EMOTIONAL FREEDOM TECHNIQUE (EFT) TAPPING TUTORIALS
EFT Tapping Creates “Field of Dreams” for Little League Team
by Stephanie Drieze, LICSW
I had a successful EFT for sports performance experience this spring, using EFT with the children on a struggling Little League baseball team.
The players on “Team A” were 10, 11, and 12 years old. Very early on in the season, it became apparent to my husband, the manager of the team, that the concentration of talent on the team was limited to only a few players, which made winning or even competing in games quite difficult!
After five consecutive losses, he asked me to intervene and work with a few of the players, with consent from the players and their parents, to see if it would help the overall team’s situation.
I started with my older son, “B.” Although “B” is a very strong baseball player, he hadn’t played well consistently in the early games. The first game he played in (after tapping on issues related to his feelings of pressure while batting), he hit his first big home run, out of the park.
He tapped on:
“Even though I feel this pressure, I deeply and completely accept myself!” and
“Even though I step out of the batters’ box, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
I then worked with one of the pitchers on the team who was struggling with anger at his team mates for their fielding errors, and he subsequently pitched a strong, confident game, with lots of strike outs. This pitcher, “H”, went on to insist on tapping before all games.
After one tapping session, he pitched against the best hitting team in the league and threw a NO HITTER!
One of the players came to learn the tapping technique, but through talking with his mother, I learned that he actually had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and that baseball was simply one of his many crippling worries.
The mother gave me permission to work with him (“L”) on all his fears which included being afraid to fail a test; throwing up; having trouble breathing; and not being able to sleep through the night.
Interestingly, this boy did not experience much relief from several rounds of the prototypical tapping, so I suggested the 9 Gamut Procedure. ONE round with the 9 Gamut Procedure and his fear went to ZERO. His mother, who was watching asked him if it was really a ZERO, although we both could visually see a huge shift in his body language.
He replied, “Mom, it’s actually ZERO, ZERO!” At that point the mother and I were both crying!
My husband said that “L” was a different, more confident, and happier player at practice that night; joking and “in the game.” I saw “L” one more time to reinforce his positive gains and he was in excellent shape. The mother said she and he tap at night together and he hadn’t had any problems sleeping, had gone to school every day and felt like “his old, normal self.”
A related vignette regarding another player (“D”) occurred well after the baseball season ended. He was playing at our home when an intense thunderstorm passed through quickly with lots of lightning, wind, and even dime-sized hail.
I remembered that “D” had always been afraid of thunderstorms, and usually hid in the basement or a bathroom whenever and wherever one struck. I looked for “D”, and when I found him, he was coming up the stairs after hiding in our basement, with a big smile on his face. I asked him if he was okay and he said, “I am now, Mrs. Drieze; I just did the tapping.”
He was using EFT on his own, and he told me that he uses it when “a situation needs the tapping!”
In the end, “Team A” didn’t win the championship, but played very well the rest of the season. The players improved significantly, and seemed to enjoy the Little League experience more.
All the players who engaged in the tapping technique with me experienced real, physical relief of symptoms, and played baseball more confidently, with significantly reduced anxiety, enhanced performance, and greater desire.