Many people want to know: does EFT work? More importantly, does it work on their specific needs?

The way to know is to try EFT by doing it daily for a while.

If you question whether EFT works, you’ll also need to know if changes in your life in any way relate to the EFT tapping you’ve been doing.

With that in mind, I’ve developed an EFT Progress Chart to encourage my clients to make a record of the EFT tapping sessions they do. Keeping a log of sessions not only helps organize our healing efforts, it provides historical context to the questions we may have about whether EFT works at all. Just like with any scientific inquiry, good records must be kept. Thus an EFT Progress Chart is what we need.

You can download my EFT Progress Chart as a word.doc file or as a pdf file. Either way, it is easy to print out and use.

Here’s a sample EFT Progress Chart I’ve filled out:

EFT Progress Chart for keeping a historical record of EFT sessions.

* Learn EFT at home! Get Gary Craig’s FREE pdf e-book or buy the DVDs now!

I’m going to start using this blog to discuss something very personal – and that is the EFT I’m doing on myself, to solve my own long-standing personal problems. Perhaps I should have started this many months ago when I first started using EFT. Since then I’ve overcome many problems including fear of driving on cliffs and high bridges, and a general fear of abandonment.

I like to do a little personal EFT self-improvement every day. Today my effort will be to give myself more confidence as a Reiki healer – something I’ve just begun. I got my Reiki level one attunement earlier this month. Actually it was the second distant attunement I’d gotten for level one but I asked to do it again because the person who is attuning me now will take me through the Master level and certify me.

Here’s my EFT for this issue:

Setup phrase: Even though I’m new to Reiki and haven’t used it much, and feel unsure of my ability to do so effectively, I deeply and completely accept myself.

Tapping: Reiki Confidence (using the Basic Recipe version of EFT *)

After going through the tapping process it is my habit to sit back and relax, and take a few breaths. I center myself this way and meditate a bit on how I feel about the issue. In this case, while I was doing the tapping it had occurred to me that my real issue is about effectiveness, not just confidence. I will do the procedure again, this time concentrating on effectiveness.

I’m at about a 5 re: being unsure of my ability to be effective as a Reiki healer.

Setup phrase: Even though I’m still unsure of my ability to be effective as a Reiki healer, I deeply and completely accept myself.

Tapping: Reiki Effectiveness

During and after doing this procedure for the second time, I had a light-hearted feeling – something that alerts me to the fact that I’ve had my emotional break-through. I got happy and then thought ‘how silly – of course you’re as effective as anyone!’ And now I’m at a 0 level of concern for this issue. I feel that I’m as effective as any Reiki healer with only a few weeks experience – in other words, someone who is at the beginning of being a level one Reiki healer as I am.

Another EFT success!

* Learn EFT at home! Get Gary Craig’s FREE e-book now!

You are welcome to join the Energy Therapy group at Gather, where you can read about Reiki, Qigong, Quantum Touch, EFT, and other energy healing therapies. The group members post articles about energy therapy modalities of all types, and comment on one another’s writing.

If you’re going to join Gather, please do me a favor and use this link so I’ll get credit for you and so you’ll automatically be connected to me in the system. There’s no cost to join Gather.

“Tapping? How can that help?” I asked my boyfriend. This was about eight months ago right after he found an advertisement for EFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques, on his favorite website.

“Well, hold on,” he said, “I’m reading about it now.” There was a website full of information and a free e-book for anyone wanting to learn how to do EFT. We dove right in and tried to get as much information about it as we could.

The e-book, written by EFT promoter Gary Craig, explained that we can be set free from emotional traumas by tapping on our energy meridians – the same ones used during acupuncture. With EFT we don’t use needles – just our fingers, tapping on the right places. This is supposed to eliminate energy blockages that occur along the meridians, and free us from emotional or physical pain. The e-book explains exactly where those places are – at the inner corner of our eyebrows, on the side of our eyes, under our eyes, under our noses, under our mouths, on our collarbone, at our sides, and various places on our fingers and the side of our hands. (You should read the free e-book before trying this as it explains exactly where to tap.)

To do EFT we start by using a ’setup phrase’ based on whatever we’ve experienced that’s causing us problems. It is better to focus on specific events than on generalities. For example if a childhood incident of abandonment is causing an adult to fear being alone, the setup phrase might go something like this: “Even though my father left me alone in the house when I was little, I deeply and completely accept myself.” In basic EFT, the setup phrases always start with “Even though…” and end with “…I deeply and completely accept myself.”

After saying the setup phrase three times while tapping on one of two places (these are explained in the e-book) the person needing help goes on to tap on the various energy meridians while repeating a phrase such as “abandoned” or “left alone”, or whatever the problem is.

Of course there’s many other reasons to seek relief using EFT — it isn’t just about feelings of abandonment. EFT can be used on almost anything including physical pains and ailments. Gary Craig encourages people to try it on everything. There may be things it doesn’t work for, but there’s no harm in trying, and many people have found relief for the following types of things: phobias, traumas, panic/anxiety attacks, chronic pain, headaches, backaches, toothaches, snoring, ADD/ADHD, dyslexia, weight loss, addictions, allergies, sports performance, hypertension, diabetes, and depression.

If you’re interested and want to try it, please look into getting the free e-book and reading some of Gary Craig’s articles.

My boyfriend has been reading consciousness-raising message boards lately and found a few references to a DVD we hadn’t seen, The Illuminated Chakras: A Visionary Voyage Into Your Inner World, produced and directed by Anodea Judith. We rented it and watched it twice this week. My boyfriend, Bob, is so taken with the beauty of this DVD, he wants to own his own copy. I am entranced, but not sure I want to see it fifty times even though it runs only about 30 minutes.

The art by Alex Wayne is the big attraction. It is so good it won an award for best animation at the 2004 New York Independent Film Festival. This film is worth at least one viewing if only to see that part of it. But I noticed during my second viewing that there were plenty of details about the chakras that I was learning – and it could take many times through to get all the information firmly implanted into my brain.

Anodea Judith narrates throughout, explaining what each chakra does. Kundalini-Shakti, the mystical serpent, is seen in each segment as she makes her way from the root chakra to the crown chakra where she’s reunited with Shiva, the supreme being.

This DVD is a great introduction to the chakra system for anyone who knows nothing about them, and for those who know a lot about the chakras, it is great entertainment. I can see myself having this DVD for my clients to view after I start my energy therapy practice. If I have an actual office with a waiting room, I will make this available for people to watch there.

I found Anodea Judith’s website, Sacred Centers, and noted that she’s offering a full course on self-diagnosis and healing in a six-CD set. I very much want to get this as I doubt I’ll be able to attend her workshops any time soon. According to the website, Anodea Judith holds “Masters and Doctoral degrees in Psychology and Human Health, with lifelong studies of alternative medicine, yoga, mythology, history, sociology, systems theory, and mystic spirituality.”

…

While we were watching the DVD, Bob asked me a couple of questions I would now like to ask you.

1. Have you ever seen a chakra?

2. What chakras do you most identify with?

My answers to the questions were (1) I have seen my own chakras while meditating, but haven’t seen anyone else’s. And (2) I most identify with the heart chakra and the crown chakra. For me it is easier to stay in awareness of these two, and feel like some interconnection with spirit is really happening. I think maybe my other chakras aren’t as developed, which concerns me. I’m working on getting them all to work equally well.

Gary Craig’s most recent EFT newsletter contains this ‘thought for the day’:

“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” - Confucius

This hits home as I’m starting to study energy healing. I’ve done it naturally on my own at times over the years, but now I’m open to improving my skills by learning from experts, and I’m developing ideas for this healing business.

As part of my training I’m putting myself through a rigorous course of study - mainly on metaphysical and writing topics. I expect this to last for a minimum of five years, so even after I start the EFT energy healing business I’ll continue to learn.

For anyone truly alive, learning never ends.

When I read something like this article about Carmela it makes me want to do something to help the suffering people of the world.

This poor woman was afraid of getting sick and so she shut herself off from the world for twenty-six years. Her brother enabled this by leaving food for her on her doorstep, though he hasn’t actually seen her in ten years.

EFT could have helped her long ago. But this week her brother was unable to continue feeding her due to medical problems of his own, so he had to tell the authorities there in Italy about her plight. And they did the only reasonable thing. They removed her from her home and brought her back to the land of the living.

Only time will tell if this will work out well for Carmela. A part of me wants to cry out that Carmela should be left alone, to arrange her life as she chooses. Yet I see that she is in need of healing and I hope that she’ll be getting the help that will be most beneficial for her psyche.

This is my first post on my new blog here at EFT Joy, and I’m excited about getting this started.

I’m an EFT practitioner in training. I’m learning from the
DVD’s sold on Gary Craig’s site and from practitioners and friends on the web.

My interests in creating this business are to extend energy healing to others, to help those who need it, and to spread the word about how effective and wonderful energy healing is.

This blog will be my record of sites I go to for training, work I’m doing on this site, and new things I’m offering here.
I may also comment on articles and books, especially those relating to my energy healing practice.