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There are some pretty crazy sounding ideas floating around in the personal development web space. One of the craziest sounding I’ve encountered is called Emotional Freedom Techniques, or EFT for those in the know. According to Wikipedia, EFT is “a psychotherapeutic tool based on a theory that negative emotions are caused by disturbances in the body’s energy field.”

The main tool of EFT is called “tapping.” It is supposed to function a bit like acupuncture without the needles. Basically, a person using EFT uses his or her fingers to tap on key meridians to alter the energy flow in the body. When done effectively, the body’s energy balance is restored and the negative emotions go away.

A Rocky Start
I first read about EFT and tapping over a year ago when I was browsing through some personal development sites. Like many people, I thought the whole thing seemed a little silly. However, I know that acupuncture has been shown to be at least scientifically plausible, so I decided to give it a try. I printed out a guide, practiced it a few times, and was pretty disappointed with the results. Basically, it didn’t seem like tapping did anything to get rid of negative emotions. I thought that was the end of the story.

Tapping Revisited
About a month ago, I came across an EFT website called Tapping.com. It didn’t take me long to discover that this site features some great (free) videos that explain all of the fundamentals of the techniques. I downloaded the Introduction to Tapping video immediately.

…And it sat on my desktop for about 3 weeks. I just couldn’t get interested enough to watch a 15 minute video.

That all changed when I woke up this morning. I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety lately about a big work project that is taking me quite far out of my comfort zone. When I sat down to try to accomplish something on the project, I realized that my anxiety was distracting me, preventing me from getting any work done, and making the situation worse.

Since I was already sitting at the computer, I figured I had nothing to lose by watching the tapping video. I dutifully followed all of the instructions and tapped on my anxiety. At the end of the 15 minutes, my anxiety had decreased from about a 7 on a 1 to 10 scale all the way down to a 2 or 3. I was able to work the rest of the day with only minor distraction or feelings of anxiousness.

Enough About Me, What About You?
Advocates of tapping and EFT say that it can be effective for a variety of emotional and psychological issues such as anxiety, depression, and even addictions. There are a lot of outlandish-sounding claims made on some of the websites (“Cure Your Heroin Addiction in 3.2 Seconds!!!”), so I don’t blame anyone for taking all of this with a grain of salt. However, it really only takes 15 minutes to learn the techniques, and it isn’t going to hurt you – unless you poke yourself in the eye when you’re tapping

Tips for Tapping Success

• Be very specific with the emotion you tap on. Really take the time to feel it, locate it in your body, and give it a name.
• Keep your focus on the emotion. As you tap, the emotion you’re working on will change. It change location in your body, or change intensity, or even transform into a different emotion. It’s important to track those changes and adjust your focus appropriately.
• Practice with the video. My biggest mistake with my initial encounter with EFT was trying to pick it up from printed material. I’m sure that works for some people, but I’m too much of a visual learner. Tapping.com has provided hours of video that explain all of the fundamentals. I highly recommend them.
• Keep working on it. By the end of my workday, I felt my anxiety coming back up to about a 5 on a scale of 1-10. This overwhelm is not productive, so I tapped on it some more to keep it at a low level.

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