EFT TAPPING
A technique that helps you release negative emotions
and calm your nervous system.
What is EFT Tapping?
EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique. It is also known as “Tapping” – because the technique involves you literally using your fingertips to gently tap on a pattern on your face and body, in an effort to help release negative emotions and calm your nervous system.
EFT Tapping is a form of energy psychology that has the capacity to relieve physical, emotional and mental pain and stress as well as transform negative belief systems and subconscious programming to bring health, wealth, happiness, peace and freedom. It can be used in counseling, and I use it in my therapy practice here in Winter Park (near Orlando) Florida. I also use it for coaching clients and teach it in workshops.
Research shows that emotional trauma contributes greatly to disease. Clinical trials have shown that EFT Tapping is able to rapidly reduce the emotional impact of memories and incidents that trigger emotional distress. Once the distress is reduced or removed, the body can often re-balance itself, and accelerate healing.
EFT Tapping points illustration
EFT uses elements of Cognitive Therapy and Exposure Therapy, and combines them with Acupressure, in the form of fingertip tapping on 12 acupuncture points (energy meridian end-points).
Over 100 clinical trials have demonstrated that EFT is effective for phobias, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, pain, and other problems.
If you tap along doing EFT while watching the sessions of other people, your problems improve too! Several research studies have documented this phenomenon, called Borrowing Benefits. This is why during my workshops, I have participants tap along with the person who has volunteered to work on an issue. No one is required to volunteer during a workshop, or even to tap along with everyone, but great vibrational support is felt by those who do.
“We know the body has natural self-repair mechanisms that fight cancer, kill bacteria, get rid of toxins and foreign bodies, repair broken proteins, slow aging, and generally keep the body healthy. But did you know that those natural self-repair mechanisms don’t function when the nervous system is in the midst of a “fight-or-flight” stress response? Yet, the average American experiences over 50 stress responses per day! No wonder our bodies aren’t doing their self-healing jobs as effectively as they could!” – Dr. Lisa Rankin
Only when the nervous system is in a counterbalancing relaxed state – in what Dr. Herbert Benson at Harvard named “the relaxation response” – can the body effectively heal itself. And this is what EFT helps achieve. By calming down the trigger-happy, freaked-out amygdala responsible for activating stress responses, EFT can reduce physiological stress responses and activate relaxation responses, thereby allowing the body to do what it does best – heal itself.
Why am I so hooked on tapping?
EFT Tapping is explained beautifully here:
“In my 40 years of experience in the world of energy medicine, I have never found a technique that is as effective as EFT, or that works for as many different issues. Clinical EFT is “evidence-based,” which means it has a body of scientific studies that support its effectiveness. What EFT does is that it calms the stress that underlies many of our other problems, whether they’re physical or psychological. Once that stress disappears, the problem tends to diminish in severity. “
– Dawson Church, Ph.D., Founder of EFTUniverse
Healing Limiting Beliefs
Another mechanism by which EFT may help heal disease is by targeting the limiting beliefs that prevent healing, such as the belief that the body can’t heal itself. The medical establishment has been proving for over fifty years that a potent combination of positive belief and the nurturing care of a healing professional can work self-healing wonders in the body. We call it “the placebo effect,” and it’s 18-80% effective, even when people enrolled in clinical trials know they might be getting a placebo! But you don’t have to be enrolled in a clinical trial to enjoy the benefits of the placebo effect. You just have to believe that something – anything, even a sugar pill or saline injection – can help your body heal itself. EFT can achieve this.
By tapping on your limiting beliefs, you can change not just your conscious mind, but the subconscious programming that operates you the majority of the time, allowing your mind the freedom to do what it knows how to do – help heal the body.
I use EFT Tapping daily with my clients to help them calm down the trigger-happy, freaked out “fight or flight” part of the brain called the amygdala.
Our brains respond to stress all the time and can get stuck in “overdrive” which doesn’t feel good. EFT Tapping can reduce physiological stress responses and activate relaxation responses (“ahhhhhh!”) thereby allowing the body to do what it does best – heal itself.