My own healing journey with EFT Tapping & Matrix Reimprinting

First published on my old blog Saturday, 13 June 2015

It is nearly 7 months since we lost our daughter Alice. I personally have come a long way since that time. It is cliché but time does heal, however, I’ve also done a lot of work on myself too. Years of spiritual work personal beliefs and my own personal strength have helped me put into context what happened to us, why Alice was here, why she had to leave us, her ongoing purpose, and what she taught us and continues to teach us.

Over the past months, I have had powerful healing sessions, lots of acupuncture, Reiki (energy healing, I myself am a Reiki master), counselling, and have written blogs. I have also gone back to work and faced some tough days with as much positivity as I could muster, mothers day being one. 

Fundraising has been a huge healer for me and this ties back to Alice’s ongoing purpose and legacy. So far we’ve raised an incredible £10,000 thanks to some wonderful and generous family, friends, acquaintances and strangers. The genuine care, love, prayers and words of support from everyone have been so healing. Knowing that Alice’s short time here has reminded people how precious life is, how to appreciate good and bad moments, and how important it is to reach out to each other with encouragement, support and love. Strangers supporting each other, in person and on Instagram, especially encourage me. The sense of community there is profound and special indeed. 

One of the biggest healers for me has been getting pregnant again ;) I am 14 weeks pregnant, as I write this. It’s like a huge weight and responsibility has been lifted. I feel we’ve been blessed and I do feel Alice’s presence supporting us all the way, and it is all part of the master plan. 

Being pregnant has brought a mix of emotions to be honest; delight, sadness, relief, fear, and excitement. I’ve had numerous flashbacks of the unpleasant memories associated with Alice’s birth and I have also felt somewhat unconnected to our new baby. This may sound strange but with Alice I talked to her all the time, and I really felt a connection to her. This time around I have been struggling to connect to this little soul, and I so desperately want to. 

Over the course of the last month or so, the mention of Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) came up a few times with my sister. I straight away found a local EFT practitioner (Kate Marillat) I read that she had a pregnancy specific package designed to help release trauma and fear surrounding pregnancy and birth. I had a real sense that this could help me.

I contacted Kate and had my first session last week. I hadn’t done much preparation so far as reading up on the subject, I just decided to go with the flow and see what would happen! I knew it involved ‘tapping’ and that was about it. I had already explained my situation via email and a chat on the phone, so that gave me the confidence to give this a go. 

My plan is to share with you how these sessions go, as hopefully what I am going through can help others too. My first session was at week 13 the same day as my first scan. Kate made me feel very comfortable and safe and we started by doing some basic EFT techniques, where she asked me to tune in to any stress and tension in my body and we worked through the standard tapping sequence.  I tapped on myself and Kate led the way in terms of what statements I repeated after her.

I felt good after that first sequence and Kate asked what we should focus on next. I decided there was no point beating about the bush and that we should go straight into the deep end and tackle the most tragic of recent memories; Alice’s birth from just before my episiotomy to 5 days later and helping her pass on. Kate regularly checked in with me to make sure I was okay, comfortable and felt safe. 

We covered around five or six different memories that I chose, and the process for each was the same. I remembered and described the scene to Kate, she asked a couple of questions for clarification, as it was important for her to assess how I was feeling at the time. I usually started crying while I was describing the scene. It was as if I was already releasing the pain. Kate guided me to approach the Sarah in the scene (I now know this is known as an Energetic Conscious Hologram ECHO. For me this is like a frozen scene of trauma in time that our conscious splits off from every day life almost as a protection mechanism). 

Kate sat beside me and tapped on the main points, saying statements that I repeated.  I approached the Sarah in the scene, introduced myself and told her that she is loved and safe and that I am here to help. I was then instructed to tap on Sarah in the scene the same way Kate was tapping on me. As we moved through a variety of statements and tapping, the tears fell. Proper belly grief and heartache was released. We would work through each scene to a point where I felt Sarah was ok, and sometimes we would approach Alice and Dave’s ECHO too, to see if they were ok, and needed some help. Often Kate would give me time to talk to Sarah, Alice or Dave privately to see if they had any messages for me. It was interesting with Dave as I was able to understand the scene from his perspective, which I hadn’t really done before.

One of the main benefits for me was to enhance and develop a connection to our baby inside me. One exercise we did was to send love from my heart to the baby’s heart. The feeling and response I got back was incredible. I felt immensely sad that I hadn’t connected to him/her properly but I felt that didn’t matter and all was forgiven. I know that when we suffer loss, pain and heartache we find it hard to release the same amount of love again, in case it is taken away from us. We hold a bit back just in case. (Lorna Byrne writes a lot about this). I feel I’ve released that fear that was holding me back and my love can now pour fourth. 

We ended the session in a very special way, as I saw our new baby join the scene. It was a wonderful moment seeing the four of us together all connected by deep cords of love, binding us together. We created a frame around the scene to magnify its light and beauty and then I visualised it coming into my body, reaching every cell, so I could feel the happiness of it throughout. By now the tears had stopped, and I had a huge smile on my face.

Since then, I feel a huge weight has lifted. I’ve been able to think of those scenes without the pain or fear that I had felt previously. My attitude and feelings about the memories are changing. I can write this without feeling upset and I have a beautiful family picture to focus on daily.

I have five other sessions booked with Kate, and I might keep one for after the birth. I am hoping to keep you posted with how they progress and share with you more about my EFT journey and what I learn about it and myself along the way. 

If you are interested in reading more about EFT and Matrix Reimprinting Kate’s book is called Transform your beliefs, Transform your life and her website is www.katemarillat.com