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Tapping? EFT? What are they? In our episode this time Brad Yates will tell us all about these incredible tools and how they can benefit each of us. Brad grew up thinking he wanted to be an actor. He attended the University of California at Irvine, my alma mater. He majored in Drama. After college he began working to create and grow an acting career. Along the way he met a woman and married her. As he worked at becoming an actor he began to feel that perhaps acting was not going to be what he should do full time. He finally decided that helping people was his real life’s calling. He took a course in hypnotherapy. He became a hypnotherapist and along the way learned about this tool called “tapping”. I get to participate in a tapping demo as you will see. Briefly, tapping utilizes many of the same techniques and areas of acupuncture, but instead of needles you use your finger tips to address certain locations on your body. Tapping is becoming more accepted as Brad proved by working with the Sacramento Drug Court for three years where he helped addicts coming out of jail to overcome life and physical challenges. This episode is fascinating and invaluable on many levels. I hope you enjoy it and will visit Brad’s website, www.tapwithbrad.com. Brad is truly unstoppable. About the Guest: Brad Yates has had the privilege and pleasure of working with a diverse group of clients, from CEOs to professional and NCAA athletes, from chiropractors and psychiatrists to corporate and federal attorneys, from award-winning actors to residents at a program for homeless men and women in Santa Monica. For several years he taught a weekly class using EFT and guided imagery at Sacramento Drug Court. Brad has also been a presenter at a number of events, including several International Energy Psychology Conferences and Jack Canfield’s Breakthrough to Success event. He’s done teleseminars with “The Secret” stars Bob Doyle and Dr. Joe Vitale and have been a featured expert in every Tapping World Summit. He is the author of the best-selling children’s book “The Wizard’s Wish”, the co-author of the best-seller “Freedom at Your Fingertips,” a featured expert in the film “The Tapping Solution” (along with Jack Canfield, Bob Proctor, Dr. Norman Shealy and Dr. Bruce Lipton), and has been heard internationally on a number of internet radio talk shows. Brad also has over 1000 videos on YouTube, that have been viewed over 47 million times. More info is available at www.tapwithbrad.com Ways to connect with Brad: Website: https://www.tapwithbrad.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tapwithbrad Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TapWithBrad Instagram: http://instagram.com/tapwithbrad TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tapwithbrad Twitter: http://twitter.com/tapwithbrad LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tapwithbrad/ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:16 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Brad Yates ** 02:04 Oh, thank you so much. Michael, I'm honored to be here. And, yeah, I think it's up to 47 million now. Michael Hingson ** 02:10 47 I was afraid that I got that wrong. Yeah, Brad Yates ** 02:12 that's all right. Michael Hingson ** 02:14 It's okay. It's Brad Yates ** 02:15 a lot of time. I'm honored that that so many people have found it helpful and and then it continues to grow at Michael Hingson ** 02:24 1000 videos. That's 47,000 views per video, so that's not too bad. Yeah, 02:30 yeah, Michael Hingson ** 02:31 take the average. Well, I really appreciate you being here. And one other thing that Brad and I just discovered about each other is we are both graduates of UC Irvine, so we're both anteaters, and as we always say, there you go. Well, why don't we start tell us a little bit about the early Brad growing up and stuff. Yeah, why not? Brad Yates ** 02:56 Well, so I, I went to Irvine as a drama major, because it had a really great drama department. So coming out of high school, I was an actor. What I intended to do, and got my degree in drama. It as I was just telling you, it took some a little bit of time off during college to go study acting in London. And then out of college, got a job with a traveling children's theater, traveled the world, performed in all kinds of exotic locations, like Italy, Australia, Fiji, Waukegan, Illinois, you know, hit all the big places and and then after a little bit of that, I decided it's time to go to Hollywood to go my movie star. And then while I was there, I I met a woman, fell in love and got married, and when our first child was on the way, I thought, you know, I might need a backup career. So I saw an ad for a hypnotherapy school, and I thought, wow, I've always been fascinated by the power of the mind. I'll I'll check that out, and did that, started building a small hypnotherapy practice while still pursuing my acting career. And then after a couple of years, when our second child was on the way, I realized that as much as I loved acting, doing personal development work was really my calling, that's really what I was meant to do. It just just so satisfying. So we left Los Angeles, moved up to northern California to be closer to our families, and had the kids close to their grandparents. And through some other hypnotherapists, I heard about this, this tapping thing, this energy psychology conference going on in Las Vegas. And I thought, Wow, that sounds interesting. And when we did this technique where we were just tapping using acupuncture points and tapping on our face to down regulate stress, it was just really amazing, especially when one of the examples you used was. Was he gave everybody pieces of chocolate, and we tapped on chocolate cravings. And after a couple of minutes, I could not eat the chocolate, and I didn't eat chocolate for two years after that, I eventually recovered. I got better, but so that I just thought, wow, this is an amazing technique. And I started introducing into my hypnotherapy sessions, and little they became tapping sessions and put it on YouTube, and here we are. Michael Hingson ** 05:25 Wow. So you you use a lot of interesting techniques. Tell me about guided imagery. What is that? Brad Yates ** 05:36 That's the the name that I give to hypnosis is still a type of hypnosis, just allowing people to go into that, that different state of mind and create images that are designed to enhance one's well being, enhance their success mindset, even enhance their unstoppable mindset, and allowing them to to find those ways of accessing more powerful and more empowering parts of themselves. So while my original sessions used to be all hypnotherapy, now I usually end a session with just what I call a guided imagery, just taking people through to use it to very nurturing process for mind and body. So Michael Hingson ** 06:23 what is it that you do? Are they actually under hypnosis during guided imagery, or are you helping people to really learn to imagine and and use their minds to to explore images and explore whatever it is that that you're talking about without actually going through the whole hypnotic process. Brad Yates ** 06:43 Well, I do. I start with a progressive relaxation, which is the hypnotic induction that a lot of people use. It's not the the induction. I as a hypnotherapist, I used a number of different inductions with with this, because I'm often working with large audiences, I do just a progressive relaxation, but it does take many folks into a very deep, hypnotic trance, and some others, not so much, but, but to a very relaxed place where they're more open to suggestion. And then I'll do it. It'll be a guided meditation of looking at what do they want to create, and how do they access that? And it, it's always it's always intuitive. For me, I very rarely know what I'm going to do until I start talking to them and taking them down. And then, generally, because I've done it at the end of a tapping session, and I know what the person is working on and what their challenges are, I'll generally come up with some sort of imagery that is related to what we've been working on, just sort of seal in the work that we've done with the tapping Michael Hingson ** 07:56 well. And as long as we're doing that, then tell me about tapping. What, what that is logical. Logical thing. Since you brought it up, guided imagery. Brad Yates ** 08:07 Mainly what I do my website is tap with Brad. So it's all about the the tapping. It based on acupuncture. So for 1000s of years in Chinese medicine, they have said there's a flow of energy through the body along these pathways that are called meridians. And when this energy is flowing naturally, we experience our natural state of health and well being, physically and emotionally. And when this energy gets stuck or disrupted, we don't feel so good, and that keeps us from thinking clearly. We don't make the best decisions, and that has all kinds of unfortunate consequences. So in traditional Chinese medicine, the doctor would stick needles in these key points along around the face and torso and the body to stimulate that healthy flow of energy. And we're just tapping with our fingertips to stimulate those same points. It's kind of a type of acupressure to get that flow of energy going. We have a growing body of scientific research validating it as a very profound tool for down regulating stress. And when you realize that stress either causes or worsens most, if not all, of the issues that trouble us, both physically and emotionally, then having a very simple tool for down regulating stress and balancing the nervous system is can be a profound benefit in in life in general, for our health and well being, but also pretty much any area of our lives. Michael Hingson ** 09:36 So you talk about Emotional Freedom Techniques is, is essentially guided imagery, and tapping part of what that means. Well, the Brad Yates ** 09:45 the Emotional Freedom Techniques is the is one version of the tapping modality. It was developed out of a another tapping modality called fought field therapy. The psychologist named Dr Roger Callahan and. Who had been working with this woman with a lifelong water phobia, and after working with him for a year and a half, and she was about 40, had been in therapy all of her life. After a year and a half with him, she could be outdoors near swimming pool and not have be too disturbed, but she had to be looking away from the water. But she was, you know, very, very bothered by bodies of water and any water. So he had been expanding his horizons, learning different things. Was taking a course in acupressure. And one day, he said, Well, what's the physical sensation when you have this water fear? And she said, Well, I get a knot in my stomach. And he said, Okay, well, this this key point for the stomach meridians right here under the eye. Let's see what happens if we tap there. And after just a few moments of tapping, she said, it's gone. And he said, Well, what's gone? She said, the fear. And she runs out of the house towards the swimming pool. And he's running after saying, Wait, stop. She goes, Stop, just It's okay. I know I don't know how to swim, but she got down by the pool and started splashing water in her face. And she said, this doesn't bother me at all. And naturally thought, well, this is very interesting. So he started experimenting with different patients, and found that with different emotional issues, he it was beneficial to use different points in different sequences. And within a year, he put himself out of business because all of his patients who had been coming to him on a weekly basis were now, hey, I'm fine, see ya. So he started teaching this process called that. He called thought field therapy, and one of his first students was a gentleman named Gary Craig, and you'll appreciate this. Gary got his degree in engineering. He he had his degree from from Stanford, and was very interested in personal development, and was taking this learning this process. And he said, Well, it's it. This is very complicated, coming up with these different algorithms of which points to tap in which sequences, and there's eight points that we're using. So what if we just tap these eight points top to bottom in one sequence and simplify it? You know, as an engineer trying to simplify what's there? Yeah, and found that he was getting the same great results. So he called this version of tapping Emotional Freedom Techniques. And a lot of us, the the tapping that many of us do is based on EFT there. There are sometimes some differences, because each person does it a little bit differently. So the general term over that all is, is tapping coming from my background as Hypnotherapist. I then just add on guided imagery as as part of the work that I do Michael Hingson ** 12:43 still extremely interesting and clearly beneficial. What about how it's accepted in Western culture, Western medicine and so on? Just like acupuncture, it seems to me, there's usually a lot of resistance to some of this stuff in the in the Western world, yet it clearly works. Yeah, Brad Yates ** 13:06 yeah. There is, there is still some resistance. There's a growing number of people who are introducing it. There are MDS and PhDs who use it. I it. One of the most flattering things for me is when I hear from a licensed therapist saying, Oh yeah, I send people to watch your videos as homework in between our sessions. So there is that, as I said, there's a growing body of scientific evidence showing it the APA, the Association of psychology, the American Psychology Association has not fully accepted, at this point as an evidence based process, a dear friend of mine in Australia, Dr Peter Stapleton, who is a clinical psychologist. She's a psychology professor at Bond University, and when she was first introduced to this, she thought, I'm a scientist. This is ridiculous. And then she experimented with and found that it was very beneficial. And she's led a lot of the research, doing research such as with cortisol levels, which is a stress hormone, where we see the dramatic reduction in cortisol after tapping. She's done fMRI studies, where you can see the brain activity and how, after the tapping, the parts of the brain that are lighting up are no longer they're now normalized. So she has, she has been working with the AP sheet. She followed all of their guidelines to to meet the criteria for evidence based practice. And they said, Well, we're changing our guidelines. She'll love it, and she's done studies with up against cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT is the gold standard of therapy, and in the studies that they did, the. EFT group got the results quicker, and the results lasted longer than CBT, but the people running that involved in CBT said, Well, when you publish the findings, you can only say that EFT was non inferior to CBT, Michael Hingson ** 15:19 and she'll love it. Brad Yates ** 15:21 Yeah. So little by little, little by little, we're making headway. Michael Hingson ** 15:25 Well, so how does tapping really affect people's ability to make choices and and improve or or achieve better results in their worlds? Brad Yates ** 15:36 Yeah? Well, when we look at it, most of the choices that we make are made on an emotional level. Well, most of the choices we make are we do unconsciously. 80 to 90% of the choices are we're doing the same choices make having the same thoughts as yesterday. And we so often make choices and we don't even realize that we're doing it. So we say we want to get healthy, but then we find ourselves halfway through a box of cookies going, ooh, how did that happen? And and it's we want to be compassionate with ourselves. So so often we beat ourselves up for these choices, but we're just trying to take care of ourselves. There's a part of us that says I'm uncomfortable. Cookies tend to make me feel better. I'm just trying to take care of myself. So we're trying to soothe an emotional discomfort, and that's what tapping does. Tapping soothes that emotional discomfort. So rather than eating doing stress eating, we can do the tapping to calm ourselves down. And then what happens when we go into stress? We go into some level of fight or flight, where the sympathetic nervous system kicks in and we're cortisol is pumping we're trying to prepare ourselves to fight or freeze. And the prefrontal cortex, our rational mind, where we make all of our best choices goes Bye, bye. Yeah. So when we're in that stress point, we're not making those good choices. But with the tapping we calm that down, we engage the parasympathetic nervous system, get our get the blood flowing back into the prefrontal cortex, and we make much better choices. So we're able to look at what do I really want in terms of my health, in terms of my well being, in terms of my finances, in terms of my career, all of that stuff, we're now able to make much better choices, and we get better results. I was talking to someone about tapping for money. I have a number of videos on money, and someone said, Now, how can tapping on your face make a difference in your financial life? I said, Well, would you agree that your behavior has something to do with your financial situation? And she's like, Well, yeah. And I said, would you agree that stress has something to do with your behavior? Yeah, okay, so therefore, ergo something that can down regulate stress can benefit how you the behavior that you have which can benefit your finances. Michael Hingson ** 18:04 So what did she say to that? She was Brad Yates ** 18:07 like, Well, okay, you got me. And in terms of, you know, I love the title of your show about being unstoppable, it's, it's, I did a program for a group called the unstoppable foundation that builds schools in Africa. Cynthia Kersey and I actually have a just a video that I made years ago called being unstoppable, because it's looking at what stops us. What are those things when, when we look at what we want to create and what, what's the kind of life that we want to have? And we might have some ideas, and then we say, No, I couldn't do that because of this, because of that. And and that's just we have old programming that has an emotional charge on it that creates this stress. It's like put an electric fence around us, and it stops, and we say, Oh, I can't go past this point. This is out of my comfort zone. It doesn't feel safe. And so by clearing out that stress, we expand that comfort zone, and we become more unstoppable. Michael Hingson ** 19:16 One of the things that I have been working on is starting to help people understand that when a major crisis occurs in our life, like for me, when I was in the World Trade Center and it was attacked on September 11, so I wasn't afraid. I'm not going to say, well, I shouldn't say I wasn't afraid, but I was not and did not allow fear to overwhelm me, or, as I put it, blind me to being able to act. And the reality is that fear is something that we can control, and if we if we work at it, we can teach people that, in fact, you can use fear. Is a very powerful tool to guide you. It keeps you it can keep you more alert. It can keep you more focused, and that you don't have to be blinded or overwhelmed just because you're in the middle of a building and something happened now one, one of the things for me is that I and all the people who I was with and who were around me as we were going down the stairs. Had no idea what happened. We did figure out an airplane must have hit the building because we were smelling the fumes from burning jet fuel, but we had no idea what really happened, other than an airplane hit the building. And as I love to tell people you know, who always say to me, Well, you couldn't possibly have known because you couldn't see it. My immediate response was, you don't know what kind of imagination I have. I've been watching too much science fiction for years. You have no clue. But the reality is, of course, eyesight had nothing to do with it. The plane hit 1840 on the other side of the building, so no one knew. No one saw that. Yeah, Superman and X ray vision just aren't there, you know? But I had learned what to do. I had spent a lot of time studying, talking to the emergency preparedness people, the Port Authority, police and so on, so I knew what to do in an emergency. And the mindset kicked in, and I realized that for 22 years after that, I've not really talked to people about how they can learn to control fear, but rather I've just talked about the fact that I chose not to really be afraid. So it's it's interesting listening to you, because clearly talking about things like Emotional Freedom Techniques and especially tapping, might be a more direct way to help people really get to the point of understanding that we can control fear and it doesn't need to overwhelm us. Yeah, Brad Yates ** 21:56 absolutely, absolutely in the moment. You know, people talk about, oh, the negative emotions like fear and anger. And I say, no, there are no negative emotions. There are uncomfortable emotions, and we don't want to stay stuck in them, but they all serve a purpose, and the so called negative emotions are our warning signals. They're there to tell us, hey, here's something you need to pay attention to, right? Just as you said. So you use fear to go, Okay, I want to pay attention. But so for me, it's like having a smoke detector in your house, and when there's it gets triggered, the alarm goes off, but the alarm is just there to tell you, hey, you need to pay attention to something. Go check if there's a fire someplace, yeah, and, and then you can put it out. But with so many of us with these emotions, especially anger, but, but in many ways, fear, with the trigger goes off and the smoke alarms going off, and we just run around going, Oh, my goodness, oh my goodness, there's an alarm going off. It's like, okay, that doesn't help. You're supposed to actually take action, so you use that as a signal to check, and you go into the kitchen go, oh, there is no fire. It's just a misunderstanding. Or, you know, it often happens when we're cooking, and the fire alarm goes off because it detects the smoke, even though there's no actual fire. So it could be just a mistake and but we are. We sometimes get so triggered that we that we go into this panic mode, and the prefrontal cortex shuts down, as I was saying earlier, and we don't think clearly, so we don't make great choices, so we the the tapping allows us to hear the alarm and calm down that panic and go, Okay, let me. Let me figure this out. And what you were saying about how you were so prepared, I think it's something they talk about in navy seals, is you don't, you don't rise to your potential. You fall to your training and and that habit, and I had, I when we when we first spoke a couple weeks ago, and I had said something about, in some ways, your lack of sight as a superpower, because you have spent, rather than being stopped you. I mean, you truly are a hero of being unstoppable in terms of, you know, what you've achieved, and the things when you talked about riding a bike, I'm like, wow, so, but because of that situation, you don't take as much for granted as as some other people. And so you had done the your your due diligence in learning the safety things and talking to Port Authority that a lot of people take for granted. And so in that moment, as you said, you, you had that training. You, you built that in. It wasn't I have to now figure out, Oh, my goodness, there's emergency let me now go look at the emergency manual that I have taken for granted. Just assume I'll be able to look at that when the time comes. You know, it's like, yeah, I. Know what to do with this, and, you know, benefited all the people that were there in your office. So, but it's, it's a great tool for, it's great tool for clearing stress that has been held in our body. You know, Dr Bessel van der Kolk the one of the premier experts in trauma. His book is called The Body Keeps the Score, so we have this stored trauma in our body, and with the tapping, we can release that. But it's also great for in the moment, having that, I have reached out and talked to some first responders about being able to having this be a tool in their tool kit, so that when they're dealing with someone who is in this elevated state of fight or flight, to be able to use this to quickly calm down the nervous system, so that they can be more present, more more able to do what they need to do and or tell what they Need to tell. Michael Hingson ** 26:01 I like your an example or analogy of using it in comparing it to a fire alarm, because the the reality is, the fire alarm goes off and you and if you are able to not just run around, but go investigate and you discover that there is a serious fire in the kitchen or in the garage. The point is, though, that again, you can panic, or you can have spent time training and thinking about such things, and so you know what you can do and what your options are. And the reality is, that's what it's really about. You know, there was no way to control the airplanes hitting the buildings, and that happened. And of course, the buildings could have collapsed, and there we all were, and we would have been smushed, but that but until that happened, the bottom line is, that's not what was going on. And so we had the option to then choose which is the operative part of it, what to do. And for me, I made a choice because I had learned what to do. And I think that's that's the issue. And sighted people could do that as well. But as you point out, they realized so much on just Oh, I could go look at the manual. Well, that doesn't work when you have the emergency. You're already in the middle of it. Did you really prepare? And that's what people need to do a lot more of, is taking the time to really prepare. And that's why I've just written a book. It'll be published later this year, called Live like a guide dog, and it talks about controlling fear. And the reason that we titled it that was that in reality, I've used lessons I've learned from observing eight guide dogs on my wife's service dog and things that they showed at challenging times that did teach me a lot more about learning to and helping Control fear or being afraid and being able to use that fear in a in a positive and constructive way to be able to survive and move on. Yeah, Brad Yates ** 28:09 yeah. So listening to the hearing the fire alarm and going, Oh, this is, this is telling me to go do something just like in the in the fire station, if there's a fire an alarm goes off. And because of their training, they go, Oh, time to suit up and sit up and go, yeah, not, not. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness, there's alarm going off, yeah, which is what so many of us do, because we take things for granted and and then it triggers that, that fight or flight, and we have a lot of programming about, well, if I'm not afraid, then I'm not taking it seriously. And and I'll say to folks, well, if you're crossing the street, you know, you look both ways right to make sure that it's safe to cross the street, or you wait for the walk signal. You don't, but you don't stand there and go, Okay, there's a little green man on the walk signal. I can hear the signal chirping, saying it's safe to walk. I can look both ways and see there's no traffic, but first I better get myself worked up into a panic, because otherwise I'm not really going to pay attention. Yeah, no, we just calmly walk across so we can use common sense and recognize all right. I can pay attention to what's going on and not have those elevated levels of cortisol going on, and I don't need to have my prefrontal cortex shut down. I can actually allow myself to think more clearly. So I sometimes say that Emotional Freedom is the freedom to make better choices well, and Michael Hingson ** 29:39 I know for me, so let's use your example with the traffic light and or when there isn't an audible traffic signal, and there doesn't need to be an audible traffic signal everywhere, like if you're at a straight crossing where you've got two streets that intersect, it's not like it's necessarily magical, but what I always do is listen. To see what the traffic's doing, right? And when I hear that the traffic is going the way I want to go, then I will start across. But even then, I listen again to make sure I'm not hearing a car that seems to be coming up fairly fast from behind me, that might suddenly turn in front of me, but I'll make a decision. And they do that sometimes. Oh, Brad Yates ** 30:21 every morning, on my morning walk, Michael, I walk five miles every day. And, you know, every couple of weeks there's someone who is in a hurry, and they come whipping around, making a right hand turn without looking Yeah. So, yeah, you never know. So Michael Hingson ** 30:38 I listen, and when I make the determination that I have enough time or or space to start across, I will and even then, if a car comes up faster than I expected, I I keep myself poised and ready to okay, if that car is coming, is it better to leap back to where I came from, or shoot the rest of the way across the street. And you have to have that awareness, because drivers are crazy. The other part about it is working with a guide dog. So I start, I tell the dog to go forward across the street, and the dog won't go. That tells me there's something else going on, like a hybrid vehicle turning that I don't happen to hear and I will follow the dog, because the dog's job is really to make sure that we stay safe. The dog doesn't know where I want to go, and I don't want the dog to know that, but the dog does have the option to prevent me from going if it thinks there's a problem. So it's a team effort, and that's fine, but the bottom line is that I've learned those skills. And you know, like in the World Trade Center, talking about the fire alarm went off. If I really wish that when we met firefighters coming up the stairs, they had told me what was going on. Because I know me, I love information, and it would have made some differences in some of the decisions that we made later, which, for example, put us like 100 yards from tower two when it collapsed because we didn't know what was going on. Oh, geez, you know. And if I had known that, we would have probably gone a different way. On the other hand, we were there and we ran and all that was fine, but still, I like information, but I know me, and I also know why they didn't say anything to anyone, because we asked, because they were afraid that it could cause a panic, and I'm sure with a lot of people, it would have so I understand that, but I would have liked to have known but they don't know me. They didn't know me. So, you know, we go on Right, right. Brad Yates ** 32:43 Yeah, they can't take everything and go. Everybody else would panic. This guy looks like he's got a good head on your shoulders. He could probably handle the information and not and and if they had to appeal and panicked, you know, fewer people might have gotten out because of, yeah, Michael Hingson ** 32:58 yeah. Well, we worked really hard to keep people focused going down the stairs, and you know that so they they didn't panic, which was important. Well, so what are the areas for tapping that that work with Emotional Freedom Techniques with EFT? Because I'm sure there are a lot of things you can a lot of places to tap for one thing or another. But what do you mainly work on with EFT and tapping? Brad Yates ** 33:20 I actually work with folks on all kinds of different things. I, you know, a lot of times it's, it's career success, people trying to up level their career and finding themselves stopping because, you know, fear, fear of success, fear of failure, fear of being seen. There's a lot of people, it's the idea of having more people find out about them, meaning more people that can be critical of them and judgmental of them. It feels very threatening. And so we work on that. I work with folks on self esteem issues, which is underneath a lot of the blocks in terms of relationships, in terms of so many areas of life, this pervasive feeling of not being good enough, of not being worthy, is out there, and it's a misunderstanding. So I I'll help people shift their mindset around that the problems we we we get very stuck on what we believe and how we do things, and when we try to make changes, part of our mind says that's threatening. What is familiar is safe. What is unfamiliar is dangerous, even if I'm looking and going, okay, but my life is not so great, and I can look over at this other possibility and say that would be much better. The part of the brain says, No, it's different. That's dangerous. And so we have a stress response that stops us from taking certain actions and and we become very stoppable. So So, and also, ultimately, in many ways, helping people become unstoppable is, uh. Is what it's all about in all kinds of different areas. Michael Hingson ** 35:03 Can we teach our brain to think that difference isn't necessarily bad, and get out of that reaction? Because that's something that, of course, we hear all the time. People always talk about how change is all around us, but people hate change. Yes. Can we teach people that that's not necessarily the case? Brad Yates ** 35:26 Yeah, that's and that's the the that's what, where the tapping really comes in, because it down regulates that, that stress that occurs. Yeah, we want, as a friend of mine says, everybody wants things to be different. They just don't want to change, you know, and, and because when we come up against some kind of change, we we have that, that stress response, like touching the electric fence and says, go back to where you were. And the tapping calms that down. So it's like cutting the wires to the electric fence, and we can see, oh, that's a misunderstanding, that thing that I was afraid of isn't really a threat to me. You know, obviously there are things that are real threats. In 911 there was a real threat, but most of the things that are stopping people on a day to day basis are absolutely imaginary and not, not an actual threat to our well being. It might be, it might bruise our ego, if it goes a certain way, but our ego can handle that. And so as we use this tool to create a feeling of safety, so as I look at, you know, if I, if I have, for instance, with money, people have a lot of old program about, you know, money is the root of all evil. So if I have, I may consciously say, of course, I want to make a lot more money, but if, unconsciously, I have this belief that money is the root of all evil, I don't want to be evil, so I'm going to block the amount of money I have. So if I have a get an interview for a job that's going to pay me a lot better, I might blow the interview. I might not even show up. I might totally forget to show up unconsciously. And I, you know, afterwards thinking, oh my goodness, I totally spaced that. Because I like to say that self sabotage is simply misguided. Self love. We're trying to protect ourselves. So these self sabotaging behaviors are an attempt to protect ourselves based on some old misunderstanding. So as we calm down that that the fear that causes us to to stop ourselves, and we look at and say, oh, you know what? I could handle having more money and in that job, I could be of a lot more service to more people, it would be so rewarding personally as well, and that that just creates that, that great opening for for amazing things to happen. Of Michael Hingson ** 37:51 course, Steve Jones and Joe Vitale have been trying to teach that for a number of years. And I know you've done I've worked with both of them. You've worked with both of them before. Yes, Brad Yates ** 37:59 I have a program with with Joe Vitale, a program called money beyond belief. And with Steve, we did a program called Confidence beyond belief. Yeah, Michael Hingson ** 38:08 and, you know, the issue is that that we can, we can learn to deal with change, and it makes us a lot more powerful if, if we do that, and we do it consciously and do it the right way. Can anyone learn tapping and how to deal with Emotional Freedom Techniques? Yeah, Brad Yates ** 38:27 pretty much it's it's a very simple technique of tapping with our fingertips on our face and torso. There are different places you can tap and and you can even gently hold or rub the points. For some folks who may not be physically capable of tapping all of the points, and a lot of people find it very beneficial just to imagine the tapping, they can also get a lot of benefits from that in because, you know, we send we send thought signals. We send electrical biochemical impulses to these different nerves and different muscles. So we're able to do it that way as well. Michael Hingson ** 39:08 So how can people learn how to tap? Brad Yates ** 39:12 Well, the easiest way is, from my perspective, is go on YouTube, because there's, there's this guy who's got over 1000 videos. I heard, again, all kinds of different subjects. But that's sort of the the easiest way is to is to be guided in that way. And there's a number of colleagues of mine who also have videos and different resources online to, you know, one of the very simple thing is we just, you know, learning the these different these eight points. And I'll you know, just for the sake of demonstration, if someone takes their index and middle finger, all right, I've done that. Yeah, take the take the the fingertips and gently tap on the opposite the side of your opposite hand. So we gently tap the the opposite hand to begin with, where we. This setup on the hand itself. Yeah, right on the on the edge between your wrist and pinky. Okay, yeah, so, yeah, gently tapping there. And that's where we say, even though I have this stress or even though I'm feeling this fear, or even though I'm angry at Bob, whatever it is that's bothering us, we gently tap there and say, even though I feel this, I choose to love and accept myself. And it's just creating a level of acceptance, because so often we try to run from and say, Oh, I don't feel that. And then what we resist persists, yeah? So we just say, I accept that. Then we gently tap the eyebrow point, so right at the beginning of your eyebrow, right near the center of your face. Yeah. We'll just gently tap there five to 10 times and we say, whatever the issue is, this stress, this anger at Bob. And then we then we follow the eyebrow out to the side of the eye, right the corner of the eye socket, and gently tap in there and say, all this stress. We follow the edge of the eye socket around to right under the middle of your eye, just above your cheek, all this stress, then right under your nose, just above your upper lip, gently tap in there, all this stress, then right below your lower lip, just above your chin, all this stress. The next point is right your where your collarbones just about come together. There's a little bit of a U shape at the base of your throat, and you can gently tap there, and you can actually even make a fist and tap where the collarbones meet all this stress. The next point is four inches below the armpit, so it's right about bra strap level. And even us guys can figure out where that one is all this stress. And then the last point we tap is right at the top of the head. So if you use all of your fingertips and tap around the crown of your head, all this stress when you take a deep breath, and actually be when we first do it, we would rate the stress on a scale of zero to 10. So it's like, okay, the stress that I'm feeling, or the anger at Bob that I'm feeling, is maybe an eight out of 10. And I'll and I'll try to figure out what the physical responses too. So it may be a tension in my shoulders that way we can see what we're working at, because then we can, after doing the tapping, we check again. And sometimes it'll go from an eight down to a zero like that. Sometimes it may just go from a seven, from an eight to a 7.75 but even that is some relief, and it's often like peeling the layers of the onion so that we might recognize as we're tapping like I might be tapping on all this anger at Bob, all this anger at Bob. Wait a minute, it's not even Bob, it's Cindy in the third grade. She did this thing, and I've been mad at her ever since. I never forgave her, and now I'm able to clear up some stress that I've been holding in my body for decades. So it's, that's, that's the very simple way of using it. And then, you know, and so in the very basic version of of EFT like that, we just repeat the whatever it is that's bothering us on each point. The way I do it in my videos is, I It's a more intuitive process, and I like to explore different ideas. And when I when I do that with folks, it they may say, Well, that's how do you come up with those words? It's like, don't worry about that. That's why I made the videos on YouTube, so you don't have to worry about the words. As you get more comfortable with the process, you'll start thinking of what you want to say while you're tapping. Yeah. Michael Hingson ** 43:38 Now people have used acupuncture to relieve pain and things like that. Does tapping do the same thing, or is it somewhat different? Brad Yates ** 43:46 It can I have helped a number of people with physical discomfort. I was working with a guy once, who I was at a health fair, and a guy came up to my booth and was asking what I was doing, and I and he was saying he had a his back was really bother him. I said, scale is zero to 10. He said, Oh, it's an eight. Um, it's like, really difficult to walk. And we did some tapping, and he said, Yeah, I think I feel a little bit better. And he and his girlfriend walked away, and later they came back over and said, So, at another part of this fair, there's a dance floor, and we've been over there dancing for a while, and what the heck did you do to me? And he said, my back isn't bothering me at all. And I'm not a doctor. I'm not going to make any medical claims, but there are plenty of doctors will say that, you know, up to 75% and sometimes more, of the physical pain we experience is is created by the stress that we're feeling. So when we can down regulate that stress, it can relieve a lot of the physical discomfort we have, and it also gives us more room for healing, because our body has remarkable healing capabilities, and as we clear out, as we allow ourselves. To process the emotions that might be involved, then we have more energy to put towards our physical healing Michael Hingson ** 45:08 well. And we, we all too often, don't accept that the body is really as good as it can be to heal itself and so on. And yes, of course, the point you're making is that the body really is that good, and we need to grow and learn that, that it can do that, and that we need to allow that to happen. And so often we just don't. Yeah, no matter what Cindy did, no matter what Cindy did to us in the third grade, Brad Yates ** 45:36 exactly a darn Cindy telling you, Michael Hingson ** 45:41 but we, we just don't, we don't accept that. And we've, we've talked ourselves way too much into some things that aren't necessarily So absolutely, Brad Yates ** 45:53 absolutely, and we're we have so many misunderstandings about things, so many arguments that we have with people in our heads about something that wasn't that didn't happen the way that we thought it did. Yeah, and, you know, we may finally get up the nerve to talk to the person go, you know, I'm just so mad about this thing you said, and they're like, I didn't say that or, well, I certainly didn't mean that. You know, certainly in this day and age of texting, where there's where you can't even hear the tone of voice, where we misread things Michael Hingson ** 46:27 way too much, yeah, Brad Yates ** 46:30 so so we're able to clear up those misunderstandings about ourselves, about other people, about different situations, and then that just creates a whole lot more peace. Tell me Michael Hingson ** 46:40 if you would a little bit about your time at the Sacramento drug court. That seems like it would be fascinating to dealing with all of that and dealing with addiction and so on. Brad Yates ** 46:48 Yeah, that was a very interesting time I had been I had presented a workshop at the energy psychology conference where I'd first learned tap, and I'd gone back as a presenter. I had been learning about 12 step programs. I had gone to some debtors anonymous programs. I was not handling my finances well at a time, and I had gone to debtors anonymous and been introduced to the 12 steps. And so I thought, wow, EFT would be a great tool with that. And there was a woman running a drug court program here in Sacramento, which is a mandated recovery program for people coming out of jail for drug offenses. And she said, Would you be willing to be one of our staff teachers, teaching EFT as a recovery tool? And so I did that for three years, and it was very interesting, because a lot of the people that I was working with there was, they were not my normal clientele, I bet. And you know, these people who had had really tough lives, people had really tough lives, and I come along and I say, so you're just coming out of jail, tap on your face. And not everyone was was totally open to but when they were, you know, people say, Oh, my God, this, this really works, and being able to first down regulate the the trigger and emotions that they had, and it then created greater freedom to to do what they needed to do To recover from addiction, because so much of addiction is trying to tranquilize stress and trauma. It's like I'm just, I'm just trying to find a way to feel better because I can't tolerate the discomfort that I have, and tapping provides a healthier alternative, such that we then have that again, the freedom to make better choices. Michael Hingson ** 48:43 Tell me about your book, The Wizards wish children's book, I guess, 48:47 yeah, Michael Hingson ** 48:48 I sounds like a great title. Brad Yates ** 48:50 Thank you. I I had done there. There's a documentary about tapping called The Tapping Solution, and when I was interviewed for this film, we talked a lot about children and how so many of the issues that stop us as as adults, our thing are based on events that happen in childhood. And I'm saying, Wow, if you know, if we taught children how to tap such that, you know, in the third grade, when Cindy did that really mean thing to us, rather than carrying that for years, and all of the ways that it limits our ability to thrive, if we could have, you know, tapped, even though Cindy did this thing and felt free that day, what what is possible for us. What kind of things could we achieve? And after that, I thought, yeah, I would love to find a great way to teach tapping to kids. And I had young children, and story time was always a big part of our lives. So I thought, do it as a children's story. And I'm a Harry Potter fan. I love. Wizards. I have a I have a plaque with all of my replica wands from the Harry Potter movies on my wall here. And I thought, wow, what if we used the wizard and and using the fingertips as a magic wand for tapping these magic points on the body. And so that's where the the inspiration came and, and I'd been a cartoonist and illustrated the book, and had a lot of I had some resistance to that. It was like, Oh, I gotta have a hard time drawing all these pictures. And I didn't realize where I was stopping myself. And I talked to a friend of mine, and she did some tapping with me and rattled off all the drawings within a week. So it's like, oh, there's a this is a good experiment for me in terms of using the tapping where I where I'm not seeing, where I'm stopping myself. Michael Hingson ** 50:47 So you tap yourself, yeah, perfect. Brad Yates ** 50:51 Every day. It's because you can. It's not always about clearing stress and fear. It can also be used for just allowing yourself to feel more peace, feel more joy, be more open to what's possible. And most of us are carrying ambient levels of stress that we're not even aware of, especially with most of us are walking around with a cell phone that's constantly saying, Hey, how you doing? Here's something to be upset about. And we're getting stressed out about things that aren't even directly related to our lives, yeah, and that stress has a harmful effect on us. So I like to start my day just trying to be as clear as possible. Well, we live in good things. Michael Hingson ** 51:30 We live in a world today looking at our elections and everything else, where people are just encouraging us to be fearful and yes and so angry about so many things. And you know, I, I've seen it happen to me, and I always have to say, wait a minute, stop that. Yep, but, but the thing is that we just don't get enough opportunities, or we don't take enough opportunities to back up on and back off on that and say, Wait a minute. We got to really look at this in a sensible way. Because no matter what these people are saying, what's real? Brad Yates ** 52:09 Yeah, they don't want us to look at a sensible way. No, that is because if they can make us afraid, then that puts us into fight or flight, and our prefrontal cortex goes away and we're not thinking clearly, and then we're more easily manipulated. Well, I have to, oh, go ahead. So that's the thing. Is they want us to be afraid. It's like, don't even think clearly. No, we're going to tell you what, what's going on and what you should be afraid of, and how we're going to help you. So if we have a way of dealing with that stress and that fear, which most people don't have a healthy weight, I always recommend to folks to tap on a daily basis, because it's energy hygiene. We have physical hygiene, like brushing our teeth. We, most of us, do it a couple times a day, at least, whether we think we need it or not. We don't usually wait until someone until we see green stuff growing between our teeth, or until someone's holding their nose around us and say, Oh, that's right, I haven't brushed my teeth in a week. Well, we Michael Hingson ** 53:05 could do that to Cindy, though it's okay, yeah, yeah, poor Cindy. Well, I noticed that you graduated from Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey circus clown college. So what's it like being a clown? Brad Yates ** 53:20 That was, yeah, and it's so funny. I just actually had coffee with the director of clown college just a few days ago. I hadn't seen him in a number of years, and it's actually and I told him, it's 30 years since we met when I went to clown college, that was during my acting days. I saw an ad for clown college, I thought that would be some really interesting training as an actor and when. And it was a two month program, an intensive program of doing character development and makeup and throwing pies and all kinds of things. And I didn't do a lot of clowning after that, I'd had a few a few things I didn't go on the road with the circus. I have a friend, a few friends, who did that, but, but a lot of that experience still informs my work, and I still very proudly have my my diploma, my Bachelor of fun arts, up on my wall of my office. I think Michael Hingson ** 54:21 it's interesting that you learned how to throw pies, though. Yes, I need to learn more about that, I guess. Except, pies cost a lot of money, so now, well, Brad Yates ** 54:32 we in the circus. You use, use soap foam. Oh, I understand. So it's, it's good clean fun, yeah, Michael Hingson ** 54:41 well, absolutely Brad Yates ** 54:43 rubber pie, rubber pie pans and crusts and and soap foam. Pass soupy Michael Hingson ** 54:50 sales, exactly. Well, this has been fun. I know you have to go, but I really have enjoyed this, and I need to go spend some time. Any more about tapping, and I don't know whether the videos are descriptive enough, or I'll have to bug you some more, but this is fun, and I hope people will take to heart what you've had to talk about if they want to reach out to you and learn more about it and maybe and see how you can help them. How do we do that? How do they do Brad Yates ** 55:15 that? Yeah, thanks, Michael. Easiest way is go to my website, tap with brad.com and you can get I have a couple of free five day programs there. One is called tap into your best self, and the other is called success beyond belief, which sounds like a lot of success, but it's also literally the success that's beyond your current beliefs about what you can have. So I encourage folks to to check those out, and there's links to my YouTube channel, and I've just, I've just described to you those tapping points, so you can go on to the video and and listen along. And while on the videos, I don't describe which points I'm saying, you can just move along. And you can even just tap one point, even if you're just tapping one point and repeating back the phrases that could that can be beneficial, so that you don't have to worry about, Are you tapping the same point that I'm tapping right now? Yeah, Michael Hingson ** 56:07 as long as you're tapping the points, yep. Well, this has been absolutely great. I really appreciate you taking the time to be here and discuss all of this. Maybe we'll have to do some more of it, if you want in the future, I Brad Yates ** 56:22 would enjoy that. It's been a great pleasure meeting you and speaking with you, Michael, I you're awesome and and as as we had agreed, I've had a lot of fun doing Oh, good talking with Michael Hingson ** 56:35 that's that is important as we know well. I want to thank you, and I want to thank you all for listening. Appreciate you being here. Love to hear your comments about this and all that Brad had to say. Please reach out to Brad, but I'd love to hear from you. Please email me at Michael h i@accessibe.com that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at A, C, C, E, S, S, I, B, e.com, or go to our podcast page, www dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, and Michael hingson is m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, S o, n.com/podcast, wherever you're listening, please give us a five star rating. We really value your ratings, and we love it when you are able to take the time to do that and review the podcast. But I again, would love to hear from you directly with any thoughts that you have, and Brad for you and anyone listening, if you know of anyone else who we ought to have on as a guest. Love to get Joe Vitale or Steve Jones on, Brad, I'll leave that to you. But if you know of anyone, we are always looking for more guests, so please feel free to provide introductions. So once again, thanks very much for being here, Brad, and thank you all for listening. And Brad, this has absolutely been great. 57:48 Thank you, Michael. Michael Hingson ** 57:55 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. 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