What is monkey mind?

Monkey mind is a Buddhist term for that part of you that will stop at nothing to get you to stay where you are because it feels safe. Monkey mind tells you not to work on yourself- “you don’t have time to tap”, or “it really doesn’t work on me”. Your conscious mind is saying “I want to change” but monkey mind laughs and throws in the proverbial monkey wrench in the middle of all your well-intentioned plans. The way to stop monkey mind is to acknowledge its presence and continue or tap away the chatter using EFT.

One of my first clients had severe debilitating fibromyalgia pain and couldn’t get out of bed. After a 1 1/2 hour session she was completely free of the pain she had suffered for the last 10 years. I asked her to continue with some exercises at home that required maybe 10 minutes tops a day so the pain would be gone permanently. We agreed to talk in a week to just check in but when she wouldn’t return my emails or calls I became a bit worried. When she finally sheepishly wrote back it was to say that she knew our work would help her but she had seen that her something house was in her something moon and that she was incapable of real change until February 2007! That was my first real encounter with monkey mind in my work.

From my point of view it really is the good ol’ fashioned subconscious mind protecting us from a perceived threat and I always factor it in when working with a chronic condition, depression, and addiction.

If someone calls me and says that they actually get money from the government for their disability, I instantly know that we have to deal with that loss of income as a possible reason for not healing.

My favorite story about all this was when I had a mom seek my help for her son’s abscessed tooth problems. This poor child had one tooth pulled after another and was scheduled to have his 3rd pulled. After just a few minutes I found that he had many great benefits to his pain. He received two very large gifts after both procedure, his mom didn’t go to work, he ate ice cream whenever he wanted, and got to watch otherwise banned DVDs when he was recovering. Together with his mom we worked out a system for the things he would get if he asked his mouth to heal and using EFT we were able to cancel the surgery and he hasn’t been in pain since.

Don’t beat yourself up about self-sabotage but recognize why it happens and get on with it. Use the EFT set-up phrase :Even though I keep having these negative thought that on some level are about my fear of change, I deeply and completely accept myself.

Ram Das was asked what he feels is different about his mind now as opposed to when he was in his early twenties. His answer was that he still had the voice inside his head telling him why he couldn’t do this or that but that it was much quieter and didn’t linger as long. He too obviously knows a monkey when he sees one.

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