making the peices fit
What is EFT?
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is a psychotherapeutic tool based on a theory that negative
emotions are caused by disturbances in the body's energy field and that tapping on the meridians while
thinking of a negative emotion alters the body's energy field, restoring it to "balance."
EFT was created by Gary Craig in the mid 1990s, and is meant to be a simplification and improvement of
Roger Callahan's Thought Field Therapy techniques. Craig trained with Callahan in the early 1990s. In
1993, Craig was the first person Callahan trained in his most advanced procedure, a proprietary
procedure known as Voice Technology. Craig found through his experience that the sequence of tapping
points did not matter and that special proprietary procedures were therefore unnecessary, so by the mid
1990s he had simplified Callahan's procedures.
EFT has been used successfully to relieve many psychological and physical conditions, including
depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, general stress, addictions and phobias. The basic
EFT technique involves holding a disturbing memory or emotion in mind and simultaneously using the
fingers to tap on a series of 12 specific points on the body that correspond to meridians used in Chinese
medicine. The theory behind EFT is that negative emotions are caused by disturbances in the body's
energy field and that tapping on the meridians while thinking of a negative emotion alters the body's
energy field, restoring it to "balance."
The theory states that negative emotions are built in the following stages: A negative experience occurs;
negative emotions are felt in response to this negative experience, leading to inappropriate programming
inside the body; and then the body's energy system gets disrupted due to these negative emotions. The
contention of EFT is that in order to remove the negative responses, tackling the negative experience is
not enough, because doing so cannot correct the energy imbalance. Rather, the energy imbalance must
be restored along with rebalancing the negative emotions.
There are no doubts that this technique can be considered odd when first entered into, presenting any
thinking person with a feeling of scepticism about the procedure and its potential for achieving a positive
therapeutic outcome, but the facts are contained in the results which speak entirely for themselves. Just
tap "EFT research" into Google and read some of the thousands of responses. Whilst I do not dispute the
assertions of how EFT alters the body's energy field in response to the targeted condition, I believe,
fundamentally, there are elements of reprocessing inherent in the technique that are characteristically
similar to the effects obtain in EMDR - but with a lighter touch!
What is: