Self Help Tool EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique): How to does it work?

 EFT, standing for Emotional Freedom Technique, is an universal self-help technique that can be applied for the neutralization all sorts of negative emotions. This short and very basic introduction is just intended to give you a first glimpse of the technique and I strongly recommend to you to get more information on various very good websites to this topic.

 

The technique is comprised of a short introduction (the so-called Setup) and the main tapping round (tapping on certain points on your body). Sometimes, tapping only on the points might be enough, but there are cases where too much of inner resistance to a healing is present, and in these cases the Setup is essential and since it tunes you in to the problem very easily and serves as a constant affirmation of self-acceptance and self-love, I use to add it to every round.

 

Based on the Thought Field Therapy by Roger Callaghan, Stamford engineer Gary Craig developed this easy to learn and to apply algorithm. All of the EFT tapping points are situated on different so-called meridians, energy lines pervading our body. Along these energy lines, the skin has a measurably lower resistance than on other parts of the body, which can be nicely demonstrated by using an electronic acupuncture tool.

 

The so-called tapping points are situated at certain points on your body and are slightly tapped with one or more fingers of your dominant hand (the meridians go through both body half’s, but we normally only tap on one side of the body at a time), while you are tuned in to the specifics of your problem.

 

These are the body-points:  

 

-          On your head (this is the crown point, it doesn’t necessarily belong to the tapping routine, but it encompasses a lot of meridians, so many practitioners like to include it)

-          At the beginning of your eyebrow (next to the root of your nose)

-          At the outer corner of your eye (ca. 1 inch from the outer corner of your eye)

-          Under your eye (on the cheekbone)

-          Between your nose and your mouth

-          Between your mouth and your skin

-          On your collarbone (ca. 2 inches from the small indentation at your neck)

-          Under your arm (if you are a woman, it’s where the bra goes along)

 

There is one more spot under your breast on the lowest rib, but it is only very rarely used.

 

Besides that, there are finger points, which can be accessed in two ways.

 

A) at the end of a normal tapping round, you can just tap with all fingers of your dominant hand just above the wristband of a wristwatch (across your arm) and additionally on top of the wrist joint (also across your arm).

 

B) each finger separately:

 

-          In this case, the points are located always at the side of your fingernail that points towards you on all fingers.

These points are especially useful for continual tapping or for tapping in public, since you can access them very inconspicuously. Additionally, these points are very powerful when used in sessions with couples, for example when one partner talks about his problem and the other partner at the same time taps on him.

 

This is the physical side of the tapping routine and as I said before, sometimes it would be enough to just tap these points and stay concentrated on the problem and you would notice some changes.

 

But in many cases, there is a resistance to change present on an unconscious level, which can have a lot of different reasons (more to that topic in another hub), and then we need to perform the so-called Setup, which is the recital of a specifically designed sentence for this problem, while we are tapping the outer edge of your non-dominant hand (the point a karate expert uses to crash the tiles that he stacked up in a neat pile before) with the fingers of your dominant.

 

The sentence we use while we do this tapping routine is built as follows:

 

“Even though I have [this problem]*, I deeply and completely love and accept myself”

 

*[this problem] stands for the most accurate description of your problem that you can come up with in a a few words.

 

Some people have a problem with the Setup-Phrase, because they cannot say out loud that they love and/or accept themselves. While this is an important topic (and I will get back to it in another hub), you can also substitute the “… I deeply and completely love and accept myself” with “I’m okay” or “I accept myself” or “I’m doing the best I can” or “I’m a good [whatever seems fitting to you]”.

 

Ok, here this is the procedure again in a nutshell:

 

-          You have a problem.

-          You evaluate for yourself how severe it is on a scale from 0-10 (0 being lowest, 10 being strongest), you note the number

-          You define it for the Setup-phrase.

-          You tap on the edge of your hand (the karate spot) with the fingers of your dominant hand, while you say the Setup-phrase “Even though I have this [problem], I deeply and completely love and accept myself” three times in a row.  

-          After that, you tap all the tapping points that I described earlier, at every point repeating the short version of “[this problem]”. (the number or tap’s per point varies, you get a feeling for it quickly, I normally do about 7 quick and light tap’s before I go to the next point)

-          You evaluate the intensity of the problem again and write it down as well.

-          If some or all of it remains, you repeat the procedure, changing the Setup-phrase to “Even though I still have (a rest) of [this problem], I deeply and completely…”

-          Then you do the tapping points again, with the reminder phrase being “still (some of) [this problem]²

 

That’s about it for now. Naturally, there’s a lot more to say about the technique, the right composition of the Setup-phrase, the finding out what your real problem is, the reasons why it sometimes doesn’t work, how to approach different topics, etc, but this is only intended to give you a vague idea of what EFT is all about.

 

Stay tuned, there will be a lot more to find out here!  

 

© Dorothee Geray, 2010