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As I mentioned in the Podcast and Glossary, I’ve been experimenting with EFT recently. EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique. The theory behind this works similar to acupuncture. If you are feeling pain of some kind, be it physical or mental, it indicates an imbalance in your energy, and this can be corrected by stimulating specific points on the body. With EFT, this is not done by acupuncture needles but by simple tapping.
My introduction to EFT
An interesting note to how EFT is used generally, is that there is a “basic recipe” which will work in most cases. The site emofree.com, which gave me my introduction to EFT, likens this to doing an overhaul of a defective television as opposed to finding the single faulty circuit. Since it would be equal or more work to isolate and replace the circuit, it makes sense to simply do everything. This seems logical and seems to work without ill effect.
The how.
The “basic recipe” consists of starting by assessing what is bothering you on a scale of 1-10. After that comes stimulating a specific point and stating that despite the problem you are working on, you accept yourself completely. Then you proceed through the tapping points in order. After that, you tap another specific point while doing some basic mental tasks followed by another round of tapping. At the end you re-assess what is bothering you and if needed, repeat, this time stating that despite the remaining problem, you accept yourself totally. Repeat as needed.
My experience.
When I started working with EFT, I used it mostly on headaches. I found that while the EFT would not make the headache disappear entirely for me, it would bring an intensity 6 or 7 headache down into the 1-2 range, allowing me to function.
I tried using it on some old emotional hurts out of the past, but I found that Reiki is a much better tool (for me) for dealing with them. I find so even more now that I am on the verge of completing my Master level classes.
For me, the real gem of using EFT was the ability to defuse emotional “landmines” before they even get started. Picture an embarrassing or painful memory out of the past. One that likes to pop up and say “hi, don’t forget how worthless you are” at the most in-opportune times. I’ve been able to dig out and release quite a few of them. EFT, however, was instrumental in diffusing such a negative anchor before it took hold! In Psycho-Cybernetics, Maltz describes that when stress is put on an incision or injury, scarring is the result. He theorized that the same would probably be true for our emotional selves as well. This concept can be expanded to our inner selves or our energy bodies, depending on your perspective. If you have a bad experience, and then stress on it, then heck yeah it’s going to get anchored in and plague you. If, however, you can immediately follow the unpleasant experience with an EFT session or two, overhauling your energy and stating that you accept yourself completely, you would probably be amazed at how unimportant that experience was after all.
Do you have any experiences with EFT you’d like to share? If so, please leave them in the comments!
If you would like to read more about ways of releasing what drags you down so you can shine, then please subscribe to my RSS feed.
P.S. Emofree.com has a free PDF on EFT techniques. It can be found here. If you’re looking for a book on the subject, I’d suggest this one: The Promise of Energy Psychology.
