Understanding Disease as Meaningful; a META Health Approach

Today's Valuable Free Resources/Links:

Free Resource Link: https://www.meta-healthy.life

Summary

In this episode, I introduce you to Dr Craig Weiner.

Dr Craig currently is a certified trainer for META Health International, he currently serves as the Chair of the Board of Trustees for EFT International and is co-director of the EFT Tapping Training Institute. He is an EFT Master Trainer of Trainers (MTOT), Mentor and Accredited Certified Advanced EFT Practitioner.

In addition, he co-produced the film, the Science of Tapping with his wife and partner Alina Frank. He continues to maintain a private online client practice, though most of his time and energy is devoted to volunteering, training, mentoring/certifying practitioners and giving presentations at various integrated healthcare conferences internationally.

He has worked in the healthcare field for over 33 years as a chiropractor offering an integrated approach to supporting individuals in their physical and mental health and well-being.

Today he speaks about:

EFT tapping with Dr. Craig Wiener. (0:14)

Mental health approach to understanding diseases. (1:48)

How body pain can be a sign of emotional healing. (5:44)

Healing through self-inquiry and tapping. (11:41)

Using EFT tapping for emotional regulation. (16:03)

EFT tapping for emotional regulation and self-healing. (20:00)

EFT tapping for emotional healing and self-regulation. (25:45)

Join me for this episode of Mommy Heal Thyself to learn about the META Health Approach

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Intro  0:00 

Welcome to Mommy Heal Thyself.  We featured guests that provide you with the tools, resources and strategies you need to say no to a life of pain and suffering all forms of preventable disease, toxic drugs and unnecessary surgeries. We hope to inspire you to boldly reclaim your ability to heal, and to serve ones to love.

Dr Michelle  0:28 

Welcome everyone to another episode of mommy heal thyself today we have with us Dr. Craig wiener. He's currently a certified trainer for META health International and he currently serves as the chair of the Board of Trustees for EFT International and is a co director of EFT tapping Training Institute. He is an EFT master trainer of trainers, a mentor and accredited certified advanced EFT practitioner. In addition, he has CO produced the film, The Science of tapping with his wife and partner Alina Frank. He continues to maintain a private online client practice though most of his time and energy is is volunteer is devoted to volunteering, training, mentoring certifying practitioners and giving presentations at various integrative health care conferences internationally. He has worked in the health care field for over 33 years as a chiropractor offering integrated approach to support individuals in their physical and mental health and well being. Thank you for joining us today. Dr. Reiner how are you?

Dr Craig  1:48 

Thank you definitely am i doing just beautifully. It's spraying here in the Pacific Northwest. Everything's blooming and I'm I'm doing really well. Thank you for inviting me. Awesome.

Dr Michelle  1:58 

Well, we have so much to cover today. I would love for you to first give us an understanding of what is the Mehta health approach.

Dr Craig  2:10 

Okay, so mental health is a perspective. META health is a way of looking at things and that are held through the way that a META health practitioner views the world somewhat like I think many people have heard of like a trauma informed approach, which which is included within mental health. Mental health is a perspective that we really look to understand individuals, especially women, since we'll be talking about them. And how symptoms and disease is meaningful how our body's reactions really to specific stressors and circumstances. Tribes go through processes and how their body is programmed based. On their experiences. So in other words, things happen to us in life. We develop emotional responses to them. We have thoughts and beliefs that can create it according to the things that we've lived through and my circumstances and when we can start to see that how our body shows up in the world through symptoms and diagnoses and diseases are often meaningful systems and programs that are put into place to help us overcome challenging circumstances and how to be able to better negotiate those in our life. That they're not just happenstance. They're not just arbitrary, that when we start to have a better understanding to the most cognitive and emotional aspects to what's happening to us based on what we've lived through, it starts to allow us to be more compassionate with ourselves. It allows us to take more supportive self care towards healing. It's so easy when anybody is going through suffering, physical and emotional suffering, to to feel victimized by that feel like it happened to us so we didn't have a choice to feel that we have nothing to do with that, that we that it feels often arbitrary. And we end up creating. I mean, I know you know this with clients and patients is it's so common for us to not like our bodies to feel at war with to feel antagonized, or the effect of and that doesn't generate hormones or neuro trends. It doesn't facilitate healing nearly as well. So a META health approach can be from multiple types of practitioners whether it be a chiropractor or an interview worker or coach or medical doctor, nutritionist, acupuncturist can employ a mental health approach for better understanding the emotional root causes to the biological and physiological changes that are happening in our body. As we start to understand the meaning of why they're going through. It can facilitate greater self compassion and greater healing. So that's about getting started place I think, well,

Dr Michelle  5:08 

let's drill down a little bit more because I really like to get a little bit better understanding, giving me an example of what do you mean by understanding diseases meaningful you know, what is a common issue that you find women are dealing with? That perhaps having a shift in perspective and viewing the quote unquote disease processes meaningful would be helpful.

Dr Craig  5:38 

So let's, let's kind of talk about the way the mind body Interplay the way that it does. In other words, when we look to there's so many kinds of symptoms and pain and things we can have in our body. And let's look at different kinds of maybe, I don't know decades, backaches, different ways in which people hurt pretty calm. And the chiropractor I see a lot of that all the time and, and women come in with different kinds of physical pains that they're suffering from, and what they often have as an underlying mechanism is often a way in which life circumstances have triggered stress, stress, like responses to different situations, that often challenge their self worth their self ability to be able to overcome their ability to to stand up for themselves for example, or speak up for themselves. So it's very common for example, I get to see a lot of back pain that women are suffering from for all different kinds of reasons. And all different kinds of diagnoses in whether it be arthritis is intended by the system disk related problems that often when we look to, for example, our lower back and our hips and our pelvis, we start to look at ways in which the stressors that are happening previous to the pain often have to do with life situations that are challenging my ability to feel like I can stand up for myself and move forward in a situation. somebody's telling me I can't bring up memories of why I can't take an action step or I don't feel worthy enough to be able to or stand up for myself and so often what is happening before the pain sits in our stressful situations in our work in our home and home life, in relationship that challenge, the sense of our ability to be able to do that. And so what ends up happening is we go through these periods of stress that challenge and often bring up memories of being told that we are not enough in some way that we can't do things for ourselves that we have to depend on somebody else, etcetera. I'm speaking on behalf of and whether it's a man or woman but especially in this subject, we'll be talking about women that that's not uncommon that they've been informed in various ways that they're not enough in themselves, and so they have to lean on others or get support from others and rather than be able to stand up for themselves and so, what starts to happen is when we live under a period of stress for a period of time, it takes its toll on the tissues and organs in our body that are often specifically related that have somatic references to different issues that we're dealing with emotionally. And when we start to look through a mental health approach, one of the really interesting things is, by the time that we start to take some steps to stand up for ourselves to be able to, to heal that part of ourselves that feels like we can do something and I do have the abilities and skills to do this and take that next step and get the support I need that when we start to take healing steps forward. That the healing of that in our tissues is often the inflammatory process of healing the tissues, but with inflammation and swelling and healing is often a pain and it can be very confusing for people because they've actually lived through the stressful, challenging period, they started to take steps to actually move in the right direction and then there's pain associated with that. But symptoms are often interpreted as something bad. Symptoms are often interpreted as, where the problem is when often symptoms are actually a sign of the healing. I think one very common one is when we get a fever. I think in our common consciousness we now know nobody likes to have a fever. It's not a comfortable thing to go through sweating and have a fever. And yet we understand the fever is our body's natural response to fighting off something into the healing process. We don't often see pain as being sometimes a sign of a healing progress when we start to understand that our body has natural responses, that we start to understand that symptoms if we can understand they're meaningful and we start to inquire and be open to why is this going on for me and why now? Then that starts to remove some of the stress it starts to remove some of the self defeating thoughts and beliefs that get reinforced it starts to allow us to be more compassionate with ourselves that starts to generate different levels of healing compounds and understanding in our body and we can start to move through a process much quicker. I work with patients all the time in pain. And when they start to understand and I asked them you know questions, if we can look through the lens of my body is always attempting to heal. My body is always doing its best to overcome the challenges. What might be the meaning of why this is happening now what is your body asking of you right now? What is it and do it so often? You know with people with women that are having so much stress because they're trying to handle family and work and and so many different things at once that often they don't get the support or the break that they need. And so often when they're sitting down by payments, their body asking them you need to take a break. You haven't given yourself a minute to yourself for self care and let's hear so if we look to the body actually doing our best to give us what we really need, which is arrest which is getting some support which is such time away with just a boundaries, etc. Then we can start to look at old that's what needs to happen here. And when I can take those forward moving steps. My body can start to heal, the pain goes away. It doesn't have to be hitting us over the head, telling us take a moment for yourself here.

Dr Michelle  11:40 

Yeah, yeah. Well, I love what you're saying because, you know, part of why we have our title being mommy heal thyself is to encourage our leaders to have that conversation, that loving conversation with themselves you know, to have that conversation with whatever it is that is speaking. The resonance of quote unquote dis ease is really something that says I'm not too comfortable right now with what's going on and to have that conversation to talk with ourselves instead of saying, What's wrong with you, you know, and internalizing that anger that that dissatisfaction and all of those negative emotions that will further complicate the issue as opposed to promoting the healing. So I love it. Absolutely love what you're saying.

Dr Craig  12:37 

I love that you would translate to soften the underlying stressor. But then on top of that we add the What's wrong with you to our bodies. Sometimes I'll ask people to talk to their bodies as if it was their child, especially if they'd be on one. Right. It's like, you know their child is sneezing, coughing, they're like what's wrong? Like you? I'm going to give statements? Right? I mean, it's like you would never do that. It's like, oh, what's needed here? And right, what needs to happen here, what kind of care is needed here? But we've lost that ability, so many of us to speak to ourselves in that same way. Or to speak to our bodies that way. So medihelp You know, there are a variety of different exercises and processes that we can use. We'll talk about some of them, but sometimes just doing what we call Oregon breathing or breathing into our tissues and just starting to develop a more intimate relationship with my ovaries, my stomach, my breast, whatever the tissues are, that are giving some sort of symptoms or talking to us really, this that's really what symptoms are as a way of communicating. Diseases. A diagnosis is just a label for that communication, and what it's trying to share in order to try to heal something underneath. And so if we sometimes I'm always amazed just taking a minute to find that area that's given you a problem. That looks like a problem. And just breathe into that and begin an inquiry or conversation is what you feeling. Yeah. What do you need from me right now? And starting to cultivate that compassion? Clearly. There's something going on here. I mean, if we're good, when we are our best parent, right when we're when we're our best selves with our parents, and we can be curious with our child, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're calling out for something. And our body is calling out for something, it's needing something. And so if we can be in a place of safe inquiry with ourselves, that really helps often find the answers that that we weren't given time to listen to. And that's a lot about what my health is mental health is about is getting curious is understanding that there's always a reason that there's always some stressor that is either being restricted automation, which is now causing our bodies to have to act out in order to try to resolve something or or promote us to be able to take some steps toward what we what we need or not asking for. And that's, you know, as a, as an as a woman, as a mother especially that has such a strong, innate component to try to give and take care of so many things. The person that often gets left out is the time and patience to ask oneself what one needs. So

Dr Michelle  15:23 

now in alignment going a little bit further in terms of some of the modalities that we can utilize to support the healing process from a holistic perspective. And with the understanding of this communication. Let's take a step into tapping. Tell us a little bit more about what that is and how it's part of this dance, let's say of healing.

Dr Craig  15:51 

So from medihelp Many different modalities and tools that can be used using that understanding, one very powerful and that it's commonly used something called EFT or EFT, tapping Emotional Freedom Techniques. And this goes back to the 1980s in which those emerging of understanding how the body works. On an energy system from a Chinese medicine standpoint, along with cognitive psychology, along with forms of holistic counseling, and combining these in such a way that has become of very strong family research back system that can very effectively in a rather quick amount of time, help us to create an understand the connections between the emotions that we're feeling that are triggered by the sick circumstances in our life, that when emotions don't move through, I mean, emotions are are basically energy in motion. Motions are completely natural. They're how we respond to circumstances, and they all kind of have a half angry when something happens and it moves through us in the past. We feel grief, we feel sadness, we feel frustration, we feel pressure and overwhelm and all those things are completely natural emotions to feel the problem is that when we don't support that and moving through and they get stuck, they get stuck. And when energy and emotions get stuck in the body and not be able to move through. They lead to systems not working nervous system has not been able to get regulated ways of holding on to patterns that then lead to thoughts that then lead to decisions and beliefs that limit the way we leave the choices that we live that we make in our life, and how we see ourselves and how we see the world is not good enough or unsafe, or not fair or all the different ways that we view the world. So tapping or EFT tapping is a system where we're stimulating a particular usually nine points where we're tapping on very specific meridian points in the body or the upper body, while we're saying certain phrases that are tuning us into the emotion that's there that maybe we're not allowing, witnessing and owning you know, even though I'm feeling right now, like as a mom, and a child does something and it makes me in the moment just feel so angry and even hate them in the moment. Right I can't say that but but I do. I feel that in the moment. And it's just like even though right now like just wanted just, oh I'm so mad, I could just do something. And I feel that and I tune into where I feel it in my body even though I feel so angry a little Johnny right now for spelling. It's now something silly, right? And I know I shouldn't feel angry. And I know he's only a little kid and yet I still feel angry. It's my response. Probably because it's not just about that one time. But if I can allow myself and I tap on the anger that I'm feeling about that and noticing how I'm feeling and experience it in my body. I can actually just help that move through. And move quicker into compassion quicker into behaviors that are nurturing for myself for my child. You know, Dan Siegel is a great neuro psychologist and he just uses a wonderful simple analogy of a hand model of the brain. And he says you know when our whole brain and nervous system is working together, we're at our best. But when something triggers me and I flip my lid, I don't have access to all the parts of my brain that can be empathetic and compassionate and understanding and have a great way to play and get it and move through this and I'm reacting from a defensive or emotive reactive way. And so when we tap or use other methods of mental health uses, we can start to regulate ourselves so I can be most creative in the situation and be okay with the way I reacted and self accepting as well. So EFT helps to stimulate these points through tapping us points. And it can go much deeper than that it can be either a self regulation tool that I teach people all the time, or a deeper therapeutic tool for learning from a mental health perspective, why certain conditions showed up in my body. So it can be used in a lot of ways.

Dr Michelle  20:01 

So now is there a particular issue that you find commonly when dealing with women or mothers that can be addressed with a certain sequence of tapping?

Dr Craig  20:16 

Yeah, so I mean, here's the thing for me is you know, we look at the research and there's a lot of research behind things like anxiety and depression, stress and PTSD and all kinds of things. I don't believe that there's any one sequence that helps all people because you know what, my angry little Johnny for spilling his milk for one person is because it feels like it's disrespectful of me because I have a history of being disrespected, even though it's ridiculous to put that somebody is feeling this tension to right now. And clearly there's a need for attention but we all have our own unique relationships to what's happening in the moment. So from a self regulation standpoint, we can go ahead and we can tap on just what I'm feeling in the moment, the frustration, the overwhelm the noise, there's not a sequence we're tapping out of what I'm feeling about a certain situation however, when we get deeper to really why do I keep responding? Why do I keep overreacting to that way, then that becomes very individualized because my history is different than your history different than the next person's history. So I'd say there's kind of two ways of using tapping one is to self regulate to neuro regulate a moment, which is just owning what I'm feeling, which is the same in different as each person is in the moment. But then when we start to look to Why Am I overreacting, why is this particular thing getting to me more than some other things that happen? That's where we work with a practitioner to be able to dive deeper into my own history to understand like, this suddenly feeling like the helplessness that maybe I learned early in my life or why is it making me feel so reactive or angry? Because there's reasons in my history that something happening that's surprising or taking control away from me makes me feel angry. So that becomes really unique. So I'm not a big believer in what we call scripts or just kind of uniform tapping for a situation because we're all unique beings that have unique histories. So

Dr Michelle  22:23 

is there a particular event that occurred in your life that brought you to the world of tapping?

Dr Craig  22:32 

Wow, okay, that's a good question, but I'll try to make it brief. I actually when I first found EFT, I was really skeptical about it. I had read about it online. I thought there's no way that tapping on your head and face all the headaches, back pain. I mean, just like a million different conditions. And I'm like, That's ridiculous. So I just like shoved them. But kind of like you I often did presentations and dialogues and conversations and my clinic for years. And one time I just I heard about it again, I said, you know what i i You know, I could put it I didn't really know much about it. Maybe I should find out a little bit more. I started to do some research. And I was like there's a lot of research behind this. This isn't just a little like more research and a lot of kind of therapies. And the thing that made the difference for me, as I looked at one so many of these different conditions that was being looked at have in common. And it was the stress response. If you look at their research, it says that looks at the role of stress went from I don't care heart disease to cancer to diabetes. I mean, it goes on and on to addictions and all phobias and on and on. That if I can alter the way that I respond in a stressful situation, whether it's a bad relationship, or a bad whenever circumstances an ultimate stress response to that, then this can really affect a lot of different things. So I mean, I've worked with people with regard to their careers and their relationship and their health, because the EFT tapping helps me to own my emotional response. Get to the root of why I'm responding somebody a colleague of my website and I love this. It has a Midwest kind of point where if they need never the thing Yeah, why because what's showing up now it's like, you know, somebody drives by and I react all angry because they speeding by me. Like, I don't know, half the circumstance that's going on. And clearly, it's not just about the current moment. The current moment is a perfect example of something much bigger from earlier and when I get curious about that I can make those connections but we're not always in a place to be able to respond. That way. So being able to have a tool like tapping in myself or to teach my kids Oh, my God is so powerful to teach kids to tap. Because once they move on quickly, they're so mad at somebody for saying something mean to them or pushing them that they like resolve the emotions like that. They're like, Alright, I want to go play with them now and you're like, Wow, that is, you know, so I know a lot of parents that include shalt do EFT for themselves, because of their own worry about their kids. That adds more stress to the situation, but then being able to share tapping with their kids is one just it's an amazing tool for transforming relationship and teaching that social emotional learning and that neuro regulation techniques for self soothing, that you know, I never learned when I was a kid I know about you. So

Dr Michelle  25:45 

yeah, I always share with my parents that the greatest gift you can give to your child is the ability to self regulate. You know, so many people that we refer to ourselves as adults, but in when we are no more than, you know, cantankerous, tantrum driven children in our world. I mean, look at our politics today. You know, that's just one example. So I mean, I love the fact that EFT can be used to not only help us to self regulate, but also to drill down deeper to unveil what's really under the surface. As I always say to people, the tip of the iceberg is not what sank the Titanic. And too many times we just get so enamored with what's going on at the tip of the iceberg with all of these sexy different terminologies and things of that nature. And we're scared really to look underneath and to access what's under. And if EFT can do that, if tapping can do that, to help us to get down to the bottom to really face that inner aspect of ourselves. To have and the ability to self soothe to have those difficult conversations. Oh, awesome. Yeah,

Dr Craig  27:07 

I was working with a woman today who is just we're dealing with the ability to speak up for themselves and and what it came down to for them was it wasn't okay to be angry. Right and of course where did they learn that? It's not I mean, on a spiritual path, anger is not code, all of that. And yet, when we got to the bottom of that, of course, it came from an angry father that they couldn't get feel safe being angry with. And when we work through their ability to just see Wow, Anger can actually help. Anger can be done well. And it can help us move through things and get courage to speak up for ourselves and take steps and set boundaries and do things and it can also be done where it causes harm. So emotions have a place and I love what you said about my life, and we'll say disease is the tip of the iceberg. When we can start to get curious when we can start to be understanding. When we can start to know that we're doing the best that we can, or we did the best we could with what we had, and we can always then be more compassionate and more curious and more understanding. Like we are with a child if we can do that with ourselves. We are being the best ally, for a child to teach them to demonstrate them and to be our best selves. But we're also human and we're fallible and we make mistakes and we have to make hard decisions. We have responsibilities and we have stressors that that's part of being in this culture, but EFT is really an amazingly powerful despite that, but it looks like a tool for cutting through those things really quickly that can be self applied. So yeah, it's really I feel blessed to have found that. Well,

Dr Michelle  28:45 

I thank you so much for taking the time to share with us these beautiful modalities that we can easily access and ladies in the chat, not the chat in the notes for today's episode. The links to META health and also to EF T tapping so that you can connect with Dr. Rainer because it is just like I said the tip of the iceberg. So I encourage you to take that journey within and to reach out and get some assistance if you need. Until next time my beautiful ladies Peace and blessings.

Closing: Thank you for tuning in for this episode of Mommy Heal Thyself, if you liked what we're doing here, please share subscribe, like us and leave a comment. Your feedback is very much appreciated.

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