We’ve all had money fears at one time or another. Money can be such a big, painful part of our lives. Coach Stephanie Wood is determined to help her clients alleviate those fears and create peace and calm around money. She combines a system of EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) that she’s created with the Three Principles to calm her clients’ nervous systems and help them see that painful thoughts, even ones about money, are still just thought. Energy coming to life within us, moment to moment, and then moving on.

You can listen to the podcast by pressing play above, or listen on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, or watch the video here. Below are the show highlights and full transcript.

Show Notes

• How Stephanie is combining EFT and the Three Principles
• The benefits of giving our cognitive brains something to do while we’re learning about the Principles
• How a lot of thinking about money can create problems for us
• And how EFT and the Three Principles can shift us out of that over-thinking
• Why money isn’t what we think it is
• Freedom for coaches and practitioners who see it’s not their responsibility to make create insight in clients
• Is money a heavy issue or do we just have heavy thinking about it?

You can find Stephanie at InnerPeaceAndFlow.com.

Transcript of Interview with Stephanie Wood

Alexandra: Hi everyone, I’m Alexandra Amor from stopsufferingabout.com and I’m here today with Stephanie Wood. Hi Stephanie.

Stephanie: Hello. How are you today?

Alexandra: I’m awesome. How are you?

Stephanie: I’m very well also.

Alexandra: Let me give a little

introduction to you to our listeners.

Stephanie Wood is passionate about helping

people get unstuck, especially around their finances. She’s a financialtherapist, an EFT trainer and practitioner who has found a way to incorporatethe wisdom of the Three Principles into her groups, programs and sessions insomething she has created called ULTRA EFT, which I’m going to ask you about.

The ULTRA stands for Understanding Life Through

Realization and Awareness. And Stephanie has an upcoming book, which we willalso talk about today, which is called Money Is Not Scary Unless You Think It Is.Welcome, Stephanie.

Why don’t you just give us a little bit

about your background to start things off.

Stephanie: OK.

So through my own personal healing I ended up stumbling upon EFT and really, itjust stuck with me. That was almost 20 years ago and I immediately became anactive practitioner because I knew I wanted to help people and I could do it ina way that didn’t drain me. So that was amazing. I didn’t have to take on theirstuff. It was really fantastic.

And also, over the years that I became a

trainer and then I stumbled upon the Principles and whoa, it blew my mind and changedeverything.

The reason that I focus on money is because

my partner and I – she’s co-author of the book – we’ve always had a uniqueperspective on money. And so we realized after all these years that when wewere writing a book, in our mind we realized there are talks on the couchneeded to get out to other people. Because we’re doing something right andwe’re looking at things in a different way than other people and we need toshare it with others. So that’s where the book was kind of born.

Alexandra: Oh

nice. I love hearing that.

So then tell us maybe how you came to

integrate EFT and the Principles. I think that’s a really interesting thingthat you’ve done.

Maybe we should just back up a little bit

explain a little bit about what EFT is, what it stands for and then tell us how

you merge the two.

Stephanie: Sure.

EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique and that’s been a technique that wascreated by Gary Craig about 30 years ago and it’s basically a tapping technique.

You tap on your meridian points, acupuncture

points, while you’re focused on an emotional problem or a physical problem. Andby doing that it calms the amygdala. There’s been a lot more scientificresearch supporting EFT in terms of what it does to the body. And I found itreally worked quite well.

I was so comfortable using that over the

years and got really good results and of course, like anything else, notperfect results and there’s places even for myself where I was pretty stuck.

When I stumbled upon the Three Principles it was just such a game-changer because I could see what I had been doing for all these years in the same light. And I also started to understand very clearly and deeply that what I thought was the mechanism behind the changes that I was witnessing for myself and others, my clients, had nothing to do with the tapping. It was all about facilitating insight.

Just seeing that was really helpful.

I did entertain and I still entertain the

idea of possibly moving away from the EFT and just talking and having coachingsessions. But what I found when I started to do some of that with my clientswas they love the tapping for a lot of different reasons.

There’s a soothing quality to it. There’s

something about incorporating the body in a somatic way and also what I foundis people want to do something. And I know with the Three Principles, at leastfor the first couple of years that I was exposed to it, tell me what I can do.I want to do something.

I spent three years after I learned about

the Principles and nothing happened so it wasn’t till I revisited and myunderstanding and grounding started to grow.

I think if we can hook our cognitive brain

on something to do, which I find the tapping is useful for with clients, thenthe teaching kind of sneaks in past your brain. So that, for me, is how I seeit right now that could change. I might see it very differently in a few yearsor tomorrow. And again, people like something to do, even though I know what’sreally happening and I can teach while they’re kind of distracted with doingsomething.

Alexandra:  Yes. There’s

so much to love in what you’ve said and one of the things that occurs to me: Idid EFT for a while and it is so soothing. I just found it so soothing andcalming.

I imagine there’s two things going on. One

is that the meridians that you’re tapping on are actually soothing your body. Butthen the other thing I think I noticed was that when I started doing it, it wasalmost like a Pavlovian response. My body would just go, “Oh OK, I’m safe now. We’redoing this.” I loved that about it as well.

But then what you said about facilitating

insight. I love that so much because one of the things people talk about him inthe Principles is that insight can happen at any time, which of course it canand our wisdom can reach us at any point. I do personally find that I tend toget more insights when I’m in a calmer state.

I can see how using EFT to kind of

facilitate that calmer state would be such a great thing for people. I alsoloved what you said about giving people something to do because you get stuck.

You touched on it briefly about writing the

book with your partner and that you wanted to share your outlook about money. Somaybe give us an overview.

What is that that you guys do differently

that you want to share?

Stephanie: I

think what we do differently with money and our finances is that what we’venoticed over the years is the way we look at money and resources and thematerial world is significantly different than other people. We take a verylong-term perspective.

For one thing, we’re both unusually rational. I’m grateful for Karen’s mother because her mother is super-rational and I think she really instilled her with that. My parents, not so much, but somehow it came anyway.

In the principles, people talk about having

something ‘on something’. You’ve got thinking about something. I’ve got thisissue because I’ve got a lot of thinking on it or there’s something on it.

Well for us both, we’re fortunate enough

that we don’t seem to have a lot on money. So it’s been fairly easy for both ofus to have clarity around it and to make very solid decisions. So from a Three Principlesperspective what I’ve realized and with the EFT and my practice with clients iswhen you can get people out of their own way with respect to all they’rethinking about money and their ideas and beliefs and all the subconsciousstories and stuff so that they can have clarity around just what might be theactions they’re taking and not taking which might be just money itself.

All of a sudden, your decisions change. The

way you look at it changes. You don’t necessarily feel the need to have moneyburn a hole in your pocket. It just doesn’t make sense anymore. And you’re notafraid to look at your budget, or you’re not afraid to do your taxes. It’s justit’s a complete game changer with respect to that.

So with the book there’s that piece. But

then there’s also the practical perspectives of just kind of being very unusualin like how we’ve never had debt, either one of us, because it never made sense.But we’re in a society where that’s really important. People are used to debt.People think that’s a given. Our grandparents didn’t.

We’re trying to bring some of these

concepts that people have either forgotten about or just aren’t popular in ourculture. They are common in some other cultures to people’s awareness. Becausefrom those perspectives you just make better financial decisions.

Alexandra: Right.

It’s like looking at it with a different kind of lens anyway.

So one of the things I loved in your book,

right at the very beginning you talk about – I was going to use the worddelusion. I’m not sure if that’s the right word – what an interesting concept moneyis because it used to apply to the gold standard. And you explain that briefly.I don’t know a lot about the gold standard but you mentioned, and I didn’t evenrealize this, that there is no gold standard anymore.

One of the things you say is money isn’t what we think it is. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Stephanie: That is the bottom line right

there. Money isn’t what we think it is. That could be the whole book.

But really, that is the case because a lot of people don’t know that our money is not backed by gold anymore. There’s nothing. So it is a total and complete construct, which is kind of mind-blowing just in itself even without it Three Principles approach.

Now take in what that really means on a

consciousness level is that collectively we create the value that is money andindividually we also create that. So we have an idea of what something’s worth,or what we’re worth, or what we deserve. And it’s just not true. None of it’strue.

And in fact, one of the things that I’ve really been playing with the clients recently is I’ve had an insight about it about and about deserving and worth. So often with money people have this idea that I don’t deserve a better life or don’t deserve that much. Even if it’s not conscious they might recognize that it’s an old story or that yeah I’m not worth this or I’m not good enough.

What I really started to see is that worth

and deserving are irrelevant, like profoundly irrelevant. That we even thinkthat we have worth or deserving based on anything other than just our essenceof consciousness is a completely made up.

It’s just not real. And so when people are

able to see that and sometimes get a glimpse of it, it’s mindblowing becausemost people are walking around with this idea of issues around deserving andworth and which are totally connected to money. And when that dissolves …

What is worthy?

It’s not even that. Is consciousness worthy? What does that even mean?

So when we put it to money then again, it’s

like this idea that it’s just what we think it is. It’swhat we think our material world needs to look like or be. It’s what we haveexpectations about all the things that hold us back from having more. That’sall fine.

No really. Money itself is what we think it

is. Our relationship to money is what we think it is. So from the Three Principlesperspective it’s fantastic news because anybody in the Three Principlescommunity has a sense that they’re comfortable. We know that whether we see itinsightfully or not most of us get it from that conceptual way and they’re likeoh that’s interesting. That’s kind of yummy.I can see that a little differently.

Alexandra: Yes.

It’s such a deep topic and it is kind of mind bending in a way when you startto think about it in relation to the Principles I love that.

One of the things you touched on in the

book too a little bit, is limiting beliefs and how those are made up.

Maybe for those in the audience who are new

to the Principles, could you explain that a little bit. How are limitingbeliefs are made up?

Stephanie: Sure.

We’re all walking around with this idea of who we are and what we believe inour opinions and our preferences. And that comes from somewhere. We were justborn with a set of beliefs. We were born with a set of opinions. That startedto grow over time based on what information came to us from our environment soor our experience.

We draw conclusions based on things when

we’re little. OK well we see something happen and we have to make sense of it. Icall it the writing on your wall.

We start getting this writing on our wall

about what we believe, who we are, what our place is in the world, what thingsmean, what money is, what our resources mean, what it means to have and have not,what it means to be good enough or not good enough. And that can come from ourparents, that can come from our peers, that can come from experiences atschool. It comes from TV. It comes from the stupid magazines people read.

How many magazines do you see when you’re standing

in the line up at the grocery store and they’re telling you how to have bettereverything. It’s everywhere. It’s ubiquitous. So that all gets written on thewall of who we think we are. And we’re constantly referring back to thatsubconsciously, usually unconsciously. That really creates this filter of howwe see everything.

But from a Three Principles perspective, we get it. That’s all fine. And it’s all made up. It was never real. Even when we put it there ever it never was real.

It just appeared real because it made sense

at the time and explain something so bang. We just put that on our wall OK.That makes sense. I feel safe when or whatever conclusion we draw to let thatbe there. Well my parents think it’s true so it must be true. I need to fit inwith my family so I’m going to write that one on my wall.

Every place it came from with made up. Everything we wrote down was made up. And that is what forms our beliefs about ourselves in the world. So starting to see that it’s very freeing because you kind of go whoa. When you run into one and they’re there all the time you kind of like oh look at that.

That’s a big one. That is a loud one that

plays a lot on auto play in my background that is like whoa, I got the “I’m not enough” playing all the time. I can justtune it out because I know it’s not real or I could really put it in front ofme and really believe it.

Alexandra:Yeah and one of the

things I love about the Principles working in a situation like this withlimiting beliefs, or with beliefs that we have about ourselves, is that in thepast if I found a limiting belief I would work really hard to dissolve it orget rid of it or change it or whatever the thing was.

But now with an understanding of where

experience comes from there’s so much less weight. Ifind when I discover a limiting belief because I know it’s just thought andinsight will help to dissolve it or shift it. Or it won’t. But that’s OK too.Just recognizing it as thought is helpful.

 Do your clients find that as well?

Stephanie: Totally. Yeah.

With the tapping when I’m bringing the EFT what

I’ll have people do is repeat that limiting belief. If they can name it andthen you just keep tapping and you keep saying it over and over and over. Andwhen you start to introduce the idea that it’s all for it’s all made up.

Often they’ll just have an insight that

they see how funny it is. Usually it turns into ridiculousness. It seems absurdand more often than not. That’s one of the common things that happened in oneof my favorite things in the session is when a client just gets out. Oh my Godthis looks ridiculous. Believing that and it just it pops. It just pops a beliefand it’s gone.

Alexandra: I love hearing that. We’ve

touched on EFT a couple of different times so explain ULTRA EFT which is the namethat you’ve coined. Tell us a bit more about that.

Stephanie:What

I realized was after I came back to the Three Principles and went deeper anddeeper that it was really changing my EFT practice and I could not do it thesame way. So after a very short while I realized wow I’m not actually doingtraditional EFT at all so I better call it something different, just so peopleknow that they’re getting into something different.

I’m not going to go dive into your past. We

don’t need to be a detective and go searching for every aspect of something.And so I really struggled with what to do at that point and I realized I stilllove tapping. So I just need to rename it and I thought about what rename itand it came to me and it’s like how can I bring in the Three Principals? Understandinglife through realization and awareness. So it sounds really fun. Ultra.

Alexandra: I’m curious about this for myself, have you received any pushback from the EMT community or from the Principles community because sometimes people can get a little caught up in what they think is the right way to do something.

Stephanie: That’s

a very interesting question. I haven’t brought it to the Three Principalscommunity. So even just having this on this podcast. Oh my God. The Three Principlespolice are going to come after me.

But what I’ve just started to realize that

I don’t care so much because that’s all I thought. And that’s it. I’m open tothe tapping falling away. I don’t really care but it’s it seems to be workingright now.

For me it just feels like if you had a

stiff muscle you go to a massage therapist. Is that Three Principles based? No,it’s not. So that’s how I how I’m seeing it right now.

So I haven’t even brought it really to the Three

Principles world at all so I don’t know what people would think of it.

For the EFT world that has been interesting

because I’m going to be bringing it more to the EFT world and I am sure thatthere’s going to be big pushback. What I have noticed is when I have introducedit to a handful of few practitioners they didn’t like it because they want togo back. There’s an attachment to finding that exact belief and thinking thatit’s real. So that’s been interesting when I bring it to people who don’t knowor who just been clients and they’re just open everybody time. It’s sointeresting how a structure of beliefs no matter what it is can get in the way.Isn’t that funny? That’s human.

I might get a lot of pushback from the EFT world.

We’ll see.

Alexandra: Yeah. Oh interesting.

As long as you’re helping people you know who cares?

Stephanie: I

think it’s an opportunity to bring the Three Principles to a larger audience. That’sone of the things that I’m really hoping to do with bringing in the EFT as wellbecause I think all of us who have had the good fortune of encountering the ThreePrinciples, I think all of us have that feeling in our cells that we need tobring this to more people. And so this is kind of my way of hoping to bring itto all people.

Alexandra: Yes lovely. And so the book Money Is Not Scary. It’s your first book correct?

Stephanie: Yes.

Alexandra: If someone were to read it, what

would sort of be your ideal outcome for them?

Stephanie: My

dream outcome would be that they read it and they just have insight afterinsight.

That is my dream. That it drips. What I’ve

tried to do with the book is pepper the whole book with pointing to the Three Principles,although not so super overtly. I don’t even name consciousness and mind but Italk a lot more about thought. It’s peppered through every chapter.

The reader is going to be like, “Why is she

talking about thought again?” For somebody who doesn’t know the three principles.I’m pretty transparent about it. I’m hoping that people will start to seesomething by the end.

So one is that they see something. The

other is that there are some practical new vantage points that people can seefrom. We introduce some new lenses, like you said, lenses to look through abouttheir money and the material world. So if someone could just even take one ofthose I would be delighted that they could make a change for the better intheir finances and their financial world.

Alexandra: Lovely. And one of the things I

thought was really interesting is that you’re going to have links to videos tointroduce people to tapping.

It’s kind of like you’ve written sort of an

interactive experience in a way because of that.

Stephanie: I

hope so because I thought that would make it more fun. I was hoping to bringsome fun into it.

Alexandra: That’s great. Let’s see, how do

I want to phrase this question?

Money can be such a fraught subject. I have

a friend who said the big three things in our lives with really a lot of energyattached to them are money, relationships and oh geez I forget what the thirdone does.

I imagine with a Three Principles approach

and the awareness that everyone is connected to their own well-being and wisdomand that you’re not really having to carry that load for them. You’re justpointing them in the direction of what’s already there.

As a practitioner there’s less weight or pressure on you. Would you say that’s true?

Stephanie: Totally. Oh yeah.

Recently in different groups I’m in, I’ve

heard some different Three Principles teachers and coaches talk about that. Itseems like a lot of people when they start to realize that it’s not their jobto make somebody have an insight or take an action, there’s a lot of freedom inthat and it’s not our job to do that. So all we can do is point to the truth ofwhat how it works.

Letting go of that expectation that

something has to happen, because sometimes you plant a seed or somethinghappens months or years later, you don’t know when that’s going to happen. Wejust do the best to share from where we are now.

Alexandra: As we’re chatting, I can just

feel a difference between working in this way the way that you’re working inand then the way maybe a traditional money coach or counselor would work.

It just feels so free and light and for you

and for the client as well. And that’s definitely the sense I got while I wasreading your book too. So it’s a good feeling.

Stephanie: Awesome. It’s all energy. It

really is and we’re the ones in our own way and we just don’t see it. Andthat’s OK. And it’s kind of funny when you start to see it. It is light. It canbe light.

People might feel like it’s still heavy.

Money is such a heavy issue. Debt is such a heavy issue. But is it or do wejust have heavy thinking about it? What if there are solutions? And even thoughwe might not like them because we have thoughts that say I don’t like what Ihave to do, it doesn’t have to be hard.

Alexandra: That’s such a great point. It doesn’t have to be hard.

And I think so many of us do walk through

life with so much weight on our backs about money, thinking it does have to behard. We have to be worried about it and it has to be fraught was the used wordI used before. That weightyness to it that isn’t necessary really.

It’s like anything else; it’s made of thought.

Stephanie: Yeah.

And we’re just feeling that has nothing to do with the money at all. Not even alittle bit.

Alexandra: For myself personally, the Principles have helped me an incredible amount with anxiety around money. I used to wake up in the middle of the night with knots in my stomach and lie awake for hours worrying about money. And just over the course of time understanding more about where my experience is coming from, that’s completely dropped away. Which has been extraordinary.

It’s sort of like a side effect of learning

more about this understanding. It’s been great.

Stephanie: Really

cool. But that’s how it works right?

Alexandra: Right!

Stephanie: People

might be focused on or hoping to have an insight about money and the next thingyou know like you’re dropping weight or your relationship is better.

It’s like with anything that happens with EFT alone as well because it’s something that affects every area of their lives.

Alexandra: I love that expression that a rising tide lifts all boats and that’s what the principles are really like.

I imagine your clients must have insights

not just about money but about other things in their lives.

Stephanie: Yeah, totally.

Alexandra: Do you do tapping with them as part

of your coaching?

Stephanie: Yes. Sometimes, I do. I used to

tap on people in person. Which I like, tapping on a person. A lot of the EFTpractitioners don’t do that but.

But now I just have the client tap they

follow while we’re talking. So we’re kind of having a 3P conversation whilewe’re tapping.

Alexandra: I’m just fascinated. This is so

incredible. This has been amazing chatting with you.

Before we go, let people know where they

can find out more and about you and your new book.

Stephanie: Sure. You can check me out at innerpeaceandflow.com. Stephanie Wood was taken. There some Stephanie Wood who’s a porn star.

I’m hoping the book will come out by the

end of the summer.

Alexandra: Great. OK, so this show will go live on July 31 so if it’s not available then I’ll go back and put a link in afterward to the book.

Thank you so much Stephanie, it’s been lovely chatting with you.

Stephanie: Likewise. Bye.

[Piggy bank image courtesy Fabian Blank and Unsplash.]