Emotional Freedom Technique
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If you are in a panic and can only think to tap one spot, use the “karate chop” spot on the edge of your hand.
I use EFT quite often as a grounding and centering technique.
The process is a downsizing of the TFT – Thought Field Therapy which was created by a psychologist who stumbled upon it while being very frustrated with the lack of overall positive results psychologists have. EFT was created from this and is meant to be free and easy for everyone.
Remember to replace your negative thoughts with a positive affirmation. This is not how it is presented at the EFT site, but I find it works much better. State your original negativity to overcome and then reverse it by saying, “I choose to replace this negative response (whatever it is) with this positive response (whatever it is). I will do a general positive statement that goes something like, “I choose to fill myself with God’s love, peace, joy, hope, happiness, energy, health and healing. I am filled to overflowing and share it with abandon.”
Please see this page for more interesting correlations between EFT and Dr. Emoto’s studies with vibration and water.
Here is a
COMPLETELY FREE EFT PROTOCOL
for you to try.
If you don’t have time right now, either bookmark this page or go to the 2 Minute Stress Release below this protocol, which is an abbreviated version that really only takes about 2 minutes to complete.
The Complete EFT Emotional Freedom Technique Protocol
The EFT Treatment Points
Tapping The Points For EFT Treatment
The EFT Set Up
The EFT Round
The 9 Gamut In EFT
Testing Your Changes With The SUDS Scale
Subsequent EFT Treatment Rounds
0 = The Sore Spot – On your chest where you would pin a medal or a brooch. Gently push with your fingertips to find an area that feels tender, rather than sore.
1 = Start Of The Eyebrow – Where the bone behind your eyebrow turns into the bridge of your nose.
2 = Corner Of The Eye – On the bone in the corner of your eye.
3 = Under The Eye – On the bone just below your eye, in line with your pupil if you look straight ahead.
4 = Under The Nose – Between you nose and your upper lip
5 = Under The Mouth – In the indentation between your chin and your lower lip
6 = Collarbone – In the angle formed by your collarbone and the breastbone
7 = Under Arm – in line with a man’s nipples on the side of the body
8 = Thumb – all finger points are on the side of the finger, in line with the nail bed.
9 = Index Finger
10 = Middle Finger
11 = Little Finger
12 = Karate Chop Point – on the side of your hand, roughly in line with your life line.
13 = Gamut Point – just behind and between the knuckles of your ring and little finger.
Take a moment now to find and touch each point in turn. You may notice that some feel slightly different from others, or you may not. When you get to work on various issues, you will feel that some of the points “feel” differently when you tap them, and you will notice that the shift or release will occur with one or more points, depending on the reason for using the technique at the time.
In EFT, these points are stimulated by tapping on them. Try now tapping the point under your eye, with your index or index and middle fingers, quite rapidly* about seven to nine times or as many times as it takes for you to take a normal breath in and out. The strength of tapping should be comfortable, but you should be able to feel a resonance from the tapping spreading out across a reasonable part of that side of your face.
* I have noticed that different people have different speeds of tapping. We generally show a tapping speed in line with the rhythm of “Jingle Bells”.
In spite of this, some people develop a kind of woodpecker action after a while, and others tap quite slowly. I would suggest that what feels right to you probably is right for you.
For practice, tap all the points from the Eyebrow to the Karate Chop point now just to get the feel of doing it.
Contacting the Problem
To direct the releasing effects of the tapping to the required area, we focus the mind on the problem by using a statement of the problem: “I am afraid of heights.”
Preferably, this is spoken out loud to engage as much of the neurology as possible and to contact the problem as directly as possible.
In a moment, take a little time to think about a problem that you have, a pain, a fear, an illness or perhaps a phobia, something that always makes you depressed when you think about it, just generally any negative emotion you are happy to release now and forever. Choose a statement that rings true to you, choosing words that make sense to you and you alone.
The more forthright, direct and truthful you can be, the more profound a change you will experience.
Now that we’ve named the problem, we can start with the Set Up.
For the opening statement, we use the following routine:
Find the sore spot on either side of your chest; rub it round gently and say:
“Even though I (insert problem statement), I deeply and profoundly accept myself.”
For example, if you decided your problem was “My back is killing me”, you would say as your Set Up Statement:
“Even though my back is killing me, I deeply and profoundly accept myself.”
Repeat this three times, rubbing the Sore Spot continuously as you do so, and please do endeavour to put some meaning and energy into the “I deeply and profoundly accept myself” part.
Following the Set Up, we now tap all the points, starting from the top (Eyebrow) and ending up with the Karate Chop Point on the hand.
As you tap each point, repeat a shortened version of the Set Up Statement which is called the reminder phrase; so if your set up statement was,
“Even though I hate and despise my boss, I deeply and profoundly accept myself”,
… you say the reminder (shortened version) phrase:
“I hate and despise my boss”
… on each point at the same time as you tap.
This is the middle part in what is sometimes called the EFT sandwich:
Following tapping all the points about 7 times from the top of the eyebrow to the karate chop point, you tap continuously on the Gamut point, and then do the following:
Take a deep breath in and out.
As you do these (at first slightly unusual) things*, repeat the statement in between as best you can to keep yourself focused on the problem in hand.
Then, repeat the Round one more time, tapping all the points from the eyebrow to the karate chop point. Take a deep breath and allow yourself a moment to reflect on how you feel now.
The eye movements are linked to various brain functions and the reason for the humming-counting-humming manoeuvre is to switch between hemispheres quite quickly; both are designed to “wake up” your neurology so the tapping can go to work on the problem.
A great way to ascertain from yourself or others just how you feel is to put a number on it. The technical term is taking a SUD Level or SUDS Scale reading, which stands for Subjective Units of Disturbance.
What that means is you ask yourself:
This works for emotions as well as for physical sensations and even for beliefs which might be a problem:
On a scale of ten to zero:
Before you begin tapping for any subject or problem, take the time to take a SUDS rating and make a mental note of it. Then, when you have completed a Sandwich treatment, ask the question again to find how much has changed. It’s a good way to be able to assess how well the treatment has worked and if you need to repeat the treatment.
Sometimes, the problem can go from as high as 10 to as low as 0 in a single Sandwich treatment.
More often though, you start with 8 or 9, and after a round of tapping, the severity is reduced to a 4 or a 5.
This means that the treatment is beginning to work but there’s more to be done.
Testing is a very important part of the EFT procedure; see also Testing in the A-Z, Part 2.
If the original set up statement was something along the lines of, “Even though I have this problem” and you have tapped a first round on “this problem”, and upon checking with yourself, this problem is not as severe anymore but still noticeable, change the start up affirmation to:
“Even though there is still some of this problem remaining”,
or
“Even though I still have some of this problem”.
When you’re down to a rating of “Oh its a tiny little bit now” which would be a 2, 1 or a half on the subjective rating scale, a third round can be done with the opening statement of,
“I want to completely overcome this problem and I fully and completely accept myself”.
And that’s it!
It’s as simple as that. There’s no need for you to worry about getting it wrong, or getting the wrong statement.
ALL TAPPING YOU DO IS GOOD FOR YOU.
Any tapping you do stimulates the meridians, relaxes you, calms you and makes you feel a little better, even if you get totally the wrong opening affirmation and the original problem has not yet shifted.
Just try again with a different start up phrase, or think about what the truth about the problem might be.
EFT designed by Gary Craig
EFT Protocol Explanation Excerpt by
Silvia Hartmann
