Guide to Emotional Freedom Technique
Emotional Freedom Technique is a psychological acupuncture technique that is used to optimize emotional health. Although emotional health is still often overlooked, it is absolutely essential to our physical healing and health. Regardless of our devotion to proper lifestyle and diet, we can never achieve optimal preventive and healing powers if emotional barriers are still standing on the way.
Emotional Freedom Technique will help you:
Get rid of negative emotions
Eliminate or reduce pain
Reduce food cravings
Implement positive goals
The energy meridians used in EFT are similar to those that are used in acupuncture to treat emotional and physical ailments but without any invasiveness. Instead, tapping is used to input kinetic energy into various specific meridians on the chest and head while the individual thinks about their specific problem and voicing positive affirmation. The problem can be anything such as an addiction, pain or traumatic event.
The combination of voicing positive affirmations and tapping the energy meridians using your fingertips works to clear the emotional block from the body’s bio-energy system. This restores your mind-body balance which is essential for the healing of physical disease and optimal health.
There are two main areas you need to learn in order to use Emotional Freedom Technique effectively:
1. Tapping techniques and specific tapping locations
2. The positive affirmations
You can treat numerous problems by applying the following instructions diligently
Tapping
The basic Emotional Freedom Technique sequence is simple and straightforward and usually takes most people just a few minutes to learn. Although it’s important to ensure that you are tapping the correct area, you should not worry about being very precise since focusing on the general area is also sufficient.
You will be tapping with your fingertips/pads and this is primarily because the fingertips have several acupuncture meridians. Therefore, when you are tapping with your fingers you are not only using the meridians in the specific area you are tapping, but also those on the fingertips. In traditional emotional freedom technique, the patient taps using the fingertips of the middle finger and the index finger and with one hand only. The side you use doesn’t matter since most tapping points exist on both sides of the body. Moreover, it does not matter if you decide to switch sides during the process. For instance, you can tap under your left eye and later in the process, under your right arm.
You can also use all your fingers and both hands. Form a gently curved line with all your fingers in a gently relaxed manner. This allows you to cover a larger area and access all the acupuncture points. However, most people achieve success with the two finger one hand approach. Although it’s essential to use your fingertips because they have more meridian points, you can use your finger pads if you have long nails.
Tap solidly
You should always tap solidly but not so hard as to bruise or hurt yourself. If you are using both hands, alternate the tapping slightly so that your hands are out of phase with each other. This will provide a kinesthetic variant of the work that is usually done by the EMDR (alternating eye movement) and will have some additional benefit. You should tap about 5 to 7 times (the number is not important but should be the length of time it takes for one respiration cycle; a full breath).
Tapping points proceed down your body which basically means that each tapping point is located below the one before it. Although the sequence is not really important, it is vital to ensure to tap all the points.
Tapping Points
1. Top of the head: Down the centre of your skull with fingers back-to-back.
2. Eyebrow: Just above the eyes at the beginning of the eyebrow and to one side of the nose.
3. Side of the eye: on the bone that boarders the outside corner of your eye
4. Under the eye: On the bone under your eyes about an inch below the pupil
5. Under the nose: this is the small area between the top of your upper lip and the bottom of your nose
6. Chin point: Midway between the bottom of the lower lip and the point of your chin. This area is called the chin point mainly for descriptive purposes.
7. Collarbone: This is the point where the breastbone (sternum), the first rib and the collarbone meet. This is a very important point especially in acupuncture and is referred to as K 27.
8. Under the arm: This is at the side of your body, about four inches below the armpit; usually at the point even with your nipples (for men) or the middle of your bra strap (for women).
9. Wrist: The point inside of both wrists is the last point. Rub them gently against each other.
Remove your watch and glasses before Tapping
Watches and glasses can electronically and mechanically interfere with Emotional Freedom Technique. Therefore, it is recommended that you remove them before tapping.
So you now may be wondering if Tapping Therapy (or Emotional Freedom Technique) can help you in anyway, in particular dealing with traumas, addictions, or other challenges that you may be faced with at this tim