Tapping/EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)
With Tapping, you have a technique for emotional wholeness and physical relief. You can take your physical and emotional well-being into your own hands. It’s simple for anyone to master. You can practice any time, anywhere, and feel immediate results.
“Tapping provides relief from chronic pain, emotional problems, disorders, addictions, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, and physical diseases. While Tapping is newly set to revolutionize the field of health and wellness, the healing concepts that it’s based upon have been in practice in Eastern medicine for over 5,000 years. Like acupuncture and acupressure, Tapping is a set of techniques which utilize the body’s energy meridian points. You can stimulate these meridian points by tapping on them with your fingertips – literally tapping into your body’s own energy and healing power. Your body is more powerful than you can imagine… filled with life, energy, and a compelling ability for self-healing. With Tapping, you can take control of that power.” -The Tapping Solution
Research at Harvard Medical School over the past decade has shown that stimulation of selected meridian acupoints decreases activity in the amygdala, hippocampus and other parts of the brain associated with fear. In fMRI and PET scans, you can clearly see the amygdala’s red alert being called off when acupoints are stimulated.
Harvard Medical Schools Studies and the Brain’s Stress Response
For example, studies at Harvard Medical School have revealed that by stimulating the body’s meridian points – the same spots on your body that are manipulated by acupuncturists – you can significantly reduce activity in a part of your brain called the amygdala.
Think of your amygdala as a personal alarm system. When you experience trauma or fear, the amygdala is triggered and your body is flooded with cortisol, commonly known as the “stress hormone.” This intricate chain reaction – your stress response – significantly influences and sometimes even causes whatever it is that troubles you, whether that’s an illness, injury, or even an external problem such as your finances or a relationship.
These studies show that by stimulating these parts of your body – as we do in EFT Tapping – you can drastically reduce or eliminate the distress that accompanies or gives rise to these problems you face. By so doing, you can often eliminate the problems themselves!
“Energy medicine is the future of all medicine. We’re beginning now to understand things that we know in our hearts are true but we could never measure. As we get better at understanding how little we know about the body, we begin to realize that the next big frontier in medicine is energy medicine. It’s not the mechanistic part of the joints moving. It’s not the chemistry of our body – its understanding for the first time how energy influences how we feel.”
- MEHMET OZ
EFT – Case Study
The Emotional Freedom Techniques It worked for me, and it can work for you.
I lost eleven brothers on my first deployment alone. Their initials are tattooed on the inside of my left forearm in memorial. I will never forget them. But I will not let their loss cripple me emotionally for life, either. If you are at all like me, your first thought – if you are even aware of EFT to begin with – is that this stuff is a bunch of BS. How the hell can tapping on your face and hands alleviate PTSD? But I was wrong, and found this program to be far more effective – and less emotionally invasive – than anything else I have tried for combatting PTSD.
When I got out of the Army and moved back to Oregon in late 2010, I planned to take some time to clear my head. I wanted to avoid responsibility, and I sure as hell didn’t want anyone telling me what to do. I was glad to be free of the overly structured military life. Six months later, I could barely leave the house. Nearly all of my personal relationships were strained – or worse. And I had almost zero interest in anything but wallowing in my own self-pity.
At the urging of my family, I finally sought treatment at the VA in the spring of 2011. I started a six-month traditional PTSD therapy program at the Vancouver outpatient clinic (part of the Portland VA Medical Center system). To track my progress, my therapist had me complete a PTSD Checklist-Military (PCL-M) at the start of every other session. The PCL-M asks the veteran to rate the severity and/or prevalence of 17 different PTSD symptoms on a scale from 1 (Not at all) to 5 (Extremely). Answering “not at all” to each question would produce a final score of 17, while answering “extremely” to each question would produce a final score of 85. A score of 50 or higher is the field’s accepted cutoff for a veteran having PTSD. My first PCL-M score was in the mid-70s. When I finished the VA program in the fall of 2011, I was in the low 40s, below the threshold. Outstanding improvement to be sure, but it didn’t stick. Within a few months, many of the symptoms had returned. My emotional condition continued to deteriorate throughout 2012.
I had dismissed VikingVets emails about the Emotional Freedom Technique for months, immediately deleting each without even a cursory glance. Around Thanksgiving 2012, I finally relented – again at the urging of my family – and set up an appointment. I decided to complete a six-session (one per week, or more spaced out if you prefer) treatment program. My EFT provider, like the VA, had me complete a PCL-M prior to the first session, after the third and sixth (final) sessions, as well as 90 and 180 days after completing the program.
Here is how I looked: Before session #1: 54. While not considered extreme PTSD, it is certainly above the cutoff. After session #3: 35. This was only two weeks after the first session. Page 2 of 2 After session #6: 27. This was HALF the score of when I started the program, but the progress is even more substantial considering my final score was only ten points above the rock-bottom minimum one can score on the PCL-M. 90-day Follow-Up: 32 180-day Follow-Up: 32 (no change!). I have not had a single nightmare or involuntary reaction (i.e., jumping at a loud noise or breathing hard when remembering a stressful experience downrange, etc.) in almost a year. While I will always remember the men who died and the moments when they did, my emotions no longer control me.
Evan Hessel
Former President, Viking Vets
Iraq Nov ’06-Feb ’08; Afghanistan May ’09-June ‘10
"Clinical trials have shown that EFT is able to rapidly reduce the emotional impact of memories and incidents that trigger emotional distress. Once the distress is reduced or removed, your body can often rebalance itself, and accelerate healing."
-JOSEPH MERCOLA, M.D.
