitch Gainey
You get metabolized, the nervous system starts to go back into that more ventral vagal safety, social connection response, go back into that kind of hot grab that space. And then what's really fascinating with tapping in particular is as the kind of practitioner you try very hard not to offer refrains. So I don't know if you've ever had the more traditional therapy where it's like, oh, you know, have you thought of looking at it like this?
00;27;59;16 - 00;28;21;13
Mitch Gainey
Or essentially I'm trying to like spray deodorant on or on your thinking and be like, Look, it actually smells really good. We found that something really interesting, the tapping is that as the stress response comes down and sometimes people get a bit teary, people yawn, get a little bit of shiver, people laugh a lot, they'll kind of stop themselves and go, Do you know what?
00;28;21;13 - 00;28;41;29
Mitch Gainey
It's actually really funny what I think about it now. And actually what I remember was there was this resource there and I'd completely forgotten about it. And so the brain naturally begins to reorganize and and reframe it and it sticks because it's coming from the past rather than me. Trying to if you just thought differently about it, wouldn't be stress.
00;28;42;12 - 00;28;43;06
Kelly Deutsch
No.
00;28;44;16 - 00;29;24;22
Mitch Gainey
So there's been a lot, there's loads and loads of research. Again, Dr. Peter has a lot up there around the cortisol drops in the body and they're release together. And all of these oxytocin, as people tap it's used quite extensively for PTSD. So particularly in the States, there's a lot of organizations that use it for returning war. Veterans who have got PTSD that pay to use as a lot in the area of food cravings, eating disorders, weight loss because again, most about creature comforts around food of emotional eating.
00;29;24;22 - 00;29;53;26
Mitch Gainey
So again, when you deal with the underlying emotional thing, often the craving or the relationship to the food changes, it's used in peak performance for athletes. So more and more you're starting to see pro athletes on on field kind of tapping on the side of their head or kind of doing this just before they're getting ready. Because, again, our mind has a big impact on our physiology and and it's it's also I use that a lot in the area of working with James.
00;29;55;04 - 00;30;21;23
Mitch Gainey
I do a lot of trauma clients as well that also personally and for some of my clients as well, it's it's looking at, okay, what's that belief about that thing we call God or, you know, what is it that you feel? So being let into that that maybe some of your historical church upbringing is bringing up a lot of fear about and what happens if we just meet that fear and do some tapping?
00;30;21;23 - 00;30;51;23
Mitch Gainey
Let's just say let's just be curious. And, and the other thing I would say about it is to me it's that as the tapping kind of downregulates my nervous system and as a kind of calms that amygdala responds, a lot of it is I'm actually able just to stay present and I'm able to stay in compassionate awareness of this something that's happening in my body.
00;30;52;08 - 00;31;22;20
Mitch Gainey
And as I made it with that compassionate loving presence it changes, it shifts, it might not fully go away or it might or it shifts into something completely different. And so I think as a ongoing practice, emotional freedom techniques is the ability to stay more and more in presence and to have more capacity to meet all of those guests that visit us each day.
00;31;22;25 - 00;31;47;23
Mitch Gainey
Sometimes not the most pleasant guests and and cultivating that that love and acceptance, which is one of the kind of premises of most EFT sessions, is even though I've experienced this, I love and accept myself anyway. It's kind of up acceptance, moving into that loving, grounded space.
00;31;49;14 - 00;32;15;24
Kelly Deutsch
I love how much this feels like a bio hack, you know, like, yeah, it's so much of this. It's so much of trauma and the emotional reactions that we have from day to day when we perceive, you know, threat or danger on a very subconscious level. But our whole nervous system is like, okay, it's time to freak out now or get anxious or depressed or to zone out or whatever.
00;32;16;05 - 00;32;44;28
Kelly Deutsch
You know, whether we're going into sympathetic or dorsal vagal shut down, our body is like, Okay, I'm out. This is but I love that there is something that we can do in our bodies to respond to that and to down regulate, like to get back to that place of presence at heart space where we can have that compassion and acceptance because sometimes that feels like the most impossible thing if you are, you know, severely triggered your panicking.
00;32;45;26 - 00;32;59;21
Kelly Deutsch
The thought of like just accepting the panic just feels so big and out of reach. So I love that there's a physical way to be able to tap through that yet.
00;32;59;21 - 00;33;43;17
Mitch Gainey
And honestly, I am doing it all of the time. And how I actually found a shift was, was predominantly when I was looking for what's a tool that I can teach young people experiencing homelessness who don't go up to their appointments all of the time and you don't want to talk about this stuff anymore. And I saw this tapping thing and like, honestly, you've got someone being like, even though I feel this, this, this is you like you look and saying and I was like, and there's a lot of there's a lot of things in YouTube that look like EFT but aren't quite evidence based clinical EFT and they're not quite research based.
00;33;44;09 - 00;34;05;07
Mitch Gainey
So I was like, I'm not interested. This is all just hippie stuff. And I had a friend of mine who is this amazing Russian woman who speaks like seven languages and was a consultant for one of the big firms in the world, and she's like, Oh, I've changed my life. I was like, what you like the most? No nonsense person I've ever met in my life.
00;34;05;07 - 00;34;46;22
Mitch Gainey
I'm a little bit scared of you. And she's like, Oh yeah, completely changed my fear of flying. I do it when I've got a big project and I'm just like, I'm never gonna get this project done. So I started to research it, and it was one of those probably back in the day, and it was one of those ordained moments where I found this documentary of an amazing woman called Dr. Laurie Leighton, who is based over in the States Shut Out Dr. Laurie who went over to Rwanda to work with survivors of the Rwanda genocide, because funnily enough, there was a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder going on there and she was kind of this one
00;34;46;22 - 00;35;19;01
Mitch Gainey
woman. She had a small team in this rural part of Rwanda, and they're like, so like help us do something like crap. And so she actually worked with local churches in the local schools. She got together a group of young people, kind of youth ambassadors, and some of the church leaders. And she taught them just this very simple technique and I think the stats say they saw a reduction of 90% of PTSD symptoms within the three months.
00;35;19;01 - 00;35;38;26
Mitch Gainey
I think that she was there so kids weren't waking up screaming in the middle of the night anymore. And these were just like, you know, middle class white people traumas, which are just as valid as well. This is these are the survivors. This is watching mum and dad being beheaded and, and living next door to the person who did it.
00;35;40;18 - 00;36;03;05
Mitch Gainey
And so it was also a big part of their reconciliation process. So if you if you want to build peace, you've got to deal with all of that rage in your body, and that's that survival energy. And then as she was doing that, the Sandy Hook shooting happened in Connecticut. And she was brought over to help coordinate some of the response there.
00;36;04;06 - 00;36;44;29
Mitch Gainey
And again, teaching people this very simple technique you know, she trained health professionals to use it in a more clinical setting. But the gift of effort is that, you know, I might know all of the ins and outs of the particular processes and this question of this type of stuff. But it's also something where we say, you know, hey, it's actually really simple like when you're at home, like or you're triggered to stop tapping or, you know, we give people homework or a piece procedure, which is going to list all of the things in your life which you wish happened differently or didn't happen and give it a little title.
00;36;44;29 - 00;37;10;24
Mitch Gainey
And as you think of that, just notice the intensity in your body. Get a rating out of ten and just do some tapping. Even though I've got this Sunday afternoon memory and it makes me feel sad I love and accept myself anyway, just as a little practice each day, ten, 15 minutes, just tap on one of those memories or one of those triggers and just see what happens and if it's a big one, you know, call someone, get a tapping buddy.
00;37;11;09 - 00;37;42;05
Mitch Gainey
If it's a really big one, maybe call you a therapist and and have a session where someone can hold you and guide you through the intensity of that. So I ended up emailing Laurie got put in contact with Dr. Peter and in Australia who just randomly met me for coffee because she happened to be in Melbourne and then for some, some madness in her mind, she just went, Oh, sure, you can come and do my training for free and kind of just started mentoring me in it.
00;37;42;05 - 00;37;52;06
Mitch Gainey
And then brought me on as a trainer for her evidence based team trainings that she does for health professionals. And yeah, it's been a huge part of my life since then.
00;37;52;25 - 00;38;13;00
Kelly Deutsch
Wow. Yeah, that's beautiful. And I love how easy it is. It's a very simple technique. I mean, I remember I can't remember where I first learned about it. I actually might have been while I was in the convent, like in Rome. I remember one of the sisters, like went to some sort of workshop on it or something and came home and taught us.
00;38;13;07 - 00;38;41;28
Kelly Deutsch
That might have been the first time, but I do remember after leaving the convent I'm going home is a lot of trauma and difficult things were surfacing like when I was at work, just taking my 15 minute break in my car and I'm like, Okay, you know, just try it. At that point, not even knowing sometimes what the triggers were, but just knowing that I felt overwhelm in my body and using that as something to bring me back down so I could get through the rest of my day.
00;38;42;18 - 00;39;10;13
Mitch Gainey
Yeah. And sometimes, you know, that's the best gift you can give someone in the moment is when we might not be resolving like the deep roots of it, right this session, but we can at least take the edge off and we can at least put you back in your body. And yeah, you feel safe here. And then as we build and cultivate that safety, maybe then we can look at the roots or some of the bigger emotional aspects of it back.
00;39;10;22 - 00;39;31;24
Mitch Gainey
Yeah, definitely. Like I've been on planes and had, so I at one point I used to travel a lot for work when the world was still open I know people would freak out as the plane took off, but we get turbulence. That made me is this kind of weird it being like, Prince is going to be really great, but I'm just going to get you to tap on this spot with me right now.
00;39;32;08 - 00;40;04;26
Mitch Gainey
You know everything so you can start. And I sit on planes like I've obviously done enough tapping, but I don't care what people think about me. Anymore, cause I'll sit there on a two hour flight and like, I'm going to do some work on myself. So what am I sensing? What am I? Block's right now about a new plane kind of tapping away and it's good for goal setting so that you're setting a goal for your business or something like, you know, by the end of 20, 21, I'm going to have my website up or I'm going to, you know, have 20 clients.
00;40;05;14 - 00;40;23;21
Mitch Gainey
And then we talking to you about tail lenders which is that little voice that goes, Yeah, but you know, you've never done it before or you say you're always going to do this or no one's going to do this, okay. So let's turn to that voice. Instead of pushing it away, let's turn to it. How strong is that?
00;40;25;04 - 00;40;45;08
Mitch Gainey
Even though I'm going to get this done, and we kind of bring it down, you know? Do you have a memory of, of where you've tried something in the past and it didn't happen either? Reminds me of when I was of course, as you think of that memory, how intense is that in the body? And then again, we just kind of test it because it's a very good well to talk about these things.
00;40;45;22 - 00;40;48;10
Mitch Gainey
But my passion has always been like does it work?
00;40;49;00 - 00;40;49;10
Kelly Deutsch
Yes.
00;40;50;02 - 00;41;08;08
Mitch Gainey
Of course. And now you think about being able to build your business or being able to have that difficult conversation. What do you notice now? It's like actually it's all that scary. Well, you know, I really think I can do it and it's really fascinating. I particularly like using it. What am I like? Just fun ones that I like doing is using it.
00;41;08;10 - 00;41;21;21
Mitch Gainey
People with food cravings fascinate eating all of the emotional baggage around food and how quickly your tastes will change. When you take the emotional overlay of some of how food.
00;41;22;11 - 00;41;38;17
Kelly Deutsch
Mitch, I'm wondering if you could lead me and anybody watching through a brief exercise just so that people have an idea of what this looks like. And do you have any exercises either on your website or someplace that you recommend people go if they want to learn more?
00;41;39;13 - 00;41;52;27
Mitch Gainey
Yeah, I would look up I should probably pimp out my own website a bit more, but I would definitely look up Dr. Peter Stapleton. Okay. Yes, I p t a Stapleton so lady doctor.
00;41;53;24 - 00;41;57;12
Kelly Deutsch
Wonderful with your accent. Thank you. So, Peters. Yeah.
00;41;57;20 - 00;42;27;29
Mitch Gainey
I think Peters. She's got lots of really good research, easy to understand exercises up that way. You can always shoot me an email and I'm genuinely pretty, pretty happy to chat to anyone but there's two exercises that we kind of do is a little bit of a demonstration, one which I won't get you to do right now, Kelly, because you're sitting in, you've got your earphones in, but one we like to do in training, just to give people a little bit of an understanding of it is we invite people to kind of stand up.
00;42;28;20 - 00;42;50;25
Mitch Gainey
We go around and invite them to see how close to the ground they can get their feet. So can you touch your toes now? If you're anything like me, I kind of get about halfway through my shins and my hamstrings just get really tight, my lower back get time. So one could say that that is an example of some stress and tension in the body.
00;42;52;22 - 00;43;27;23
Mitch Gainey
Way would just kind of go, you know, how intense is that stress, that tension in your body? Give it a rating out of ten, ten being like, Oh, it's so intense, so painful. Like I'm never going to have to touch my toes. Zero being like, my palms are flat on the floor. I am a yogi extraordinaire. Generally, some of us somewhere between that and we would just start off with, even though I've got all of this tension in the back of my legs, I can accept that about myself, even though it really hurts when I try and touch my toes.
00;43;27;23 - 00;43;52;00
Mitch Gainey
I've never been able to touch my toes before. I love and accept myself anyway. So we did this three times. Even though there's all this pain and all of this tension, the back of my legs, I could never touch my toes and that makes me feel angry. Or sad. I love and accept myself. Anyway, then we would do the remind to phrase, which is just we're taking what we just then kind of putting it into a few words.
00;43;52;00 - 00;44;21;14
Mitch Gainey
So it would be this pain in the back of my legs. There's tension in the back of my legs. I'm never going to touch my toes. All this pain really frustrating. All of this tension just got all of this tension in my legs really hurts when I try and touch my toes. I don't want to do it I just take a breath and then touch your toes, say, and just notice if there's any difference there.
00;44;22;03 - 00;44;40;16
Mitch Gainey
Now, some people have kind of like one session wonders where all of a sudden they can touch their toes. Most people will get some incremental shifts and change, and we would just say, keep going. If there's another one, we can do particularly with you right now. Kelly, it's your that you're finding is and it's just when we do around breathing.
00;44;42;04 - 00;45;04;19
Mitch Gainey
So if you were to just take in a breath now and just notice kind of how full that breath is or if there's any tension in your own kind of chest so would you say there's some tension in your breathing? You're not able to take a full breath?
00;45;04;23 - 00;45;09;02
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, I feel in my upper diaphragm it feels kind of constricted yeah.
00;45;09;02 - 00;45;18;22
Mitch Gainey
If you would give it that constriction in your upper diaphragm, a rating out of ten, ten being like it's really constricted, zero being it's pretty calm. It's relaxed.
00;45;20;17 - 00;45;24;08
Kelly Deutsch
I give it maybe let's say a five.
00;45;25;00 - 00;45;41;21
Mitch Gainey
A five. Okay, so maybe we could play with this idea of breathing about 50%. So we would just it doesn't matter which side of the hand you start on, but we just started this kind of fleshy point. We start tapping you can repeat after me if you want, Kelly. Even though.
00;45;42;05 - 00;45;42;24
Kelly Deutsch
Even though.
00;45;43;07 - 00;45;44;19
Mitch Gainey
I've got all this constriction.
00;45;44;27 - 00;45;46;08
Kelly Deutsch
I've got all this constriction.
00;45;46;27 - 00;45;47;22
Mitch Gainey
In my diaphragm.
00;45;47;26 - 00;45;48;26
Kelly Deutsch
In my diaphragm.
00;45;49;19 - 00;45;50;29
Mitch Gainey
I love and accept myself anyway.
00;45;51;09 - 00;45;53;01
Kelly Deutsch
I love and accept myself anyway.
00;45;53;25 - 00;45;54;15
Mitch Gainey
Even though.
00;45;54;25 - 00;45;55;18
Kelly Deutsch
Even though.
00;45;56;03 - 00;45;57;09
Mitch Gainey
I can't take a full breath.
00;45;57;14 - 00;45;58;24
Kelly Deutsch
I can't take a full breath.
00;45;59;17 - 00;46;00;26
Mitch Gainey
Because of this constriction.
00;46;01;04 - 00;46;02;13
Kelly Deutsch
Because of this constriction.
00;46;03;02 - 00;46;04;13
Mitch Gainey
I love and accept myself anyway.
00;46;04;21 - 00;46;06;11
Kelly Deutsch
I love and accept myself anyway.
00;46;07;07 - 00;46;08;00
Mitch Gainey
Even though.
00;46;08;09 - 00;46;08;29
Kelly Deutsch
Even though.
00;46;09;16 - 00;46;11;02
Mitch Gainey
I'd really love to take a full.
00;46;11;02 - 00;46;13;06
Kelly Deutsch
Breath I'd really love to take a full breath.
00;46;14;06 - 00;46;15;15
Mitch Gainey
When I'm holding some tension.
00;46;15;22 - 00;46;17;01
Kelly Deutsch
But I'm holding some tension.
00;46;17;16 - 00;46;18;14
Mitch Gainey
In my diaphragm.
00;46;18;20 - 00;46;19;20
Kelly Deutsch
And my diaphragm.
00;46;20;12 - 00;46;21;19
Mitch Gainey
Loving and myself anyway.
00;46;21;26 - 00;46;23;14
Kelly Deutsch
I love and accept myself anyway.
00;46;24;07 - 00;46;28;22
Mitch Gainey
Then we go to the eyebrow point all this constriction.
00;46;29;01 - 00;46;30;04
Kelly Deutsch
All this constriction.
00;46;30;21 - 00;46;34;09
Mitch Gainey
Then we go to the side of the I constriction in my diaphragm.
00;46;34;19 - 00;46;36;07
Kelly Deutsch
It's constriction in my diaphragm.
00;46;38;05 - 00;46;39;12
Mitch Gainey
All of this constriction.
00;46;39;25 - 00;46;41;02
Kelly Deutsch
All of this constriction.
00;46;42;13 - 00;46;43;21
Mitch Gainey
Tension in my diaphragm.
00;46;44;01 - 00;46;45;16
Kelly Deutsch
It's tension in my diaphragm.
00;46;45;28 - 00;46;47;21
Mitch Gainey
I can't take a full breath.
00;46;48;02 - 00;46;49;05
Kelly Deutsch
Can't take a full breath.
00;46;50;09 - 00;46;51;13
Mitch Gainey
Feel just constricted.
00;46;51;24 - 00;46;52;27
Kelly Deutsch
I feel constricted.
00;46;54;09 - 00;46;55;19
Mitch Gainey
Something in my diaphragm.
00;46;56;00 - 00;46;57;09
Kelly Deutsch
Something and my diaphragm.
00;46;57;24 - 00;46;59;00
Mitch Gainey
Is really constricted.
00;46;59;12 - 00;47;00;19
Kelly Deutsch
Feels really constricted.
00;47;01;13 - 00;47;02;25
Mitch Gainey
Like I can't take a full breath.
00;47;03;05 - 00;47;04;12
Kelly Deutsch
I can't take a full breath.
00;47;05;29 - 00;47;13;25
Mitch Gainey
So that would be one round. So we would invite you just to kind of notice what I've been noticing, maybe just kind of regal feel into your body.
00;47;16;10 - 00;47;35;06
Mitch Gainey
And then again, just inviting me. We've got to test out work to know whether we're on the right path. So just kind of taking in a bit of a breath gently just noticing is that constriction still are five. It's gone opposite go down interesting.
00;47;35;06 - 00;47;42;27
Kelly Deutsch
It feels less in my upper diaphragm, like maybe a three, but I feel more in like my lower abdomen now.
00;47;43;12 - 00;47;54;10
Mitch Gainey
Yeah, and that often happens is you become more in contact with our body. So there's a lessening there and a little bit more in the lower abdomen. So do you want to keep going Sure.
00;47;54;12 - 00;47;55;05
Kelly Deutsch
Let's do one more round.
00;47;55;16 - 00;48;03;24
Mitch Gainey
Yeah. So how would you rate the tension in your lower abdomen? You give that a zero to ten.
00;48;07;23 - 00;48;09;17
Kelly Deutsch
That's also lower, like maybe a three.
00;48;10;10 - 00;48;31;07
Mitch Gainey
All right. So kind of tension in this lower abdomen region altogether. And since it is a three, Kelly, so it's like a low activation. If it had maybe an emotion what might it be? Hmm. It's okay if there isn't any.
00;48;35;14 - 00;48;37;09
Kelly Deutsch
Word that popped up was apprehension.
00;48;38;08 - 00;48;41;04
Mitch Gainey
Awesome. Now, let's just throw that one in there.
00;48;43;05 - 00;48;43;22
Mitch Gainey
Even though.
00;48;44;01 - 00;48;44;20
Kelly Deutsch
Even though.
00;48;45;04 - 00;48;46;13
Mitch Gainey
There's still some tension.
00;48;46;20 - 00;48;47;23
Kelly Deutsch
There's still some tension.
00;48;48;10 - 00;48;49;09
Mitch Gainey
In my lower abdomen.
00;48;49;14 - 00;48;50;17
Kelly Deutsch
In my lower abdomen.
00;48;51;12 - 00;48;52;16
Mitch Gainey
I can accept that. Right. Now.
00;48;52;25 - 00;48;54;04
Kelly Deutsch
I can accept that right now.
00;48;54;29 - 00;48;55;17
Mitch Gainey
Even though.
00;48;55;24 - 00;48;56;13
Kelly Deutsch
Even though.
00;48;56;29 - 00;48;58;28
Mitch Gainey
There's something like apprehension.
00;48;59;03 - 00;49;00;24
Kelly Deutsch
There's something like apprehension.
00;49;01;10 - 00;49;02;21
Mitch Gainey
Living in my lower abdomen.
00;49;02;27 - 00;49;04;13
Kelly Deutsch
Moving in my lower abdomen.
00;49;05;06 - 00;49;06;13
Mitch Gainey
I love and accept it anyway.
00;49;06;21 - 00;49;08;14
Kelly Deutsch
I love it and I accept it anyway.
00;49;09;03 - 00;49;09;19
Mitch Gainey
Even though.
00;49;09;27 - 00;49;10;16
Kelly Deutsch
Even though.
00;49;11;08 - 00;49;13;11
Mitch Gainey
There's something that feels apprehensive, there's.
00;49;13;12 - 00;49;15;00
Kelly Deutsch
Something that feels apprehensive.
00;49;15;25 - 00;49;17;26
Mitch Gainey
And it's constricting in my lower abdomen.
00;49;18;02 - 00;49;19;29
Kelly Deutsch
And it's constricting in my lower abdomen.
00;49;21;02 - 00;49;21;28
Mitch Gainey
And except in anyway.
00;49;22;04 - 00;49;23;23
Kelly Deutsch
I love it and accept it anyway.
00;49;24;11 - 00;49;33;24
Mitch Gainey
All right. It's apprehension feeling this apprehension feeling. It's constricting. It's constricting my lower abdomen.
00;49;34;03 - 00;49;35;02
Kelly Deutsch
My lower abdomen.
00;49;36;11 - 00;49;37;22
Mitch Gainey
Something feels apprehensive.
00;49;38;01 - 00;49;39;12
Kelly Deutsch
Something feels apprehensive.
00;49;41;07 - 00;49;42;29
Mitch Gainey
And its affecting my breathing.
00;49;43;05 - 00;49;44;15
Kelly Deutsch
That's affecting my breathing.
00;49;47;07 - 00;49;48;04
Mitch Gainey
Feels constricted.
00;49;48;16 - 00;49;49;15
Kelly Deutsch
Feels constricted.
00;49;50;26 - 00;49;52;09
Mitch Gainey
Like I can't take in a full breath.
00;49;52;18 - 00;49;54;02
Kelly Deutsch
Like I can't take in a full breath.
00;49;55;17 - 00;49;57;00
Mitch Gainey
Something apprehensive about.
00;49;57;11 - 00;49;58;25
Kelly Deutsch
Something apprehensive about it.
00;50;01;03 - 00;50;37;14
Mitch Gainey
And so we could keep going, but for the sake of the demo would take him as kind of noticing I sent him back. Yeah, legs on the chair, feet on the ground. And then just coming back to that sensation in the stomach constriction restriction, apprehension Just noticing whatever you're noticing Hmm.
00;50;38;18 - 00;50;50;17
Kelly Deutsch
That's interesting. I, I notice when I'm attending to my lower abdomen, like it feels more mobile, but now I'm also noticing, like, oh, no, my back feels, you know, it's like, interesting. It moves, you know?
00;50;51;03 - 00;50;51;10
Mitch Gainey
Yeah.
00;50;52;03 - 00;50;52;29
Kelly Deutsch
What's not moving.
00;50;54;07 - 00;51;00;20
Mitch Gainey
Yeah. And if you were to take in a breath now, just what do you notice about the quality of your breathing or your capacity for breath?
00;51;09;04 - 00;51;20;07
Kelly Deutsch
That it's fuller from when we first started, but, yeah, that my back is now asking for my attention, so I feel like that's something that I would have to continue tapping on.
00;51;21;01 - 00;51;53;23
Mitch Gainey
Yeah. And that and this is a thing sometimes it can be like peeling the onion layer. Now, sometimes we have these sessions where it honestly feels like a miracle. You do three tapping session rounds and someone's deep dark traumas resolved the pain and the body's gone. And then other times that it's just the slow, gradual work, because if we're building this acting capacity in the body to go, Oh, it's okay for my stomach to relax, there's nothing to be apprehensive about because we never want to go faster than the slowest part of us.
00;51;55;29 - 00;52;21;19
Mitch Gainey
And one of the other ways that I use tapping is just as a general. If I am doing some contemplative practice or prayer if I just include this in it. So if if I was to use the Lord's Prayer or the Serenity Prayer, just each line has some low gentle tapping, which again is this kind of I'm a body that's praying.
00;52;21;19 - 00;52;42;18
Mitch Gainey
I'm a body that's contemplating. And if you're anything like me, generally, your mind is swelling when you're trying to do these contemplative exercises. And that if I'm in a really bad mood that I get judgmental about my why can't I do this? And my mind's always going. So I might start with, you know, even though my mind's wailing, like, that's okay.
00;52;43;17 - 00;53;06;28
Mitch Gainey
And just kind of doing this study show, it's just the mere act of doing the tapping kind of releases those chemicals in the body that begin to calms down, slow the heart rate, put us in that rest and digest, stay and play, reduce cortisol, which is much more conducive to contemplative exercises that to stop.
00;53;07;03 - 00;53;09;02
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. Yeah, it's totally.
00;53;09;02 - 00;53;25;20
Mitch Gainey
It's another real easy way to just incorporate this practice or a body practice is okay. I'm just going to notice my tensions and tap and breathe, say whatever particular prayers I'm doing or however you play with it. It's pretty hard to get it wrong.
00;53;26;04 - 00;53;48;17
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. And I love that because I find that's often the biggest obstacle to spiritual practice. Is that, you know, we say like, I just can't get myself to pray or I can't find time to, you know, do my sit or meditation. But generally that's because we're stuck in sympathetic, right? We're stuck in the buzzy energy, and it's hard for us to get our brains to shut off.
00;53;48;17 - 00;54;17;17
Kelly Deutsch
And so suddenly we find ourselves like organizing the whole closet, you know, instead of doing my, my sit or like, oh, well, I'm going to go for a walk or I'm going to, you know, we do something else, which is generally just some part of us avoiding sitting in that space because we don't feel safe enough. And so being able to tap through that so that we can return or get closer anyway to that place of safety where I feel calm in my body and I can be present and still and that doesn't feel terrifying.
00;54;18;05 - 00;54;48;10
Mitch Gainey
Yeah. And that's that partly it is it's like, you know, maybe that's my goal or maybe my goal is to do a 20 minute sit. As I think about it, I can immediately feel this not all. I could think of 100 nothings I want to do that arc. So we were just really curious about as you think about having us, is there any intensity in your body right now yet as a six out of ten new way even though there's no way I'm doing this now, I don't want to do it.
00;54;48;21 - 00;55;11;28
Mitch Gainey
Stupid prayers out love and accept myself anyway, which is the whole point of most of these things, is come to the mat to come to the altar and whatever state you're in, that's okay. Yeah. And if we're that's got this tool that can be like, cool, I'm going to make my resistance. I'm going to meet this fear because I don't want to see it with myself right now because I'm terrified angry.
00;55;12;25 - 00;55;44;00
Mitch Gainey
Then again, we've just got this thing that can downgrade you, like, drop us back into our body in a hot space. It's a beautiful thing to do with another person. Now we talk about borrowed benefits, so because we're all connected and mirror neurons, if I'm tapping with you, Kelly, on up on your resistance to prayer, in order for me to understand or have any form of empathy, I've obviously got a link to my own experiences of where I know where I am resistant to prayer as well, or contemplative practice.
00;55;44;18 - 00;56;05;13
Mitch Gainey
So as I'm leading you through the exercise, I'm also getting the benefits of working on my own stuff as well. So that's quite a reported phenomenon in tapping. And often therapists report that I feel a lot more energized at the end of the tapping sessions than just the talk therapy, because you're dealing with your own stuff at the same time.
00;56;05;14 - 00;56;27;06
Kelly Deutsch
So yeah, yeah, I love that. And I was just talking to someone else about, you know, that idea in neuroscience of a shared window of tolerance, you know, where it's like, I have so much that I can tolerate, you know, as far as like sympathetic activation or whatever it is before I go into shutdown, that kind of dorsal bagel.
00;56;27;16 - 00;56;49;04
Kelly Deutsch
But because of that, the coagulation that happens between us and because my nervous system is kind of resonating with whatever is going on over there, even just what I read in your face in your tone of voice, the kind of presence that you bring that that can help me downregulate. And so I love that. I mean, just as you mentioned before, like if it's something really big, do it with somebody else?
00;56;49;04 - 00;57;03;02
Kelly Deutsch
And it's not just because, you know, you're an expert at this, but it's also because you bring that depth of presence that makes your body my body feel safe enough to do this and it widens my window of tolerance when you bring yours as well.
00;57;04;04 - 00;57;25;17
Mitch Gainey
Yeah. And look, I still you know, there will be things that I got to tap on and I'm like, oh, it's not shifting. It's not shifting. And and one thing is I might not be actually on the right track or whatever it likely is. My my wisdom goes kind of you can't handle this by yourself right now, right?
00;57;26;03 - 00;57;52;16
Mitch Gainey
You need someone who can one hold you to this process. But also a lot of our healing is, is the witnessing of our pain. So having someone who is grounded and spacious and accepting whilst I sit there and rage at something that was done to me or I am judgmental or I sit there and I weep and I cry and someone's going, hey, like, I'm here.
00;57;52;21 - 00;58;27;15
Mitch Gainey
I love and accept you right now. You know, let's come on, let's we can we can make this together. Yes. Then I'm like, and that was actually what happened in my very first training with Dr. Peter so you try not in your trainings, you try not to bring like your deepest, darkest traumas, but occasionally they surface in this shed the system of a bunch of therapists together who generally are too busy to go and have their, like, training.
00;58;27;15 - 00;59;15;11
Mitch Gainey
Yes. Let's work on all of our own stuff. And we were doing a section on trauma, I think, and and I just got triggered into my play, the gateway stuff. And I just like my body was shaking and I was at the ventilating and I just like my very rigid heart at that point. I was still a compassionate person, but I was very defended against my own just unraveled as my body obviously sensed the safety and yeah, this this woman, I didn't know her, but I picked her because I was like, I don't know, I feel safe with you for some reason.
00;59;15;11 - 00;59;40;25
Mitch Gainey
So I sat with her. We went through the process of a particular memory in the prayer counseling where some stuff had been sent to me, which was pretty hurtful. And I just wept and and, you know, when you're hot and sweaty after crying because my body just discharged all of this stuff. And and at the end of it, I was like, oh, my God, I can breathe.
00;59;40;25 - 01;00;03;17
Mitch Gainey
Like, yeah. Oh, oh. I remember feeling like this and I don't think I could have ever gotten there by myself. I don't think it would have been safe for me to get there by myself. So which is, which is the joy and that the gift of shared spiritual practice. And I and I think if tea is and can be a part of spiritual practice.
01;00;03;17 - 01;00;37;17
Kelly Deutsch
Yes, I think that's what's so huge about having those kinds of friendships, having a coach, therapist, spiritual director, somebody who's able to hold that space so deeply. And I can name on, you know, one, maybe two hands the number of people that I've met in my life who have that depth of presence where I just, you know, within 30 seconds of meeting them or starting a conversation, you're like, Yeah, your whole body just kind of goes in and you're like, Oh, thank you for just pulling me into this gorgeous, spacious place.
01;00;39;12 - 01;00;51;16
Kelly Deutsch
But that's really the magic of any good therapy or any good spiritual direction is if that person offers that kind of presence and has regulated their own nervous system enough to offer it to you.
01;00;52;08 - 01;00;52;18
Mitch Gainey
Yeah.
01;00;53;04 - 01;01;07;16
Kelly Deutsch
It's not it's not the modalities, it's not the techniques, it's not the tools. Like, you can have, you know, dozens of letters after your name, but if you're not able to offer that depth of presence, it's pretty hard for real, lasting healing to happen.
01;01;08;03 - 01;01;29;27
Mitch Gainey
Yeah, and that that was the question I was going to ask you is what do you think it is that those people have done that mocks them as that person presents? And I think you just answered it there. It's they've done their work. They've faced off with this like pain and and anger and rage. And and so when it starts up in you, they're just like, Hiya, I know this.
01;01;29;27 - 01;01;33;28
Mitch Gainey
I know, I know there's the end to this, and I can be yeah.
01;01;33;28 - 01;01;53;09
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, absolutely. It's not only that you've done your work, but you continue to, you know, because we're all I think that's one of the marks of wisdom and of spiritual maturity is recognizing that we're always going to be a work in progress and that we're constantly just like you said, like just last night, I was tapping, you know.
01;01;53;24 - 01;02;03;24
Mitch Gainey
Yeah, funnily enough, stepping on some of our perfectionism issues of ethics. Yeah. If I get it wrong, I'll be judged right? Yeah.
01;02;03;24 - 01;02;24;22
Kelly Deutsch
Which is so ironic. But that's that's why I like to say that, like, all of us are beginners and all of us are elders you know, because all of us have some sort of wisdom to share. But we every day we need to have that humility to say, Okay, I'm still figuring this out. Do none of us have gurus who just are masters.
01;02;24;22 - 01;02;48;12
Kelly Deutsch
And as much as we want to believe that, as much as our egos like to kind of cling to that sense of security and certainty, like, oh, but at least, at least Gandhi knew what was going on. At least Richard Raw knows what's going on, at least Thomas Merton, whoever, you know, like whoever your, your idol is and it's nice to have heroes, but it's also really helpful to know that we're still all in this together.
01;02;48;19 - 01;03;23;26
Mitch Gainey
Yeah. And I think like, you know, those heroes and I would I would lean towards Richard Raw in particular, like part of what makes him so lovable and so seemingly safe people is he's the first person to go. Guys like I'm, I'm far off. Like, I like, I'm cranky like I prefer being in my habit away from everyone, like and again, it's nice people who have met their unlovely parts and God, yes, they're here and I love them and they're at the table.
01;03;23;26 - 01;03;25;03
Mitch Gainey
They're just not running the show.
01;03;25;13 - 01;03;25;25
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah.
01;03;27;03 - 01;03;48;18
Mitch Gainey
Or he can go. They came out and we've got a practice and an a presents to be able to repair. I think so much of that is out here as well as, you know, you and I might have a conversation and I get triggered off into something. Kelly's me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And likely that's I'm being triggered off into something that happened ten years ago.
01;03;48;22 - 01;04;08;03
Mitch Gainey
Sure. And when you've got this, even though Kelly, you made me do it and she did this really annoyed and then you go, oh, it's actually got nothing to do with her. Um, and then we repair again. That's something for my nervous system to go, oh, I don't have to get it right all the time or there's a way back when connection is broken.
01;04;08;10 - 01;04;08;28
Kelly Deutsch
Yes.
01;04;09;14 - 01;04;30;28
Mitch Gainey
I love what we're so terrified of as if I do the wrong thing. Connection is severed straight away and I can't get it back. Some of us not that experience either through our parents or through our God concept of maybe once, once in an ear out forever that leaves imprint in the in the body and leaves a patent to my relationships upon other.
01;04;31;01 - 01;04;32;05
Mitch Gainey
I've got to be perfect.
01;04;32;23 - 01;04;33;07
Kelly Deutsch
Mm.
01;04;33;23 - 01;04;38;18
Mitch Gainey
No wonder why we're stressed told the type if we're constantly like I had that that I thought all.
01;04;38;29 - 01;04;49;26
Kelly Deutsch
Right right or I can't make mistakes or you know something terrible is going to happen something potentially eternal, you know, like you know yeah. Oh no pressure.
01;04;50;07 - 01;04;53;01
Mitch Gainey
Yeah. Healthy for small children to learn that.
01;04;54;10 - 01;05;18;12
Kelly Deutsch
Oh yeah. And instead to have that kind of mercy and gentleness and expectation that I recognize from my relationships, you know, it comes into those, gets myelinated in those neural pathways so that once I of, you know, something doesn't jive well you know, I send some things off. Maybe I said something wrong. Mitch is acting a little bit weird.
01;05;18;20 - 01;05;38;02
Kelly Deutsch
And then to know though, that we have safety in our relationship and I can say, like, image is everything okay? Like, you know, things have been off, you know, since since we talked yesterday. And I just wanted to make sure everything's okay. And you say, yep, I actually was just tapping through it. I had the stuff come up and I we can reconnect again and restore and repair that relationship.
01;05;38;02 - 01;05;50;24
Kelly Deutsch
Up. So, yeah, both of our nervous systems again, have another example that says, look, remember, like, this is possible. We don't have to think that dire eternal things are going to happen when we mess up.
01;05;51;15 - 01;06;20;16
Mitch Gainey
Yeah. In fact, I had that exact experience this week. I was chatting to a friend and we had like just that ever so slight disagreement about something, and it was more so that I was working through a particular experience of shame. And this conversation perfectly triggered and it was really interesting to watch my process of, first off, making the other person room.
01;06;21;02 - 01;06;41;03
Mitch Gainey
Well, I'm going to use all of my psychological prowess to pull apart all the things that are wrong with you and either wrong person you mean like, okay, what are you feeling in your body? Feeling shame because I said the wrong thing or I'm not coming across as perfect and having it all together. And if I'm not perfect and have it all together, the people won't love me.
01;06;41;19 - 01;07;10;09
Mitch Gainey
Where did you experience that? Okay. Even though I've got this memory of of this and some of that for me was church stuff of a few sin, then you, you lose the Holy Spirit or that God takes these presents away from you being that tapping through that and going, gosh, what an intense thing to be taught as a kid by the all powerful, loving day to the universe will run from you, if you could, that thought or something like that.
01;07;11;05 - 01;07;26;19
Mitch Gainey
And then the next day I messaged my friend and I was like, Hey, sorry, that was pretty techy yesterday. This is what was going on from me. Had nothing to do with you. And anyway, we just chat it out and things are things are back on track.
01;07;27;15 - 01;07;49;08
Kelly Deutsch
Isn't that, like, miraculous that that can even happen though? I mean, I just, I feel like I've had at least growing up. I had so few examples of that happening, of that kind of the rupture and repair and seeing it done well and somebody processing their stuff and actually coming to apologize or say, hey, I had nothing to do with you.
01;07;49;08 - 01;07;57;26
Kelly Deutsch
Like I take my, you know, ownership of the parts I contributed there. So, you know, just wanted to throw that out there, like, oh, my gosh, who does that?
01;07;58;05 - 01;08;19;15
Mitch Gainey
You know, because I think a bunch of us good, good folk, what we tend to do is just deny that we're pissed off or deny that we're upset and we're just going to get to get it, got to get over it. And then we meet each other for coffee like a week later and it's like time and you're like testing the waters.
01;08;19;15 - 01;08;43;09
Mitch Gainey
And we kind of have this unconscious agreement of, okay, we're just going to pretend it didn't happen. But again, what happens if like actually you've both got a practice where you can go tell you really pissed me off and your Mitch was a real techy little butthead before. Oh, actually, I'm reminded of my are my dad, my dad and my siblings and I've got nothing.
01;08;44;00 - 01;09;01;17
Mitch Gainey
I hate to be sorry that I saw the other day, like I could say, okay, yeah. Like I've got ability to repair and, and, and lean into each other and in what is a fairly isolating, challenging world sometimes that light at the moment.
01;09;01;22 - 01;09;28;00
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. I just find that so powerful, both in like spiritual settings where, like, we're all still very much human and we all got to work through our stuff. But even in work settings, you know, and I know both of us have spent time doing, like, leadership development and trainings and things like that and how powerful that is. And people can just have real conversations with each other, you know, like, let's just offer some frank feedback.
01;09;28;01 - 01;09;40;04
Kelly Deutsch
You don't necessarily have to be like tell all vulnerable to sharing everything in your heart, but still to be able to have those tools to process like, whoa, I mean, that's, that's the basis of emotional intelligence, right?
01;09;40;07 - 01;10;23;13
Mitch Gainey
Yeah. Yeah. And there has to be a sense of safety in order to be able to do that. Doesn't that for whatever then is going to come up to come up and as you're talking about that, I'm thinking of something that Dr. Laurie used to say and it's a big part of her. Her focus is on peacebuilding. And, you know, one of the other areas that I'm passionate about using with ICTY is I like to call it a bitch and tax session or judge judge thy neighbor, which I think is really important for where we're at at the moment.
01;10;23;13 - 01;11;06;13
Mitch Gainey
Like I think the world's political, you know, you've got left to go right into your either one or the other. Or even if we look at this idea of masks and vaccination, like there's such strong camps, such strong feelings, people are in fear because there's pandemic happening, what the heck's happening in that world? And so people are going into these stress responses and I've got to attack my perceived enemy so again, that's that's another area where we can bring the tapping to is, you know, I'm going to think of my political opponent or I'm going to think of the person who does wear the mask or doesn't wear the mask.
01;11;07;06 - 01;11;35;02
Mitch Gainey
And as I think about that person, is there any intensity in my body right now? Yeah, there's a ten out of ten hatred or anger call, even though I hate this person right now, even though I think they're people I love and accept myself. And as you meet that anger and that I think some of us have to be honest, the hatred generally the seed of is fear.
01;11;35;11 - 01;11;55;06
Mitch Gainey
Yeah. And as you as you begin to bring that down, and then either go, who do they remind me of in my life? Or What do they remind me of myself that I don't like? Where am I entitled that I touch myself better? Where do I not care about other people? Where do I always have to be right?
01;11;56;02 - 01;12;22;02
Mitch Gainey
Oh, yeah. Even though I've always got to be right or even there I'm entitled and I hate myself for it. And we're bringing that down in again when the theories come off and I've got clear eyes to go to go, Oh, this particular political leaning person or is anti-vaccine or all these facts they're frightened and they're doing the best they can.
01;12;22;02 - 01;12;50;00
Mitch Gainey
And, you know, I still one question, the conclusion that they've come to but I don't have to be in fear and hatred and bodily fear and rejection of them. So again, I think the more that we can kind of bring this in at the moment in the world, giving us a perfect opportunity to make all of our judgments, then maybe, just maybe we can begin to have those conversations where it's like hey, like how do we navigate this together?
01;12;50;24 - 01;13;28;05
Mitch Gainey
Like and look, there's stuff so tricky you like I've got family members that think very, very politically different to me, and I get into my self-righteous, ill informed idiots. Like, how could you think such horrible things I can be to own the attachment of that projection, bring it in, and can I still have compassion for this person? Can I still see them in made in the image of God ness, or can I still see what is it like if I can hold presents for their fear and not have to convince them or or something along those lines?
01;13;28;15 - 01;13;29;02
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah.
01;13;29;23 - 01;13;32;14
Mitch Gainey
I think an important aspect of this work as well.
01;13;32;25 - 01;13;53;08
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. I think what I love most about this is how many different applications there are the different contexts that you can use it in, you know, whether it is like I mean, it pairs well with shadow work like you just mentioned, like I'm projecting that into that other person where I actually like that it works well with like internal family systems.
01;13;53;08 - 01;13;53;21
Kelly Deutsch
We did a.
01;13;54;07 - 01;13;54;09
Mitch Gainey
An.
01;13;54;10 - 01;14;19;02
Kelly Deutsch
Episode on that where it's like, Oh, I have this part that's getting really activated. Okay, so let's tap through whatever this part's beliefs are. It works in like leadership and emotional intelligence stuff. It works in contemplative practice, it works and you know, whatever is happening in your day to day to just be able to be present in your body in a different way, you know, and use that bio hack, if you will, yeah.
01;14;19;03 - 01;14;19;11
Kelly Deutsch
That.
01;14;20;25 - 01;14;21;29
Mitch Gainey
Yeah, awesome.
01;14;22;03 - 01;14;33;26
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Well, wonderful. Before we close today, where ah, where should people go if they want to learn more about you, Mitch, or potentially, you know, get in touch with you. Yeah.
01;14;34;18 - 01;14;56;25
Mitch Gainey
So probably easiest thing is to go to my website which is Mitch Cane Ecom. Pretty simple. And yeah, you find out a little bit more about my, my journey. And if you're curious about doing some work with me either in the kind of FTA or that intuition felt sense development space where you just want to have a chat about anything.
01;14;56;25 - 01;15;03;23
Mitch Gainey
I'm pretty chatty. I'm in lockdown at the moment, so I've got plenty of time to chat yeah. Shoot me an email and I'd love to hear from you.
01;15;04;12 - 01;15;10;15
Kelly Deutsch
Wonderful. Is there anything, any last words you'd like to leave with? With the folks who are listening today?
01;15;13;21 - 01;15;45;13
Mitch Gainey
So many words. Yeah, just that I think, you know, every generation thinks this every point in history thinks this. But I think we are in a really important time. We're doing our work and and finding out grounding and finding that compassionate space is the key to navigating whatever's happening, whatever's coming, so that we've got the in turn or mental resources to imagine a better way forward.
01;15;45;14 - 01;15;56;09
Mitch Gainey
And this is just one tool to help us be in that space more often. So encourage you to to find that grounding in however you need to do it.
01;15;57;05 - 01;16;04;05
Kelly Deutsch
Beautiful. Yeah. Thank you for sharing and thanks for leading us through that. Exercise today to. That was lovely.
01;16;04;23 - 01;16;07;11
Mitch Gainey
No worries. Thanks, Kelly. Let's have a chat.
01;16;07;21 - 01;16;20;04
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, absolutely. And thank you everyone for listening today. And feel free if you have questions, leave them in the comments or to look up Mitch's website. Mitch Gainey, AECOM and learn more. Thanks. Everyone thinks Mitch.