What is Emotional Freedom Technique and How Do I use It Effectively?

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is a powerful method that uses 'tapping' to relieve emotional trauma. It is a simple and effective form of meridian energy therapy. It is like emotional acupuncture but without the needles. We tap points on the face and upper body with our fingertips while focusing on an issue we have. The points we tap are acupuncture points. There are many acupuncture points, but using EFT we focus on just ten of these points.Studies have shown that EFT is able to reduce painful emotional memories. EFT tapping induces a mini REM state in the brain which re-organises how we store and process information.

This balances electricity in the meridians of the body by sending healing pulses. The presence of such meridians is assumed in traditional Chinese medical theories. It can be shown with an EEG machine that brainwave patterns respond well to tapping.

EFT was founded by NLP Master and Practitioner Gary Craig who states 'The cause of all negative emotion is a disruption in the body's energy system, and our unresolved emotions are major contributors to most physical pains and diseases. EFT will remove these disruptions in more than 80% of the cases in one or two sessions, sometimes within minutes'

Generally we start by deciding what we want to use EFT for. We then assess our pain on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 would be minimal pain while 10 would be very painful. Also, the pain we describe need not be physical. In EFT we regard emotional problems to be the cause or root of medical and physical problems.

Using all four fingers of one hand, we tap on the karate chop point of our other hand saying to ourselves 'even though I have this pain (and you get specific about it) I accept myself totally' This would be repeated three times before changing hands.

We then move onto the 'Eyebrow point' which is where the bridge of the nose meets the eyebrow. When trying to find the tapping points it is a good idea to start gently. You should be able to feel when you have successfully located each point as it will feel a bit tender. We tap this point seven times using just one or two fingers stating the issue we are concentrating on, for example 'This headache'. This brings awareness to our feelings and emotions while the tapping helps to clear them.

Some EFT systems tap both left and right points on either side