In the Press

It’s a Friday morning in a residential street in leafy Chiswick. Nine men and women, aged between thirty and sixty, are tapping away on various parts of their body. An outsider might be forgiven for thinking they had taken leave of their senses, but everyone here is very serious, each person has a story to tell about how ‘tapping’, Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT, for short, has benefited them. Reassuringly, everyone looks remarkably normal, which is good news as I am one of the nine people and rather new to tapping.

I first came across EFT a few months earlier when I was looking for ways to overcome my fear of singing solo in public. I am, I admit, a bit obsessive about singing, and even though I have always wanted to sing solo, I have dreaded it in equal measure. Whenever I had attempted it in the past, I had become incredibly nervous, my breathing had quickened, my mouth had dried up, and my voice had become unrecognisably thin and croaky.

On a friend’s advice I tried one session of EFT with Penny Croal, an EFT Practitioner, and I tapped a few times on my own before I was next due to sing solo. The results were remarkable. My nerves disappeared, that anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach was no longer there and I sang as I do when I’m alone at home, just having fun with my voice and feeling relaxed and unselfconscious. What impressed me most was how quickly and easily my performance anxiety, which had been with me for years, just melted away.

After my solo singing success, I was curious to see what else I could ‘fix’ with EFT, hence my presence at a 3-day workshop run by Penny, the practitioner who had introduced me to EFT. Now Penny is an interesting character, not someone you would usually associate with anything remotely flaky. She has several successful careers behind her, in recruitment, property management and interior design and applies the same rigour to EFT as she applied to her careers: therapies must stand by their results, they must be proven and effective. Having used EFT and other therapies to heal herself of Bell’s Palsy, partial paralysis of the face, and recover from a nervous breakdown she became so impressed with the results that she abandoned her previous career, took a drastic drop in salary and lifestyle, and became a fully accredited EFT practitioner and trainer. I discover we’re a bit of a mixed bunch that Friday morning: a business man, a singer, a park ranger, a writer, an NHS health worker, a sports psychologist, a healer, a property investor and an acupuncturist and over the next 3 days we are due to find out a lot more about EFT and about each other.

So what is EFT? It’s often referred to as a needle free technique, akin to acupuncture for the emotions and it is increasingly being used by coaches, therapists, doctors and individuals to treat a wide range of emotional, health and performance issues; anything from depression, anxiety, trauma, stress, fear, phobia, low self esteem, lack of confidence to back pain, high blood pressure and weight loss. It’s quite an impressive and broad list and, although it certainly helped me overcome anxiety and fear in one very specific instance, I needed to be persuaded it could be successful for such a broad range of conditions. I was curious about the theory behind it.

During the workshop I learnt that EFT is based on relatively recent discoveries regarding the connection between the body's subtle energies, between our emotions and our health and that it is endorsed by some big names in Personal Development, Deepak Chopra, Anthony Robbins and Bruce Lipton to name a few. The premise behind EFT is that emotional trauma and emotional pain disrupt the body's energy field. If negative emotions are left unresolved for too long they start to disturb the body’s energy system and eventually manifest as physical pain and disease. By tapping on the energy meridian points on the body while thinking or talking about an issue we alter the body's energy field and so restore it to "balance."

In my case of performance nerves the tapping helped me identify the source of my problem - a time in my childhood when I had made a bit of a mess of a poem I was reciting at a concert. The humiliation and anxiety about it had stayed with me all those years and had affected my ability to be at ease centre stage and to perform in front of an audience. I was very curious to find out what my fellow tappers thought of EFT and what their experience of it was. Without exception they were all enthusiastic converts. I discovered that the link between emotional issues and physical symptoms was borne out by some of the stories I heard. One lady told me how she’d cured herself of very weak and painful wrists. She recounted how she would regularly drop things, could barely hold a pen to write, would need someone to lift a saucepan of water for her, couldn't push open a swing door and how even getting dressed and undressed was painful At the time she was in an unhealthy relationship, when she ended the relationship the pain in her wrists disappeared. “ With EFT, I understood what my wrists were telling me. I regularly used EFT whenever I felt the urge to contact my ex or felt a tug on my heartstrings. EFT helped me get over the love of my life within a couple of weeks. Without it I dread to think how long I would have remained in an unhealthy relationship with physical symptoms that the medical profession could not help me with.” Others had used it to relieve and sometimes eliminate various conditions from persistent back pain, stomach pain, tooth ache, ear ache to acne. One lady recounted how she had burnt her finger with a cigarette and had been in pain for 2 hours before she remembered to try EFT. Just ten minutes after tapping she was pain free. Although I heard examples of instant wonder cures with EFT, not all emotional or physical issues were resolved so quickly, some deeper rooted issues took longer, however, even in those cases it was interesting to hear of EFT working relatively quickly when compared to other methods and succeeding in situations where conventional routes had failed to produce results. As one EFT-er put it “I had a long standing issue with anger. During a 5 to 6 year period I tried Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, counselling, healing, physical exercise, meditation, Buddhist meditation, talking to friends, in fact lots of things, but I could not get to the core of the issue. I was taught the basics of EFT and I did lots more work during an EFT workshop.

I managed to crack my anger issue like a nut and do you know, I don't care about the whys and wherefores anymore. I do still experience anger but not as intensely as in the past.” Of course, these anecdotal stories, including my own, do not constitute scientific evidence. Sceptics would say the results could just as easily be due to other factors: the cumulative effect of other treatments working at the same time, the placebo effect or just coincidence. What interests me, however, is hearing about other people’s experiences first hand. Since the workshop I have gathered numerous stories about EFT and the enthusiasm and excitement about EFT is palpable. Those who use it swear by it. As one attendee put it: “EFT gets to the heart of the matter, relieving symptoms and often their root-causes quickly and efficiently, making life easier, happier, healthier and far more rewarding.“ Just to check whether these are isolated incidents I do a quick search of “EFT success stories” on my favourite search engine and it throws up 88,600 results. Perhaps not such isolated incidents after all.

During the workshop I decide to try EFT on another fear of mine, fear of competition. A few weeks earlier I had decided, rather recklessly, to enter a humorous speech contest. I did so because I have come to a point in my life where I no longer want to be limited by my fears, but the truth is I’m scared of competing against others and finding out I’m not good enough, of making a fool of myself and of not being remotely funny. It’s only 3 days before the contest and I’m already feeling anxious and wishing I hadn’t been quite so foolhardy.

The workshop draws to a close and I am encouraged by all the stories I’ve heard. Now I know the basic technique and some shortcuts and it is very familiar to me I’m willing to try EFT in many more situations. And just in case you’re wondering about that Humorous Speech contest. No, I did not win it but I did have a lot of fun, there was a momentary adrenalin rush before I started speaking but no anxiety or fear, so from my point of view, another successful outcome with EFT. EFT is very simple to learn and easy to use, it has no side effects and seems to work successfully on a wide range of physical, emotional and performance issues.

If you want to find out more visit: www.emofree.com or contact Penny Croal on 07976 819321, www.changeahead.biz

© Christine Mockford www.creatinganimpact.com. 28th November 2009