Last week, I gave a brief introduction to Tapping – Emotional Freedom Technique and my experience with it for many things. I would say that I can definatly relate to the Tapping expression “Try it on Everything.” This week I would like to share my conversation with Steven Gottlieb, EFT Expert and Tapping coach for You Can Thrive!, about how tapping works, what tapping can do and his experiences with it.
EFT was created by Gary Craig around 1990 after being trained in Roger Callaghan’s techniques, known today as Thought Field Therapy, (TFT). Callaghan was a PhD. Psychologist that created the original tapping protocols used in EFT while learning about Traditional Chinese Medicine which teaches about acupuncture meridians and our energy fields. It was during this time that he made the incredible discovery that tapping on certain acupuncture points resulted in often complete resolution of longstanding psychological and emotional problems by clearing blocks in our energy fields, which were the actual cause of the problems. Gary Craig simplified Callaghan’s process so anyone could learn to clear these energy fields with what is now called Emotional Freedom Techniques, EFT or “Tapping”. Since then, thousands of practitioners have been trained in these methods world-wide.
I was fortunate to have met Steven at the Open Center in New York City during my own training for EFT certification. Steve was assisting Dawson Church by providing tapping assistance to anyone in the class who may have become “overwhelmed” during a training exercise, and by answering questions and sharing his experiences. We don’t live far from each other and remained in contact long after classes were complete.
When speaking with Steve for this blog, I asked him what attracted him to tapping and what he most wanted people to know about Emotional Freedom Techniques. The following is his response:
“I got involved with EFT because as an Intuitive Energy healer, I was always looking to provide the best tools, techniques, and methods that would provide the most effective relief for my clients problems. The more I used EFT the more amazed I became, and eventually I chose the phrase 'Miracles Can and Do Happen' to put on my business cards because that is what EFT can seem like sometimes. If you go to the articles and archives on sites like EFTUniverse.com there are hundreds of success stories that can be described like that.
As the science of EFT began to catch up with the clinical evidence showing how effective EFT is, two very significant ideas emerged for me that are paramount, and You Can Thrive! clients really need to understand how important these are. First and foremost, EFT Tapping provides nearly an instantaneous reversal of the debilitating effects of stress, be it mental, emotional, or otherwise. Stress itself, not what is stressful, is the main problem that we are dealing with, because of the ways our brains and bodies respond to stress. Stress makes everything worse. It makes us worried, anxious, and fearful. It floods our biochemistry with immunosuppressive agents that are completely antithetical to the natural healing process. It impedes our rational cognitive capabilities to make important decisions. Stress can overwhelm us and make us feel helpless and hopeless. Any level of stress has the potential to impact us in any of these ways without our even knowing it. So, learning EFT Tapping is an essential skill for our health and overall well-being.
The second important idea can be approached with EFT after the needs to provide immediate stress relief have been resolved. This relates to how unresolved psychological trauma contributes to our overall levels of stress. Psychological trauma is essentially the ongoing memory of anything that ever happened to us that was 'bad'. Consider the extreme case of a war veteran's PTSD. Working with a professional practitioner PTSD can be reversed with focused application of EFT Tapping in as short as 6 to 10 sessions even when the veteran has been suffering with the ravages of PTSD for over 20 years. All the best help that was provided through treatment programs, therapy, and medication could not do that, and PTSD was thought to be incurable. That is how powerful EFT can be.
Everyone can learn EFT for stress management and that is why I provide this service to You Can Thrive!. Once you get the basics, you can tap for yourself anytime you feel any stress and that is what is really important. The more you use it, the better you feel and the more capable you are of handling stressful situations. And for anyone that feels they are suffering from past traumatic events as so many of us do, there is hope because with professional EFT coaching, we can completely resolve this suffering. There's a lot more I can say about this, but I think we can save that for another time.”
Empower Your True Self.com