Tapping for Emotional and Physical Health with Karen Acquinas

Rebecca:

Before I get started on today's episode. I want to let you know that my
workshop, the flow workshop for female entrepreneurs is tomorrow, August
5th. So if you want to sign up for that, you need to go to
rebeccatervo.com/flow. That's forward slash F-L-O-W. And this is for you.
If you're ready to be visible and be more visible in your work in the
world. This is what I use human design as a tool for, with business owners.
So we are going to look at several placements in your chart.

It's a really fun workshop where it's actually practical things that you
can use in your business when you're done with that workshop. So once
again, just go sign up. You will have access to recording if you can't be
there live, that is fine too. So I'm super excited to be offering this
workshop again. I got really great feedback last time I held it. All right.
So today I'm talking with my friend Karen Aquinas. So let's get started.

Welcome to Beautifully Bloomed the podcast where we explore how to break
you out of the box of rules and beliefs that are holding you back from the
life you're meant to live. I'm your host, Rebecca Tervo. Join me as I share
mindset tools, coaching conversations in human design, to help you uncover
your unique gifts and create the life, relationships and business you
desire.

Karen Aquinas is an internationally certified EFT, Emotional Freedom
Techniques, tapping master practitioner, and Energist. She supports clients
in areas of anxiety, low self-esteem, limiting beliefs, stress and trauma.
As a result of working with Karen clients, leave their issues behind and
step into a more empowered way of living while experiencing more ease in
life and success in business. Welcome, Karen. I'm so excited that you're
here today.

Karen:

Hi, Rebecca. It's great to be here.

Rebecca:

So before we get started, I always love to let our audience know how we're
connected. So how do you remember that we connected?

Karen:

Well, I think it was either through or, both Jackie Johnstones human design
course and/or possibly Caryn Gillen and lead your profit, course.

Rebecca:

Yeah. I remember meeting you and Jackie's group and I met Jackie through
Caryn, so it's kind of a circle, right? Caryn was my first business coach
and she introduced us to Jackie and we started out learning about human
design through Jackie and then I hopped into her group and you might've
been there when I hopped in. I don't know, but that was super fun.

Karen:

Yeah, that was a fun course. A lot of good information there.

Rebecca:

Learning about our designs. And so we're going to talk about human design
and our designs and all the fun stuff later. But first before we do that,
so the reason I was drawn to you too, is that you are a emotional freedom
technique master practitioner. And after my son died in 2012, that was the
first coach I hired was an EFT coach. I was told by a nutrition coach to go
higher. You know how we always think we're going to solve all of our
problems by losing weight. So I was like, because I was in a steep grief,
"I'll feel better if I go lose weight, right?" I don't know why that's the
solution to everything. But I went and I tried to hire a nutritional coach
and he, it was a he, and he said, you need to... he heard my story, my
traumatic, right? The grief of the trauma of losing a child. He's like,
"No, no, no, no, there's no losing weight until you actually get to the
cellular problem where the grief is." Isn't that interesting.

Karen:

Goof for him though.

Rebecca:

That's when I found out about EFT. So, that was back in 2014-ish probably.
And so I hired a tapping coach and it was super amazing. So can you
explain, because I'm sure a lot of my audience, or some probably doesn't
know what that is. What is EFT and what do you, yeah. What is it about?

Karen:

Well, the way I like to explain it is if you can be on board with the idea
that we have an energy body and think it's actually called the primo
vascular system. If you think of that as a river flowing from your head to
your feet, when we're born for most of us, that river is flowing along
pretty nicely. And then we begin to live our lives. And as we go along
about our lives, things happen, unsettling things happen. Sometimes
embarrassing things happen. Sometimes there's trauma. Sometimes we trip and
fall down or it's different things, but all of those things are like rocks
and boulders and logs falling into this river. And then the river being
energy, it doesn't flow as well. When we get lot of debris and congestion
in that flow of energy, we begin to experience physical and emotional pain.

With tapping what we do is we tap on the end Meridian points of those
Meridian energy, energy lines in the body. And as we do that with focus on
a boulder, for example, and we're tapping and we're thinking about the
boulder and approaching it from different angles. And pretty soon the
boulder disappears. And we know from longitudinal studies now that that
boulder doesn't come back. When we get rid of the debris in the river, of
course there's a better flow. So our energy flows better, our energetic
vibration goes up and we feel better. Once sometimes we'll tap on a boulder
and it'll go away and we'll say, "Oh my gosh, I didn't even know all these
pebbles were down here." And so we take care of those. Sometimes we tap on
something and it turns out to be like a log with a bunch of stuff, cut up
behind it and like a dam it burst and the whole stuff goes and we feel huge
release.

We're able to move up into a better feeling place. Many people see tapping
as an opportunity to get rid of what doesn't feel good in their lives, the
baggage that they carry around, and ideas. And it's great. And we can get
to that place where it's gone. Many people don't realize that we can use
tapping to then move up into a better feeling place, not just get to
neutral where stuff has gone, but move up into emotion, peace, joy, wisdom,
motivation, confidence. And so those are some of the things I really enjoy
doing in my business. Once we get rid of the debris and what doesn't feel
good, we can use tapping to energize our system, to tune into the
vibration. If you're familiar with law of attraction, you understand that
we move into the vibration of that, which we desire in order to manifest it
in our lives.

Rebecca:

Yeah. So getting to a higher energy level, right? Because there's that
scale. I learned that from Abraham Hicks. And did you learn that too the
scale of emotional energy? The higher vibration you're at, then you can
attract those things. Right. So that's super, so I'm just curious as you're
talking of course, my curiosity is piqued. How did you come into EFT
yourself, or why did you want to use it in your business?

Karen:

Actually I didn't have a business yet. I was coming out of a career in
education and I was completely depleted because I was also coming out of a
difficult marriage. And I was sitting on the couch without even enough
energy to walk around the block. And I was studying Reiki and things like
that. So I was on somebody's list somewhere and the invitation to
[crosstalk 00:07:21] the tapping world summit in 2010 came into my inbox.
And so I attended that and sitting on my couch, tapping along, thinking,
what on earth is this going to do? Is this going to help? Would this make
any difference at all?

After four and a half years of trying to figure out what was wrong with me
and being misdiagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and all sorts of
things. In two weeks, I recovered my emotional and physical health with
tapping. And so at that point I couldn't shut up about it. I was telling my
friends and family, they were having success. I didn't even know what I was
doing. And I landed in a training program and before I knew it, I was a
trainer and opening my own business.

Rebecca:

That's amazing. I love how I feel like if we would just follow the signals
and the clues that show up in our life as to, "Hey, here's a path for you
to follow." So many people, I feel like shut that down, but you actually
followed it, you're like, "Hey, this is could be something..."

Karen:

Yeah and I didn't know where it was going to go. And the thought of me
having a business, it was just actually just a few... I've been doing this
for 10 years now. And it was 10 years ago that I started taking clients on.
But the thought of me being a business owner and really being in business
didn't even come into play really until a couple of years ago when I owned
that I'm not actually unemployed. That was huge.

Rebecca:

It's sustaining me and it's supporting me. That's awesome. That's amazing.
And that thing that we kind of laughed about in the middle there about the
invitation, Karen is a projector. So that's such a key word for projectors,
right. Is receiving the invitation.

Karen:

I didn't know it then.

Rebecca:

No, but you responded to the invitation. You were like, "I have the energy
for this." That's so important for projectors invitations come along. Do
you have the energy for the invitation? And at that point you did
obviously, right. You had the curiosity about it and it had worked for you.
So you had some passion for it already. So it wasn't the wrong invitation.
Let's just say that right? You jumped into it and yeah, it's done well.

Karen:

Yeah. As I look back over my life and the invitations that have come my way
I did do for a long time, I did the thing. That's all in my chart about how
I will go ahead and be the one who says yes, even when I shouldn't, but I
learned that early on my thirties or so, so we're not doing that anymore.
But I see where, when I did act based on an invitation, things went much
better than when I put my best foot forward and say, "Hey, let's do this."
No, it was like, "Who are you?"

Rebecca:

When you try to initiate something instead of...

Karen:

Exactly, it didn't work as well as when I... And I could be invited and
then become the leader easily, but the invitation had to come first.

Rebecca:

Exactly. That's so interesting. And it's so good to know. And I think the
thing about projectors is jumping into the wrong invitations because
there's afraid there aren't going to be any invitations, right?

Karen:

That can happen yeah.

Rebecca:

So it's like, as soon as someone invites me, I better jump on it because
there's this weird thing with projectors of trying to figure out what that
means. What does that invitation thing mean, you know?

Karen:

Right. And I did that for a while in my business, people say, "Oh, would
you do a workshop on this? Would you do a workshop or a class on that?" And
I would, and there wouldn't be a big turnout and the people who asked me to
do it wouldn't even be there. And so then I learned pretty quickly to do
what lights me up, to do where I get the energy. So it's a lot of fun to
play around with that and to just observe how that plays into my life.

Rebecca:

Yeah and to notice that because you can so easily burn yourself out,
right.? Especially as a projector, just burning yourself out by answering
the call to all these invitations, which were entered into incorrectly, as
you're telling us, that's what it is. It's incorrect energy. So I just had
to bring that forth. But I read something that you sent me about what you
came to believe is that you just wanted to find this path to happiness and
it had nothing to do with finding purpose or is that something to do with
the same story you just shared with us about how you came to this business?
Or what was that about that core belief?

Karen:

It kind of really is because of the circles I'm in, there's a lot of about
find your purpose. You won't be happy until you find your purpose. And I
just wasn't going to get on board with that. And I don't know if that's
because my design is that I never have a hundred percent yes or no, it's
never going to be for sure or what that's about. But there was a day that
came and I realized that happiness could be my hobby and there was nothing
wrong with that. And as I played around with that and I made what I did in
my spare time, doing things that created happiness in my life, I decided
that why does there have to be more of a purpose in life than to just enjoy
it. Here, where we are having this incredible human experience? Let's do
that. And let's have sex. Let's exercise. Let's go to the beach and play in
the sand. Let's have babies or not. And all of the things, and enjoy it.
Every moment is our life. So in each moment let's feel as good as we can.

Rebecca:

Yeah. I see what you're saying. It could be what if our purpose is just to
be, and to live and experience, right? Does it have to be this real,
serious thing where we have to work really hard?

Karen:

Some profound thing. Well, what you find is, and what I found is that when
we work from a place of happiness, everything falls under that umbrella, we
find that we are showing up each day with a purpose with, on purpose, doing
something that feels good when we go to bed at night, we're thinking, yeah
I have accomplished something today and this feels good. And of course,
when we do that from a place of love and happiness, it's good for everyone.
And whether it's defined as our "purpose" or not we often find that just
simply allowing ourselves to move into that place of happiness and joy,
then anything that we can contribute to the world takes place and
everything we need to do that shows up.

Rebecca:

Yeah. Is this part of what you help your clients with too? Is just to kind
of find some way to be happy or find...

Karen:

Absolutely. They come to me with some rocks and boulders. Some people have
been focusing on these rocks and boulders for decades in talk therapy or
other locations. And yeah, so first we get rid of the rocks and boulders.
Then we look at how we can live as an energy being in the world and really
have fun and enjoy life. Having that higher rate vibration living there
doesn't necessarily mean a giddy, enthusiastic persona all the time. It's
also a very peaceful, calm place where you know deep in your bones that
everything's going to be okay. And even if it's not right now, it will be.
And that's a powerful place to show up in the world from because you bring
that energy to the table, wherever you go. And people feel that, and they
take comfort in that. And I think that too is a great gift to the world.

Rebecca:

Yeah. And being both of us have this emotional energy, right. This
emotional wave, I think I was looking at your chart. I think you have the
individual wave also, right? The highs, highs, and the highest and lows.
And what I recognized in my version of happiness is, you know what? Life
has a 50-50 balance. There are some times when you're just whatever's
happening, you're allowed to express your emotion about that, right? It's
not like our goal is to be at this high vibrational energy all the time,
because it's almost kind of impossible, really. It would almost be false
for me to be like, "Hey, I'm happy today, yey." Right. No matter what's
going on. But to be like, you're saying to accept that, you know what life
does have the ups and downs, but in the background, I know that this, even
this feeling of down doesn't last forever, like today I was feeling a
little low.

Well that's okay. Tomorrow, I'm not going to feel low. I have this
emotional wave, right? And so just even feeling peaceful about that, that
life is an emotional journey. There's the ups, the highs, the lows. And
when we want to create more, we know we can have tools, right. To get
ourself into a different emotional state. And there's nothing wrong with
the sadness, right? Sadness is part of life. And I had to learn that after
my son died, like wait, we are allowed to grieve, right. We're allowed to
grieve parts of life when they don't go. And we have expectations, they
don't go the way they're supposed to, whatever. It's okay. That's normal
part of life.

Karen:

Everything we feel is absolutely valid. And I think that's where a lot of
people get stuck is they think, "Oh, I shouldn't be angry or I shouldn't be
frustrated. I shouldn't be sad." And it's all just energy. And if we can
move that, then we can raise our vibration, the idea of the emotional wave
with human design. For me, it's more of a physical energy. I get a low on
the energy thing. But in sometimes I have my most deep and profound
insights when I'm in that lower part of the wave. Especially since I've
learned more about honoring that, just taking the space for that, letting
that be. I don't find myself there very often anymore, but yeah, it's an
interesting thing to let us be who we are. And I think that's what a lot of
people who, when they are introduced in human design, it's one of the first
things they said, "Oh my gosh, I have permission to be me." That's such a
valuable thing to allow ourselves to do what works best for us.

Rebecca:

It really is. And I love that what you said, just allowing when you said,
because I feel like the reason, sometimes we're in a low, it's a signal to
us that, "Hey, maybe you need to nurture yourself today or maybe take some
time to yourself." I take it a couple times a month, I have this low and
I'm like, you know what, today I'm nurturing myself more. It's a signal to
me why can't we have a balance of being alone in our own space, telling the
people around us, "Hey, by the way, I think it's a good day for me to spend
some time by myself or whatever, right." For me being a manifesting
generator informing the people around me is super important. And just, hey,
I'm spending some time by myself and you're right. It is a good time to I
think of it as that menstrual phase of your period where it's a great time
for rest, for restoration, for reflection, right. Reflecting. That's what
this low energy is for.

Karen:

It's a wonderful, wonderful to be able to say, "I'm going to walk away from
my desk." And it's wonderful to be able to trust that because you know,
when you walk away from your desk in a low that when you come back, you're
going to get so much more done from a much better place. It's going to be
much better work. Because you walked away and honored the low part of the
wave.

Rebecca:

Exactly. And what I noticed is when I try to create in my business, or I
try to get stuff done when I'm in the low, what is the point? It's like,
you could spend eight hours on something that literally could take you an
hour or half an hour if you were in the high of your emotional waves.

Karen:

Exactly.

Rebecca:

I have totally learned this lesson.

Karen:

Yeah me too.

Rebecca:

It's like knocking your head against the wall like, "What is going on?" I
can't figure this out, right. It's just so funny. And I'm like, [inaudible
00:19:17] this is like, try to teach... I'm like, okay guys, you don't have
to be like, I was where I was just... and this is what it is about this
normal work success formula, work 40 hours, eight to five every day, work
the same schedule Monday through Friday. No, actually, no.

Karen:

I don't think for very many people, that's a good fit.

Rebecca:

No, it's not. We all have our own way of working. We have better times
energetically and that's kind of what human design teaches us. How do you
use your energy efficiently? How do you schedule your time? And so I love
that since 50% of the population has an emotional wave. Learn about your
emotional wave.

Karen:

And then honor it.

Rebecca:

And honor that emotional wave, if you don't have the emotional wave, you
have other ways to look at what energy is defined and how your schedule
would work and all of that. And so, yeah, I love that. So this is so fun to
talk about. We just go off on a tangent over there, again, talking about my
emotional waves here we are. But really because of the tapping, I just
thought the emotional stuff kind of comes in, emotional freedom technique.
Yeah. It's all emotions, right? So what would you tell people if they were
wanting to find out about tapping? Is there a way that they could get into
your world somehow or find out where you are?

Karen:

Yeah. There are a lot of resources for tapping right now. I encourage
people to make sure they're following reputable resources. If you want to
find out about tapping from me, I offer at least weekly, a free opportunity
for people to jump online in a group setting, learn how to tap, experience
tapping, ask any questions they want to ask. And I think I gave you a link
for that.

Rebecca:

Yeah so I'll put the link.

Karen:

Just general wellbeing. There's also topic focus things on how to grow and
build your business. Lots of opportunities there just for absolutely free,
no donation requests, nothing. And I've been doing this for years. We're up
to 20 countries. People popping in from 20 different countries to do this.
And it's a good time. And sometimes it's a serious time. It's an
opportunity. Seriously find out how moving your energy can impact your life
and your world. And so we'll tap on anything people want to tap on.

Rebecca:

So in these groups, because I know you have it once a week, right? Do you
have a free tapping group? Is it once a week or is it once a month?

Karen:

At least once a week. Yeah, when COVID hit, I did it every other day,
because I knew people were stressed out and tapping is an excellent stress
relief tool. So [inaudible 00:21:48] once a week.

Rebecca:

As a projector, I'm like, "Oh, that every other day thing sounds like a lot
of work," but I mean in this once a week thing, so does it help? I'm just
asking a general question for anybody who might wonder if they're not
actually the one who asks a question or wants to tap on something, does it
help them even just to come and watch the tapping or try to participate
without saying anything or without asking right a certain people just to
tap along.

Karen:

I love that you asked that. There's actually several research studies out
about that. There's something called borrowers' benefits that show that
even if you're just tapping along on other people's issues. So for example,
maybe there's a person who does not reproduce children in the group or
we're tapping on someone else's discomfort in pregnancy and that versus
going, "Oh, my feet are so swollen. My belly and my back are so bad." That
person is still going to benefit because what happens when we tap and
stimulate those meridians cortisol actually goes down.

We call them the nervous system, engage the parasympathetic nervous system,
that relaxation response, and when the body is relaxed, the body heals
itself. And so it's an amazing thing. So I encourage everyone to tap along
and we're all in our own places. So you can say whatever you want to say,
but generally people will just repeat after me. The other recent research
study came out which is that after an hour of group tapping, cortisol was
reduced by 42%. So that's huge in just one hour.

Rebecca:

Yeah. And I can attest to it. I mean, I don't know if I've told my false
tapping story. Probably not to my podcast audience, but yeah, I can attest
to it, after deep anger and grief, so many layers of things. I thought I
was going to be tapping on grief and guess what? We tapped on anger and
that released layers and layers of stuff I had no idea it's like peeling an
onion. That's what I thought of as, because we'd get this layer and it's
like, "Oh, there's another layer." And it was so fascinating to me. And I
also have to say that I found that there were benefits of other things that
were happening in my life that we weren't even tapping on. So that's what I
thought of when you said that, because other things changed because I was
tapping and I wasn't tapping on those things.

Karen:

Right. It's because overall you're raising your vibration.

Rebecca:

Yes, it was super interesting to me. So I definitely know tapping is going
to be a part of my life again, as for a while, I've been like all in the
human design whole, but when I found you again like, "Oh yeah, tapping,
we're going to get back into talking about tapping." I love it. So thank
you so much. And I see that you had your website. So karenaquinas.com is
also where they could visit your website.

Karen:

Absolutely you won't find the free groups there. So if you want to get into
the free groups, you can look for those on Eventbrite or with the link that
you give.

Rebecca:

Yes. I'm going to put the link for the free group in the podcast notes so
that we can see that. So thank you so much for coming today, Karen. This
was super fun.

Karen:

Thanks for inviting me, Rebecca.

Rebecca:

If you enjoy listening to this podcast, please go subscribe so that you get
notified of all the future goodies that are coming along while you're
there. Please leave me a review and let me know what you think. So excited
to share this with you and can't wait to talk to you next time. Bye.