Sandra Hillawi - Interview

Firstly Sandra, I hear congratulations are in order?!

Yes, I’m getting married in June to a beautiful and wonderful man.

Could you tell us a little bit about your story so far? How did you discover the Meridian Energy Therapies?

About 7 years ago, not long after changing my career from IT to natural healing, one of my colleagues called me up raving about EFT and making outrageous claims of tapping on people’s faces uttering various words and they were getting well. I was pretty sceptical back then, but we went on a course run by Ananga Sivyer, which was apparently the first course run by the newly formed GoE at that time. I saw how powerful the technique was and started using it in my practice more and more.

What is it that you find most elegant about EMO, EFT and your other skill sets?

The fact that they are so simple and they work so quickly. They are great for self help and also for use with a facilitator or friend. As a naturopath I used to treat everyone with a detox…change their diet, clean them out!!!! And over a week or two there symptoms would recede and they would feel better. I confess, without taking away any of the importance of good diet for our health, I find EFT and EMO works a lot faster by addressing emotional factors contributing to our problems.

How do you like to combine these skills? What works better with what situations?

I still work as a colonic therapist and herbalist and EFT and EMO combine well within my sessions. I often find during a session of colonic irrigation, we are resolving relationship issues, olds painful memories and releasing stress and its interesting to see just how much of that is stored for example in the digestive system, leading to digestive problems. But I also use the techniques on their own, and this has enabled me to widen my practice to phobias, personal development, relationship stress, childrens problems which I was unable to work with when I only had diet and herbs as my tools.

Some people really love EMO and certainly, when I am out and about living my life, and I meet an opportunity to help someone informally I tend to use EMO first. It is so discrete and natural. It’s just like having a conversation with someone. Quite effortless and fast. Where clients have a strong sense of a body sensation in relation to their stress I will go with EMO first. Where the issues are a bit vague and we’re not sure what the real problems are… then I’ll go with EFT first as an exploratory clearing of energy to get to a deeper issue. Also, some people actually like to have a tangible technique that they feel they can apply so some prefer EFT. It is great to have them both.

OK, onto your company Passion for Health Ltd – you certainly seem to have grown somewhat in the past couple of years?! Talk about your success.

Yes, that’s interesting. Once I got the message about these techniques I was strongly motivated to share them with a greater audience, but faced my own issues of inertia, procrastination, lack of vision, fears about running a business and employing people all of which stopped me doing a much about it. I then applied the tools to myself and my own issues. What I got was a clarity of vision, a way forward, confidence, power and passion and….really…endless creativity enabling me to transform my ideas into reality. That was the start of the expansion of my business into training and workshops in a big way. As you know, we have since trained approaching 2000 people through our workshops and several hundred practitioners in MET and EMO.

Where do you see the future taking you and your team?

Having spent a few years doing trainings I am now looking to new directions and new challenges. I have two main projects I am developing. One is the EFT Buddy Network and the second is a training programme for the corporate world who so need these tools. The idea for the buddy network came from my own personal experience of having EFT Buddies to swap sessions with for personal development and stress release. I can’t tell you how much this has helped me keep moving forward at difficult times in my personal and professional life. Also I was looking for a way to take these tools out to the general public, as a lot of our workshop attendees are therapists and professionals. The EFT Buddy Network’s aim is to create a community for support and personal development of not only therapists but the general public too and to encourage them to make new like minded friends and to continue their health and personal development path. The website is www.eftbuddy.com So as we reduce our own courses we will move into promoting this community and promoting EFT and EMO workshops and courses offered by other trainers aimed at personal development as opposed to just professional training.

I like your website, PassionForHealth.com and see you have a new section entitled ‘The Love Clinic’. Tell us more?!

(Smiling) here’s where EMO reaches the places EFT cannot reach!!! When you work with EMO concepts of energy flow and energy nutrition understanding life and how to resolve our problems gets very simple. I’ve used EMO extensively in restoring harmony and intimacy in relationships, helping people overcome breakups, restoring trust after infidelities, and on a personal level, not only falling in love fast but staying in love and living my own life in trust and love!!!! The Love Clinic is a part of my practice where we use these tools for resolving relationship problems, which is a very rewarding area to work with. Later in the year, when my personal life is more settled, I’d like to run some workshops around this theme, probably at a new Red Sea, Egypt training venue!

Something I noticed is that your site has a special section for corporate organisations – how do you feel that Meridian Energy Therapies can aid this sector? What would you say are the biggest hurdles to mainstream adoption of these techniques?

We know only too well the problems of stress in the workplace and the impact on individuals health and also productivity and performance. These are obvious areas we can tackle with EFT and EMO. In addition, addressing the resistance to organisational change and unleashing peak performance are other areas of application. I am working on a training programme right now to introduce a Wellbeing and Peak Performance programme to an oil company involving training ‘Company Coaches’ which will be able to offer employees a private consultations for their personal stress related issues as well as address corporate stress and performance issues through individual and group work. We have a lot of interest already in this project and it is due to go live in July 2006.

Some of the obstacles we have encountered before approaching UK companies in this way have been a fear of being the first to introduce anything new and the need to see success in other companies plus a need to see actual research on the effectiveness of such new techniques. Therapists who have offered private sessions on site, have seemed to experience more success, where employees are funding the sessions. I hope that our July project will open the doors for many others to work more easily in the corporate market place.

And finally, where do you feel that this field is heading in the next couple of years? How do you think each one of us can best promote these amazing therapies and techniques that once learned can make such a profound difference to each and every one of us?

We now have a growing base of trainers and professional practitioners and there is increasing media attention to our techniques. Awareness is growing and we will see more people looking for EFT and EMO practitioners but still the majority have yet to learn about the techniques. The best way I have found is to share our stories of success with those around us. We can also send a press release to our local paper with a success story, get a local newsletter going to your existing clients or friends and family circles, get onto local radio station for an interview or maybe do demonstrations in local support groups. Even using techniques in a public place can attract interest as I found whilst releasing a flying phobia with EFT in a departure lounge while returning from Egypt last month! We just have to willing and confident enough to reach out and help.

Ok Sandra, it was lovely talking to you - see you at the EMO conference!

Further information about Sandra, including contact information can be found on her GoE members page: