I attended Ruby Wax’ ‘Frazzled’ show at the beautiful Regal Cinema in Evesham, Worcestershire. Ruby shared the ups and downs of her mental health journey with a crafty mixture of frankness and wit.
She also talked about Mindfulness and even invited the audience to take part in a few simple exercises. It was great to see that the show had sold out and personally, I was delighted to notice that 20-25% of the audience were men! She managed to adroitly see-saw between empathy and humour and I felt the got the seriousness vs humour balance spot on.
As someone who is fascinated by the brain, its plasticity, the role of the amygdala, the release of cortisol, the effect on our cognitive functions etc, I was surprised to hear Ruby mention several facts and statistics about the brain that I myself use in my workshop about Stress! I got quite excited and kept thinking ” I knew that!… I agree … Absolutely right…”.
By the time the Q & A started in the second half, I just knew I had to ask her about her experience of Tapping. The mic finally made it to my row and I asked if she’d heard of Tapping. “Tapping? Yes, of course I have!” she said, frantically tapping around her eyes, she then mentioned that’s it’s only useful when you “do it every day” and I said I agreed with that.
I also took the opportunity of mentioning how our brains have a negative bias and are 4x more likely to remember negative, rather than positive experiences and the importance of consciously going to happy emotions and memories because ‘Neurons that fire together, wire together’ and how this is especially helpful when people are grieving for loved ones that they’ve lost. (Someone in the audience bravely shared previously how she was struggling 2 years after losing her dad to cancer). I wished I’d recorded our brief exchange but it all happened too quickly. I’m so glad I spoke up, though, and if it means just one or two people in the audience Google ‘Tapping’ and finds EFT and/ or FasterEFT, it will have been totally worth it!
Respect for Ruby. She’s spreading the word that needs to be spread… I’m going to end with my favourite quote of the evening:
“In the future, it will no longer be about survival of the fittest. It will be survival of the wisest!”
And this one I also love. I’m not sure who first said it but I Love the sea metaphor: "You cannot stop the waves but you can learn to surf!"