We ‘tappers’ know that EFT works. And as silly as it sounds, we’ve seen it work for a wide variety of issues, so many that some professionals poo-poo it because they think such a claim can’t be true. It’s been hailed as a pain reliever, performance enhancer, trauma buster, and health improver.
Now, thanks to the efforts of Dawson Church, author of Genie in Your Genes and other researchers, science is answering this question.
The original explanation for EFT’s effectiveness was that it affects the energy flows in the body. And this is true.
When you use acupuncture, tapping or pressure on acupoints, you send a calming signal throughout your body. MRI scans show that stimulating acupoints turns off the fright flight response in your limbic system. Dr. Church tells a story of how an EFT session plunged the cortisol levels of his research subjects so quickly that the lab thought there was a problem with their equipment!
When you think of an old trauma it reactivates the fright flight signal and your body responds accordingly. When you tap you send a different signal saying you’re safe. Your brain knows that if you were facing a real tiger you’d be running not tapping. When you tap while bringing up the traumatic memory, you are combining the old signal of threat with a new signal of safety. As you do this you interrupt or break the old conditioned response loop. Once you break the association between the memory and the physiological response you no longer go into fright flight at the thought of that old memory. Your brain now recognizes it for what it is – an old memory and not a current threat.
This also explains why you can try EFT for everything. When you deactivate your stress response, it ripples through your body. As you reduce stress and anxiety about anything it helps your body function better. Keep in mind that when you experience stress, it affects you neurologically, hormonally, and electrically.
Anxiety impedes performance and creativity. Unresolved childhood traumas (no matter how irrelevant they seem to your adult mind) cause an undercurrent of anxiety that increase your risk of serious disease. When you remove this overlay of anxiety, your mind and body are better able to heal. Even if you feel great about something, you can feel even better with EFT.
Please keep in mind that EFT is a tool. It works best as part of your health care, and is not a replacement. If you’ve had serious trauma, it’s best to work with an expert therapist and use EFT coaching as a complement.
If you’d like to learn more about EFT, and experience its benefits for yourself, you’re in luck. The 2012 Tapping World Summit is about to begin. Between now and May 16th you’ll have access to special videos and 20 interviews with EFT experts. Learn the basics so you are ready to dig deeper when the summit starts. Then for 10 days you’ll get to learn even more and tap along with experts on a wide variety of topics. Be sure to register to get the training audio/visuals and additional interviews.
