Heal Yourself with Emotional Freedom Technique

John Freedom

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781444177183
• eBook ISBN: 9781444177206
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

Emotional Freedom Technique is a new and innovative alternative therapy that is rapidly becoming a phenomenon. It is a safe and non-invasive healing method, based on tapping acupuncture points while you focus on a particular issue. It has been shown to be effective in treating fears and phobias, performance anxiety, guilt, shame, self-sabotage, and other emotional conditions. It is also being used to enhance and improve academic and athletic performance, psychic and intuitive abilities, confidence and self-esteem, and overall health and well-being.

1

Why Emotional Freedom Technique?

Your emotional health, your success in the world and your level of joy can all be dramatically enhanced by shifting the energies that regulate them. This is the promise of the fascinating new field of energy psychology.

David Feinstein, The Promise of Energy Psychology

In this chapter you will learn:

• what Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is

• what EFT can be used for

• the history of EFT and Thought Field Therapy

• why stress can be harmful

• why we have emotions

• the power of intention.

I’m teaching an EFT Level 1 training seminar in Columbus, Ohio.

Unbeknown to me, one of this group of 25 people has a severe phobia of heights, to the extent that she will not get on an airplane. I tell the trainees to focus on a ‘recent, upsetting experience, not your worst trauma’. ‘Leslie’ ignores my instructions and focuses on her fear of heights while I guide the group through the tapping sequence. After repeating an affirmation of self-acceptance and tapping on several acupoints, I ‘check in’ with the group, to see how they’re doing.

‘I gotta see if this really works!’ Leslie walks outside the meeting room, which is on the second floor of the hotel, and leans over the balcony, looking down. ‘I still have some fear, but it’s better,’ she tells me. I stand next to her and we do three more rounds of tapping. After each round she leans over the balcony and ‘checks in’ with me. After the last round, she leans over the balcony for a long time, takes a deep breath and takes in the huge lobby below her. ‘This is amazing,’ she says. ‘I’m totally OK now, there’s no fear at all.’

EFT Master Gwyneth Moss from Yorkshire shares this story:

‘In my trainings we spend the first day learning how to use the tool of EFT and by the end of the afternoon the trainees tap with each other for a current situation in which they feel nervous or annoyed. “June” partnered with another newcomer to EFT and told him that she became very nervous on the slip road to a motorway and would stop and get stuck; as a consequence she never drove on motorways. Working together the two uncovered several aspects and cleared them using EFT. Two weeks after the training June called to say that she had driven from Yorkshire to Plymouth and back on the motorways with complete confidence. When on the return journey she had to face her biggest fear, driving in a thunderstorm, she pulled over and got the whole family tapping with her and then drove on despite the lightning and thunder.’

I’m leading an EFT Level 2 training seminar in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

‘Jocelyn’ suffered a stroke 11 years previously. Since her stroke, in addition to the left side of her body being disabled (she walks with a shuffle), she often stammered and experienced what she called ‘a delay’ in her speech. She described it as ‘knowing what I want to say, but not being able to express it in words.’ This issue was disconcerting for her, because she had been a public speaker prior to the stroke.

Over the weekend, I tap with her a couple of times, for 15–20 minutes each time, on emotional issues: her fear and guilt about her disability, her self-consciousness about her speech, her disappointment in herself, comparing herself to her husband and two adult sons etc. By the time we finish the weekend, she’s speaking as freely and easily as you and I.

Albuquerque life coach and EFT practitioner Susi Wolf shares this story about a woman with a sugar addiction:

‘I was teaching EFT to 26 teachers in Roswell, New Mexico. After teaching them the Basic Recipe, I brought out some chocolate and asked for a volunteer who had a sugar addiction. One of the group volunteered and we tapped on her cravings for chocolate and sugar. That night she went home to a surprise; her husband had bought her favourite goodies for her and there on the table were chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cake and chocolate ice cream. She looked at all the chocolate, took a bite out of a cookie, realized that she didn’t want it and just stood there, amazed at her reaction, as well as at her new-found freedom.’

I’m teaching another training seminar in Seattle.

‘Harry’ is a successful, apparently confident executive at an aerospace company. But underlying his confident persona is a dogged perfectionism, fuelled by a terror of making mistakes. This fear has motivated him to compensate by striving for excellence in all areas of his life. He has been very successful, but at tremendous cost in terms of stress and anxiety, affecting his health and family.

I taught the class how to tap and Harry applied this to his perfectionism issues, stemming from his mother. ‘Even though my mother tried to control every aspect of my life and even though now I’m doing the same thing, I deeply and completely accept myself.’ With the same dogged persistence, he practised his tapping routine every morning.

A couple of months later he called me. ‘John,’ he said, ‘You won’t believe what I just did. For years I’ve never been able to throw any contracts or documents away, for fear that I might need them. This morning I spent a couple of hours going through my files, tossing any documents more than five years old.’ ‘That’s wonderful,’ I replied. ‘Yes, it is. But the most wonderful part of this is that I feel so much younger. I can do things now that I simply could not do before.’

This is something I hear from my students, clients and colleagues repeatedly: I can do things now that I simply could not do before.

Results like these are not unusual. In every training seminar, people ‘pop’ like popcorn, with shifts and Aha’s, with sighs and giggles of release and laughter. Any EFT trainer can share many stories like these. I must emphasize that they do not happen for every person, every time. But they happen often enough that we have two names for them in the tapping world: ‘one-minute wonders’ and ‘one-minute miracles’.

What is EFT?

EFT, also called ‘tapping’, is a novel method for rapidly releasing and resolving emotional distress, simply by tapping on acupoints. Thousands of people around the world are tapping to release fears, phobias, blocks, anger, guilt, cravings, stress, self-sabotage etc. EFT can also be used to enhance and improve academic and athletic performance, self-confidence and self-esteem, health and wellness, psychic and intuitive abilities, sex and relationships etc. EFT can be applied to improve virtually every aspect of human behaviour.

• EFT is a revolutionary new method for rapidly resolving emotional distress.

• EFT is a tapping technique (not a talking technique).

• EFT is a self-help and self-empowerment tool that people can use for themselves, their friends and their families.

EFT and meridian tapping:

• are highly effective

• work rapidly

• work on a wide variety of issues

• are painless with no side effects.

When people tap on specific points on the body while focusing on an upsetting memory or issue, several things often happen.

• The emotional distress lightens or releases entirely.

• They become more present in their bodies.

• Other symptoms sometimes release as well.

• They spontaneously experience a new perception, a fresh point of view.

• They feel lighter, clearer and freer.

The shifts and changes that people experience are palpable and often permanent.

What can EFT be used for?

• phobias

• traumas

• stress

• insomni...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• About the author
• Title
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Disclaimer
• Contents 
• Introduction
• 1 Why Emotional Freedom Technique?
• 2 The healing power of touch
• 3 It’s all energy
• 4 Breaking through blocks and walls
• 5 How to tap
• 6 Going deeper
• 7 Fine-tuning your results
• 8 Tapping and relationships
• 9 Tapping into good health
• 10 Tapping for trauma
• 11 Tapping for career and self-esteem
• 12 Tapping for peak performance
• 13 Energetic self-care
• 14 On the horizon
• Conclusion: The tapping revolution
• Appendix 1: How tapping works
• Appendix 2: Research on EFT
• Appendix 3: Tapping worksheet
• Appendix 4: Probing questions
• Appendix 5: Energy exercises
• Appendix 6: The original EFT recipe
• Appendix 7: Associations and practitioners
• Appendix 8: Further reading
• Appendix 9: Sources
• Copyright