Get Past Old Beliefs

My first real introduction to tapping was after I had heard and seen it once or twice, but had never really experienced it myself. Since it looked so weird, I was skeptical that it could do anything. But I wasn’t basing this conclusion on much experience at all.

So, I drove up to Medford, Oregon to train with a man who has since become one of my primary mentors in this and related areas. During that first seminar, I was brought up in front of the class. I told my instructor that one of my goals was to deadlift 500lbs. Using a form of muscle testing, it was revealed to me that I didn’t feel safe deadlifting 500lbs. Or to put it another way, that if I pursued this goal, I’d end up hurting myself.

Why did I believe this? Because I had previously hurt myself in the deadlift. And although I was over the physical trauma of having done that many years before, I wasn’t over it psychologically. There was no pain or injury anymore, but there was this belief in the back of my mind that was holding me back.

Safely Move Towards Your Goal

Fears that remain in our subconscious minds, with little or no conscious realization, are common. The body may heal, or it may not, but unless and until you let go of the emotions surrounding that experience, they’re still in your body-mind.

With a few rounds of the EFT technique of tapping, this belief of mine was blown out. The fear of hurting myself as I pursued my goal was demolished and in its place was installed the confidence that I could safely and successfully improve toward my goal.

When I started seriously training the deadlift again, I achieved a 505lb. deadlift. It’s also worth noting that I haven’t hurt my back since, despite the fact that I deadlift with a rounded back (what many people would consider horrible form).

Working on safety issues can be a useful way to target EFT. I’ve used some quick tapping many times when I’m about to do a backflip and haven’t done so in a while. It is safe in that I’ve done so many flips that my body knows how. But with lack of practice, the fear starts to creep back. A quick round of tapping removes that completely.

Tapping to Beat Your Cravings

On a similar note, if you have a previous failure that stands in your way, you can address those with tapping, as well. This is an easy and helpful way to move beyond your past to focus on doing whatever it is correctly in your next attempt.

For many people, failure shows up in and around their nutrition. Specifically, how they handle their food choices and cravings. Tapping can be a phenomenal tool to utilize if you’re taking on a new diet or nutrition plan.

I’ll never forget the time in one of my early EFT training classes when we’re covering this exact subject. The teacher brought in a Hersey’s chocolate bar that was passed around for people to smell, look at, and then select on a scale from zero-to-ten how much they desired to eat it. I’m a big fan of chocolate and my number at the time was a seven.

Then, we went through a simple couple of rounds of tapping using the following phrases. (Click here for a refresher on these phrases and tapping.)

• Setup: “Even though I desire to eat this chocolate right now, I deeply love and accept myself.”
• Reminder: “This chocolate craving.”

In the end the chocolate bar was passed around once more so we could rate it again on the zero-to-ten scale. For me, my craving dropped down to a zero, but here’s the amazing part…

The smell changed!

I can’t explain exactly how or why this happened. But when I smelled the chocolate the second time, it was no longer the same inviting scent. It’s not that it didn’t smell like chocolate anymore, but instead I experienced the smell as plain and undesirable.

This probably has to be experienced to be believed, so I invite you to try it yourself. But that was a big moment of realization and empowerment for me. After that, it was well within my power to have more control over my eating by being able to erase cravings whenever I chose.

Clear Up Emotional Eating Issues

If you have deeper emotional eating issues (and most people do), you can use EFT techniques to clear these up. Since as children we’re so often rewarded with junk food – pizza parties for winning, cake and ice cream on birthdays, and so on – we have emotional anchors linking eating to positive feelings. We also discover that we can get into a better emotional state when we’re feeling bad by eating those same foods.

Then there’s emotional overeating. Many people eat to shut down their feelings altogether. I’m not judging here. I’ve gone through all of this stuff myself. I bring these issues up so that if you need work on these areas you now at least have awareness about it and perhaps consider trying EFT as a tool to help you.

Find a Competent Tapping Practitioner

For some of the more advanced work like this, a competent practitioner is going to be a better choice than trying to work through it yourself – just as is the case with any complicated aspect of your health and fitness. The goal of this article series was to teach you the basics so that you can experiment and use EFT for simple and easy things. But if you need more help, then by all means ask for it.

Although this is the final article in this series, this are not the only ways you can use EFT to help support your goals in the gym. There are more. Once you have the basics down use your creativity and you too can come up with new and powerful ways.

If you’ve been trying it out or if you have questions about it, please post them to the comments below.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Use EFT to Achieve Success in Your Fitness and Nutrition Goals appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Sound crazy? Consider that pain and injury are not static things. They change all the time. Even if you have chronic pain, there are times when it’s better and times when it’s worse. And if that’s the case, then there is perhaps an opportunity to get to a place where sometimes there is pain and sometimes there is no pain. And once you are there, the possibility arises of having your pain disappear completely.

If you haven’t read my previous EFT articles, click here to learn about the science behind EFT and here to learn the basics of tapping.

A Case Study on Wrist Pain

Tapping is at the heart of EFT and is best used to target the mental and emotional issues surrounding an injury. There will be sometimes, though, when you can go directly for the physical component itself.

My first experience using EFT on an injury involved my wrist. Back in high school, I injured my right wrist while playing football. I had a specially made cast I wore that wouldn’t allow my wrist to bend back more than 45 degrees. Of course, this impacted my playing, but less so that the intense shooting pain that would occur otherwise.

Years later, I was working on my handstands and this chronic wrist issue was in my way. In a handstand, your wrist is bent back approximately ninety degrees and must support your entire body weight. Because of the pain in my right wrist, I was forced to lean to my left side. Not the best way to hold a stable handstand. So progress further along in my hand-balancing skills just wasn’t happening.

I had tried regularly stretching, which certainly made it better, but the pain and stiffness was still there. So, as typically happens before a big change, I got fed up and swore to myself that I would fix it.

I threw everything and the kitchen sink at the problem. This included energy psychology, to which I had only recently been introduced. I used tapping while I addressed the emotional issues surrounding my chronic injury, as well as those of the first cause (more on those in a minute).

I did this in combination with stretching, mobility drills, some other mental training, and applying topical liniments to the area. In the end I called it “fixed” when I was able to do a one-handed handstand, against the wall, on my formerly injured right hand. This all happened within a span of a few weeks.

To this day, that wrist still not as flexible as my left, but there hasn’t been any pain in about five years now.

EFT in Action: Watch and Learn

Intrigued about how to actually perform EFT? A great way to learn is just by watching and imitating a person, so I‘ve included a video here:

Pain Free in Thirty Minutes

Just recently, I did some work with a woman on her shoulder pain. Her pain had existed for several years following an injury while playing basketball, which was further hurt during subsequent car accidents. After a half-hour EFT session, her pain was 100% gone, and has never returned.

I’m always amazed when the technique works this well and happy to have helped the person in this way. Sometimes it really is just the emotional pain that keeps the physical pain there. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work like this. More often then not, it is best to accompany the tapping with other physical solutions, like I did with my wrist.

Remove Blocks to Healing

If you have a pain or injury that isn’t healing, then something has gone wrong wrong. It is natural for the body to heal. You can probably think of many instances where an injury did heal properly and you got better as the body put itself back together naturally and over time.

But this isn’t always the case. Why? For whatever reason the body may get signals – from beliefs, additional physical or emotional trauma, and all manner of thoughts and feelings – that direct the body not to heal and impairing that process in some way. Then after time, this becomes a habit in the body and thus the lack of healing can stick around forever.

Every single cell in the human body gets replaced over time. Blood cells come and go in a few days’ time. Bone cells, which stay the longest, are still changed out about every seven years. Yet a chronic injury can stick around longer than any of the cells that were there originally. Therefore, something must be keeping it in place.

So when you remove that “something,” the body’s natural healing methods can work once again. This can be backed up by conscious decisions you make to support that healing even further. There are a few methods in EFT that work to do this.

Chasing the Pain

In the chasing the pain technique you’re going after the pain specifically. Sometimes this doesn’t even involve your emotions, although other times they get brought up. Case in point: one woman I worked started with a complaint of an upset stomach that, by chasing the pain, we discovered was linked to her stifled creativity.

To use the chasing the pain technique, you must become hyper-specific about how you feel the pain (or tightness, pressure, etc. that you feel). This means that the pain must be present at this time.

Ask yourself the following questions about your pain:

• What are the qualities of it?
• Is it a sharp pain? Or dull?
• Does it come on quickly and then go away or is it always present?
• What area does it cover? A big area or a specific location?
• Is it always in the same place or does it move?
• Is there a temperature sensation (hot or cold) associated with it?
• If it’s not pain, but a pressure, how does that feel?
• What is the intensity of it? (on a zero-to-ten scale)

As you do your tapping sequence, you’ll verbalize those specific qualities. Its called chasing the pain because after a round or two, more often than not, the quality of the pain will change. Then you chase it, finding and identifying the new qualities and continuing to tap. Sometimes you’re able to chase it right outside the body.

Tap on Emotions for Best Success

This is a great for the physical aspects of pain, but as I mentioned, you’ll mostly want to tap on the emotional aspects for the best success. To work on the emotional issues surrounding an injury, there are two main places to look – the present and the past.

What are your current feelings regarding the pain? Do you feel like its hopeless? Are you angry? Does it make you feel depressed? Tap away the negative feelings.

And typically, it’s even more important is to work on the emotional trauma that most likely began with the physical trauma. The two almost always go together. Think back to when you first hurt yourself and tap through the emotions of that event.

Some typical emotions involving injuries are:

• Anger at others
• Anger at yourself
• Shock and surprise
• Embarrassment
• Feeling stupid
• Sadness
• Loss or grief, if the injury led to loss of important opportunities

As usual, when you go through these incidents and the surrounding emotions, more may come up. When you tap on the fact that you felt stupid for hurting yourself, you may uncover your anger towards those who could have stopped it. Sometimes there are multiple events and emotions that must be worked through.

Also keep in mind that some other important areas to look at are safety issues you may have in regards to the future. For instance, “If I get better, I’ll just hurt myself again.”

Get Better and Faster Results

Working through this emotional and physical healing process may take some time, but it can’t hurt. Since the psychological component is what is most often left out of any physical therapy approach, I feel that by adding this EFT technique to your healing regimen, you’re sure to get better, faster, and more complete results.

Photos 1, 3, & 4 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post How to Banish Your Pain Faster and More Completely appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

How would you like to be able to improve in any exercise instantly? I know that sounds full of hype. But if you stick with me, you’ll learn you can do exactly that.

Target the Breathing for Immediate Improvement

A few years ago I was going through my first official EFT class. I had been using tapping for a couple of years, having been trained by someone else, but I decided to go deeper and work towards getting my certification in it.

During that class, the instructors showed one technique called the constricted breathing technique. There are several uses of this technique. First, it can be a useful way to introduce the benefits of tapping. Second, breathing is tied into various emotional issues and thus it can be useful to target the breathing rather than go straight at the issue at hand. 

For now, let’s stick to the first use. Here’s how you do it. And yes, I would recommend you give it a try right now.

1. Take a couple deep breaths. After having done so, rate on a scale of zero-to-ten how deep your breathing is, with ten being the fullest breath possible.
2. Then you tap, starting with a phrase like, “Even though my breathing is constricted…” or “Even though I can‘t breath fully…” and perform one or more rounds through the whole sequence.
3. Once you’re done, take a few deep breaths and rate on the scale of zero-to-ten again.

Having showed this technique to many people, I find about 80% see some improvement immediately. But, so what? So you can breathe deeper after doing this? That’s great and all, but when I learned this, my mind then immediately went to, “What else can I do?”

The Instant Energy Exercise Enhancer

Breathing is a movement of the human body. The lungs expand and contract along with the diaphragm and other surrounding tissues. If tapping can help the movement of breathing, can it do the same for any movement?

As my experimentation with myself and others began, the answer appeared to be a resounding yes. I call it the Instant Energy Exercise Enhancer because it instantly enhances any exercise. (Duh.)

Now, it isn’t foolproof. Unfortunately, nothing ever is. But this technique seems to help in eight or nine cases out of ten. Using this method, I’ve seen people double the number of reps they can do of a given exercise. I’ve seen them go from the impossible to the possible. It was how I tripled the number of freestanding handstand push ups I could do, the story of which I shared in the first article.

Yet, it’s not always that dramatic. Typically, there is just an incremental improvement. But if you can do something just a little bit easier, even five or ten percent better, then isn’t that worth it?

Shifting Your Mental Programming

Here’s a video from when I first taught this technique in a workshop:

I can’t tell you exactly how this technique works, though it seems to shift the mental programming and your neurology around any exercise towards a place where it is easier. In addition, it helps put you into a confident state, which is critical for success.

To do it, start tapping with the setup phrase, something along the lines of:

• “Even though pistols are hard for me, I deeply accept and appreciate myself.”
• “Even though I don’t think I can make this press…”
• “Even though I’m not good at overhead squats…”

Then, run through the tapping sequence with the reminder phrase. I typically keep it simple with something like “it’s hard” or “this is challenging.”

Then, make it even better by flipping to the positive. Continue tapping another round and say the following:

• “I know I can do it better and easier than before.”
• “I got this.”
• “I will set a personal record.”

The important thing is to use this technique regularly. Don’t only try it when you’re going after a new max lift. By all means use it then, but include it as a frequent part of your training and you’ll see more exercises become easier and easier. And, yes, you can often use it a couple times in a row, improving each time.

Next time we’ll discuss how tapping can be used to help with something that holds many people back from achieving their goals – injuries.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post How to Instantly Improve in Any Exercise appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

What is the most difficult part of working out for most people? Finding the motivation to do it. It’s probably not a big issue for many people reading here. We love to work out. We enjoy it. But that’s not the scenario for the average person. And even so, we all go through days when we’re just not feeling it.

A Recap on EFT

In 5 Workout Remedies for When You Feel Weak, I discussed some of the strategies you can take when you feel that way before training. There, I introduced the idea of using Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, and that’s what this article is all about.

This is the third in a series of articles on using EFT to improve your performance in the gym and sports. If you missed it, the first article introduced what EFT can do for you, covering both anecdotal and scientific evidence for its use. The second article was all about how to do the technique. It’s important you read both of those articles before continuing here.

Make Sure You Are Ready to Work Out

A bad state can lead to a bad workout. It’s hard to be at your strongest, best conditioned, and most skilled when you feel bad. Of course, this is not always the case.

There are times when you feel like crap but get started anyway and have a phenomenal workout. So what’s the different between the two?

It’s useful to be able to tune in to your body. Does your body feel weak? Does your body feel like crap physically? Or is it mentally or emotionally so?

The body and mind are a system and you can’t affect one without affecting the other. That being said, knowing where the issue originates is important.

If the physical body is overtrained, then rest may be the best thing for you. But if you’re not feeling like working out because of stress at work or in your relationships, this can typically be easily dealt with to allow you to focus on getting results in the gym.

And even if you feel like working out right now, ask yourself, could it be better? If you rated your excitement to train right now on a scale of zero to ten, how high would it be? This can show you that even if you’re good to go, you may not be completely optimal.

The Personal Record Amplifier

I call this technique the PR Amplifier (PR stands for “personal record”) because I found that by doing it I tended to more easily hit personal records when I trained. Here are the five steps to this process:

1. Take note of your starting state

Rate it on a scale of zero to ten. Zero being absolutely no desire to train right now and ten being you can’t wait to get started and are full of enthusiasm.

2. Tap the karate chop point while saying the setup phrase

This needs to match where you’re currently at and how you’re feeling. Here are a few examples:

• “Even though I feel like crap right now, I choose to have a great workout anyway.”
• “Even though I feel okay right now, I choose to have a great workout.”
• “Even though I’m unmotivated to train, I know I can feel more optimistic and energetic.”

3. Run through the tapping sequence

Say your reminder phrase with each point. Here’s the list of points once again and example reminder phrases:

1. Inner Eyebrow
2. Outside Eyes
3. Under Eyes
4. Under Nose
5. Under Mouth
6. Under Collarbone
7. Breast Bone
8. Under Arm
9. Seams of Legs

• “Feel like crap.”
• “I feel okay.”
• “Unmotivated.”

4. Now that you’ve covered your starting state, switch over to the desired state as you continue tapping through the main sequence of points

• “I choose to have a great workout.”
• “I feel optimistic and energetic.”
• “I know I’m going to set some personal records today.”

5. Take note of your new state

Once you’re finished take note of your current state and how much you want to work out now. Is your current state high enough for you? I like to be at an eight or above before starting.

If you haven’t reached the desired state, then you can repeat the process. Also, if any specific issues came to mind while you ran through the tapping, then be sure to deal with those at this point, too.

This whole process generally takes a couple of minutes. Considering that the state you’re in will have a big impact on the results you get in your workout, this process is worth doing every time. Please give it a shot and report your results in the comments below.

In my next article, I’ll go into detail on how you can use EFT to see immediate improvements in just about any exercise.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post My Secret Technique for Getting Results and Breaking Records appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

This is the second in a series of articles on using Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, to help improve your performance in the gym and sports. If you missed it, the first article introduces what EFT can do for you, covering both anecdotal and scientific evidence for its use.

Trying EFT on Your Own

In this article you’ll learn how to use EFT. While EFT is fairly simple and can be done by yourself once you learn the basics, doing it on your own is not always best. To handle bigger issues, you often need a qualified person to lead you through the practice.

Just like having a coach or trainer is often best in the gym, especially when starting out, it’s the same with EFT. You wouldn’t teach yourself techniques on exercises from the start, so don’t expect to get the best results from EFT if you only read these articles or even just watch a few videos.

With that being said, once you do understand the basics, you can use this for yourself and there’s really no harm in trying. At worst you’ll be in the same place you were before your started.

The Basics Behind EFT

EFT involves tapping on specific acupressure points while saying certain statements. The points used correspond to different meridians in order to work with your energy and nervous systems to help recode the issue at hand. While you’ll need to memorize the points, you don’t need to know any of the deeper details like which points belong to which meridians. And there’s only ten or so of them, so it’s quite easy.

The statements are used for a couple different reasons, but the main purpose is to bring up the relevant issue and keep it in the forefront of your mind so that the tapping can transform it.

EFT needs to be aimed at a specific problem. A common mistake is to try it on too global of an issue. For instance, if you lack confidence tapping on the phrase “I lack confidence” isn’t likely to do much. Instead, you want to narrow your problem down to something specific. “I lack confidence in being able to do a muscle up” would work just fine, if that were your issue.

Along with this, you’ll want to assign an intensity level to the statement. On a scale of zero to ten, with zero being not at all and ten being the highest intensity, how true is this statement? Tune in to your body and feel how true it is for you. It’s important to do this before you begin your EFT practice, as this number will be used later to measure against and see how the tapping has made changes.

The Setup

The first point you tap on is known as the karate chop point. It’s on the pinky side of your hand, at the middle of the palm. This can be tapped with the four fingers of the other hand.

While tapping on this point, you’re going to say a statement designed to temporarily eliminate psychological reversals. A lot of the subconscious concerns like safety, deservedness, or other issues surrounding your identity can stand in your way. These are called psychological reversals. The name means that if you have one of these, then you will reverse what you consciously say you want, because a greater need is being fulfilled by not changing.

By using the setup, you can often temporarily side step these issues to get results with the rest of the process. For example:

“Even though I have [name the problem], I deeply love and accept myself.”

And yes, this is the point where some people start snickering because it’s not cool or manly to love yourself, but just stick with me on this. This is the classic setup phrase, but you can use variations of it. In fact, a statement like the example doesn’t always apply in a big way to what you’re trying to do in the gym, so other variations may fit better.

Some examples of gym-specific phrases include:

• “Even though I fear hurting my back while deadlifting, I know I can do it safely and effectively.”
• “Even though I doubt I‘ll be able to lift this weight, I choose to give it my all.”
• “Even though I desire to eat this food right now, I deeply love and accept myself.”

The phrase “I deeply love and accept myself” is used because it acknowledges self-acceptance in spite of the problem. If people don’t feel they love and accept themselves, they can use the phrase, “I choose to deeply love and accept myself.”

Honestly, if you are trying to make a change but can’t accept yourself for where you’re currently at, then you don‘t have much hope of making positive changes. In fact, youy may continue to access more negativity, often in never-ending loops, that keep you stuck or make things even worse.

Generally the setup statement is repeated three times before you move onto the next sequence.

Warning: Tapping can get quite emotional. I’ve had a person burst into tears when she tried to say, “I deeply love and accept myself.” But if you don’t feel this statement is true (and be honest with yourself), it’ll be hard to be a peak performer.

The Tapping Points

From this setup phrase you’ll use a shorter statement. This is called the reminder phrase. Its purpose is to keep the issue at the forefront of your mind. From the examples above you could use:

• “Hurting my back.”
• “Doubt I can lift it.”
• “Desire to eat [x].” (where [x] is the food you have a craving to eat right now)

The main sequence of tapping makes up the bulk of the process. This involves tapping on certain points from the top of your body down. Different people use some different points but these nine as a basic formula have worked well for me:

1. Inner Eyebrow
2. Outside Eyes
3. Under Eyes
4. Under Nose
5. Under Mouth
6. Under Collarbone
7. Breast Bone
8. Under Arm
9. Seams of Legs

Watch Me Do EFT and Learn

The best way to learn is just by watching and imitating a person, so I‘ve included a video here:

You’ll tap on each point about seven or more times. The exact number isn‘t important and you don‘t need to count. Instead, you‘ll tap while saying the reminder phrase.

When you’re tapping the points, you’ll usually use two fingers – the index and middle – for all the points on the face. For the other points on the body, you can include the two fingers and thumb or even all the fingers close together.

You’ll typically go through this whole sequence two or more times. It really depends on the issue at hand. After you complete a tapping sequence, check back in with your intensity level. Has it gone down? Has it gone up? This sometimes happens as initially the tapping and talking can trigger the issue to come to the surface more. If the intensity has gone up, then keep tapping.

Also, pay attention to what else comes up, like different memories that may be related to the issue. For instance if you have a fear of hurting your back in the deadlift, it’s probably because you did it before. Going back to that initial trauma and tapping on that is what is going to help remove the current fear.

You also have aspects that are certain components of the issue. For instance, you can pay attention to and tap on the specific feelings you have in your body. You may feel the craving or fear you’re working with in specific areas of your body. You can bring up those details while you tap.

This article is only meant to give you an overview of the technique. There’s far more detail in how to use this than can be covered in one article. But in the next articles in this series, I will dive deeper into specific issues, giving you step-by-step details on how you can use them to help improve your performance.

Photo 1 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post How to Use EFT to Overcome Challenges in the Gym appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Finding the Breakthrough

That was until that one breakthrough workout. I realized the only reason I couldn’t do more than one rep was because I was stuck in a mental box. I believed that freestanding handstand push ups were hard and that I couldn’t do more than one – so it was manifested in my reality. This belief came about through my experience of the exercise being difficult and a lot of work to achieve even that one complete rep.

After this realization, I started tapping on my body at specific points and saying, “Freestanding handstand push ups are hard and I can’t do more than one at a time.” I repeated this over and over before shifting to the positive. “I got this. I can do more.” (Had this been a deeply seated belief, it would have taken more work, but in this case it was easy to transform.)

Once I had finished tapping I kicked up into a handstand and dipped down twice, just as easily as I had done singles before. I was excited but I knew there was more. I went for it again and did another double. I followed this up with another round of tapping to help open up the possibilities even further.

On my next set I hit a triple. 

Using Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

I went from one to three reps by removing a mental block that stood in my way. The tool I used to remove it is called Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT for short. Since that time I’ve shared this technique with many of my clients, helping them to hit all kinds of personal records, as well as accomplish much else.

EFT is the most well known form of energy psychology, a self-help and psychological tool that has become quite popular in the past few years. In this series of articles, I’ll introduce you to the technique, explain how to do it, and show you the many ways it can help you out.

EFT Can Accelerate Healing

EFT is typically used to work on emotional traumas like phobias and childhood events. Many psychologists use the technique because it gets faster and better results than many other methods. But its use is not limited to psychologists or even trauma. I am not a psychologist myself. And while that stuff is great, I’m always looking for the edge to help me get stronger. What I have found is that EFT is a great tool for getting better results in the gym and in sports. While other people have used it for this purpose it is one of the lesser-explored areas.

One of the things that hold people back from achieving their goals in the gym is injury. EFT can help greatly here. Injuries aren’t just physical, but have a mental-emotional component to them, as well. When this mental aspect is dealt with a person can greatly accelerate the healing of an injury. In fact, sometimes it seems like the emotional trauma is the only thing holding the injury in place.

I know. It sounds too good to be true. It sounds woo-woo. But when you see it work like that you can’t deny it. I worked with one woman on a chronically bad shoulder she had for seven years. After a half-hour session her injury was gone for good and hasn’t returned. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that well. But there’s always some improvement, if you get to the heart of the matter.

EFT Can Help You Perform Better

EFT has a wide range of uses for helping you perform better. Any time I’m not feeling like training, a round or two of tapping can be enough to put me into the right state I need to train.

EFT can also simply and effectively deal with food cravings of any kind. It can turn something from being a battle of willpower, which is doomed to fail, to actually making the desire disappear. Like when it somehow changes what chocolate smells like to you. Seriously! How it does that I can’t say for sure, but I’ve seen it happen over and over again. These are all personal stories of my own experience with EFT or that of my clients.

Tapping as a Form of EFT

Tapping, another often used name for EFT, combines elements of Western psychology with Chinese Medicine, specifically the use of acupressure points. There are several theories as to how it works, including that tapping on the points creates an electromagnetic signal that can help to recode the nervous system and brain. This makes sense when dealing with trauma, as you access the memory, which can then be literally recoded in its connections in your neural network, yet it doesn’t necessarily explain all the other effects that EFT can have.

Acupressure points lie on the meridians, one of the energy systems detailed out thousands of years ago in Chinese medicine. Although these points have been measured to show lower electrical resistance than other random points on the body and stimulation of points causing brain changes via fMRI, Western science still has much disbelief about such things.

What the Research Says

So right now you may be asking yourself is how well is this stuff studied. As tapping is still in its infancy, studies are just being started in comparison to many other much-studied subjects. Also since it’s a free process that anyone can do, not only could it stop many medications being used, but also many healthcare professionals could lose their jobs. So, there is no money to be made in EFT, except of course those doing it with clients or teaching others how to use it. That being said, a few preliminary studies have been conducted.

According to David Feinstein, a leader in the field and a clinical psychologist:

A literature search identified 51 peer-reviewed papers that report or investigate clinical outcomes following the tapping of acupuncture points to address psychological issues. The 18 randomized controlled trials in this sample were critically evaluated for design quality, leading to the conclusion that they consistently demonstrated strong effect sizes and other positive statistical results that far exceed chance after relatively few treatment sessions. Criteria for evidence-based treatments proposed by Division 12 of the American Psychological Association were also applied and found to be met for a number of conditions, including PTSD.

One study measured the cortisol levels of people in three groups, one that did tapping, another who underwent standard talk therapy, and a third group that did nothing but sit in a relaxing environment. In all three groups the cortisol levels drops. The talk therapy and control group both dropped by about fifteen percent while the tapping group dropped 24 percent – a significant statistical difference.

As for sports performance there are results there too. Gary Craig, the creator of EFT, detailed a study using EFT with basketball teams. Greg Warburton at the Oregon State University tested the results of EFT compared to a placebo on free throws. The results were a 38 percent improvement. Another study was done with rugby penalty kicks among volunteers. In this case the improvement was 80.7%. More case studies for sports performance and all manner of other uses can be found here.

So tapping may look weird, but I’m about doing what works. Even with something esoteric, with the results it can bring, I can’t say no. I have to do it. You can be skeptical and lose out on the benefits – or you can put that skepticism to the side and try it out. If it can improve your performance even just a little bit, wouldn’t that be worth it?

After all this, I’m sure you’re curious how to actually practice tapping. In my next article, I’ll show you how to get started and how you can do it on your own.

References:

1. Feinstein, D., “Acupoint Stimulation in Treating Psychological Disorders: Evidence of Efficiency.” Review of General Psychology, 16, 364-380. doi:10.1037/a0028602

2. Smith, S. “EFT brings about 80.7% sports performance improvement.” Emotional Freedom Techniques. Accessed July 15, 2014.

3. Church D., Yount G., et al. “The effect of emotional freedom techniques on stress biochemistry: a randomized controlled trial.” J Nerv Ment Dis. 2012 Oct;200(10):891-6. doi: 10.1097/NMD.0b013e31826b9fc1.

4. Ahn AC., Colbert AP., et al. “Electrical properties of acupuncture points and meridians: a systematic review.” Bioelectromagnetics. 2008 May;29(4):245-56. doi: 10.1002/bem.20403.

5. Huang W., Pach D., et al. “Characterizing acupuncture stimuli using brain imaging with FMRI–a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature.” PLoS One. 2012;7(4):e32960. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0032960. Epub 2012 Apr 9.

6. Craig, G., The EFT Manual Energy Psychology Press, 2010, California pg. 58-59.

Photos 2 & 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

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