Tapping Through with Ho’oponopono, The Hawaiian Practice of Compassion and Reconciliation

I am sorry.

Please forgive me.

I love you.

Thank you.

Select a Focus

1. Select a relationship with someone that is bothering you.
2. Choose either to focus on the person or a specific incident with the person.
3. You can also choose other things that are bothering you such as a part of yourself, a self-defeating behavior or a physical symptom. You can also focus on positive people and things as well such as an important support person in your current or past life, a positive experience, or a positive aspect of yourself.

Tapping Practice

1. Select a focus (see Select a Focus, above).
2. Bring up the focus, and feel the physical sensations and emotions that are stirred up.
3. While being aware of the focus and the physical sensations and emotions, select one (or more) of the four statements that applies the most.
4. While being aware of the focus and the physical sensations and emotions, say the statement silently to yourself and begin tapping (see Tapping Options, below). Be aware that you can be saying the statement to the other person, to yourself, to a part of yourself, to a higher power, or to another person, place or thing. You just begin with the statement. You don’t need to keep saying the statement silently to yourself.
5. Tap for approximately 30 seconds. Stop and take a deep breath.
6. Notice what stands out now at this very moment or from what emerged during the tapping: mentally, emotionally, physically, including awareness of your surroundings. Don’t just focus on awareness of your thoughts when noticing what stands out.
7. State what stands out now out loud or silently to yourself.
8. While being aware of what stands out now, select and state silently one (or more) of the four statements that applies the most and begin tapping.
9. Tap for approximately 30 seconds. Stop and take a deep breath.
10. Continue with steps 6 through 9 until you feel a shift, some resolution or reduction of the stress and emotional charge. You can check your level of emotional disturbance by bringing up the original focus with current physical sensations and emotions and asking your yourself, “On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is no disturbance at all and 10 is the worst you can imagine, how disturbing does it feel now?”

Note:

1. Continue tapping if you are experiencing a strong emotion until it subsides.
2. If you become overwhelmed, stop and use one of the self-care techniques to calm, soothe and ground yourself.
3. You may switch to another of the statements if it emerges while tapping, before the 30 seconds are up.
4. If a memory arises and stands out when you stop tapping, select a statement that applies most. You may find that the memory is more foreground than the issue you began with. You can decide to stop and work with the memory exclusively or put it aside to work with it at another time.

 Tapping (Bilateral Stimulation) Options

1. Tapping thighs (right, left, right left,…)
2. Butterfly: crossing arms in front of your chest and tapping shoulders
3. Atari method: make two loose fists and press thumbs on the sides of index fingers
4. Tapping feet on floor
5. Turning head from side to side (option: breathe in one direction, breathe out other direction)
6. Swaying back and forth
7. Walking in place
8. Eye movement: pick two spots on either side of the room. Eyes go back and forth between the two spots.