Awakening to Your Inner Wisdom
with EFT and Imagery

“I can’t stop eating Oreos. I was eating them all the way here in the car. I think I left a trail of crumbs on the walk up to your waiting room door,” Melissa proclaimed as she walked into my office, plopping down into the couch. “I don’t even know why. I guess something must be bothering me; that’s usually what happens when I’m upset. I eat. But I have no idea what I’m upset about.”

I could have worked with Melissa’s Oreo binge by helping her to get in touch with the underlying feelings that caused the binge, but this time I asked if she were willing to try something different--a new technique I had recently learned. “It’s like nothing we’ve done before,” I explained, “and it may look weird, but bear with me. You may be surprised.”

Somewhat skeptically, Melissa agreed.

First I asked her to rate the intensity of her craving for the cookies on a scale of 0 to 10.

“Fifteen.”

Then I had her tap with her fingers on various places on her face and upper body while repeating the phrase “craving Oreos.” After one round of tapping, she took a deep sigh and laughed. “I can’t believe it. I feel better.” After three rounds of tapping she reported her craving down to a 0. I asked if she had any Oreos left in her bag. “Sure,” she responded, “I was going to eat the rest on the way home.” I asked her to take out one cookie. “Smell it,” I said.

She took a deep inhalation. “Ugh. I don’t even want to smell the cookie. I’ve had enough. I can’t believe it, but I don’t need any more cookies. And whatever was bothering me….that feels better too. I feel calmer.”

How did that happen? How could a mechanical act like tapping on various places on the body lead to such profound emotional change? How could it lead to any change at all? Melissa’s experience flies in the face of everything we therapists thought we knew about how to help people overcome emotional pain.

The technique I used with Melissa is known as Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), one of many such approaches derived from a new field known as Energy Psychology. Energy Psychology represents a totally new way of understanding the human psyche—what causes us pain, and how that pain can be healed.

Energy psychology can be seen as an outgrowth of Traditional Chinese medicine, in which emotional and physical distress result from disruptions in the flow of Chi or Qi, the life energy that animates the body. Chi flows through the body in vehicles known as meridians. Meridians are the veins and arteries of the body’s energy system. Blocked Chi creates ill health, but one way the energy flow can be restored is by stimulating certain points on the meridians known as acupuncture points. In Chinese medicine this is done with very fine needles, placed strategically in the acupuncture points along the affected meridians.

The Energy Psychology techniques such as EFT employ acupuncture points as well, except rather than using needles, one merely taps or presses on the points. For that reason, EFT is sometimes called “psychological acupuncture.” The basic premise of EFT is that emotional and physical pain results from disruption in the flow of bioenergy, and restoring the natural flow through the stimulation of various acupuncture points leads to emotional and physical relief.

From the standpoint of Traditional Chinese Medicine, this makes sense. From the standpoint of Traditional Western Medicine, it doesn’t. Why it works is still a mystery. There is currently no Western scientific explanation of acupuncture; yet numerous studies have demonstrated its effectiveness for a variety of medical conditions. Your doctor may not be able to explain why it works, but your insurance company probably will pay for acupuncture treatments.

The Western scientific explanation may not be so far off in the future, however….


E = MC² What does this have to do with my psyche?

In the early part of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein revolutionized the field of physics , forever changing our view of the universe with what has become the most famous equation in the world, E=mc². The equation is complex and formed the basis of much of twentieth century theoretical and practical physics. Atomic power is based on the conversion of matter to energy. And what is an atomic bomb if not the conversion of radioactive matter into explosive energy?

But what does Einstein’s equation really mean? For our purposes, and in (oversimplified) terms we can all understand, what Einstein was saying is that energy and matter are the same. Matter is just bound or condensed energy. That means that everything, even your own body is composed of energy.

As Gary Craig, the originator of EFT has pointed out, this notion is so widely accepted that “not one scientist on the planet disagrees with it.” If we are composed of energy, is it really far-fetched to propose that we can effect emotional and physical change by attending to our body’s life energy?

The New Paradigm in Town

In science, a paradigm is a working set of assumptions about a topic. It’s an attempt to make sense out of all our observations so that we can systematically examine that topic. A scientific paradigm forms the basis of all thinking and research in that field. In psychology, a paradigm is a set of assumptions about what causes emotional pain and dysfunction and thus about how that emotional problem can be healed. There are several paradigms which have guided psychology over the past century. Some, like psychoanalysis, view emotional pain as stemming from early childhood experiences. Therapy consists of examining those past experiences within the context of a safe relationship with the therapist. Another prevailing paradigm, the behavioral approach, focuses on dysfunctional behavior and emotions stemming from learned behavioral responses to the environment. Therapy consists of learning new behavioral responses.

Energy psychology represents a revolutionary paradigm shift from conventional models of psychological change. It challenges the basic notions of why we experience emotional pain and how we can heal from that pain. According to the energy psychology approaches, emotional pain results from disruptions or blockages in the bioenergy system of the body, and the way to eliminate negative emotional is by correcting the flow of energy through the body.

What a revolutionary concept! I can scarcely believe it myself. The paradigm on which energy psychology approaches are based flies in the face of everything I learned in my training as a psychologist and psychotherapist. And yet, I am continuously amazed at how fast people are healing when they use the techniques of energy psychology, specifically EFT. And I have used EFT in my own life over the past few years with results I never would have believed possible ten years ago. In my first book, Weight Loss from the Inside Out: Help for the Compulsive Eater, I wrote about how it took me 10 years to completely get over my eating disorder. Now, I realize that had I had the tools of EFT available to me, I would have been able to heal in a fraction of the time.
I haven’t abandoned more traditional psychotherapy approaches entirely. I still believe we heal best within the context of a healthy relationship, and in many ways my practice as a psychologist looks like it did before I learned EFT. But increasingly in my work I am relying on EFT to help alleviate emotional pain. I have also discovered that sometimes while doing EFT, clients become aware of deeper issues fueling their pain. Body sensations and memories that arise while doing the EFT tapping are not uncommon signposts to those deeper core issues. (We will talk about this interesting phenomenon in another issue of the newsletter)

To me, EFT is another tool for accessing our own inner wisdom—an extremely powerful tool. EFT tapping is easy to learn and can be self-applied. It is also a gentle approach to healing. It’s as though the body knows how to heal from emotional and physical pain, and EFT sets that process in motion.

In upcoming newsletters, before we go on to working with guided imagery, I will talk more about EFT and how you can learn this wonderful technique through videos, books and online. I’ll give you examples from my work with clients and from my own life.