The History and Science of EFT
Twenty years ago an American Hypnotherapist and
Psychotherapist, Roger Callaghan, was working with a client called Mary, who
suffered from a water phobia. Mary had suffered for years, had been everywhere
for help without success, and had been visiting Callaghan for some time.
Callaghan was pursuing a personal interest in the Oriental
meridian system. These are invisible pathways along which energy or chi flows in
the body linking the organ systems together, and which come to the surface of
the body at certain points.
During a particular session, under regression, Mary was
experiencing her fear of water and complained of a sick feeling in her stomach.
Callaghan thought...."Stomach...., stomach meridian, what if....?" and
asked Mary to tap the point under the eye, which is on the stomach meridian.
After a few moments of tapping, Mary cried out, "It's gone!" She
jumped up and rushed out of the room to the pool outside to test it. Her fear
had indeed gone and has never returned, but it left Callaghan with a puzzle -
just what had happened? He was as amazed as she was.
Initial research and the development of Thought Field Therapy
(T.F.T.)
Knowing he had hit upon something quite extraordinary,
Callaghan started to research with all kinds of phobias and then all kinds of
other emotional problems. His research revealed that different emotions were
linked to different meridians. He developed Thought Field Therapy; how to
release specific emotions by stimulating combinations of meridian points.
The main meridian channels
Callaghan worked with Physicist David Bohm, to understand what
was actually going on. He began to experience 80-90% success in his work using
T.F.T. in his clinic, resolving problems in anything from 1-3 sessions, compared
with 10 or more sessions before.
All this research led to the important discovery or
conclusion that, "all negative emotions arise from a disturbance or
blockage in our body's energy system".
T.F.T. was the first technique of this new field of Energy
Psychology and continues to be successful today. However, one of Callaghan's
students, Gary Craig, an Engineer and Lay Preacher, noticed during his training
courses that only 14 meridian points in total were ever used in all the
combinations of points in T.F.T.
Gary Craig and EFT
Being a lateral thinker, he said, "Instead of learning
all the combinations for the different types of emotions, why don't we just tap
the lot for everything?" and thus Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) was
born, as a much simpler technique involving tapping or stimulating the 14
meridian points for any kind of negative emotion.
Silvia Hartmann and EmoTrance
Silvia Hartmann, PhD Researcher in the Field of Human
Potential, has done much for introducing Energy Psychology techniques into the
U.K., and through setting up The Association of Meridian Therapies in 1998, to
set professional standards for the clinical practice of these therapies as their
popularity and uptake increased.
Silvia, being a passionate researcher and explorer in Personal
and Spiritual Development, went on to develop an even simpler system for
transforming emotional energy, EmoTrance, which was born and presented to the
world in London, in 2002.
Through EmoTrance we understand that everything is energy,
that everything we experience comes into our being as energy first, and that all
energies have a nutritional element for us. We understand that whether we have
an enriching or stressful response to life's events depends purely on how our
energy system handles the incoming energy....the looks, the comments, the impact
of events.
When we don't handle energy well we feel that build up of
pressure in the chest, head, stomach, etc., accompanying the emotion of stress.
What Silvia added was that this energy disturbance, which we tune into each time
we recall the distressing incident, responds instantly to thought.
So, with EmoTrance, we use thought alone, or more accurately,
our intention, to soften the energy. When soft enough, the energy flows once
again and we actually feel the movement of this energy through and out of our
body as a warmth or tingling movement through and out. Once all of the energy is
released, returning to the original thought no longer creates distress; instead
a new clarity and understanding which was not accessible when we were in our
previous emotional state is experienced. Indeed, we realise that emotions are
merely the feedback devices, the symptoms, of blockages and disturbances in the
body's subtle energy system.
Energy Psychology continues to develop
Energy Psychology continues to evolve and as we learn and
practice these techniques, we become more aware of the flow of energy in life.
We may consciously choose to work and live with energy, noticing when it gets
blocked, restoring the flow and being nourished even more by all the energies
around us....colours, sounds, the weather, the earth, our families, colleagues
and friends.
Life simplifies to the understanding that stress and suffering
arise simply from blocked energy and that we now have the power in these simple
tools, to restore the even flow to rediscover peace, find clarity, for
acceptance, understanding, release, wisdom, passion, inspiration, compassion and
love.
Research in Energy Psychology
Research into this new field has been carried out and Dr. Phil
Mollon, Psychologist and author, has collated much of this in his book, 'EMDR
and Energy Psychology - Psychoanalytic Perspectives', Karnac, London.
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