Emotional Freedom Techniques – EFT – Introduction
EFT is based on the discovery that imbalances in the body’s energy system have profound effects on one’s personal psychology. Correcting these imbalances, which is done by tapping on certain body locations, often leads to rapid remedies. By rapid, Gary Craig means, most of the problems vanish in minutes!!! ( This is especially so when you reduce the problems to specific negative events in your life.
Rapid remedies for “difficult” emotional problems are, in some circles, considered impossible and anyone who purports to dothem rapidly is labeled a charlatan. ” After all “, the belief goes, ” these things are deeply ingrained in people and therefore they must take a long time to remedy. “
You do not have to believe in these techniques for them to work. Some people mistakenly conclude that EFT gets results. Some people undergo therapy for months or years for relief from their fears, anger, guilt, grief, depression, traumatic memories, etc. and make little or no headway.
So they switch therapists in hopes someone else has “the answer.” The results are often the same. They switch again…and again…and again. They spend money. They spend time. They go through emotionally painful sessions. But if anything positive happens for most of these people, it doesn’t appear to be much.
Gary Craig (founder of EFT) asked therapists and patients, ” Why does it take so long to do so little? ” The answers varied, of course, but generally speaking they went something like this….
**” Well, the problem is deeply ingrained ” or **” It is a deep scar ” or **” We don’t know for sure…we are dealing with the mysteries of the mind, you know. “
Our bodies have a profound electrical nature. Any beginning course in anatomy covers this. Shuffle your feet across a carpet and then touch an item made of metal. Sometimes you can see the static electricity that is discharged from your fingertip. This wouldn’t be possible unless your body had an electrical nature to it.
Another obvious bit of evidence regarding the existence of electricity (energy) in the body are the electroencephalograph (EEG) and electrocardiograph (EKG). The EEG records the electrical activity of the brain and the EKG records the electrical activity of the heart . These devices have been used by medical science for decades and are the ones you see in TV hospital dramas hooked up to dying patients. When the screen stops “blipping” the patient is dead.
About 5,000 years ago, the Chinese discovered a complex system of energy circuits that run throughout the body. These energy circuits…or meridians as they are called…are the centerpiece of Eastern health practices and form the basis for modern day acupuncture, acupressure and a wide variety of other healing techniques.
This energy courses through the body and is invisible to the eye. It cannot be seen without high tech equipment. By analogy, you do not see the energy flowing through a TV set either. You know it is there, however, by its effects . The sounds and pictures are your ever present evidence that the energy flow exists. In the same way, EFT gives you striking evidence that energy flows within your body because it provides the effects that let you know it is there. By simply tapping near the end points of your energy meridians you can experience some profound changes in your emotional and physical health. These changes would not occur if there was no energy system.
Dr. Callahan’s first experience
The science behind EFT was not developed like many other discoveries. That is, it was not created in a laboratory and then tested in the real world. Instead, a stunning turn of events in the real world pointed the way first. Here’s the story.
In 1980 Dr. Roger Callahan was working with a patient, Mary, for an intense water phobia. She suffered from frequent headaches and terrifying nightmares, both of which were related to her fear of water. To seek help, she had been going from therapist to therapist for years….with no material improvement. Dr. Callahan tried to help her by conventional means for a year and a half. He didn’t make much headway either.
Then one day he stepped outside the normal “boundaries” of psychotherapy. Out of curiosity, he had been studying the body’s energy system and decided to tap with his fingertips under her eyes (an end point of the stomach meridian). This was prompted by her complaint of some stomach discomfort. To his astonishment, she announced immediately that her phobia was gone and she raced down to a nearby swimming pool and began throwing water in her face. No fear. No headaches. It all went away….including the nightmares. And it has never returned. She is totally free of her water phobia.
Results like that are rare in the field of psychotherapy…but commonplace with EFT.
Let’s put this in terms of Mary’s water phobia. When she was experiencing her fear, the energy flowing through her stomach meridian was disrupted. That energy imbalance is what was causing her emotional intensity. Tapping under her eyes sent pulses through the meridian and fixed the disruption. It balanced it out. Once the energy meridian was balanced the emotional intensity….the fear….went away. Therein lies the most powerful thing you are ever going to learn about your unwanted emotions. They are caused by energy disruptions.
In some circles, it is the accepted practice to “treat the memory” and, in the process, ask the client to repeatedly relive some emotionally painful event. EFT, by contrast, respects the memory but addresses the true cause….a disruption in the body’s energy system.
Thus there is relatively little emotional suffering involved with EFT. It is relatively painless. You will be asked to briefly recall your problem (there may be some discomfort in that), but that is all. There is no need to relive the pain. In fact, with EFT, generating prolonged emotional discomfort is frowned upon. This is but one example of where EFT is a radical departure from conventional methods.
As a further aid to your learning, it might help if you compare the energy flow in your body to that of a TV set. As long as the electricity flows through your TV normally, the sound and picture are both clear. But what would happen if you took off the back of the TV set and poked a screwdriver amongst all that “electronic spaghetti?” You would, quite obviously, disrupt or reroute the flow of electricity and an electric “zzzzzt” would occur inside. The picture and sound would become erratic and the TV would exhibit its version of a “negative emotion.”
In the same manner, when our energy systems become imbalanced, we have an electrical “zzzzzt” effect going on inside. Straighten out this “zzzzzt” (by tapping—sometimes skillful artistry is necessary—see the tapes) and the negative emotion goes away.
Please note that if step 2, the intermediate step, does not occur then step 3 is impossible . In other words… if the memory does not cause a disruption in the body’s energy system then the negative emotion cannot occur.
That is why some people are bothered by their memories and others are not. The difference is that some people have a tendency for their energy systems to become imbalanced under such a memory, while others do not.
With this in mind, it is easy to see how the “treat the memory” method misses the mark. It addresses step 1 and ignores step 2.
Thus, grief has the same basic cause as trauma, guilt, fear and a baseball player’s hitting slump. So the same general method can be used for all these problems. This “one cause” idea is also a blessing for mental health professionals. They are accustomed to an endless, ever changing number of explanations for the seemingly countless emotional concerns of their clients. To learn that there is only one cause greatly simplifies their efforts.
The EFT overhaul concept requires a memorized tapping procedure. This procedure is the centerpiece of EFT and is referred to as The Basic Recipe. It is your primary tool and “best friend” for emotional freedom.
You can find more about EFT in the following articles.
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