EFT, or Tapping, is a great tool to have when something overwhelms you with strong, unwanted emotions. It’s a tool, right at your fingertips, that can literally calm down your nerves or your Fight-or-Flight response in an instant.
The basis of EFT comes from ancient Chinese acupuncture.
Chinese documents, dating as far back as 476-221 BC, speak about the different acupuncture points, meridian channels (energy flow in the body) and how to stimulate healing through activating the energy flow, by the use needles on certain points of the body.
In EFT (tapping) we tap lightly with our fingers on meridian points to change the energy flow in the body.
Fast forward to 1979, Roger Callahan, a US psychologist, stumbled upon the amazing effect of tapping when he was trying to treat his patient, Mary, who suffered from overwhelming fear of water. The fear was so great that even the slightest contact with water would cause her great suffering.
Dr. Callahan had tried out everything to help Mary with little to no success. After a year and a half of working with her, Mary was still not able to approach water without being overwhelmed with fear.
One day, Mary told Dr. Callahan that the thought of water caused her to feel an awkward feeling in her stomach. Dr. Callahan knew that there is an acupuncture point linked to the stomach, located just beneath the eye. In order to relieve his patient of the uncomfortable feeling in her stomach, he asked her to gently tap on the point below her eye to lessen the stomach symptoms.
Mary followed Dr. Callahan’s advice and tapped lightly with her finger just below her eyes. After just a few minutes of tapping Mary realized that something had changed in her. Instead of just feeling a relief of her stomach-ache, she realized that her fear of water had disappeared.
Dr. Callahan had no idea that tapping on the eye-point would cause such a huge difference, so he got scared seeing Mary run towards the swimming pool and start splashing water in her face.
But the fear was gone!
The fear of water was completely gone – and it never came back!
This event was the starting-point of a new era of energy psychology.
Based on what he had discovered, Dr. Callahan created a revolutionary new technique called Thought Field Therapy (TFT). You think about a problem while you tap on specific points. Before you start tapping, you rate the emotional intensity of your problem on a scale of 1-10 (SUDS-Scale). Then when you are done tapping, you rate the emotional intensity again, to objectively rate the change in intensity of your emotions.
Dr Callahan’s work was taken one step further and simplified for easier use by one of his students, Gary Craig who wanted to share this “universal healing aid” with the world. He offered free resources to the public and email newsletter with case-studies and he was a leader in spreading the word.
Tapping was made even more popular by Nick Ortner and his documentary film The Tapping Solution. He now runs the yearly event Tapping World Summit, where you get the possibility to discover all the amazing uses of EFT tapping.
Now tapping is known all over the world, and it’s being used to heal traumas caused by anything from suppressed or forgotten childhood memories to devastating war-trauma.
