Note: None of the opinions expressed herein should be confused with medical advice. Consult your physician, get appropriate treatment, and use EFT as a health aid. No part of this website is intended as a substitute for medical advice, or to diagnose or treat any particular individual.
In any discussion of the application of EFT to serious disease, it is necessary to clear up a possible misconception regarding the EFT phenomenon known as “the one-minute wonder.” EFT sometimes produces miraculous results, with problems resolving so quickly that they are indeed one-minute wonders. Everyone using EFT needs to understand that not all issues respond in mere minutes, and also that if an issue does not respond that quickly, it does not mean that EFT is not working.
Although using EFT with serious diseases sometimes produces one-minute wonders in one or more symptoms, this does not mean that EFT will clear the underlying causes of the disease that rapidly. Actually, serious diseases normally need persistent and creative use of EFT to achieve resolution.
Overview
Due to EFT’s clinical results, it should be a first line of defense in healing. EFT does not use drugs, surgery, radiation, or any other invasive methods. Given these facts, it makes sense to use EFT before turning to the medical approaches that are more drastic and often have serious side effects. The following is a discussion of primary healing modalities in relation to EFT:
1. The Medical Profession. Conventional medicine has been viewed as primary medicine, with all other modalities deemed “alternative,” but it has become so costly in the United States that many people cannot afford it and the system is also now threatening U.S. economic solvency.
Conventional medicine excels at treating emergency conditions such as infections, wounds, and mechanical injuries. One of its failings is its division into so many specialties that medical professionals no longer treat the whole person and the fact that body and mind function as a system seems to get lost. This is a glaring fault, given research showing that unresolved emotional trauma can cause a range of physical ailments.
The medical profession largely dismisses other approaches to heath and healing, including those covered here.
2. Nutrition. Providing the building blocks of healing through good nutrition may seem obvious, but it is often overlooked. Diets full of sugar, additives, preservatives, processed foods, and produce grown with pesticides and the overconsumption of alcohol prime the body for disease.
3. The Body’s Subtle Energies. Traditional Chinese medicine addresses imbalances and disturbances in the body’s subtle energies, or vital life force, called Qi (pronounced chi). This form of medicine has been an effective treatment for thousands of years. The conventional medical profession, for the most part, dismisses this time-proven model of medicine, persisting in regarding the body as a “bag of chemicals and body parts” instead of acknowledging the proven existence of pulsating energy in the human body.
4. Unresolved Emotions as a Cause of Disease. This is the centerpiece of the EFT model of healing. This model has been validated by countless cases of physical conditions disappearing after anger, fear, or guilt is tapped away.
5. Prayer, Meditation, and Spiritual Methods. Research and anecdotal evidence tells us that healing can occur through the use of group prayer as well as surrogate EFT (a form of prayer). EFT may not seem to be a spiritual method because of the mechanical nature of tapping. The broader goal of EFT, however, is to clear the obstacles to an individual’s spiritual awareness. As EFT taps away anger and fear, it opens the door to inner peace and true forgiveness.
Points to Keep in Mind in EFT for Serious Diseases
1. Despite the healings that have been achieved with EFT, the method is still in the early stages of its development and there is much we do not know. Instead of assuming that the current techniques are the final word, approach EFT with an inquiring mind.
2. Persistence is vital. As noted earlier, if you don’t experience a “one-minute wonder,” that doesn’t mean EFT won’t work for you. And if you do experience a quick healing, that doesn’t mean you are done. Other aspects of the problem and related issues may emerge. Serious diseases are often multicausal and multifaceted. Applying EFT to them can be like navigating a maze, encountering what seem to be dead ends. To find your way through the maze requires backing up when you hit a dead end and trying another path.
3. A serious disease can involve causes aside from emotional, energetic, or spiritual factors. Heart disease, for example, may be improved by EFT, but if it resulted from decades of poor diet, lack of exercise, and other lifestyle habits, those causes need also to be addressed.
EFT Doors to Explore
There are a variety of EFT approaches to the healing puzzle. These “Doors to Explore” offer different ways to apply EFT to your serious disease. You may be fortunate and have excellent results after entering only one door. In many cases, however, it is necessary to go through every door and even discover new ones. If you fail to achieve results on the first four or five doors, don’t give up. The sixth, eighth, or tenth door may be the one where you achieve breakthrough.
The following is a list of the current EFT doors. They are in no particular order and can be used in whatever order you choose.
- Daily tapping. This technique is essential for serious diseases. Perform 10 to 20 rounds of EFT tapping daily to facilitate the free flow of the body’s subtle energies. An easy way to remember to tap is to associate tapping with activities of daily living. Do rounds of tapping before eating, when using the bathroom, when turning the TV on and off, and/or after getting in the car and before getting out of the car.
- Tapping directly on the symptoms. For instance, you can start EFT with “Even though I have this pain in my left hand…” This alone may provide relief of the pain. If not, then assume there is one or more emotions behind it. In that case, ask yourself, “If there was an emotional reason for this symptom, what could it be?”
- Approach the symptoms through metaphors. For example, an EFT practitioner may ask a client, “What does the disease look like inside your body?” or “What does your doctor tell you is going on?” Then tap for that metaphor. For instance, “Even though it feels like I have shards of glass in my wrists…”
- Sneaking up on the problem. This technique is for use when you anticipate that the underlying emotional issues may be particularly intense. Use general statements at first, such as, “Even though I have all these problems…” and gradually make them more specific until you arrive at a specific issue, such as “Even though Dad slapped me at my birthday party when I was six…”
- The Tearless Trauma Technique. This is a highly effective method for gently approaching an emotional issue. For this, the client estimates what the emotional intensity would be if he or she were to imagine the painful event. This sidesteps having to relive the trauma. Tearless Trauma Tutorial
- Watch the Movie Technique. For this, the client narrates his or her mental movie of an emotional event. When intensity arises, the person stops narrating and taps on the intensity. When the intensity subsides, the person resumes the narration. For many EFT practitioners, this technique is a primary tool. It may be, in fact, the most often used EFT technique. The Movie Technique Tutorial
- Tell the Story Technique. Similar to the Watch the Movie Technique, this method allows the client to unfold the details of the emotional event, in this case, telling it as a story rather than framing it as a movie. Tell the Story Technique Tutorial
- Being Specific. Being specific in EFT is often vital and offers an efficient method for resolving a problem. People tend to express their problems in a global manner, like “I have diabetes” or “I feel abandoned.” Although success sometimes occurs using such general language, the likelihood of success increases greatly when you focus on the specifics or specific events underlying an issue. For example, “Even though my blood sugar level is over 300…” or “Even though my mother left me alone for three days when I was 5…” The Importance of Being Specific Tutorial
- Personal Peace Procedure. This can serve as homework for clients. For this, clients make a list of every specific troublesome event they can think of in their lives (people often list more than 100) and tap on each one in turn to clear it, preferably clearing one a day until all the items on the list have been tapped away. Inner peace becomes possible as stored emotional issues are resolved. Personal Peace Procedure Tutorial
- Emphasizing or Yelling. To tap away an emotional issue, a client may need to engage more fully with it. They can do this by emphasizing the EFT Setup Phrases and Reminder Phrases more strongly, or even yelling them. This technique can change a “go-nowhere” session into a successful one.
- Questions. The following are questions that can assist an individual in getting to a core issue:
- If there was an emotional contributor to that symptom, what could it be?
- If you had life to live over again, what person or event would you prefer to skip?
- What would it be like to have none of your symptoms?
- What benefits are you getting from this illness?
- What would you have to give up if your illness went away?
- Who or what are you most angry at?
- Why might you deserve this illness?
- Chasing the Pain. Sometimes after tapping, physical discomfort changes location and/or intensity or quality. For example, a headache, initially described as stabbing pain in the temples at an intensity of 9 can shift to a dull ache in the forehead at an intensity of 7. In this case, the tapping strategy is to “chase the pain.” Tap for the new location and quality. By chasing the pain, the discomfort and the emotional issues underlying it usually drop to 0 on the 0-to-10 scale, or at least a low number.
- Testing. This is an essential step in EFT. If you don’t test, you could mistakenly think the work is finished before it is. Ask the client to reenact the troublesome memory or vividly imagine it; or try to get upset; or move in such a way to bring back the symptom (without hurting him or herself, naturally!). Check for aspects or related problems that still require tapping.
- Humor. Laughter can assist clients in forming new associations regarding the “severity” of their emotional issues. Laughter can also be a method of testing: if a client can laugh or smile at a trauma or fear, it is a sign of progress. If the client meets the practitioner’s attempts at humor with a frown, grimace, or other intense response, it is a sign that more tapping is needed.
- Imagine perfect health and observe tail-enders. This technique is useful for locating subtle emotional issues that help keep the health problem in place. First ask clients to vividly imagine themselves in perfect health (which means with none of their symptoms). Then ask them to listen for the “tail-enders” or “yes buts” that emerge in their minds as self-talk. These tail-enders often serve as clues to the true obstacles to healing.
Reframing within the Setup procedure–through you, not by you. Conventional talk therapy often employs reframing to aid clients in viewing their issues through different, more healthful glasses. Reframing done while tapping has even more of an effect. Use the Setup part of the EFT process to establish reframes while you are correcting Psychological Reversal. Put yourself aside and request that your intuition apply healing through you, not by you. We all have the necessary intuitive capabilities to accomplish this, but a successful outcome requires trusting that intuition.
