Heathcare workers are often subjected to high levels of stress. This study shows how attending an EFT workshop produced lasting benefits for these professionals.
By Courtney A.
Research published in the medical journal Integrative Medicine measured the symptoms of 216 healthcare workers before and after EFT workshops. It found that EFT produces dramatic improvements in psychological problems such as depression and anxiety, as well as physical problems such as pain and cravings.
Psychological problems improved by an average of 45%; pain dropped by 68%, and cravings for substances such as tobacco, chocolate, coffee, drugs, and alcohol dropped by 83%.
The results of five different one-day workshops were combined for the analysis. One of those workshops was taught by EFT founder. EFT Universe trainer Dawson Church taught the other four, and the results were analyzed independently by a research psychologist at the University of Arizona.
The study was important for several reasons, and it’s worth sharing these facts and figures with your friends and clients.
1. It was one of the largest studies ever published in the field of energy medicine in terms of the number of participants.
2. One of the criticisms that skeptics have made is that EFTs results were due to some special ability only the EFT founder possessed. The study tested the validity of this criticism, since the founder of EFT taught only one of these workshops, and an EFT Universe trainer taught the other four. No statistically significant difference in healing results was found between the 5 workshops, showing that EFT is clearly effective when applied by well-trained people other than its developer. A replication of this study examined the results of EFT workshops taught by EFT Masters such as Loretta Sparks and Ann Adams, and again found statistically similar improvements in mental health, showing that EFT is doing the work, not some particular individual.
3. Another misconception is that, while people might feel better after EFT, the results don’t last. This study followed participants for three months. It found that even after that 90 day period, their mental health was still much better than it had been before. Participants had maintained about half the mental health gains they had made in the workshop.
4. More EFT is better. This was the first study to ask participants about their use of EFT after a workshop. They told the researchers whether they had used EFT “not at all, three or more times, or once a week or more.” The group that used EFT once a week or more had significantly better outcomes than the other two groups, but even the group that never used EFT even once after the workshop were a lot better than the day they walked in!
5. EFT works in groups, not just in individual counseling. The 5 workshops started with lectures about the science behind EFT. That topic is also covered in the new edition of The EFT Manual. The participants then did about an hour of EFT “Borrowing Benefits.” They tapped on themselves for their own issues while watching a demonstration of EFT at the front of the room. After a lunch break, they heard another lecture and did another hour of borrowing benefits. So even though participants received no individual attention, only group work, they still improved. A description of 10 other Borrowing Benefits studies appears under the heading “EFT as Group Therapy” in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Psychology. We hope that this result will encourage those working with groups of people to use EFT.
Imagine if we saw a such a big improvement in:
– Schoolchildren
– Business teams
– Prisoners
– Disease support groups
– Smoking, alcohol, and drug programs
– Group psychotherapy
– Sports teams
– Stress management groups
6. EFT works quickly on pain and cravings, The pain segment of the workshop lasted about 20 minutes, and participants rated their physical pain before and after this brief segment. There are very few therapies that can reduce pain by as much, 68%, in just 20 minutes, with no drugs or side effects. The cravings segment was just as brief, and produced a reduction in cravings of 83%, which is enough to help many people suffering from addictive cravings to resist the temptation to indulge.
The study had a number of limitations. The primary limitation was that there was no comparison group, to control for factors common to all group experiences, so it’s not possible to claim that the results were due to EFT alone. Just being part of a workshop can make people feel better, though research has not demonstrated evidence of improvements on this scale from other workshops.
Other EFT studies have used control groups, and found that EFT produces much greater effects than other interventions. The study was also limited to the population attending medical conferences, so the results can’t necessarily be generalized to other occupational groups, though again, nurses, psychotherapists, doctors, kinesiologists, and chiropractors aren’t necessarily that different from other human beings.
The results were highly statistically significant, meaning that there is only one possibility in 10,000 that the results were due to chance. It’s yet another piece of the puzzle establishing EFT as an “evidence-based” method with a sound scientific foundation.
To read the abstract of the paper, click here. For a list of all EFT studies, you can see the EFT research pages, and for a description of the scientific evidence validating EFT, you can see Chapter 1 of the third edition of The EFT Manual by Dawson Church. That chapter is called “The Science Behind EFT.”
If you need to reassure a skeptical friend or colleague that EFT has solid scientific roots, that chapter is a good place to start. It’s extremely important to our health to reduce our levels of anxiety and depression; a study of 68,000 people published in British Medical Journal found that even low-level anxiety may shorten your life.
There’s no evidence quite like the exhilarating experience of dropping your old limitations, and EFT workshops are a great wayto heal past emotional wounds.
