What is EFT?
If you are not familiar with EFT, it is commonly called "tapping". EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques and I work with the original EFT developed by the founder, Gary Craig, who is an engineer from Stanford University. Gary developed EFT several decades ago and many people have adopted it and made their own versions, but I have always learned from Gary because I want solid, proven, reliable,
in-depth techniques and I am a Gary Craig Certified Official EFT Master.
You may be familiar with acupuncture where they use needles to return the proper energy flow in the body. In EFT, we use some of the same points as acupuncturists do, but instead of needles, we just gently tap on these points on the body to restore the natural flow. EFT aims to release the excess emotional stress in our system. In the case of the loss of a loved one, for example, we are not trying to stop feeling sad, feeling the loss, the pain, the loneliness. We are wanting to take out the excessive response and deal with the shock, the anger etc. and bring them down to a natural level.
When a traumatic event or a shock happens, or when we adapt a limiting belief like "I'm not lovable", it disrupts the energy system and the energy gets blocked or it gets rerouted in an unnatural way. It is kind of like a garden hose. If it gets a kink, the water won’t flow through it, or only at a reduced rate. It puts tension on the hose and over time, that kink becomes a weak spot, the water becomes stagnant behind the block and there is no flow to the part of the hose in front of the block. We want to remove the kinks in the energy system, so energy can flow normally.
This is not like talk therapy. You don’t tell me the whole story in its entity. We want you to experience as little pain and stress as possible, no need to retraumatize yourself. Instead, we take one small piece of the story at a time, one that lasts only a minute or two and contains only one emotional crescendo. For example, the moment you received a diagnosis. We would only focus on the moment immediately before, and then the crescendo when you heard the doctor tell you. Full stop. We then work on only the emotion in that little segment and we do not continue until we have brought the intensity of the emotion down significantly.
So, as you start to tell me the story, I will interrupt you a lot because our natural response is to tell the whole story in one fell swoop, and what we want is to break it into small bites, so we release one small specific event at a time.
WHAT IS OPTIMAL EFT?
REMOVING THE BLOCKS TO THE AWARENESS OF LOVE'S PRESENCE
The developer Gary Craig's later development is called Optimal EFT, which calls on the spiritual dimension to do the healing. While tapping clears blocks and resolves problems very well, inviting in the Creator of the Universe often brings in a deep level of peace that people do not experience using tapping. Both versions work, and we will typically try them both out and you can choose which one you prefer to work with.
Regular EFT uses tapping on meridian points to rebalance the energy system and bring flow and peace. In Optimal EFT, we call on the spiritual dimension, what we call Unseen Therapist, to bring healing and peace to the issue. The Unseen Therapist is a term Gary Craig came up with and it is purposely a neutral term that does not belong to any particular religion or teaching. If you have a Christian background, it would be The Holy Spirit, but many people are not comfortable with that kind of terminology, so we use a neutral term.
We still use Optimal EFT for:
Since there is a connection between the body, the mind and the emotions, and since there usually is some stressful emotional issue underneath physical problems, there is sometimes an improvement in physical conditions when we work on the emotional issues.
WILLING TO SEE THINGS DIFFERENTLY
For Optimal EFT to work well for someone, we need to be teachable and open to new ways of seeing things. Willingness to see things differently or from a different perspective is very important. We cannot change what happened, but we can release the anger, fear, hopelessness etc. that we feel, and we can take full responsibility for where we are now and see if there is another way to look at any given situation or limiting belief. We can learn from our past, release the emotional charge, change the beliefs – and move forward.
Optimal EFT works with specific stressful events, taking the emotional charge off them as well as uncovering specific beliefs and working with them. This requires that we are willing to see things differently, allowing a greater perspective. Reframing is hugely important and it is necessary to be open to that.
In addition, we often have limiting beliefs that we barely even notice. Such beliefs are not associated with any particular even and have no emotional charge – it just feels like “that’s the way life is”. I will share such a belief from my own life in the next section.
SNEAKY BELIEFS
Traumas, accidents, events that hurt or scared us are often easy to find. There is another set of beliefs that
are much harder to detect.
Gary Craig uses the term “the writing on our wall” about all our beliefs, good or bad, big or small.
Tt is extremely important to look at what we have written on our own “wall” about what we believe, how we think life is. Everything you believe is written in your wall and it is like digging for gold when you start to critically look at ALL your beliefs. Not just the “limiting” ones or the “hidden” ones – the really tricky ones are the ones you don’t even notice.
Here's an example from my own life:
My grandmother whom I loved dearly would always say “My life could be so good if only I didn’t have this X”. It could be a hip pain, it could be anything - but there was always a reason why she could not be happy.
I have no emotional charge on that statement, there were no specific events or traumas associated with it, but I unconsciously took it on as my own: “My life could be so good if only …”. I went through most of life not even aware of it – that was just how life was. My life would never be “good”. There was always some reason why I could not live a happy, fulfilling life. Once I saw this pattern in my life, I could then work on it and release it.
So, start to look at what you believe - what has shaped your life? Both the more dramatic events, but also
these "small", invisible beliefs that completely run our lives. They can all be resolved using EFT or Optimal EFT.