Emotional Freedom Technique

In view of my last article on an upset clearing process, Malcolm sends along a link to a site discussing the Emotional Freedom Technique.  I haven’t tried it and don’t want to be construed as recommending or endorsing it. But I pass along the information to you for your own review and discernment.

The Kinesiology Institute presents Dawson Church, author of “Genie in Your Genes” demonstrating the Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT. The Kinesiology Institute offers training in Holistic Health to both lay people and health professionals (i.e. massage therapists, holistic nurses, chiropractors, psychologists) in Touch for Health Kinesiology to eliminate physical and emotional pain and stress and optimize health and performance.

https://www.youtube.com/user/kinesiologyinstitute

[Video does not download. You’ll have to go to Youtube to view it]

EFT Universe

PO Box 442, Fulton, CA 95439

https://www.eftuniverse.com/

(707) 237 6951 • Fax (800) 330 9798 • www.EFTUniverse.com •

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)

The Basic Recipe

1. Where in your body do you feel the emotional issue most strongly?

2. Determine the distress level in that place in your body on a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 is maximum intensity and 0 is no intensity:

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 3.

3. The Setup: Repeat this statement three times, while continuously tapping the Karate Chop
point on the side of the hand (large dot on hand diagram below) “Even though I have _______(name the problem), I deeply and completely accept myself.”

4. The Tapping Sequence: Tap about 7 times on each of the energy points in these 2 diagrams, while repeating a brief phrase that reminds you of the problem.

[A graphic of the human body appears here in pdf format. Unfortuntalet I’m unable to copy and paste it into the article. It’s available from EFT in a strater training manual.]

5. Determine your distress level again on a scale of 0 to 10 again. If it’s still high, say: “Even though I have some remaining _____ (problem), I deeply and completely accept myself.”

6. Repeat from Step 1 till your distress level is as close to 0 as possible.

EFT 5-minute tap-along video: https://www.youtube.com/user/kinesiologyinstitute

The Timeless Principles of EFT

Below are the Timeless EFT Principles. Some of these Principles are unique to EFT while others have been customized from other sources and have become integral to the EFT process. Besides this page, you will find a great deal of specific information on using EFT for particular circumstances in the EFT Tutorials.

Principle #1 – The Discovery Statement:

“The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system.”

This is the foundation of EFT and also represents the essence of Energy Psychology (EP). As a result, all versions of EP tune in to the issue at hand and then stimulate the energy points on the body to create energy balancing. The proponents of the various versions may not state this directly but it is the underlying principle. This statement is discussed in The EFT Manual and at the start of EFT trainings.

Principle #2 – The EFT Basic Recipe:

The full version of this simple procedure is given in the The EFT Manual and is demonstrated in EFT trainings. There are many variations and shortcut versions but your EFT education is not complete without a thorough grounding in the original.

While many variations and short-cuts have been developed, and various people have experimented with them for some twenty years, none of these has demonstrated consistently improved benefits over the standard EFT points. Once you learn the Basic Recipe, you develop your skill in EFT through the Art of Delivery.

Principle #3 – Customized Setup Phrasing:

Once you master the streamlined, intuitive and flowing nature of the Basic Recipe, you can customize and expand the Setup Statement using “stream of consciousness” insights, or “intuitive rambling.” This accomplishes three things:

It keeps the focus on the issue

It identifies reframing phrases that connect powerfully with emotions

It develops intuition, which aids in the detective process of finding core issues.

Because this Principle dovetails intuition with the Basic recipe, it has become a major innovation in EFT, and made it more powerful for serious students. Every EFT expert uses it and their skills with this Principle are what separates their results from the average.

Principle #4 – Adding Reframes:

Reframing your perspective encourages cognitive shifts. These increase the success of EFT. Reframes can shift a client’s perspective in a healthier direction. Experienced EFT practitioners with skill in Reframing can dramatically improve their results. Reframing while tapping improves the emotional impact of the reframes.

Principle #5 – Shifting Aspects:

Unlike slower conventional methods, EFT can be so rapid and efficient that clients “shift aspects” during the session without knowing it. Since a given issue can have several parts or emotions contained within it (aspects), it is not unusual for an EFT client to resolve one aspect immediately and then shift to another aspect without noticing the previous improvement.

Thus the client can shift from one event in a memory to another or shift to different emotions within the event and conclude that “nothing happened.” In reality, they may have completely resolved one aspect and are now working on another.

It is critical for the EFT practitioner to understand this Principle and to develop skills to work with it. Otherwise, neither the client nor the practitioner will be able to fully recognize the progress. It is vital to demonstrate it repeatedly so the student is thoroughly grounded in this Principle.

Principle #6 – Using Specific Events:

Clients almost always portray their issues in global terms like, “I feel abandoned”, “I have a bad temper” or “My self image is poor.” However, none of these broad issues could arise unless there were specific events underlying them. One cannot feel abandoned, for example, unless one has experienced abandonment events previously.

Those inexperienced with EFT typically try to tap on these global issues using language such as, “Even though I feel abandoned….” This is like trying to chop down an entire forest of diseased trees with one swing of the axe. The client may feel some relief but you haven’t reached the core of the issue until you break it down into the easily tappable specific events underlying the problem.

Not addressing specific events is one of the major errors made by newcomers. The EFT Manual says, “Be specific where possible” on numerous occasions. For some clients, specific events are so intense that the Principle involving Minimizing Pain is best used first.

The Movie Technique and the Tell the Story Technique support a focus on specific events, and are among the centerpieces to EFT’s Art of Delivery.

Principle #7 – The Generalization Effect:

After you have used EFT to neutralize a few problems or specific events on a certain theme, the positive effects tend to generalize across related issues. This is because these related events have commonalities.

For example, someone who has 100 traumatic memories usually finds that, after using EFT, the intensities tend to vanish for all of them after neutralizing only a relatively small number. This is startling to some because they have so many traumas that they think they are in for unending sessions with these techniques. Not so. Thanks to this Principle, EFT often clears out a whole forest of diseased trees after cutting down just a few of them. This Principle, along with a focus on specific events, brings great efficiency to broadly based and complex issues. Knowing how to use this Principle often separates the experienced EFT’ers from the rest.

Principle #8 – Testing Your Work:

Testing your work is imperative. Without it you will often flounder and not know where you are in the process. In EFT, we ask how intense the emotion associated with the memory is on a scale of 0 to 10. Zero represents no emotion behind the memory, and 10 represents the maximum possible emotional intensity. This scale is called SUD or Subjective Units of Distress, and was developed by psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe in the 1950s.

During your sessions, you can integrate other ways of challenging the client’s improvement. These might include role playing, testing the results in the real world (such as with a height phobia), asking pointed questions, and on. Testing is a crucial skill and you must have a wide facility with it.

Principle #9 – Chasing the Pain:

Chasing the Pain is the act of determining precisely where in the body pain is located, and then as one pain is improved or eliminated with EFT, moving on to the next pain. In this way, you might work on a whole series of pains in a single EFT session, going to a SUD that is at or near 0 for each one before moving on to the next.

Emotional and physical issues are linked. EFT first recognized that emotional releases also resulted in reduced physical symptoms such as headaches, back pain, stomach upsets, and so on.

But then we discovered that you can also do this in reverse. A client with an intense emotional issue, for example, will often have physical symptoms. If you address the physical symptoms with EFT first and Chase the Pain as these symptoms shift, you will often collapse the related emotional issue without ever having to deal with it directly.

Principle #10 – Finding Core Issues:

This essential Principle also separates the expert practitioners from the average. It takes solid detective work to get down to the real issues behind the client’s problem. This isn’t a principle that you learn overnight. Rather, it takes experience and training.

While the idea of finding core issues is not new, it takes on special importance when we are able to bring relief so rapidly. Until you truly resolve the core issues, the problems will appear to “come back.” This is a clue that you aren’t done yet.

Some standard questions help us find Core Issues and, properly used, they almost always lead us into useful territory. Two of these questions are: (1) “What does that remind you of?” and (2) “If you could live life over again, what person or event would you just as soon skip?”

Principle #11 – Minimizing Pain:

Because we can get to Core Issues with unprecedented speed and depth with EFT, we need another Principle to “sneak up on the problem.” This is so these painful issues can be handled humanely. Thus we developed unique EFT procedures that add gentleness to the process. They include “taking the edge off” by tapping globally at first and The Tearless Trauma Technique (described as one of the Useful EFT Tools below).

Principle #12 – Borrowing Benefits:

Borrowing Benefits is the principle that you can improve issues of your own by “tapping along” while watching someone else use EFT for a completely different issue.

Anyone can use this remarkable advance by simply tapping along in their living room with the videos on this site, or during a workshop. Benefits can be borrowed by rooms full of people.

EFT first discovered this from the reports of therapists who tapped along with their clients. They cleared up their own thyroid problems, collapsed their own phobias, and so on, without ever using EFT on these items directly. With these reports as a foundation, we began doing EFT with a live person on stage and had the audience borrow benefits by tapping along for their own issues. The Borrowing Benefits Principle was the result.

Principle #13 – Surrogate EFT:

In the process of Borrowing Benefits, workshop participants noticed that the group tapping of the audience appeared to help people on stage. Sometimes the person in front of the group does not even tap; only the audience taps, and the person’s symptoms subside.

Sometimes you can do EFT on yourself on behalf of someone thousands of miles away and often generate benefits for them (and sometimes for yourself). Among other things, this extraordinary principle allows you to help others who are unable to help themselves, such as infants, pets, and disabled people.

Surrogate work like this is not new; distant intentionality and prayer have shown similar benefits. However, adding EFT to the surrogate healing process can dramatically accelerate the results. It appears to work much more rapidly, deeply and consistently when EFT is involved. Accordingly, there are many ways to customize this process to EFT and you will find them throughout our website.

Principle #14 – Doing EFT through you, not by you:

This is the central idea behind the use of intuition within the EFT process. It involves “getting yourself out of the way.” Intuition is always useful in the healing process but takes on a new importance now that we have a tool that can readily collapse the issues that your intuition uncovers.