EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques. Commonly referred to as ’Tapping,’ it is an elegantly simple and easily learned way to release emotional overwhelm, limiting beliefs, anxiety and even pain. It’s the modern, drug-free method of working with the mind-body connection everyone’s talking about, and can be used for self-help, peer-to-peer care and in practiced hands, therapeutic care.
The practice is sometimes known as “psychological acupuncture” as it combines stimulating acupressure points by tapping on various points in the body with talking. In practice, this means tapping on various points on the body which are connected with energy meridian lines using your fingers while also saying out loud a certain phrase repeatedly. By physically tapping on 14 key easy-to-reach points on the body while talking about how you are feeling, signals are sent to the amygdala in the brain which governs the fight, flight, or freeze stress response. Tapping is the hack that tells your brain you are safe. By tapping in moments of stress or anxiety, you are able to calm your nervous system, reduce the cortisol and adrenaline, allowing yourself to start to feel safe again.
A unique combination of ancient Eastern and Western medicine, EFT brings together an efficient mix of mindfulness, brief exposure, and neural re-consolidation. It simultaneously uses the somatic, to down-regulate the nervous system by using the body’s meridian energy (Qi) system. Its ease of use is legendary: we’ll teach you to simply use your own fingertips to tap upon just a few of the body’s acupressure points while focusing on an issue you’d like to change for the better.
Professionally applied EFT has been found to be so effective that we say tapping can achieve in minutes what therapy has taken months to accomplish.
What Kinds of Things Can it Be Used For?
Gary Craig, EFT’s founder, always said, “Try it on Everything!” He knew that it worked surprisingly well on a great number of troubles, ailments and conditions. His vast archive of case studies documented EFT’s use on things from emotional turmoil and upset all the way to serious health conditions and troubling memories from childhood events. Now that we understand how intertwined the mind and body really are, EFT is the perfect tool for using that information to great advantage and restoring well-being. You might want to use it on things like this:
In the Moment:
- Pain, such as headaches, injuries, emotional overwhelm
- Fear, such as performance anxiety or worries
- Negative moods and emotional states that hamper your enjoyment of life
- Confusion around what troubles or blocks you from what you want
- Stress reduction
In Deeper Use:
- To resolve old memories, hurts and wounds
- To release traumatic events, including PTSD
- To find and release old limiting beliefs
- To create more rapid healing of health conditions and bothersome symptoms
- To bring clarity to the beliefs we have inherited or adopted unconsciously so they can be examined and revised to align with present-day truth and realities
- Self-sabotaging behaviours that keep you small, limited or unsuccessful
- For phobias and bothersome behaviours
- Old habits or coping behaviours that affect your health, such as smoking and cravings