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Amy B. Scher is a bestselling author and a leading voice in the field of mind-body healing. As an energy therapist, Amy uses techniques to help those experiencing illness and those in need of emotional healing from anxiety, depression, and more. She has been featured in CNN, Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, and CBS. Amy teaches and speaks internationally and is recognized for her inspirational story and approachable style. Her books have been translated into ten languages. She lives in New York City and can be found online at AmyBScher.com.

Additional Resources:

BOOK: How to Heal Yourself From Anxiety When No One Else Can

Anxiety is not “just fear” and it doesn’t come from out of the blue. In fact, everything you think you know about anxiety is about to change. With a brand new approach to understanding and overcoming anxiety, this exceptional book is unique, go-at-your-own-pace, and full of hands-on techniques and guidance that illustrate one profound truth: healing from anxiety is possible.

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Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the Healing Uncensored Podcast. My name is Sarah Small and I’m a health and mindset coach for women with autoimmune disease just like you. I absolutely love helping you tap into your self-healing power, uncover the energetic side of healing, and release limiting beliefs around your body and your life. Think of this podcast as everything you wouldn’t hear at your doctor’s office. It’s a place for empowered souls to move beyond food and heal themselves on a soul level. I hope you enjoy today’s episode. Now let’s begin.

Welcome. I am so excited for today’s guest. This is Amy B. Scher and I have been following her for a very long time and I have all of her books. And she is a best-selling author and a leading voice in the field of mind-body healing. As an energy therapist, Amy uses techniques to help those experiencing illness and those in need of emotional healing from anxiety, depression, and more. So you guys can probably already tell this is right up my alley. I had so many questions for Amy and I just really love talking to her. So I hope you guys enjoy and get so much out of this episode.

Sarah: Hello and welcome to the show, Amy. I’m so excited to have you on today.

Amy: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here with you.

Sarah: So I have all of your books; the newest one is on its way. And I was just so inspired by your story and all of your energy-healing techniques. In fact, you were the first person that I ever heard anywhere about muscle testing from, and it’s now a tool that I use with my clients and in my own body and my own health journey and it has been so instrumental. So I also want to say thank you for introducing me to muscle testing. You probably didn’t know you introduced me.

Muscle testing

Amy: Oh, I love that. Isn’t it mind-blowing? I remember when I learned about it, I was like, wait, what have I been doing without this for so long? And I didn’t even know this was here. All this guesswork I’ve been doing for so many years, driving myself crazy, I could have used muscle testing.

Sarah: Yes, our body has so many answers that we can tap into that information. I remember I was on a family vacation and I was reading your book How to Heal Yourself When No One Else Can and I was like, okay, I’ve got to try this. So I went into the bedroom; I was staying in a room with my sister. So I was like, Anna, don’t come in here for a little while. I’m going to do something weird. So I shut the blinds and I was like, all right, I did the standing muscle test. And I stood there and I was like, okay, whatever happens, happens. I’m in it, I’m all in. Let’s just see what happens. And it totally worked for me and it was just mind-blowing like you said. It’s like, whoa, how did I not know that my body could do this? So—

Amy: Yes. And I think when you can relax and just be curious about it and think it’s a fun thing. Because I have some people get really stressed out and how do I know if it’s accurate? And I always say, listen, it’s probably not 100% accurate, but it’s a lot better than guessing. And in my experience, it is very, very accurate. But when people start worrying about its accuracy and if they’re doing it perfectly, it often doesn’t work in terms of nothing’s happening, I’m not getting answers. And so, I love your energy about it because it’s just that curiosity and wow, this is cool, this gives me so many new clues, that make it so valuable.

Sarah: Yes. I’ve actually had a lot of women ask me, now that I think about it, hey Sarah, I think I’m overthinking this, I think I’m forcing this answer. And my advice to them is usually, okay, first of all, really ground yourself, clear your energy, take a couple of deep breaths, but also, can you release the attachment to the outcome? Do you have any other tips for people who have tried muscle testing and they’re just like, “Oh, I feel like I’m overthinking it” as they go into it, to have more of a clear mind?

Amy: Yes. So those tips are very good ones. Just relax, get grounded. I would say stay away from electronics. Don’t care about what the outcome is; it’s really, really important. If you go into it with a lighter energy, like, hmm, I wonder what’s going to come up or I wonder what’s going to happen, it really, really does help. Being hydrated really helps. In the new book, How to Heal Yourself from Anxiety When No One Else Can, I actually teach pendulum testing. Because for a lot of people, pendulum testing will work a little bit better or clearer than muscle testing because when your body tenses up and you’re nervous and you’re overthinking things, then it’s obviously going to manifest in maybe a malfunction of the body in terms of muscle testing. But a pendulum, even though we’re still using and reading the energy of your body, a pendulum is still a thing that isn’t your body and so, it can be a bit clearer. But I just say relax.

And also, it took me a year to learn how to muscle test. I was not one of those people who just got it and my life changed. It was like, I remember I was taking a class, a Donna Eden class, when I really learned, really, the in-depth way of muscle testing. And I was the only one in the class that couldn’t do it. And I just stuck with it and I really got it after a while. So I would just say for people, you don’t need it to heal. That’s really important to say. You don’t need it to heal. It’s super, super helpful so just be easy about it and come back and try it a few times. I was like, I can’t do this. I’m the only one in the world who can’t muscle test. And then suddenly it was like, I can muscle test. And now people come to me specifically for muscle testing, which seems crazy to me because I used to not be able to muscle test. So I think as with so much about life and healing, just give yourself a freaking break. It will happen. And it’ll happen faster if you’re relaxed about it.

Sarah: Yes. That’s probably really encouraging to a lot of people who I’ve talked to, at least in the past, of like, okay, even if it didn’t work the first time, this has potential to work for me eventually. Just keep at it. And I’m curious what you said about electronics. So is that just there’s too many other frequencies and energies around?

Amy: Yes. Many of us become really imbalanced when there’s a lot of electronics and our energy system, and it’s nothing to be scared of, but our energy system can be affected by electronics and electronics can interfere with our body’s natural energy flow. So I would never have my cell phone near me when I tested. I wouldn’t be at my desk on my computer. I mean, now I can. But especially when you’re learning, I have a lot of clients where I’m like, just go do it outside. Just go put your feet on the grass and do it outside. And a lot of times that will work for them. So just try to be away from any influencers or anything that could get in the way of you being as calm and grounded as possible.

Sarah: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. So you just published this new book on how to heal yourself from anxiety when no one else can and I have to say that I saw this a month or two ago and I was like, oh my God, thank you, Amy.

Amy: This was the book that came about by quite popular demand.

Sarah: Yes. It hit so close to home for me. And my audience already knows that; that I’ve struggled with, in the past, debilitating anxiety and I’ve done so much to heal it. And for the most part, it is healed, but I still have some days. I’ve got my days where it just sneaks up out of nowhere and then I’m like, oh, there you are. Hi, anxiety. And so, I’m curious. So you said there was a lot of demand, but what else inspired you to write this book?

What inspired Amy to write her new book

Amy: Well, what really inspired me was I think that there’s a misunderstanding about anxiety. And when we don’t understand what it is, we lack compassion for ourselves. And it was really, really important for me to help people understand anxiety in a new way so that they could feel better about themselves, (1), and so that they could heal it. Because if we don’t understand something, we can’t heal it and when we don’t understand something, we tend to blame ourselves. And so, it was really important for me with what I think is a very unique view or perspective of what anxiety is, to share that and for people to go, oh, I get why I can’t just snap out of it. I get why all these spiritual teachers who are saying, just take a deep breath, go for a walk, I get why it doesn’t work for me. Because those are the things that make us feel bad about ourselves, right? Why is everybody else deep-breathing and they feel better and I’m still a mess?

And so, that was really why I wanted to write the book. And I felt, by the demand I was getting to write it and the requests, that people were really feeling like there has to be something else that I’m not tapped into about anxiety. And I do think it’s been true since the book’s been published.

Sarah: Absolutely. They’re looking for that missing link. I can relate to that where it was like, okay, yes, I’m looking for the triggers, there’s no consistency, or I’m meditating, or all the things on the emotional side and the physical side, I was looking for a missing link in my own experience. So what would you say are some of the misconceptions about what is anxiety, what people think anxiety is?

Misconceptions about anxiety

Amy: So I think that people think anxiety is fear and I think it has very little to do with fear. Fear can be a component of anxiety. And fear happens when you’re consistently anxious because the body feels uncomfortable and freaked out and uncertain. But I think most of the time anxiety causes fear, not that fear causes anxiety. So that’s the major misconception as I see it. And I also don’t believe that anxiety is a feeling. In my opinion, it’s not a true emotion. Anxiety happens when over a long period of time, we suppress our emotions. And what I see anxiety as is the symptom of what happens when you feel emotions trying to bubble up and out of your body. So for instance, I see just as many people that have anxiety because they’ve suppressed anger as anxiety because they’ve suppressed fear. It’s really an instance of stuffing emotions that are just rising in your system, slowly trying to make their way out. And when you keep pushing them down, consciously or subconsciously, you get that feeling that something bad is happening and typically we associate it with an external circumstance.

But there is something bad happening, it’s not outside of you. You may have external triggers. But the bad thing that’s happening inside of you, it’s not dangerous, but it feels bad when we have emotions that need to be expressed and they’re not being expressed. So that’s the basis of my understanding and experience with anxiety. And I think that when we keep looking for what’s scaring us or the fear, we miss it because it’s not always fear. It’s more the fear that comes afterwards because our body’s in this constant state of trying to hold all this stuff in our bodies.

Sarah: Yes. I felt like I was living in survival mode, constantly, for two years and having then what led to anxiety. It was anxiety, then triggered fear. And then fear triggered panic attacks where I really, truly thought I was going to die. And of course, then there’s a physiological response in your body that also is like, okay, you’re dying, you know?

Amy: Of course, of course.

Sarah: Survival. I’m engaged now. At the time, my current fiancé who was a boyfriend, we were talking and he wasn’t really familiar with anxiety until he started dating me. And he’s like, what? So I was trying to explain to him the difference between stress and anxiety. And to him, he’s like, oh yeah, I’ve had anxiety. But what he was explaining was I have a lot to do today or there’s a lot of things on my plate or there’s pressure. And I was like, oh yeah, but to me, there’s a very visceral feeling. There’s a difference between I’m stressed and I have a lot to do versus this anxiety like you said, that can manifest as fear, as suppressed emotions. How else does anxiety manifest? I’m sure it’s different for every person, but how have you seen it manifest in the people you’ve spoken to or that you worked with?

Amy: Yes, that’s a really great, great question. Thank you for bringing that up because my first book, How to Heal Yourself When No One Else Can, was primarily about how to heal…I mean, all my work is about emotional healing, but that first book was sort of the premise of emotional baggage causes physical symptoms and physical conditions. And this book is really focused on just anxiety, which of course can lead to physical conditions. But people don’t always get how emotional things show up in your life. So I think I have done a really good job over the last few years really sharing my perspective on this emotional stuff can show up as physical. But people don’t really realize that they have anxiety or that they’re experiencing anxiety because it’s not coming across exactly like they understand it, which is what we’ve been talking about; fear. So it’s interesting since this book’s come out, people are like, oh my gosh, I didn’t realize I had anxiety in my whole life.

And that’s exactly what happened to me. I was trying to heal from Lyme disease and an autoimmune thyroid condition and arthritis and a million other things. And what happened to me was I was just focusing on the physical. And then I moved to focusing on emotional as well, but what I realized when I started working on the emotional was, oh my gosh, I’ve had anxiety my whole life. But I understood it only as fear and I thought to myself, well, I don’t have any phobias. I had anxiety my whole life, but you would never find me afraid to cross the bridge, afraid to go on a plane. I didn’t have anything like that. So when I started to understand anxiety from this new point, what I realized, and then through working with many, many people over the years, is it comes up in so many different ways. One of them is the inability to relax. I can’t just be chill and let myself be like that. It feels unsettling, it feels uncomfortable.

Another thing which I suffered from greatly was the difficulty making decisions. That comes from anxiety. I’m anxious about what will be the right thing to do, which is linked to perfectionism, another manifestation of anxiety. And then being moody is definitely one of them because what’s happening is you’re going from emotion to emotion, never really feeling free to express each one, or maybe not knowing how to express each one. And so, you’re feeling the oscillation of all of these different things that are coming up a little but never really going away and then just transforming as something else. Something else I really see; people mistake low blood sugar; this shaky, unstable, something’s-coming-over-me-and-it-doesn’t-feel-right feeling. If you feel like you have blood sugar issues but you don’t, or you’ve just eaten something healthy and balanced, that is a huge indicator of anxiety, that there’s emotional energy coming up that’s affecting you physiologically, like we talked about.

I mean, anxiety really does affect the body too, it’s not just the mind. But a lot of times people come to me and say, I have blood sugar problems but I don’t; my blood sugar is fine. And it comes and goes like blood sugar issues and when we really start to pay attention, it’s anxiety. Another thing we touched on, electronics; sensitivity to lights, computers, EMF, that type of thing, can be anxiety and not necessarily a direct reaction to those things. And then any physical symptoms. I see all the time, fatigue, digestive issues, for sure, adrenal symptoms. I would say digestive is probably the most common, especially for people who aren’t struggling with an ongoing illness. But if it’s somebody that really doesn’t have a lot of physical stuff going on, almost all of them are like, oh, but my stomach gets upset or, but I feel nauseous a lot. So digestion is one that I would say most people who experience anxiety deal with. But those are sneaky. I mean, there’s nail-biting, there’s smoking, all of those things too, any kind of addiction, I would link to anxiety. But once I start to talk about these, people are like, oh wait, I do think maybe I have it, you know?

Sarah: Right. Anxiety is such a big umbrella word because it does manifest so uniquely in each of our bodies. Mine has manifested as a habit of skin-picking and it’s also manifested as a physical sensation of feeling like I can’t control my hands. It’s like all the blood rushes to my internal organs and it’s like, I don’t know, I get raptor hands and it’s like, oh my God. Okay, my arms don’t work anymore. What’s happening? And of course, then that’s really scary and then my body goes into a panic attack. It used to; I’ve done so much healing for this. But what I was realizing is some of the low blood sugar-like symptoms also were resonating when you were saying that. I was like, ooh, yes, that’s kind of me. I’d have more anxiety. It seems like a physical thing but really, the hand stuff, the skin-picking stuff, the low blood sugar-like symptoms, they were never triggered by a food or anything like that. It was like it would just come out of nowhere. And when I finally started to look at the suppressed emotions that I was burying and burying and burying and burying was really when I started to see some of this healing as well.

So I’m sure everyone’s like, okay, I have at least one of those things that Amy just talked about, now, what do I do about it, Amy? So how can we start to overcome? What are some of the tools, tips, techniques that people can start to play with and see which ones work for them?

Amy: So the book basically teaches from a couple of different angles. One is, what we can do in the moment when we’re feeling anxious and how to tap into our ability to calm our bodies down, to stop that panic attack or whatever it is. But the more important part of the book is how to go back and clear the root of anxiety. And I think this is a missing link in treatments for anxiety. And this is not to say that there’s anything wrong with medication or there’s anything wrong with the current anxiety treatments, except for, that most of them only help you manage your current state of anxiety. And what I feel is really needed, if we want to truly heal instead of cope, is to go back and clear the root of anxiety. Where did it start? Where is it living in my body? What is it from? And there are ways to do that even and especially if you have no idea where it came from when it started.

I mean, that’s my specialty, is like anybody could come to me or use my work and we could figure out, we could make sense of it. We could figure out, even though this makes no sense, let’s figure out how it happened, where it’s living, what’s triggering it? Even with no memory of no point of origin. After I turned 11, I started having panic attacks. People are luckier when they have that reference point, but most people don’t. And so, let me teach everybody something that you can do right now, and then we can talk a little bit more about the importance of going back to clear. And so, I always want to give people tools now but I don’t want anybody to only seek tools that will help them in the moment because it’s really important to go back.

Sarah: Right, like a Band-Aid.

Amy: Yes, it’s a Band-Aid. And I really want them to go back and clear old stuff so that they don’t have to keep using the in-the-moment tools. That’s the idea, right? Is that you don’t get triggered into a panic attack, that we prevent that from happening. So one of the things that I teach in my work and it’s in my first book as well, is thymus tapping. And I’m going to spell it because everyone always thinks I’m saying sinuses like in your face. But thymus is spelled T-H-Y-M-U-S. And your thymus gland sits behind your breastbone, basically in your chest, and it’s the master gland of your immune system and it’s also linked energetically to your whole energy system in your body. And so, when we tap on it, it helps to release emotional baggage and at the same time rebalance the immune system in relationship to that emotional baggage or emotional trauma. It’s also very, very calming just in general to the body, to the nervous system.

And so, if you find where you would tie a tie at that notch of your neck and go about an inch below, you won’t feel your thymus gland because it’s under your chest, but you may feel a slightly raised area and that’s where your thymus gland is. If you don’t feel a raised area, it doesn’t matter at all. Just go about an inch below that notch in your neck where you would tie a tie and you essentially just tap there. And thymus tapping is very, very powerful just when you’re in those moments of panic or feeling anxious. But I also like to challenge people to find the real emotion they’re feeling. You may feel anxious, but you’re feeling anxious for a reason. So let’s say, let’s all take right this moment as an example. What I like people to do is close your eyes and tune in to how you’re really feeling; the anxiousness that you’re feeling, how you feel in your body, and ask yourself, if I was challenged to find the real emotion that I’m feeling, what would it be?

It may be a word or an emotion that pops up. You might think about something that you really haven’t dealt with. It can come to you intuitively. So for instance, we’re looking for something like, I really feel pissed off, or I really feel sad, or I really feel whatever. We’re really trying to look at the real emotion and then train ourselves out of the habit of just repetitively saying, I have anxiety, I have anxiety. That will never get you to any solutions because it’s not a real problem. It’s the side effect of a problem. And if you get it wrong, it doesn’t matter and if you find two things, it doesn’t matter. What we’re going to do is tap on our thymus gland while we just repeat, let go, let go, let go…let go, let go, let go. And we’re just sending our body the message that it’s safe to let go of that emotion. We’re already feeling it. I get people who say, I don’t want to do this because I don’t want to start feeling a bunch of things. And I always say, that’s why you’re anxious because you’re already feeling it. It’s already there. Let’s just let it go.

So you’re tapping on your thymus gland to help you let go of the energy. You don’t have to say anything; you can just tap and hold the intention to release it, but you’re basically helping your body to bring the emotion up and out. It’s sort of being discharged from wherever it’s stuck in your body. There’s a technique, which is one of my favorites in the book, called thymus test and tap, where I walk you through actually muscle testing for which specific emotions from your past are stuck in your body and then using thymus tapping to clear those. So that’s sort of a more in-depth way to do it. But for the purposes of just learning and for doing it when you’re not feeling great, just sitting for 10 seconds quietly, figuring out what emotion you might be really feeling, and doing the tapping for a minute or so, can really, really help to clear whatever’s coming up.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yes, it’s so simple, but powerful and potent and something that everyone can do at home. And I think, like you said, it’s so important for us to see what’s the layer beneath that word anxiety, that feeling that we might be describing, what’s the true emotion under there. So—

Amy: Absolutely. And I also think, for me personally, I am not a meditator. I don’t like yoga. People always come to me and say, I’ve tried to meditate. I was like, oh my gosh. When I had really bad anxiety, the last thing I could ever do is close my eyes and sit still. I would have jumped out of my skin. So I like that this helps us tune into our emotion but it gives us something to do. Because I think that that helps to energetically move the anxiety out, which is why a lot of people feel better when they exercise or go for a walk. That’s not necessarily a cure but the action of doing something to physically expel or to energetically expel the emotions was really important for me. Just sitting wasn’t going to work, you know what I mean? So just breathing. Breathing is something but I just like this because you don’t have to concentrate. You can feel anxious while you do it. I’m not telling you to try to stop feeling anxious or try to calm yourself; definitely don’t. Just try to clear it while you feel that anxiety.

Sarah: Yes. You’re not avoiding it. Like you said, it’s like discharging it. I love that. That visual for me is like, okay, it’s coming up and then it’s going out.

Amy: Yes, yes. Which is something that a lot of standard therapies like traditional psychotherapy or talk therapy doesn’t do. People say to me, well, I’ve been going to therapy for 20 years and it’s like, well, I do think therapy is really beneficial for coming to new perspectives and seeing things in a different way, but I think we all know that constantly talking about something doesn’t make it go away. I’ve certainly tried that and I’m sure most of your community has tried that. So once you have an understanding and you’ve gained those perspectives that you need, it doesn’t mean that constantly talking about is going to make it go away, but this tapping and tuning into the real cause can really, really help move it out.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. I love that. Super easy for people to do in the moment. So you were mentioning also the importance of really getting to the root of all of these suppressed emotions and clearing out all of the roots so that you’re not just using the go-to methods, you’re just not experiencing anxiety anymore. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of that and maybe a step or two for us to get started?

Getting to the root of suppressed emotions

Amy: Sure. Yes, so going back and clearing the root is like pulling the rug out from under the real issue and that’s what we need to do. So what’s happening with anxiety is that we do have external triggers. But those triggers are not the monsters and the main things that are giving us anxiety. It’s our internal reaction to those things that caused the anxiety or that triggered those feelings that we have. And so, people come to me and say, I have anxiety at work, or I have anxiety and every time I’m around this person, this happens. And it’s because they’re triggering stuff that you’re storing in your body, it has nothing to do with them. So if you are a person that has anxiety when you go to work because you have so much to do; very, very, very little anxiety really has anything to do with it. That’s more overwhelm or stress. I like how you were talking about how you and your fiancé had that conversation about the difference between anxiety and stress. Stress feels very, very different. Stress is not causing anxiety. What causes anxiety is, you could call it stress, but it’s internal, it’s emotional baggage.

So if work is a trigger, you may think it’s because you’re working 12 hours a day, but it’s more likely because you have a belief that you’re not good enough and so you have to work those 12 hours a day, or you have emotions from four jobs ago about how somebody took advantage of you and you overworked and now it’s getting triggered in your current situation. So our current lives are triggers for what we’re storing from the past. And so, that’s why it’s so important to go back because you could leave your job because you feel like that’s causing anxiety, but you’re probably just going to go to another job, honestly, that’s going to trigger the same things. And we can’t run from relationship to relationship and job to job, although we do all try at some point. So that’s the importance of really going back because you want to prevent this from happening. And these triggers are subconscious, which is what makes it really, really hard.

I tell a story in How to Heal Yourself from Anxiety When No One Else Can, where I went to the doctor with my wife and I had a full-blown panic attack. And I can’t remember what it was, but she had a cold. It wasn’t like anything big. We wanted to make sure she didn’t have like crazy ear infections or something. And they were taking her blood pressure and I literally just had to run to the bathroom. I threw up, I had a total panic attack. And this was after I healed, this was not even while I was sick. And I could not figure out why. I am certainly not afraid of doctors. I had had much worse in my life than going to immediate care for a possible ear infection. And I used thymus test and tap to muscle test and find emotions stuck from my past that triggered that specific panic attack and it never happened again. So that’s the importance. Because if I was just sitting there trying to make sense of why I had a panic attack, I would have sat there for 20 years because I do not have a fear of doctors. I literally couldn’t think of a single thing, a single reason for it so that’s really why we need to go back. And I never found out what it was. I cleared a bunch of things from a bunch of ages and then it was like, okay, well, that’s gone now. So it’s just really, really interesting how just things we’re not aware of trigger us.

And in the book, I talk a lot about as well that certain weather can trigger us, certain times of day can trigger us because we’re storing emotional trauma from the past that got linked up in our subconscious mind to weather or to three o’clock in the afternoon. And so, that’s an important thing to look at too. And those aren’t the things we can figure out with our conscious mind because it’s just too crazy.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. I haven’t considered that before, the weather and the time of day. But now that you said that I was like, oh yeah, whenever it’s windy out…

Amy: Right? Isn’t that interesting? Because there’s probably something in your past that happened like you were moving and it was a difficult time and it was really windy that day. And what our body does, our immune system, is it decides that the wind or some random, this is how people get allergic to things, the wind or the coffee we just drank, or the whatever was what made us so upset versus the emotional event that we were going through, like the traumatic move or a parent being sick or something like that. And the immune system just directs the attack basically on the wrong thing and then in a kind effort to protect us in the future, it creates a reaction to that thing, like the wind or three o’clock in the afternoon or the coffee we love. And that’s part of how energetic reactions get stuck.

Sarah: Oh, this is so fascinating. So there’s a theme of your books of healing yourself when no one else can. So can you speak to that? I’ve read part of your story in How to Heal Yourself When No One Else Can, but what inspired you to create tools for people to be able to do themselves based on your own story?

Amy: Yes. So I never set out to do any of this but by the time I had started to use energy work and look into the emotional aspect of illness and healing, I was broke, out of doctors who could help me. I had really been all over the world to try to find a cure for Lyme disease and endometriosis and autoimmune diseases and so many different conditions I had. My epiphany was like, I’ve had all of these different conditions over my life and I’m the only common denominator. So that forced me to turn inward and look at, I like to call it, my emotional landscape. And when I did that, I was like, okay, I can see how this happened. And the way that the tools got created was from my own healing because I couldn’t sit and meditate and I hated yoga. And I still don’t like yoga; I wish I did. But I talk about that in my memoir because I lived in India for a little while and everybody comes back from India loving yoga and I basically came back and was like, nope, still nope.

But these tools were created (1) because nothing worked for me, (2) because I don’t have a whole lot of patience and I knew that I needed to come up with tools that if I was going to take my healing into my own hands, which was my only option, I think everybody needs the support of practitioners and it’s always smart to get blood work and go to the doctor and cover all aspects of what’s going on, but when none of that did anything for me and I knew I was going to have to do it myself, it had to be simple because I was so overwhelmed and so exhausted from being sick. And it had to be effective and it had to be something I could do and would do. Because there are so many amazing healing techniques out there but it has to be something, for me, that’s digestible, that’s easy enough to do. And I had a really hard time finding that. I didn’t feel well enough to sit and practice something for two hours a day, that just wasn’t going to happen.

And so, thanks to my impatience, I created techniques and revised techniques that I had already learned, that would work for me and that I knew I would do. Because the only way that you can heal yourself is to use the work. It doesn’t really matter if it’s mine or something else you’ve found, but if it’s too complicated or overwhelming, or it takes too long, you’re probably not going to use it. And so, that’s how the tools got created. Emotional freedom technique, which I obviously did not create, an amazing tool; I even revised that to be easier for myself. Because I had learned, well, I can’t say I learned EFT, but I had gone to a practitioner, years before I learned EFT, that did it on me, for me, tapped for me, and I didn’t understand what they were doing. They didn’t tell me the name of it, they never explained you can do this for yourself. And years and years later, when I ran across EFT, I was like, oh my gosh, if that amazing practitioner would have made it any easier for me to know what was happening, I could have used this.

And so, even my version of EFT, I call it “EFT the Amy way,” it’s the basis of Gary Craig’s amazing process of EFT. But even that has a twist on it that’s more relaxed than the actual original technique. So that’s how all these tools came about was because I had nothing else and I was like, okay, well, if I’m going to survive this, I better figure out a way.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yes, I love how just there’s this theme of simplicity and do it yourself. And especially for the people who, you don’t feel well enough or don’t have the patience or just don’t vibe with some of the things that do take two hours or yoga or meditation, whatever it may be, now you’re empowering them to still have a full toolbox to go to if they’re experiencing anxiety or any sort of discomfort as well. So many of the women in my community have also taken, similar to you and to me, this pain, this story, this challenge that we’ve been through in our lives, and then turned it into inspiration and purpose. And so, I was asking some of them this morning, what they wanted to hear from you and some of them that are going in that pain-to-purpose path and then letting the challenges they’ve been through become their passion and create businesses or write, they’re curious about some of your favorite writing tips and how to manage your energy between the creation of the writing and then the self-care because you are also a woman who has struggled with chronic illness and just managing, energetically, that balance.

Amy: Yes. This might be my favorite question anyone’s ever asked me in a podcast. Thank you for asking that and thank you to your community for thinking of that. Okay, so these are my tips. So (1) with writing or creating business in any way, I say, allow yourself to be inconsistent when you’re creating. I think that’s the worst thing I ever struggled with was writers telling me, sit down every day and write for this time to this time. It’s never worked for me. I usually have a 4-6-month deadline to write a book and the majority of it gets written in the last two months. I’m not saying that’s the way to go, but I could sit here and I would just stare at the screen for hours and hours. I think that creativity and inspiration comes in waves and you ride the wave when it’s there and you let yourself take a break when it’s not. That’s one thing that I think is really important to know and to follow and to honor, that when it comes, it comes, and when it doesn’t, it’s okay if you have a few days of doing nothing. Because then when the inspiration does hit again, you’re ready and you go, and you’ll probably create more than and better than you would if you force yourself to sit down for three hours a day. So that’s one thing.

And if you feel like you can never write, there are probably some kind of blocks. If you want to write, but you can’t, it’s always good to work on “I’m not good enough,” or “the first draft has to be perfect;” clearing those beliefs. And my preferred technique for clearing beliefs is my own technique called “The Sweep,” which is in both of my books, to sweep out old subconscious messages. But in any case, if it’s something like you just can’t be consistent or whatever, I just say that things come in waves. The second thing is, I see this because I’m in these online writing groups and these people are in the online writing groups all day talking about their writing process and the only writing process there is, is to sit down and write, to spend tons and tons of time planning your process. The only way to write is to sit down and write it. So you don’t need them. I have no method; I have no process. I just sit down and write.

Now with that being said, the way that I write allows me to not have to spend a bunch of time on process and format and all that because I write things in pieces. I never start at the beginning of the book and write to the end. I never start at the beginning of an article and write to the end. I might write one paragraph here and then another paragraph there and they’re random thoughts and then I string them together. So my books, it’s probably, if it’s going to ever be any good, it’s going to be super messy and horrible in the beginning. So I would just encourage people to know that they don’t have to write in any sort of order. You don’t have to start at the opening paragraph and then go to the next thing. Or if t’s a book, you don’t have to start at chapter one and then write two and then three and four. Mine are all mixed up and then I make some sense of the mess in the end. But what that allows me to do is actually write.

Because you can get stuck, whether it’s creating a business or writing a book or writing whatever; your story, you can get so stuck in just sitting around planning all day. And I know people who have taken 20 years to write a book and they’re not writing. They’re worried about their process about writing. So I would just say, sit down and write, let things come out in pieces, you’ll figure it out later. All of my books started in pieces that, thank goodness nobody ever saw, before it turned into something. So I would just say, just do it. Just do it and don’t put too much pressure on yourself. And it flows much better that way.

Sarah: I love that. Yes, there’s so many voices out there that are saying show up every single day or do these five things before you sit down and put your fingers to the keyboard. What you just said is just so simple and so, yes, let’s just let it be that simple.

Amy: Right. The only way to get things on a page is to write them. And it doesn’t matter if you’re on your couch, or you’re in your office, or you have a candle lit, or you did deep breathing before. It doesn’t matter. The way to do it is to type or to write. That’s the only thing that matters.

Sarah: And I find in my own writing and just content creation is that when I am inspired and I’m excited to sit down and write, so much better content material comes out versus me trying to force myself to do something. Or if I’m just not energetically like…I have brain fog that day, it’s like, oh, what’s going to come out, it’s probably not going to be awesome so maybe I’ll write tomorrow.

Amy: Right. Yes. And my favorite book for anybody on their writing endeavors is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird; best writing book ever. And it basically is a whole book that talks about how much of a mess you’ll create when you write, before you write anything good, and it’s so good. It’s such a good book. Every writer has to read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. She’s amazing.

Sarah: I love that. Awesome. So if you are a writer and you’re listening, go read that book and Amy’s. Now, what about all of our listeners who are currently experiencing anxiety or had an ‘aha’ breakthrough moment today and said, oh, I do have anxiety and I didn’t even realize it before? What is the take-home message for them or what would you like them to know?

Amy: The most important thing I want everyone to know is you can heal; not just cope but heal. And that doesn’t mean that you have to put a ton of pressure on yourself to heal now, and you have to feel bad every time you do feel anxious in the process, or every time you do get blood tests that aren’t great. Whenever you’re healing, it is a process. Know you can do it, but also find a balance of surrendering to where you are because it just makes day-to-day much easier. I was one of those people that doctors said that I couldn’t heal because they’d tried everything and I had all these experimental treatments and all these things and I healed permanently and completely. And so, I want everybody just to really, really soak up that message that you can heal no matter what and also that it might be able to be easier than you think. Because I was going through all these complicated things as far as treatments and doctors, and I think in my head, I thought, well, if the complicated things don’t help, nothing would. But I think sometimes the simple things are what our body responds to because they’re natural, because they kind of come back to who we are and what we already know.

And it almost seemed too simple that I could do something virtually free. I mean, dealing with your emotions is free, except if you want to buy a book or whatever. But it just seemed like, oh wow, after I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on medical care, that was it. I carried that the whole time to every doctor’s office, to every state I visited, all the way to India where I went for an experimental stem cell transplant that didn’t do it completely. And so, just to remember that just because something’s simple, doesn’t mean it won’t work.

Sarah: That’s really powerful. Because I think so many of us have thought the longer I don’t have a diagnosis or I don’t know, that must mean there’s a connection to “it has to be complicated or bad or heavy or whatever.” And it’s like, what if we just let it be simple? What if we gave ourselves permission for it to just be simple? So thank you so much for imparting all of this wisdom and knowledge and really practical tools with us today. Can you let everyone know where to purchase all of your books, but especially your brand new one?

Amy: Sure. So Amazon, which is the fastest, as in you can get it that day or the day after, and then many local bookstores have the book. Barnes and Noble has…the Anxiety book hasn’t quite gotten there yet, but the other books are there. And then for anybody who can’t afford a book, most of my books are at most libraries and libraries are very willing to order. So I want to say that as well if there’s a financial issue; libraries. And I also have lots of YouTube videos if videos are helpful for you as well.

Sarah: Awesome. Thank you so much, I so appreciate your time. And again, thank you just for introducing me to muscle testing. I will always connect you to my muscle testing experience. So again, I just honor you, I’m so grateful for your work, and thanks for being on today.

Amy: Thank you so much, Sarah.

Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode of The Healing Uncensored Podcast. I love you guys so much. I got a message from a listener the other day that literally brought me to tears. I really just want to express all my gratitude to all of you for taking the time to listen. I know your days are jam-packed and you have so much on your plate and if this can just be that little spark of hope in your day, then that means the world to me. That’s the purpose of this podcast; to show up, to tell the uncommon stories, and to show alternative other ways to healing beyond food on a soul level. So again, thank you so much for your support today and every time you put in your earbuds or listen to the podcast in the shower, or the car, or while you’re making dinner, or wherever you’re tuning in. Again, I love you, I thank you, and it would mean so much to me if you would just take a minute to go rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already. Again, I really, truly appreciate it. Have a wonderful day. Thanks for tuning in and I’ll see you next time.

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