The Emotional Freedom Technique, commonly known as EFT or tapping, is a method of helping the body gently relieve stress, anger, anxiety, sadness, grief, and all forms of dissonant or negative emotion. Tapping is a wonderful technique that we employ often at Mindlight because it is easy to do, very effective, and individuals can do the technique by themselves for self care when they are not seeing a practitioner.

We want to start by offering you a bigger context for resolving negative emotion. Negative emotion, often brought on by thoughts about something, are housed in the body. While we think we can just change our thoughts and therefore change our feelings, sometimes we leave the body behind in that equation – and often even though we try so hard to change our thoughts, the negative ones remain and the body continues to stress.

To more effectively change your feelings, a key component is including your body in the relief formula. Tapping is a way to communicate directly to your body and let it know that it can release its emotion, find calm again, and re-regulate.

When creating relief in your mind and body, you can think of the Healing Paradigm. In it are the three ingredients to resolving negative emotion: 1) the emotion, 2) compassion, and 3) the body. Let’s break these things down:

The Healing Paradigm:

1. The Emotion: In order to relieve, heal, or shift a feeling, you first need to be in touch with that feeling. This means actually feeling it, instead of pushing it away or denying its existence. You feel the sadness, the shame, the anger; whatever it is.
2. Compassion: The goal here is to welcome your emotions as they are, and invite them to reunite with the rest of your energy. You observe and meet the emotions like a kind friend. You might say to yourself, “I’m really upset about this, and I accept that I feel this way. It makes sense.”
3. The body: Your wonderful friend: your body! This is where all of your emotional experiences are taking place. We help the body release emotional energy by communicating to it through touch, movement, and breath.

In the practice of tapping, you are using your fingertips to lightly tap on a meridian point system on your body, while you feel your feelings. You can think of this meridian system like the electrical breakers on a house. When you tap them you help the body reset its emotional current. Tapping on this meridian system is similar to what is being done in acupuncture, but without needles, and mainly on the upper parts of your body.

To see the tapping points, you can watch the video above, or check out this chart below, courtesy of MedicalNewsToday.

Important insights for tapping to work effectively:

• It is important that you really feel the first two parts of the healing paradigm mentioned above: The emotion you are trying to relieve, and the feeling of compassion. Actually call these feelings into your body. Let yourself feel the (sadness, shame, guilt, anxiety, etc.) and then get perspective to it and let your body feel love, kindness, relief.
• To bring in a feeling of compassion, you can try these prompts in your mind: If you have a relationship with God, or a divinity that you believe in, think of how you are held by that. If you have a belief about how the universe works that brings you peace, think about that. If you have a dog that you adore, a child you love, a relationship you cherish, think about that.
• Moments of emotional impact usually carry more than one emotion. You may tap on being sad and then discover grief. You may tap on your grief and then discover anger. Let each emotion rise and release as it comes. Think of it like layers of an onion melting away.
• If you think you’re too busy and stressed to try this technique, you are an excellent candidate to try it immediately.
• Watch the video above to see it in action.
• If the emotions you are trying to get relief from are caused by something extremely overwhelming to you, it will be best to work with a professional. They can help keep you safe, and the process gentle, while you move towards this healing journey.

Starting sequence:

1. Start by identifying the issue you want to work on. Be specific.
2. Rate the level of intensity of the issue on a scale of 1 – 10
3. Write down the key emotions and phrases that are there for you about it. Examples:
   1. I’m so overwhelmed!
   2. I’m never going to get it.
   3. It’s too late. I’m too late.
   4. I’m so freaking sad.
4. Begin to work each phrase and feeling one at a time, using the healing paradigm. You will say phrases like: “Even though I’m so overwhelmed, I’m open to the idea that I can be kind to myself.”
5. Work each key emotion and phrase one by one, until they each calm down.
6. Check your work by once again rating the intensity of the overall issue.

When you are in the swing of things, tapping on the feelings that you want to move, it’s common to experience your body releasing energy in different ways: you may start to sweat, burp, yawn, get tired, get hungry, or want to walk around while you do it. All of this is normal, and in fact a good sign! It means the emotion is really moving, and beginning to express from your body.

If you’d like support in experiencing your first tapping session, you can book a session with a Mindlight practitioner here. Please note, sometimes instead of tapping, we might invite you to shake, jump, hug yourself, take big deep breaths. All of these techniques work within the Healing Paradigm, of which tapping is simply one technique that helps people get results. Book a 1-on-1 session with a Mindlight Practitioner.