Are you stuck, stressed out, or frustrated by unhealthy behavioural patterns that are choking the life out of your relationships? Feel like giving up? For Sherry Lukey and the clients she has helped, this isn’t the time to tap out, but to “tap your crap” and move on.
Sherry Lukey is an internationally accredited advanced EFT tapping practitioner with certification in matrix reimprinting. For years she has helped people improve their personal and professional relationships and transform their lives. It’s about identifying and overcoming our limiting subconscious beliefs programmed into us during early childhood. It’s about creating new, positive associations that are aligned with our desires to live well. If other modalities have not worked for you, maybe it’s time to try tapping.
EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) tapping works by stimulating high concentrations of nerve endings (acupressure points), turning off the stress response, and sending calming signals to the brain and harnessing its full potential. Having developed a signature method called Tapping Infinite Potential, Sherry offers a selection of programs that can help you go deep and root out belief systems that no longer serve you. A speaker, self-described obsessive learner, and family woman who has worked through her own personal challenges, Sherry understands the courage required to make profound and meaningful changes in your life.
I was eager to learn more about Sherry and her work.
I was intrigued by something you shared in the radio interview on your website. Your past limiting belief was that you shouldn’t hold on to money. A problematic issue in many lives! Tell me a bit about this and how tapping revealed this past pattern to you? How does tapping vary from person to person?
Consciously I wanted to hold on to it, but I always seemed to find ways to get rid of it — like making poor investment choices, spending too much, or giving it away. How tapping reveals these patterns has everything to do with turning off your stress response.
Because money was such an uncomfortable topic for me whenever I tried to think about it, work on it, and talk about it, I would unknowingly (sometimes knowingly) set off the stress response.
As amazing as the stress response is, there is a glitch with it. Your subconscious can’t tell the difference between an actual threat like a tiger chasing you, or just thinking about a tiger chasing you; your stress response becomes activated. As you mentioned in your intro, when you tap, it sends a soothing signal through your nervous system, telling your subconscious that you are safe and not under threat.
Once your subconscious doesn’t have to worry about keeping you alive from this threat (because that is it’s most important job), your higher brain centres stay online. Now you can understand things, make connections, and see patterns that were previously unavailable to you before. Information and answers start to bubble up. It’s like the fog lifts, and you can see where you need to go.
Through tapping, I learned I had a belief that having money meant that you had broken relationships and so I shouldn’t hold on to it. When my mom went back to work, we started to have a little money, and at the same time, my parent’s relationship became more strained and volatile. Unbeknownst to me, my subconscious (in trying to protect me) made up the belief that money is wrong because it causes broken relationships, so you should not have it or hold on to it.
There’s no way I would have been able to put that together without tapping.
Tapping varies from person to person because everyone has their own specific wants and desires and unique experiences. For tapping to work, you must allow your emotions because they are your subconscious language. Your specific words and referencing your experiences help to engage your emotions, but that sounds easier than it is.
If you are like most people, you have been taught to stuff your feelings either by your family, friends, or society in general. Just think about how uncomfortable you get when you start to get upset or when you or someone else starts to cry. Negative emotions can feel extremely scary and overwhelming, especially if you have kept a lid on them for a long time.
I always tell people, don’t do what I did, get support even though it is difficult to ask for help. It is easier and faster to work with a practitioner because they can reassure you, help you make connections, and give you perspectives that can be challenging to see on your own.
Let’s talk about “matrix reimprinting.” First of all, this just sounds very cool! What is it and how does it work?
I know, right? So cool! Matrix reimprinting is an advanced form of EFT tapping. I take you back into a specific memory, and you help your younger self. You learn what limiting beliefs got set up in that experience. We reprogram them with supportive views and give you all the support, kindness, and love you needed then but didn’t get.
To be given and hear what you have been longing for sometimes your whole life — it’s crazy powerful!
One of my own crazy matrix reimprinting stories happened to me a couple of years into the business. A client wanted to nominate me for Woman of the Year in our community. My daughter Alex and I were standing in the kitchen together when my client sent me a text asking for information so that she could nominate me. I felt my stomach drop, my heart begin to race, and I felt as though I might throw up. Alex looked at me, concerned. By the look on my face, she thought someone must have died. My immediate response was to tell my client that I did not want to be nominated; however, Alex wasn’t going to have it. She also pointed out how strange my reaction was, and I knew she was right. Unusual responses are always a clue that tapping is needed.
I was bullied very badly in high school by a girl who thought that I was after her boyfriend. I had tapped on the memory of when she punched me in the face before, but a new memory came up this time. It was the memory of winning an award with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend and I were on stage, both of us holding the trophy and getting photos taken of us. I remembered looking out into the audience at her, thinking that she was going to seriously harm me after this.
It was all the same feelings I had when I got the text from my client: stomach sinking, heart racing, and nausea. My subconscious (trying to protect me again) had made up the belief that it was unsafe to win awards. After doing matrix reimprinting on this memory, I was able to go to the Woman of the Year gala and thoroughly enjoy myself. Although I didn’t win the award, it felt like a win for me. But that’s not the craziest part, though. What came next blew my mind.
About a month after the event, I got a Facebook message from the girl who had bullied me thirty-six years earlier. She wanted to apologize for what she had done to me and hoped that I could forgive her. I almost fell over with shock. I am so grateful for tapping and matrix reimprinting, because I was able to forgive her and set us both free. These kinds of stories have become standard for me now. I love my work!
You help clients improve their romantic, familial, and professional relationships. Does your approach or program vary depending on what is being addressed? And what are the first questions you often ask your clients?
The program will vary depending on the complexity of the problem, and the amount of change the client is after. I specialize in working with entrepreneurs because I understand them, know how busy they are, and need results quickly. Also, entrepreneurs can use my services as a business expense, making it easier for them to invest in themselves.
My approach does not change between the different types of relationships. How you operate in all your relationships is a direct result of your relationship with yourself. Your relationship with yourself is based on your subconscious beliefs, which were programmed into your subconscious before the age of seven or eight. When relationships aren’t working, you are subconsciously reacting, instead of consciously choosing your response.
When it comes to relationships, we often think other people are the problem and should change, not us, but that’s not how it works.
I worked with a woman in the United States regarding her romantic relationship. She had heard my story about recovering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). She wanted her husband to work with me because he had PTSD.
I explained to her how I had believed that before tapping, I thought my husband was the problem, but he wasn’t. Subconscious beliefs about myself and the world were causing me to react in ways that hurt our relationship. When I changed, everything changed, including him. I shared with her that if she started responding differently, that change would be the most compelling evidence for him to get support for himself.
That’s precisely what happened. She quit focusing on his problems and started to work on her own. She became happier, more peaceful, and intentional with her life. Her husband saw her transformation and decided to get support. Their family is now completely transformed because she did this work.
My first questions come in the form of a system. I have a bit of an A-type personality that loves methods, science, and results. The system includes an in-depth intake form for my clients to fill out, and exercises from my online self-study course. I use these tools, plus a few more, to map how best to help people.
I’m drawn to your own inspirational quote, “Done is better than perfect.” I love the brevity, for one thing. Secondly, I agree with your pragmatism! How did you arrive at this motto? And how does this outlook guide your work with clients?
One day I tapped on what seemed to be my ever-present procrastination, and I discovered its underlying driver. I subconsciously believed that if I never completed anything (or sometimes never even started it), I didn’t have to evaluate my performance, which was never good enough to me. I was procrastinating because I am a recovering perfectionist. It was not only sucking the joy out of my life and everyone’s life around me. Once I started learning how to be less judgmental of myself, others, and the world, the quality of my life and everyone else’s lives improved unbelievably. So I created a sign for my desk that read “done is better than perfect” to remind me.
“Done is better than perfect” guides my work with clients because they are hard on themselves and others. When I suggest that they are too hard on themselves, they will say, “I just have high standards.” But when their relationships aren’t working, they’re exhausted and stressed out; there’s a problem with those high standards.
What do the words balance and well-being mean to you?
Balance, for me, means head, heart, and gut alignment in a parasympathetic relaxation response. I am not just trying to convince myself that I am relaxed, but enjoying the harmonious agreement that I am physically, mentally, and spiritually aligned with feeling good.
Well-being is being well in all three fundamental areas of my life: relationships, health, and finances.
I enjoyed the photographic retrospective on your website. Share something more about you that most wouldn’t know — a fun fact, interesting perspective, or a telling story — related to one of those photos or not.
Thank you, I am so glad you enjoyed the photos. The photo of me riding the horse on the beach was a childhood dream of mine when I was in my pre-teens. I cut out a magazine photo of a girl riding a horse on the beach because I wanted to do that one day. After I experienced it and several years later, I learned about the law of attraction and was convinced that if I could manifest that experience, the world was my oyster.
However, there is a critical missing piece left out of the LOA information, and it’s this: you cannot attract what you want unless your subconscious beliefs are a vibrational match for those desires.
You can consciously want excellent relationships, great health, and financial independence, but if your subconscious doesn’t believe you deserve them, you will struggle and possibly never experience them. Reprogram your subconscious beliefs, and what once seemed impossible becomes possible!
I deeply appreciate the time you took to interview me and get my message out into the world, thank you!
Sherry Lukey
Personal and Business Coach
Internationally Accredited, Certified Advanced
EFT Tapping & Matrix Reimprinting Practitioner
Cell 250-503-7192
[email protected]
www.sherrylukey.com
Tom Kernaghan, owner of Oak Writer
I write stories about people, businesses, and communities so that people will remember what makes them uniquely powerful.
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(250) 863-6297
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