So I have done the eft thing a few times now and while i don’t know that it’s having any major effect I have to say I think I’m a bit more relaxed. In fact my wife was a bit frustrated last night after dinner as she thought that i was kind of tuning out- but in retrospect realized that i was just more relaxed.

This morning on the way to the pool I was in traffic on the BQE and I had a guy hit me from behind when i was nearly stopped. A couple of weeks ago we were hit by a guy who ran a stop sign. I was furious, and I jumped out of the car and started yelling at the guy. Even as I did it I knew it wasn’t the best way to handle the situation but wasn’t able to calm myself. It didn’t help my kids, and it didn’t help me. It was a week after this that my hip went out so badly and i know it was related.

Today I felt my body tense in that way it does when you’re hit from behind. I took a deep breath, got out of the car and took a look. There was clearly some damage. A screw was sticking out of the bumper. The bumper wasn’t in the best shape to begin with so I wasn’t that concerned cosmetically but thought something might have been thrown out of whack. The other driver approached and He didn’t speak English. I pointed to the screw. He went over and pulled it out. I looked like it might have come from his license plate.

I did a quick calculation in my head. It was raining and we were on the crowded highway. It just wasn’t worth any more discussion. I took his hand, looked him in the eye, and shook it gently. “OK”. I turned and got in my car and drove off. I still felt that whiplash tightness but it quickly dissipated as I drove away. I have to say i got a bit angry when we took the same exit and i saw him pull up next to me on the phone- but I let it go.

In the pool my hip hurt about the same as usual, but I was a little looser. i thought about how the idea of eft helped me deal with the same sarno issues by giving me a way to take a positive approach to the issues- rather than beat up that part of me that’s causing the pain it allowed me to be a bit more forgiving.

in any case, i’m feeling better so i’m gonna keep at it.

I mentioned my craniosacral massage to my friend Gus the other night and he told me that he had been regularly going to acupuncture. It got him interested in the mechanics of it all so he started researching on the internet and stumbled across EFT or emotion free therapy.

I’m not going to go into the details - but it involves tapping certain spots on the body to free up negative energy… or something like that. It’s interesting because it sounded like it dovetailed with the HANDLE process that we have been doing with our daughter F.

F was having very serious problems with defiance and anxiety last year. A friend had used handle with her son and it had done a great deal to help him with attention and learning issues. We had the handle person come by and evaluate our daughter and immediately it was apparent that there were several things out of whack that she thought some simple exercises would help. For example when she put on a pair of glasses that had one red lens and one blue lens she saw red on one side and blue on the other. If a person’s eyes are ganging properly then they see some form of purple because the colors get blended. If the eyes aren’t ganging it can be incredibly taxing to make sense of the world as ones eyes are competing. a simple exercise of drinking a cup of water through a straw with her eyes closed helped to strengthen the ganging ability.

There are many similarities between EFT and Handle and in a sense craniosacral massage. All of these methods bring me back to Sarno. Sarno is pretty adamant that his practice has nothing to do with any sort of “alternative” medicine. I agree. At the same time I see a very clear connection between the way in which he discusses the autonomic nervous system disrupting blood flow- and the idea that energy flow is disrupted as discussed in acupuncture or EFT.

In any case I downloaded the EFT manual free and read through it. Some of it reads a bit hucksterish. I tried it out though and while I’m not all better in my hip, I do feel a bit more positive - so i’mma gonna keep at it.

This morning while biking my daughter to camp I passed an old friend who is a writer. He now works at a NY magazine that I used to subscribe to. It’s a weekly that’s filled with all kinds of fun things to do in the city. Instead of doing any of these things I ended up feeling bad that I was missing them all- and that was before having kids…. Since it was a thick weekly and I tend to not throw things out, they piled up everywhere. I also used to get the NY Times delivered. In addition to it piling up, I couldn’t keep myself from reading it cover to cover so I never had any time. He was a bit down on the job because it’s less writing than editing. At least he’s got a job….

Now I just get the New Yorker and The Sun. The Sun is a weird animal. It takes no ads, and is filled with vaguely uncomfortable writing that’s just a little too personal. I like it. One of my favorite writers, Sparrow, regularly publishes pieces in the Sun. They also run a lot of interesting photos, and in the past they ran some of mine. We’re both from Chapel Hill so i feel some kinship with it as well. I just thumbed through an over-thumbed bathroom copy and came across an article about the role of positive energy in our lives. Like a lot of articles in the Sun it helped me to do a little perspective taking.

Frank Gehry, lead architect for the embattled Atlantic Yards development, thinks his dream project is over. With the financial markets in turmoil their project finally seems too expensive. No shit.

Our two year project Broken Angel Rising, chronicling the efforts of local artist Arthur Wood and a young developer to convert his legendary sculptural edifice Broken Angel into a bunch of cool condos, has hit a wall. They’ve put the building up for sale.

Read more about the saga at Brownstoner or watch the trailer.