Sydney EFT Centre

WHAT EFT IS

EFT has been described as many things. We view it as incredibly fast and effective, energy based modality for reducing stress; which in turn facilitates mind and body healing.

From the outside it appears to be deceptively simple; just light finger tapping stimulation of various acupuncture points of the body, while at the same time allowing the recall or exposure to the memory of a specific stressful event.

It has been shown to be effective in numerous clinical trials and studies. In a critical review published in the American Psychological Association's (APA) journal Review of General Psychology³ in 2012, researchers found that EFT "consistently demonstrated strong effect sizes and other positive statistical results that far exceed chance after relatively few treatment sessions."

HOW & WHY EFT WORKS

Even though it’s been shown to work very effectively, the exact mechanisms by which EFT works are still not certain.

 Psychologist, Dr David Feinstein Ph.D stated in a 2015 World Tapping Summit interview, that the research from places like Harvard medical school is pointing to the following mechanisms possibly being responsible, at least in the case of anxiety or Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD):

We can apply the explanation to show how we might deal with the unresolved stress of that near miss incident on the pedestrian crossing mentioned earlier (references in italics)

• Stimulating (tapping) certain acupuncture points reduces arousal in the amygdala. The amygdala is the part of the brain that detects threats, so it’s involved in all anxiety disorders. It’s also involved with other emotions. It’s really the heart of the limbic system which controls your emotions.

• The protocol in EFT is to bring to mind the stressful event or a trigger that causes the stressed reaction in the person and thereby put the amygdala into a stress response.

Perhaps you grew from childhood into adulthood with an anxiety about being on busy streets; hearing police sirens especially triggers the anxiety, so we bring the triggering event or original memory to mind

• At the same time you tap on the acupuncture points on the body using reminder phrases to keep the memory or trigger in the forefront. These acupuncture points are sensitive to creating a tiny electromagnetic signal that goes through the body’s connective tissue to the areas of the brain that control threat and they give the message to decrease the arousal.

• So the brain is getting 2 opposing messages. One to go into stress response as it recalls the sound of a siren or the memory of the speeding car and the other is to decrease the response, which is what the tapping does.

• After a little bit of time, the message to decrease the arousal dominates because nothing bad is actually happening. The events that caused the threat are no longer in play, so now you are able to hold the image of the memory or of the trigger (the siren sound or memory of the speeding car) and there is no stress response arousal.

• So you still have a memory of the speeding car nearly hitting you, but your brain is not going into a whole sequence that involves pumping cortisol and adrenalin through the system and that becomes the new normal state of being.

• Additionally, the tapping seems to stimulate the arousal of delta waves in the brain. Delta waves are a brain frequency that occurs in deep sleep. One of the things that deep sleep does, as well as rapid eye movement sleep, is help to discard some memories.

• If you bring to mind the traumatic memory of the speeding car nearly hitting you at the same time the brain is in high delta, that has the impact of just eradicating the emotional part of that memory. The emotional response is stored in what’s called implicit memory. The delta waves eradicate that.

• Neurologists call it depotentiation. Depotentiation means that the neural pathways literally dissolve. They no longer exist.

• So after a few minutes of sensory stimulation, particularly on the upper area of the body, which is where we tap when doing EFT, it results in these increased delta waves and the erasure of the implicit memory system’s emotion that’s attached to that stressful or traumatic memory.

• One day when research funding is made available, very expensive testing using Functional MRI’s , which can show circuits being activated inside the brain may be able to prove all this.

Very often, traumatic events cause unhelpful subconscious beliefs to form. Once the original trauma is healed, the next step in the process is changing the sub conscious beliefs that formed as a result.

Perhaps in our example scenario, you formed a belief as a young child that the world is a dangerous place and as a result you are hyper aware of surroundings and tend to ‘jump at shadows’ that are not really a threat. It could be physically and emotionally draining and be causing physical symptoms.

Changing Sub Conscious Beliefs is the Key

In the hands of a skilled EFT practitioner, through a process of uncovering subconscious beliefs and thought patterns, EFT allows those sabotaging beliefs to be changed by getting to the root cause events or traumas that caused the now unhelpful belief to form in the first place. 

Once those pivotal events and traumatic experiences are healed by being desensitised and new insight into the experience is gained, it allows new, more helpful beliefs to be formed that lead to new behaviours.  

Perhaps the new belief might be “I am safe and my world is a safe place”

That would allow the hyper alertness to be discarded as a behaviour, resulting in a much lesser stress response, a relaxed state and consequently, improving physical health.

Now you have an explanation as to why EFT could help you to be free of chronic emotional or physical pain, contact Sydney EFT Centre for a free, no obligation and confidential discussion of your specific circumstances.

For more information or to make an enquiry contact us today!!