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Beyond the immediate effects the recent global pandemic had on us (isolation, grief, loss, and illness, to name but a few) what have the long term effects been? Coach Stephanie Wood began asking herself this question when she noticed that some of the unwanted habits she’d picked up during the pandemic had stuck around.

Knowing that she couldn’t be alone in this, Stephanie has created a program to help us settle our nervous systems and aid our recovery from the prolonged trauma that the pandemic caused.

You can find Stephanie Wood at InnerPeaceAndFlow.com and on Instagram @stephaniewood.eft

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. 

Show Notes

• On learning about the 3 Principles via EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)
• Searching far and wide for a resolution to chronic depression
• On the power of insight and its ability to create positive change
• Calming the nervous system after a prologued traumatic event like a global pandemic
• The connection between a stressed nervous system and a busy, insecure mind

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• Stephanie’s free Reset Your Nervous System program
• Donna Eden and the Eden Method
• Prine Harris
• Human Design
• The Q&A episode of Unbroken about where to look for wisdom and guidance

Transcript of Interview with Stephanie Wood

Alexandra: Stephanie Wood, welcome to Unbroken.

Stephanie: Hi. Glad to be here.

Alexandra: I’m thrilled to have you with me here today.

Tell us a little bit about your background, how you got interested in the three principles, and that stuff.

Stephanie: I’ve been an EFT tapping trainer and practitioner for over 20 years. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is a mind-body technique that uses tapping on meridian points. I got into that because I suffered from depression for my whole life until I was 35. And now I’ve been 21 years’ depression free. I know these kinds of types of techniques can work. 

So where I encountered the three principles, it was through somebody with the tapping. It was another tapping practitioner. And she was telling me about Ann Ross, who was one of the EFT founding masters. And she said she had trained with her. She’s moved on to this thing called the three principles.

And so of course, I love learning about all this stuff. And I just wanted to know more. So of course, I went down the rabbit hole and really ended up training with Annika Hurwitz, Keith Blevins and Velda, and Amanda Jones. And so I just really went down the rabbit hole, and it completely jived with everything I ever saw about life.

And I’m like, this is for me. So now I share it. I incorporated it with the tapping. I had a lot of thinking about how wrong it was to bring in a technique. But over the years, I just realized I love the tapping. It’s fun for me. It feels nice to me. And it was a nice way to gently bring it to a broader audience, though.

Alexandra: Would you be willing to share a little bit more about your depression and how you came to clear that up? What you saw about it?

Stephanie: Yes. So, it was lifelong. I was hospitalized twice, I was a cutter, I tried to commit suicide, and I was a very unhappy camper from childhood on. I was relentlessly seeking help. So from my 20s on every modality you could think of. I had regular Western therapy, Eastern therapy, acupuncture, and I became a shiatsu practitioner. I just tried everything I could.

I knew in my bones that something was going to shift. That’s where I think I just couldn’t stop. I was like, this isn’t right, this isn’t who I am. And so really, it was in my mid-30s. I was 34. I kept pursuing different, practitioners, and it was a combination of two different types of energy medicine type techniques. 

I wasn’t EFT. This was before I had even heard about EFT. And I happen to be doing them at the same time. And I was doing them, nothing was happening. And then I stopped, and it just didn’t get better. And six months later, I think it took time for all of the processing to happen.

I woke up in July of that year and I realized it had been a couple of weeks since I had had hateful, self-hatred, thoughts. I could feel that something shifted. And I was like, I don’t hate myself anymore. And when I thought about it, the thought sounded ridiculous. I was like, why would I hate myself? I could see all of my dark and all of my light. 

And I was less judgy about it. I just knew it was gone. Because I started looking for it because I’m waiting for all of the thoughts and their circle of friends. The whole city of depression thoughts that would come along with the I hate myself? And they were the train of thoughts were not there. 

Now, when I encountered the three principles. I went through that lens, I looked back at everything because I was like, was it a technique that fixed me? What I’ve come to see about my understanding of the three principles is everything is insight. When it appears to be related to a technique, I don’t know if I care anymore. 

Insight, like period, it could correspond with climbing Mount Everest, it could correspond with, you’re in the tub, slitting your wrists, and you have an insight. I don’t know when it’s going to happen. So it’s like trusting where I’m being led, and then insights, calm, and that insight was so profound, that it ripped apart the belief that I had that I hated myself. 

I don’t know if that makes sense. But it was from now and then it was like I started my life at 35. I’m 56 now so I just haven’t ever been depressed. It doesn’t mean I’m happy all the time. But I’m not in that. I used to fall in the hole like it was the hole of depression. I know depression was ugly.

Alexandra: Wow, that’s fascinating. Thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it. And as you were speaking at that’s was the conclusion that I was coming to as well that everything is insight. And we don’t have control over it.

Insight can be so life-changing. That’s amazing. I love it.

Stephanie: And that’s why I do what I do now. Because when I see people with depression or anxiety, I know it’s possible. I’m not saying that this X, Y, Z will fix that, or X, Y, Z will remove the belief, but I just know that it’s possible. 

And that hope of and knowing that it’s all thought, and behind all of that, that we’re deeply okay. We’re whole and complete behind everything. I can’t not see that when I work with people or when I see anybody.

Alexandra: I love that. And it’s such a common story of, I think three principles, practitioners, even just people who are interested in the understanding that we’ve been everywhere, tried everything. And I loved what you said about, you just knew in your bones that depressed person was not who you were. 

I had the same experience with overeating. I just knew that there was an answer somewhere. 

And that I guess, in a way that I wasn’t broken, that that there was a way to be healthy around food and that thing. So, very similar experience, just in a different arena, for sure.

The reason I wanted to speak to you today was that you recently started a Reset Your Nervous System series of videos, which I signed up for.

Tell us first about what motivated that.

Stephanie: I was starting to notice that so much happened in the during the pandemic, and so much thinking developed, and so many unwanted habits. I knew that I wasn’t alone when I went out and noticed everyone had gained a little weight. 

Everyone was complaining about drinking too much. People knew things were happening, they were overspending, all the things were happening. And then as we started to come back to life, to normal life, I was hearing from so many friends and online, that people weren’t able to shake it, and it’s been a while now. 

I realized, for me, I also wasn’t able to shake it. I’m still overeating, I’m still over drinking. I’m not liking this behavior. And normally, in the past, it just never was an issue that some of those things weren’t issues. I didn’t have a lot of thinking about it, it didn’t feel compulsive, it didn’t feel like a compulsion to do those things. 

And so I started by talking about with my partner, just, I mean, this literally was just a few weeks ago, and we both realized, wow, like, if the science is correct about trauma, and that our if our amygdala gets into these patterns of fight or flight and gets in lockdown, which, quite frankly, when I when we talked about it, I looked back at the beginning of the pandemic, it was scary. 

Even though I got a lot of benefits from it. I’m an introvert. I love being at home, and working from home and everything, but nobody knew what was going to happen. And that was for a prolonged period of time. And then the vaccine came and then it was like, is this going to work and I couldn’t see my family for because they live across an international border. 

I think I had so much emotion that I noticed I started to have those coping behaviors, while the days were all the same. So five o’clock, I think I want a cocktail, it was just this pattern started to happen. So fast forward to now and I’m trying to shift those patterns and shifting that conversation with my partner. 

I’m like, I have mad techniques to get to work with this. Why am I not using them? I know it’s thinking I understand that. And we have a body and I’m also have grappled with the three principles and body how that interacts. That’s been a deep thought deep exploration that I’ve done with myself. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t know.

If I have a sore muscle I’m going to stretch it, or go to the massage therapist, I can ponder about it all day about, wow, where are the thoughts coming from, but at the end of the day, I need to go stretch that muscle. And I know three principles is not prescriptive, it’s descriptive. I fall back to that understanding of it. 

So I just thought, I’m going to put together these fun techniques. I know they are helpful for calming.

Body calming, and acupressure terms are energy, I can see energy sometimes. And so I’ve witnessed it, I’ve experienced it, let’s put them together. 

I was so inspired. I thought I’m just going to create an outline. And I’m going to put this together for myself, and I’m going to do it. And then I thought, I am not alone. I’m going to share this, why don’t I just create 10 videos, and walk everybody through it? So I just basically did a very loose outline. 

And I did it all ad hoc. I just turned on the camera, and I led through these exercises. And that’s what that’s where it came from. I thought I need to share this. So far, the reception has been amazing. And now it’s been long enough that people have finished it. 

I’m already getting responses that every so far, every single person who has gotten back to me about it has said, I feel calmer, I’m not so afraid to go back to the office, I’m sleeping better. I’m waking up in a panic.

I’m not saying it can fix everything. But there’s something to be said for when we’re in a chronic state of fight or flight, whether it’s been because of a single trauma, or long-term collective trauma, like the pandemic. Sometimes we need to remind our system when you’re safe now, it’s over, can relax now. And there’s that body connect. 

So this is that way of acknowledging the body and the thoughts we have about the body.

Alexandra: Well, that was great. We want to hear about this. I wanted to know more about the genesis of the idea.

I find there is this might be innocent approach in the three principles that we’re we tend to approach everything from the neck up. 

What I’ve started to explore recently is that we’re a body and a soul.

A friend of mine pointed out recently that, Syd Banks so often said, and so famously said, “Follow the feeling”, that was one of the things that he went back to again and again. Well, where do we feel things? 

We feel them in our bodies? So I personally think we’re missing something when we don’t fold in our bodies when we’re exploring this stuff. I think it’s really, really important. So I love that you’re doing this.

What is the experiment entail? You’ve talked about exercises, but what does that look like specifically?

Stephanie: They are a combination of things I’ve learned over the years. Mostly Eden method. Have you ever heard of Donna Eden?

Donna Eden is this wonderful magical creature who sees energy clearly, and she always has been. She’s getting older. I trained with her years and years ago. 

And she works with bodies energies, like the chakras, like the meridians. She sees the systems. So I use some of those things from something called Brain Gym that, again, help the body rebalance the energies. And when I say the energies, I know it sounds so vague, but we are all energy, if the consciousness is energy, so let’s, let’s call it that. 

And some pulls from my tapping experience, although I didn’t bring in much tapping other than the first day because tapping can be quite stimulating to the system. And the whole idea of this is to calm the system. So what I did was just bring in tap and breathe, which is in there derived from tapping. So instead of tapping on a point, you hold, you focus in and you take a breath. 

So this was a way a calmer way to do this. I also run something called havening, which is a delightful technique that is so calming, and there’s science behind the EFT and the havening. Not this little harder to do science with the Eden work, but it’s mostly those techniques and some stuff that I’ve just created over the years. 

I get insights to pull things together, and I go with the feeling. Really, it’s 10 days, and I’ve tried to keep the videos short, so they’re 11 to 15 minutes a day, for 10 days. You can skip days or whatever, but it’s just a 10 day process, and because I didn’t know how long it was going to take, first I was I thought, Oh, I’ll do this for 21 or 30 days, and it’s too much for a lot of people, I thought I’d start with 10.

And then, if people want to do it a second time or third time, just repeat it. And so far, some people are like, I’m good with the 10 days, and other people are like, I think I’m going to do it another time. So it’s really an experiment. I can’t tell you if it’s going to work for you or not. But certainly, so far the results have been happy to report that I’m hearing good things.

Alexandra: That’s great. I think it was in the Facebook group you mentioned one day that you had done one of the exercises in the morning, and then you were planning to do it in the afternoon or the evening again, as well.

There’s no harm in this, as well. What’s the worst that could happen? You feel a little calmer. Great!

Stephanie: So I got up out of my seat, and I did the cross crawl thing. Wow. I moved a little, okay.

Alexandra: Exactly. Cross-crawl. I remember that. I went to a biokinesiologist years ago in Vancouver. And she would get us to do those occasionally. 

Stephanie: That’s one of the exercises to do every day is the cross crawl correction. Because when we’ve been either under a lot of stress or trauma, or our system has been shocked, if we’ve had an illness. Donna Eden, who sees the energy, and other practitioners, Prune Harris is another energy practitioner who sees energy. 

They see that our energies go into homo lateral mode for survival, meaning they it’s like you’re one side of the body versus the other versus being crossed over. And so I have so many of my clients and friends that I know too, who are practitioners, if they’re if they’ve been having anxious thoughts or feelings, doing the correction, to try and retrain your patterns back to crossing over, is game-changing. It’s such a simple exercise, and it feels really good. 

And all sudden, you have access to your brain again. And when I do it, I didn’t realize I needed to do that’s been a game changer for me through this process. I think even that alone was something doing that over several, quite a few days. It’s I’m like, Ah, just it’s like, everything just feels normal again.

Alexandra: I’m going to say something really uninformed here. But I think what my biokinesiologist said when she recommended cross crawling is that, of course, our brains are, I’m not going to use the right word, but cross wired, so that our left eye is controlled by the right side of our brain, for example, and vice versa. 

So that somehow ties into what you’re saying, right?

We don’t want our energy to be two parallel lines running. We want them to be crossing over like an X.

Stephanie: Think of an infinity sign. That’s how I like to be like that. So according to that, even medicine and my personal experience. Yes, we’ll try it. I just like try it for yourself. If it feels good.

Alexandra: Yes, exactly.

What have you noticed personally as you’ve been doing the experiment yourself?

Stephanie: Well, it’s funny, because when I made it, I knew that I was making it from the mindset of help doing it for others. And I knew that I would walk through it myself. But I also noticed at the end of videotaping the whole process, I thought to myself, I think that works, because I just started to notice, and now I’ve run through it as well.

And what I’m noticing is it’s not that the behaviors that I’ve wanted to shift just dropped away like that. But I’m starting to for myself, I’m just starting to notice, well, first of all, I feel a lot calmer, just throughout the day, that surprised me a bit. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t as calm as I thought I was. 

And there’s like space between the choice of the behavior and the behavior. So like, oh, whereas before it felt like there’s no space, it’s ongoing. I’m going to hop on the illusion.

We all know when you have that space of okay, it doesn’t feel as scary. It doesn’t feel as compulsive. So that’s just what I’ve noticed. I’m going to run through it again, because I think for me, I had a little hint that I wanted to do it three times. 

And that feeling of freedom to choose versus being like, I’m a victim too who felt like a victim of thought and like that, it’s just going to drive me somewhere. So it’s like you get back in the driver’s seat of the bus, which are we really in the driver’s seat, but, feels a little more like that it feels like I’m following my consciousness correctly, or I don’t even know how to explain that. But this feels like there’s more space for choice and to breathe.

Alexandra: Yes, exactly. That’s been my experience with other things as well, that creating that space between thought and behavior, just that tiny little gap, gives us a moment to breathe.

It made me think of mindfulness. It’s created the ability for you to be mindful of what’s actually happening. 

Rather than what I know. I can speak for myself personally. So often, I can just be following my thoughts, mindlessly and as though they’re the boss and they know everything. And, so just taking a step back, and, noticing what they’re doing is so helpful.

Stephanie: Without leading with the thought, it’s a yes. Leave to my brain or by the thoughts like, Nah, they maybe they need me to not be in charge here. There’s something in me that knows better.

Alexandra: That’s right. It was interesting that you said that EFT is stimulating. I hadn’t heard that before. I don’t know a ton about EFT.

Are there times then when it’s really helpful, and then in a case like this, where the objective is more calming, that you can back off that a little bit?

Stephanie: It can be in the moment. With tapping, we’re usually addressing where the person is at that moment. So when they’re not calm, you can tap to address the not calm. So you hit that threshold where the calm starts to settle in.

And then, I may choose to tap and breathe. Or I may choose to do one or just stop and let the rest of that flow out. One thing I always recommend for people who are trying to sleep, if you wake up in the middle of the night and are trying to sleep, don’t tap. That’s a classic.

Sounds weird, but you can imagine tapping when you’re in bed, you just can’t sleep and you’re imagining tapping through your points. And it sounds weird that you say that to yourself. But you wake up in the morning, and you’re going, what happened? Wow, is that a lot actually for myself? If I wake up? Tapping can be just stimulating if you’ve been in sleep mode.

Alexandra: Okay, interesting.

Given that the principles tend to focus on our mind and our thinking, do you see a connection between a stressed, nervous system and a busy mind?

Stephanie: Totally. And even from the perspective of when our amygdala is all lit up, and we’re in fight, flight, or freeze, we don’t have access to clarity of mind. Because we’re ready to go, ready to do something, we’re scared. We’re in survival mode.

I think when we get into that survival mode, our bodies react a certain way, our brain goes offline to get out of the way of what we need to do to survive.

And sometimes, that can look like overeating or shopping, it can be this is what I need to do to cope because this is too hard. I need to zone out. And so when are when we can get that amygdala to relax, okay, we’re not more safe. The whole nervous system can just get operating in a more appropriate manner. 

And then our thoughts can come back online, in and the space between the thoughts to have that clarity of choice. It just allows that they just don’t go together clarity and clear, clear thinking and full-on survival mode. Like just they just don’t go well together. So that’s my take on that.

Alexandra: Absolutely. And, it occurs to me we often talk about I mean, insight can happen at any time. And I think it is a little my experience is a little easier to access when I’m a little calmer when there’s more space within me, and it’s I’m not in full-on crisis mode.

The experiment you’ve created strikes me as a way to get to that quiet place where insight is available, about what to do next or whatever.

Stephanie: To get more availability for yourself.

Alexandra: Exactly.

Is there anything about the experiment that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share? Or anything else?

Stephanie: There’s something else going to talk about. I’m just wondering things and this is a little sidetrack is the one you’re talking about. I’m not going to go to another realm, just to put a little pin in that for some other conversation. But have you heard of human design?

Alexandra: The name sounds familiar, but I don’t know why.

Stephanie: So I actually got introduced to it by two three principles people: Marsha Madigan and Christian McNeil. They were exploring three principles in something called Human Design, which is basically it’s hard to explain what it is, but it looks at your chakra system and your meridians and your time of birth. 

It’s this combo of astrology and eaching. It’s a download that this fellow had in the 80s. I’ve since become certified in that just because I was fascinated, and I think you are, too. We love these, like, how can I help myself and other people that have more clarity and insight and awareness? 

And what was funny was when I learned about my chart, my body graph, the only places that I’m defined with who I am, is my head and my throat. That’s it. So I didn’t actually have anything going on other than conditioning. So it’s all about every place else was conditioned deeply.

So, the reason I bring this up here is because it’s about understanding what’s correct for you. And understanding, I listened to your q & a about where we can access wisdom. I love that. And what was interesting, what occurred to me and why I’m mentioning this now is because for different people, it comes in different ways. 

And so to understand what is correct for you, in the next moment to moment, which may be I only need to do this for three days, or this doesn’t resonate with me, or whatever the next thing is, and Dr. Bill Pettit is that he says, I remember listening to a talk from him where and has, I love this so much. 

He talked about how he was impacted by the principles in that he felt like, I don’t need to be thinking about that, that I just wait for the next index card for the next action to appear in front of me. I was like, Mike drop.. That’s the way it works, and, and I’ve embraced that. 

And so with the human design, understanding, it’s about following your correct thing for you, which may be that it’s an inside you check in with yourself deep inside your body. For me, because in my chart, I don’t have anything inside, I have to speak to see what I believe and understand and decide is correct for me. 

So it’s different for everybody. And I just wanted to just note that and even with this exercise and what is correct for people in that next moment, everyone’s method may be a little different. And our conditioning will tell us something else; our conditioning will be like, Oh, no, you have to do it this way. 

I learned that you just have to go do this and go meditate. Well, is always in my mind and will never be that quiet mind because it’s fine. So when I learned that Marsha Madigan was the same way, she’s like, Oh, my mind is defined, I will never have a quiet mind. 

Whereas other people who meditate they like, I just had no thoughts, and I’m never going to get there. And then when I realized, no, that’s okay. That’s how I’m built. It was a game changer for me, if it’s a game changer 50,000 times, but it really was, it was. I was like, Oh, that’s not who I am. 

And that’s okay. And again, it goes back to that wholeness and okayness of who are we personally in this avatar in the game? That this is the Stephanie bundle.

But that was just the extra little piece I wanted to add on about learning what is understanding what is correct for you without all the conditioning so that you can trust the next index card that comes in front of you about what’s your appropriate for you next.

Alexandra: Yes, totally makes sense. I love that you’re pointing toward, everybody has their own way of navigating their life. There’s not one right way for everybody. That’s so important to point out.

When you talked about did you say that when you have that, the way that what to do next is because you verbalize it? Is that what you’re okay with?

How do you do that? Is that through talking to your partner? Or do you talk out loud to yourself? What does that look like?

Stephanie: Yes, all of the above. Before I encountered human design, I realized one day that even though I thought something about a situation, there was a decision I needed to make, I noticed that as I was talking to people, something else was coming out of my mouth completely. It was shocking to me. 

But I realized that is what is correct for me. And it was, and this is, even before I encountered human design, I thought I need to watch what I say. That’s my truth. What pops out of my head is not all of its truth. But that’s where I will discern the truth for me. 

And that’s what, this type that I am is, a smaller part of the population. Most people can go inside and ask yes, no questions to their inner being. That’s the bulk of it, but most people can do that. Some people need to sleep on it. Some people need to listen to their little tiny voice from moment to moment. So it’s different for everyone.

There are quite a few different ways of accessing your knowing that when you start to play with that gets really fun because you start to hear it more.

Alexandra: When we know where to access wisdom for ourselves, then that becomes such a powerful tool to have in our toolbox, for just stumbling around not knowing where to look for that. For me, it’s usually journaling. 

Journaling gets ideas out and lubricates things. And then if I leave something alone, like if I’m trying to make a decision, then it becomes very much a body-centric answer. That’s how it happens to me.

I love that you’re pointing out that it’s different for people.

Stephanie: When you journal, do you notice that does that feel like it’s your head thoughts coming out? Or does that feel like it’s just everything coming out? Or does that feel more like your wisdom coming out?

Alexandra: It’s a bit of both, I can feel very often that my mind is really busy. And I’m writing down all that busy thought, it’s like going through layers. And once that’s out of me onto the page, then I get a little quieter. 

I noticed that then I start to spend more time staring off into the distance rather than actually writing. But then what I’m writing becomes just clear; it’s definitely more centered. Sometimes I have insights right on the page, but I think that more often I’ll set it aside and go on with my day. 

And then, at some point, then or days later, something will occur to me. That’s the truth for me. I love it. It’s good to have that awareness of ourselves. It really is for sure.

So we’ve talked about the reset your nervous system experiments. And it’s free, we should point out.

Where can people learn more about that and sign up for it?

Stephanie: You could just go to my website, it’s innerpeaceandflow.com. And there’s just a link right under the main picture.

Alexandra: Great. I will put links in the show notes, so people can find it. So it’s inner peace and flow.com Is your website and if people go there they can find out also about your work with clients and that thing.

Tell us a little bit more about what you offer for people.

Stephanie: I do tapping. I’ve done tapping for all these years. I also teach people how to tap. But over the years, after I encountered the three principles, I realized my whole practice changed because I stopped dealing with the path as regular EFT practitioners go diving into the past. You go memory, and I just was I It occurred to me, well, that’s not needed. 

So basically now my practice is more about using bring it’s like a three-principles session. So because it’s so different from the other, I had to rename it. So I came up with the name Ultra EFT, which stands for understanding life through realization and awareness EFT because it’s different than regular EFT. 

And then we’re starting to get results faster, less tears, less I’m really going to deep dive into all the painful memories. It’s made my practice so much easier. And people just have access to their own wisdom more easily. So anyway, that’s, so I work with people one on one, I’m going to be doing some stuff with human design, I’m going to be I work a lot with money. 

With people’s money issues. I used to deal mostly with depression, anxiety, trauma in my early years. And I just feel like I’ve shifted to working with people with business, and money has been an ongoing fun thing that I always am passionate about, but my partner’s an economics instructor and was a stockbroker. All we do is dissect the economy every morning. 

People need help with money issues because, just like anything else, food issues, money issues. It’s not that it doesn’t matter what the topic is. It’s about addressing all the thinking we have blocking us from correct action for ourselves. That doesn’t matter what the thing is. It really doesn’t matter. That’s what I’m doing now.

Alexandra: Very cool. Well, thank you, Stephanie. This has been lovely. It’s been great connecting with you again. And, I really appreciate it. Thanks for being on the show. 

Stephanie: Likewise, thanks for having me.

Alexandra: Take care. Bye Bye.

Featured image photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash