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, also known as “Tapping.” This method involves gently tapping on specific points on your face and body with your fingertips to help release negative emotions and calm your nervous system.
EFT Tapping is a form of energy psychology that can relieve physical, emotional, and mental stress, while also helping to transform negative belief systems. Many people use EFT to achieve greater health, wealth, happiness, peace, and emotional freedom.
This technique can be applied in counseling sessions, coaching, and workshops. I personally use EFT Tapping in my therapy practice in Winter Park (near Orlando), Florida, as well as in my coaching sessions and group workshops.
How Does EFT Work?
EFT Tapping is a powerful combination of:
✅ Cognitive Therapy (addressing thoughts and emotions)
✅ Exposure Therapy (gradual emotional processing)
✅ Acupressure (tapping on 12 acupuncture energy meridian points)
By tapping on these points while focusing on emotional distress, we interrupt the body's stress response and allow the nervous system to relax.
Clinical studies have demonstrated that EFT Tapping is effective in reducing phobias, anxiety, depression, PTSD, pain, and other emotional challenges.
“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:
Why EFT Works: The Stress & Healing Connection
Dr. Lisa Rankin explains:
“The body has natural self-repair mechanisms that fight cancer, kill bacteria, remove toxins, and repair broken proteins. But these mechanisms don’t function well when the nervous system is stuck in a constant ‘fight-or-flight’ stress response. The average person experiences over 50 stress responses per day, making self-healing difficult!”
Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard named this “the relaxation response”—a state in which the body shifts from stress mode to healing mode. EFT Tapping helps activate this response, reducing physiological stress and promoting self-healing.
“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
In tandem with IFS therapy, EFT Tapping may help heal dis-ease and 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 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.