EFT – Emotional Freedom Techniques – Energy Medicine at Your Fingertips

EFT was developed by Gary Craig in the 1980’s and is a self-development tool, designed to help heal a range of things from childhood trauma to improving at sports or exams. EFT works by tapping on Energy Meridians, that are the basis of Chinese acupuncture and other ancient healing techniques. The energy point – the part where the meridian reaches the surface of the skin – is stimulated by tapping with the fingers, instead of using needles.

This is carried out on a series of points on the body, where the main meridians come to the surface of the skin, whilst repeating a series of statements that are associated with the problem being worked on. The phrases always begin – “Even though I have ‘this problem’, I deeply and completely love and accept myself” – or something very similar. ‘This problem’ can be replaced by whatever the issue is, whether it is a particular memory, or the emotion associated with an event. The points start on the ‘Karate chop’ part of the hand, and go on to the top of the head, face and continue around the top half of the body, and continue to meet up with the original point on the hand.

When EFT was first invented, it was tried out on a number of different subjects, with a very diverse set of phobias. One person had a fear of water, whilst others had height phobias or confidence issues. It proved very effective with all, but really shone out when it was tried out on Vietnam War veterans. Some of these people had been receiving traditional psychotherapy treatment for 20 years, for phobias relating to war, with no results, and these were effectively treated in a matter of minutes using EFT.

EFT is very flexible and can be used to tackle are a range of problems. It is frequently aimed at quelling negative beliefs, that have most likely been internalized in early childhood and are subconsciously effecting the persons behaviour in the present day. An example of this is “I’m not good enough.”

In the short time that EFT has been around, it has branched off in to several categories, as EFT Practitioners have developed it in to their own particular styles. Variations of EFT now include, Slow EFT, Fast EFT, TAB (Touch and Breath), PTT (Picture Tapping Technique) and Matrix Reimprinting, amongst many others.

The original website that was run by Gary Craig no longer exists due to his retirement, but most of it has been preserved and is now run by Dawson Church, who is the author of ‘Genie in your Genes’ – a book outlining new discoveries about Human energy fields and healing.