Friday, October 14, 2011

What is EFT?

EFT stands for "Emotional Freedom Technique".  It is an alternative therapy to deal with stress, PTSD, anxiety, panic attacks, and more.  It is said to be helpful for many with chronic illness.

My naturopath recently recommended EFT to help with PTSD associated with my Lyme disease.  Unfortunately, when you have multiple scary episodes (physically and/or emotionally) that do not respond to conventional treatments, you can be very traumatized by these events.  That trauma sets off a cycle of fearing the recurrence of the events.  Believe me- being in excruciating and crippling pain for prolonged periods of time (without relief by medication) can really mess with your head!  Even though I thought EFT looked a little crazy when I watched some YouTube videos about it, I still decided to give it a try.  I'll try anything at least once!

EFT is also commonly referred to as the "tapping technique".  Like in acupuncture, it taps into certain meridians, and it was actually referred as "acupuncture for the emotions" by my practitioner.  So basically, there are these points that you tap while reliving a trauma or saying a predetermined thought or phrase.  If you are working on overcoming a trauma, you start of by picturing that event before you begin tapping and you rate your emotions surrounding that event on a scale of 1-10.  Your practitioner will then guide you through the trauma going through a series of thoughts and emotions that you had during your experience.  After several rounds of tapping, you will then check back in with yourself and see if your original number has changed.  You continue this process until you have "cleared" this trauma or emotion.  Below is a diagram showing the tapping points:


Here is a site that features the above diagram and provides the various steps to completing EFT.  Below is a video that shows an example of tapping:



And here is my practitioner speaking about EFT:


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