The Gentle Power of EFT

There’s a relatively new healing technique that is growing in popularity with remarkable speed. It’s called EFT, which stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques. If you haven’t already heard of it, EFT is a safe and gentle form of energy medicine that is now being recommended by the American Psychiatric Association, and is widely used in VA hospitals in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Like acupuncture, EFT is a meridian-based therapy, but with EFT, no needles are used. Instead, the EFT practitioner (or the client) taps on various acupuncture points on the client's face, body, and hands, while the client focuses on the issue that needs to be healed by repeating phrases about it, for example: "Heartbroken because my husband passed away." The combination of focusing on the issue while tapping spontaneously and permanently releases it from the body-mind. EFT has been successfully used to treat dozens of issues and conditions, including:

• Grief
• Trauma (including PTSD)
• Fears and phobias
• Obsessive compulsive disorder
• Relationship issues
• Hormonal imbalances
• ADD/ADHD
• Dyslexia
• Insomnia
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Allergies
• Migraines
• Chronic pain

Sound to good to be true? When I first heard about EFT, I certainly thought so. Until I tried it. The results I got were so powerful and repeatable that within a week, I had dropped the other healing techniques I’d been using in my private practice for four years and was exclusively using EFT. Since then, I’ve used it to help my clients heal myriad issues, including everything listed above. The EFT motto is: “Try it on everything.” The reason for this is that no matter what the problem is, if you do EFT on it, more often than not, you’re going to see improvements, and usually dramatic ones.

Developed in 1993 by Gary Craig, EFT has been spreading across the globe ever since. Google “Emotional Freedom Techniques” (with the quotes, to keep results to that exact phrase), and you’ll get over four and a half million hits. Enter the same phrase into the Amazon search bar, and you’ll have your choice of over 200 books. It’s being used by physicians, psychotherapists, nurses, chiropractors, coaches, sports psychologists, and teachers all over the world, on everything from PTSD to sports performance (it’s very popular on the pro golf circuit). Psychiatrist Curtis Steele has said "EFT is the single most effective tool I've learned in forty years of being a therapist,” and Candace Pert, PhD, former Chief of Brain Biochemistry at the National Institutes of Health, says, “EFT is the most important development in medicine since antiobiotics.”

Since I learned EFT, it has completely transformed my life, both personally and professionally. If I had only one tool for living to give my daughter, it would be EFT. In fact, if I had only one tool for living to give anyone, it would be this incredible tapping cure that heals broken hearts, releases long-held trauma, catalyzes spontaneous forgiveness, and sets people free from the prison of suffering.