What is EFT Tapping?
The short answer is, it’s like a makeover or spring cleaning for your mind.
Using your own fingers, you gently tap on acupressure points on your head and upper body. If you look at the image, using 2 fingers, you would tap gently 5-8 times on each point.
This stimulates an impulse that sends a message to your amygdala that it’s safe to dial down the stress response it has been pumping throughout your system.
A Deeper Dive: How EFT Works
EFT is an evidence-based self-help technique that has been demonstrated to be effective for stress relief, pain, emotional distress and many other issues.
Stress, which can include memories & emotions, can cause the wise, logical & articulate parts of our brain (the neocortex & limbic systems) to go offline, triggering our automatic survival responses like fight, flight & freeze— in spite of our best intentions & efforts. The amygdala, part of the brain’s limbic system which is largely responsible for our emotional life, lives deep in your brain, below the level of conscious, wise, compassionate thinking. Like a guard watching for possible danger, the amygdala is the command centre of our fear-based responses. It activates our fight, flight, freeze and fawn responses. These are useful, lifesaving —& unconscious!— reactions when there is an actual threat that needs our immediate attention. However, much of the time that threat isn’t actual & we are left trying to fight through our own safeguards to get to doing what we want to do, to live the life we want to live.
Researchers are seeing evidence that tapping on the specific acupressure points works to reverse the brain’s emotional stress response by communicating directly with the amygdala. When tapping is paired with negative memories or emotions, as in EFT, the brain is simultaneously exposed to the thing that triggers its fight-or-flight reaction (the memory) and the thing that deactivates it (tapping). In psychology, similar techniques are often used for treating trauma. They’re called psychological exposure and reciprocal inhibition.
Because of the brain’s amazing capacity for neuroplasticity, changing the amygdala’s response brings about a re-wiring of the system & your nervous system can find a new way of reacting/responding to what has been a triggering situation. To put it another way, we are literally rewiring the brain when we tap.
DOCUMENTATION & STUDIES
Clinical studies show that using EFT reduces cortisol by up to 43% in an hour—the natural rate of decline is 14% over an hour (Stapleton, Crighton and O’Neill, 2020)
For an overview and summary of EFT and its efficacy and uses, please click on this external link: EFT Efficacy & Scientific Research Summary 2022
To see the many peer-reviewed studies on EFT, please click on this external link: Scientific Research on EFT Tapping