Emotional
freedom technique (EFT)
Emotional
freedom technique is a psychological form of acupuncture. It is
used to neutralize negative emotions associated around a thought.
This is done by tapping certain acupuncture points with your fingers
while tuning into a specific thought.
This
simple process removes negative emotions around a thought. This
process has been shown to help with behaviour change, phobias, physical
pain and emotional issues. Often EFT produces results in just minutes
which is one of the reasons it is the fastest growing branch of
psychology today.
History
of emotional freedom technique (EFT)
It
was discovered in 1980 when Dr Roger Callaghan was treating his
patient for an intense water phobia. She complained in that session
of stomach pain so he told her to tap under her eye as knew the
energy meridian of the stomach ended here (from acupuncture theory)
and to his surprise the ladies fear of water disappeared.
From
that point on he began studying this phenomenon and went on to create
a new branch of therapy called energy psychology. A student of Dr
Callaghan, Gary Craig, a Stamford engineer trained under him and
then advanced the theory and made it accessible to all by creating
emotional freedom technique (EFT).
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What
is the theory behind it?
The
premise of the theory is summed up by its discovery statement:
“The
cause of all negative or unwanted emotion is a disruption to the
body’s electrical energy system”
This
is inherently different to the way traditional psychology would
view emotions, they would see it as:
Distressing
memory ................... Negative emotion
Emotional
freedom technique would say there is an intermediate step:
Distressing
........ Disrupted electrical ........ Negative emotion
memory pattern
To
dissolve the negative emotion associated with the memory you do
not need to treat your memory, but instead re-align the energy pattern
associated with that memory.
How
do you re-align the energy around a distressing memory?
To
realign the disrupted energy you need to simply tap (with your fingers)
on some of the key acupuncture points. The key to success is discovering
what exact thoughts and different aspects to these thoughts to tap
on. Even with this element almost anyone can harness some benefits
EFT has to offer.
What is the point? How does this relate to anything?
If
the problem you are trying to resolve can be pictured like a table
top. The many factors contributing to the problem can be thought
of as the legs to this table.
The
tabletop (your problem /issue), may have many table legs underneath
(different emotional contributors). The idea of EFT is to collapse
the table legs to the point that there are not enough to support
the table top. In other words, if you collapse enough emotional
issues under your problem you will resolve that problem.
What
we are looking for is the specific memories from your past that
can still cause a negative emotion today. These will be the table
legs to one or more table tops. As you collapse each event, e.g.
remove the negative emotion associated with that thought you will
begin to positively influence the problem you are trying to resolve.
Different
table legs can be thicker (more influential on a problem) than others.
Breaking these down will accelerate collapsing an issue.
Skeptical
of EFT?
It
is completely natural to think; that cannot work? Surely not? The
majority of issues take a little time to resolve, some cannot be
resolved, others however will be what we call one minute wonders.
These are when you do one or two rounds of tapping and the issue
just goes!
When
you see it for yourself you begin to think just maybe there is something
to this. It first happened to me when I was hobbling around the
house with a calf injury from rugby. I did one round of EFT and
to my disbelief the pain had pretty much gone! I could even do a
one leg calf raise. Each time I witnessed one of these ‘freak’
events it proved further how this works.
If
you give it just a little time of day you will see some results.
It is so easy to do and has no negative side effects you may as
well give it a try.
How
to learn more about EFT.
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