Emotional Freedom Tapping (EFT) & How it Changes Your Life

What is Emotional Freedom Tapping or Technique? EFT is a practice used with a technique of acupressure tapping on the meridian points of your body. What are meridian points? These are points on your body, mainly your face, that correspond with the route energy runs throughout your body. These are points above the eyebrow, side of the eye, under the eye, under the nose, chin, collarbone, side of the hand, and top of the head. These run along our “energetic highway,” co-mingling with the structure and output of our thoughts, beliefs, and values. EFT capitalizes on the energetic power of these points to re-program or re-write our limiting beliefs using tapping. We tap on these body points using several different techniques or re-writing—like affirmations— and change what we believe about a limiting belief, trauma, past experience, and more.

EFT can also be used in the placement of or along with therapy as a powerful healing technique. In my own experience, I’ve found EFT to be one of the most powerful, fast-acting ways to heal our minds. And because of my experience with EFT, I now use it as a coach to assist others in their healing. This week on the Do the Damn Thing Podcast, joining me is EFT Practitioner and my previous coach, Valerie Greene. Valerie was my guide through healing my limiting beliefs and past traumas; this gave me the courage to grow into the person and coach I am today. EFT has and continues to change my life, making this topic very special to me. EFT is a portal for healing, leading us to greater success, stronger growth, and alignment with our higher selves.

Emotional Freedom Tapping: Feel It to Heal It

The process of EFT starts with a lot of discomfort. To heal these parts of ourselves, we first must dive as deep as possible into an emotion. In other words, we’re basically attempting to trigger ourselves so that we can pull ourselves right out of the complex emotion. The process starts by identifying what emotion, limiting belief, or memory you’re working with. Once you’re able to recall that feeling or memory, you close your eyes and sit with it. Get into that emotion and let it trigger you. Once you have the feeling, memory, or emotion, you will rate its severity on a scale from 1-10, 10 being unbearable. Let yourself sit in the number rating for about 30-45 seconds.

This process should not last long because you don’t want to get stuck in the emotion or feeling. As soon as you’re ready, you’ll begin tapping. Keep your chin up and focus on exactly what you’re saying. I believe the most powerful form of tapping that’s worked best for me is replacing the emotions, feelings, or memories with positive affirmations.

Example of a round of tapping:

When I was working with Valerie, we worked a lot on the emotional triggers behind my brother’s death. I held onto a great deal of guilt and resentment, and I worked on identifying those emotions with specific core memories I had with or of my brother. There is one in particular that I remember. My brother died in a motorcycle accident. In my first year of college, I came home about six weeks after the start of the semester to see my family. Josh had just gotten a new bike and he was in the driveway cleaning it. I was sitting out there talking to him, and I looked up at him and made the comment, “This thing will be the death of you.”

As you can imagine, recalling that moment has held a great source of guilt and sadness for me. When Valerie and I began tapping on this memory, I focused on both the anger at myself that I made that statement and the guilt of it becoming true. First, we tapped on the anger. She gave me several seconds to get into the emotion, entirely consumed by its weight; it was a ten. Then, my chin went up, and we began tapping. She helped me begin healing this wound with affirmations of re-writing the belief around the memory.

“Josh is safe now.”

“It’s safe for me to forgive my past self; she was doing her best.”

“I am safe to heal this emotion and remember the best of who Josh was.”

We went on and on with rounds of tapping, healing this incredibly strong emotion with strong affirmations.

Results of this tapping

After rounds and rounds of tapping on this memory, I can now look back at it with a much different perspective and emotion. We tapped around numerous emotions and memories around the death of my brother. But this memory in particular held so much pain. After continuing to tap with Valerie and on my own, I now see that memory as a moment I spent with my brother, bonding– and nothing more.

Tapping on your own:

Now, let me stress something and make this very clear. I do not recommend anyone go home and attempt to heal their deepest traumas with no former practice of EFT and without the help of a practitioner. It’s critical to have someone guide you through healing your most pressing traumas. Most importantly, it’s essential to have someone there to pull you out of the pain if you cannot do that yourself. With all of that being said, it’s safe and wonderful to practice Emotional Freedom Tapping on feelings, emotions, and memories that don’t carry as much weight. For example, career growth, moving, financial success, and so much more.

If EFT Tapping interests you, but you don’t want to practice entirely on your own, some fantastic resources are available for you for free for guided help. You can access Brad Yates and his “tap with me” videos via Youtube. You can also, of course, look into hiring a practitioner like Valerie or a life coach like myself, who uses EFT in their work. Book sessions with Valerie via her Instagram, and you know where to find me!

I hope this post was truly enlightening to the power of EFT and its healing properties. If you’re interested in learning more about Emotional Freedom Tapping or booking a session, you can book a discovery call or a coaching package. I look forward to working with you and healing those limiting beliefs.