2012

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Introduction

Dr. Shannon is a well-respected psychologist, with a doctorate of Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University. She was trained in Western medicine’s traditional cognitive behavioral techniques and in traditional Freudian or Neo-Freudian thought.

She did not believe in “Energy Medicine” or any “alternative” approaches to healing…until she saw it first hand when her own mother was in excruciating pain; the morphine wasn’t working, she couldn’t speak anymore, and they could not figure out where the pain was coming from. Then the hospice nurse asked if she could use Reiki to locate the source of the pain, adjusted her hip, and her mother’s face relaxed; and it was clear that she was no longer in pain.

From then on, Dr Shannon has studied everything she could get her hands on about energy healing, energy work, alternative biofield therapies, quantum healing, quantum touch – anything and everything.

She started to really become aware of these things in her everyday life and how this type of energy flowed through her, flowed through everything. She started to use it on herself and on her children, and was getting stunning results.

She started to play with the energy modalities that psychotherapy accepted, such as EFT and acupressure and other forms of “light” energy work, again getting stunning results that made the cognitive behavioral techniques look like old-fashioned clunkers. She reports that once people get a touch of the energy work, they really don’t want to go back into the room with the couch.

Are The Two Modalities Actually So Different, Or Can They Co-Exist?

At the beginning, Dr. Shannon tried to compartmentalize and separate the two. If people wanted energy work, they were just going to do that. If people wanted psychotherapy, they were just going to do that.

It turned out to be impossible. If everything is energy, then psychological and medical issues are also comprised of energy. The cause and the solution are both energy. The good news is that it’s not hard at all to weave the two together, because they all make sense.

So How Do We Convince Western Medicine Practitioners That Energy Medicine Really Works?

When you approach it through an academic or cognitive viewpoint, it’s difficult to make that shift. Typically what you have to do is just have them do a couple of techniques, so that they can see it for themselves, so they can feel it.

The medical and psychological community, and the public in general, have shown a surprising lack of resistance and openness to the concepts of energy medicine, at least through Dr. Shannon’s experience in the Midwest.

Doctors go into their fields because they want to help people. When they see something that

Title Hereby Dr. Erin Shannon

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helps people, even if perhaps they don’t know exactly how or why, they’re often very open to learning about it.

The key is to approach it in a way that is respectful of other more Western traditions or allopathic medical methods, and to show them that there is really very minimal, if any, harm at all, but great instant benefit.

Energy Medicine practitioners need to be very respectful, and reverent even, toward Western medicine. It’s not about being at all anti-medicine. It’s not about being at all anti-surgery. There is a place for all of those things.

Can you combine the two? Most people have this mindset that it has to be one or the other, and that there is this battle between the two.

The battle is definitely on the wane. Today’s cutting edge physicians understand that the body can produce more chemicals to fight off diseases if the person is in a balanced and holistically well state of being – body, mind, and spirit.

At this point, leading institutions like Mayo Clinic, Harvard University and Washington University, just to name a few, have cancer units full of alternative forms of pain management, alternative forms of psychotherapy. People are getting pre- and post-surgical hypnotherapy sessions. It’s remarkable how mainstream this has become.

Today, almost any clinical psychologist in the country should have heard of EFT. Anybody who has been trained in the last, say, 10 years, should have been exposed to somatic psychology and the somatic techniques that are being utilized.

How Does This Work With Professional Athletes?

Dr. Shannon was fortunate to grow up the daughter of a professional baseball player, so she had a unique entry into the minds and feelings of professional athletes.

Athletes are very aware of the body-mind connection. They know how important that mindset is when they step onto the field. They know that they have to be as sharp as they possibly can in their minds, as well as healthy and as energetically functioning as possible in their bodies.

They’re finely tuned machines when they walk through the door of a practitioner, very intelligent about their bodies. They can see how the energy work is a whole different modality of healing and of optimizing performance, and because it works so wonderfully, they just love it!

When you have a room full of athletes at the professional level, they’re probably the top 0.1% of their class. Nobody can argue that in most cases, the talent level, the emotional toughness and the mental sharpness of these people have got to be pretty similar to that of the members of their opposing team, to get them to that moment in time, when both teams are competing for a championship.

If this energy technique can give them that next 0.1% of an advantage, they’re usually willing to try it.

What type of an approach do you take? Is it about clearing a certain fear that comes with the pressure? What are they tapping on that’s heading them to that 0.1%?

That really depends on the individual. Some people are driven by fear. Others are driven by success. You don’t want to change someone who has risen to the top of his field based on a fear

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of failing, but you do want that person to get rid of any blockages in their energy field that may be causing a drain on their ability to do just that.

It’s one thing to be working toward a goal, and another thing to try to get rid of things that block it. But the problem is the energy, the treatment is the energy, and the patient is the energy. It just depends on what that person comes into.

That’s where psychotherapy is such a beautiful mix with energy medicine, because it allows the practitioner to question the patient in such a way as to understand what those negative beliefs are; there may be subconscious beliefs that really underlie some of the energy blockages. It’s very important to get to those core beliefs that are either running things, or stopping things from running, and then using them as the basis to tap on it.

The key is to find the right words that elicit the emotional reaction, so that one can work on it.

So for those who are listening, if they don’t have the opportunity to work with a psychologist that does energy techniques, how do they get clear on what to focus on, on what words to use?

You have to feel it. When you get the right word it hits you in the gut. It will hit you in your chest. You’ll feel your breathing change. You’ll feel your heart rate change. Your body will react to it. This may happen in a negative way, or in a positive way.

Sometimes the wording may not be “politically correct” or polite, but it’s usually something your brain is saying to every cell in your body 1,000 times a day! You may not even be consciously aware of it, but when you say the right word you can see a change in your body. You can see a reaction.

If the feeling is a positive one, tap it in, reinforce it. By tapping on and training your cellular memory to picture things, like goals, it increases and amplifies the effect of moving toward that goal. It’s really the same theory behind things like vision boards, positive thinking, and inspirational quotes.

What is the future of energy psychology?

There are many things in place at this point. For example, David Feinstein has founded the Energy Medicine Institute, and is hoping to begin to accumulate research that proves that these techniques are not only useful, but sometimes they’re more effective than the mainline techniques that are being used day in and day out around the country.

As we make progress, the drug companies might not like it, but the insurance companies are going to be very interested in the fact that you can cure a migraine headache in seconds without medication.

It is up to practitioners who know what they’re doing, and perhaps have degrees in other fields, to bring this in a very respectful and academic way to the right people, and to expose the public in a very normal and clear way to these techniques.

Then let the energy do its job, because we don’t have to sell this stuff. We just have to educate people and expose them to it. It works. It’s an easy sell.

You just have to expose people to energy medicine in a respectful way that does not make them defensive, that does not take anything away from their belief systems and their theoretical orientation.

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So EFT really works then?

Dr. Shannon says, “To a person, every single time I use tapping, every single time, I get a result. If we have the right word that emotionally connects with the person, I have not had one patient, with one issue, on one round of tapping, that hasn’t moved in their number. I have learned a lot of techniques. I was in school for a long time, and I had a lot of amazing teachers, and I read a lot of books. This is the only thing that I can say works 100%, every single time.”

Dr. Erin Shannon is a Doctor of Clinical Psychology and an Energy Medicine Practioner specializing in Holistic Psychotherapy for individuals, couples and families, and maintains a private practice in Saint Louis Missouri and travels frequently to see patients around the United States and Canada.

A graduate of both Loyola Marymount University and Pepperdine University In Southern California specializing in both traditional psychotherapy as well as cutting edge mind-body techniques and energy medicine, she is currently serving as private practitioner working with a broad spectrum of clients. Among her areas of interest are diagnosis and treatment of anxiety, depression, trauma, Elite Athlete Optimization, sleep disorders, infertility, pregnancy and postpartum issues, CEO concierge services, addictions, PTSD, OCD, phobias and neurosis. She also offers therapy focused on enhancing holistic

wellness, optimal performance, self-esteem, communication skills, parent-child interrelations, relationship skills and workplace effectiveness. She offers multiple techniques to ease or resolve health related stress, chronic pain and injury recovery, parenting conflicts, relational discord, unwanted habits and patterns, medical related stress, infertility related stress, pregnancy issues, insomnia, negative thought patterns, life transitions and energy blocks and imbalances.

Dr. Shannon is an interactive, solution-focused therapist. Her therapeutic approach is to provide symptom relief, support, and practical techniques to help clients effectively address personal life challenges. She integrates traditional therapy with highly effective complementary methodologies and holistic techniques such as psychoneuroimmunological skills, Eden Energy Medicine, accupressure, meditation, hypnosis, energy balancing, somatic psychology and EFT tapping, to offer a carefully constructed personalized approach that is tailored to each client. With compassion, skill and understanding, she works with each individual to help them to restore peace and balance, provide symptom relief, build on their strengths and attain the healing and personal growth they desire.