EFT part 2

For this posting I wanted to tell you a bit more about how EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) can be used.

I often make use of the method in conjunction with hypnotherapy, I find that teaching the client how to empower themself to deal with an immediate fear or anxiety often leads to fast and effective change.

As I explain the EFT method to a client, they are often incredulous, sceptical sometimes even mocking that something like this can work. Generally however they have sufficient trust in me to give it a go.

Gary Craig likens the emotional difficulties we have to interference on a TV set. We know the transmitted signal is ok, we know the TV is working perfectly but every now and again the picture will be disrupted by a glitch somewhere in the communications channel.

His view is that a thought or a memory leads not directly to a feeling but it is communicated through the body system and where there is a "glitch" we sometime interpret the thought or memory as a negative emotion, physical pain or psychological blockage.

The idea of the method is to free that 'blockage' so that the mind/body communications flow without interruption and without the negative emotions.

When I first learned about the method I too was sceptical. I trained as an engineer as some of the notions ablout body meridian energy lines just seemed plain weird.

However, EFT does not rely on belief to be sucessful, indeed many of my most sceptical clients have made hugely significant and positive changes in their live.

I have stopped trying to understand at a deep level how the method works; I just know that for many, many people it works very well. If you have been struggling to make changes in your life and have found it a challenge it would be well worth given EFT a try.

EFT is a constant surprise

I first heard about EFT or the Emotional Freedom Technique about three years ago.

It is, as the name suggests, a way of dealing with negative emotions both from past events and present day circumstances. The method is based on techniques developed first by Roger Callahan a clinical psychologist who started studying Applied Kinesiology (AK), which involves the body's energy meridians.

In 1980, Dr Callahan was treating Mary, a patient who had a phobia of water. After 18 months of treatment and trying various therapies, including hypnosis and behaviour therapy, Mary had barely improved. Callahan had a moment of inspiration.

Mary said she could feel the anxiety in the pit of her stomach. Callahan knew that the stomach meridian passed beneath both eyes.

As Mary imagined her fear, he tapped beneath one of Mary's eyes. Her fear of water instantly vanished and she has remained phobia-free to this day, more than 20 years later. This story is recounted in his book "Tapping The Healer Within".

I read the book and was intrigued by the method (which he called Thought Field Therapy) but thought that the complicated tapping "algorithms" were something that would be too difficult to apply in a clinical setting.

It seems I was not alone in thinking this, Gary Craig was an engineer (not a Psychologist!) who was investigating psychological techniques. He wanted to know why many changes techniques did not deliver the promised results. Having heard about Callahan's work he learned the method and developed it further into a comprehensive and easy to use system.

The EFT method involves a mix of tapping acupressure points, affirmations, eye rolls and humming. At first pass it sounds nuts and most unlikely to do anything except make you feel silly. But it turns out that this technique used in conjunction with hypnosis is a powerful and effective method that can change a person's life in just a few clinical sessions.

I'll explore this method more in my next blog entry.