I went from a broken-hearted spiritual cynic to a practically mended energy healing advocate and here’s how I did it.

Two months ago, I was the embodiment of a sacrilegious late-born millennial who could count the amount of times she’d been to church on one hand. I’d fidget during school wellbeing sessions and associate yoga with frozen yoghurt. I swore by the idea that chardonnay and Cadbury could solve more self-disdain and emotional trauma than any mental therapy because counselling was for weaklings and meditation for airy-fairies.

Until one day, an aura of transformation literally dropped at my front door. A personified aura to be precise; sixty-two-years-old with flesh so radiant it made babies’ bottoms look like child’s play. A voice so soothing that it melted into your ears. A perplexed frown and a ‘how does she do it?’ question planted into my mind when she stepped out of the room. A practitioner of something seemingly so minute but something I’d learn to be life-changing and revolutionary – Emotional Freedom Technique.

Ann was her name and spiritual goddess was her nature. The reason she showed up at my house was because of my mum. My boisterous yet beady-eyed mother who was desperate to squeeze out my misery and let me find some sort of solace post my six month relationship with my first dreamy lover-boy. In her eyes, my utter melancholy manifested itself in unhealthy habits; drinking, smoking and having fun that was turning into borderline excess. Ann convinced her that with finger-tapping, I could change. My mother thrived off lean green clean pressed juices and would go mental if daily body-balance classes were missed, so she couldn’t think of anything better to mend the crisis.

Mum and I sat down with peppermint teas cupped in our hands, facing Ann as she explained what EFT was. Her honeycomb scalp had radiating sunrays spiking out of the top and her feathery eyelashes swayed as she spoke. My arms were crossed but my ears were spiked up.

“It’s a fourth wave energy technique that can diffuse so many stress signals in our body, such as butterflies, anger or headaches or nausea.” Despite the fact that the first four words coming from her mouth sounded more like a spiritually-charged preaching than actual vocabulary, I was starting to slowly warm up to the idea.

“You release any tension through tapping on parts of your body...it can be done anywhere and at any time.”

And at that moment – bang. My mum piping up to slaughter her perception of my fat pet elephant in the room and rip to shreds the emotions associated with my… god forbid I say it…break-up.

“I feel like Angel has been, I mean I don’t want to put words into your mouth, a little disillusioned and perhaps melancholic about the whole situation?”

At that point, I’m quite surprised the energy aura didn’t magically place daggers next to my palms.

“Do you think tapping could help, as you say, release those feelings?”

Daggers….I prayed. DAGGERS.

Ann answers, “Of course. Angel – what are your main feelings around your breakup?”

I stare at them. They stare at me. There are approximately three seconds of an ambience shattering brick-heavy quiet. And I simply tell her: worthlessness.

Step one: Starting the tappidy-do with the Ann who may just be the embodiment of the profusely and intimidatingly serene.

Three days later I find myself at her home, a wallpaper of drawings with sweet plums the size of basketballs draped behind our backs and silent cynicism raging out of my ears as she starts to explain how to do it.

She first tells me to identify the emotion I’m feeling, “let’s say it’s sadness,” she says. “Rate that sadness from one to ten; ten being the worst.” Well Ann, I think, sadness is bare minimum on my emotional Richter scale. Let’s say more of an effervescent, sparkling fury at a thirteen point seven.

“Then we have a set-up statement, something along the lines of: Even though I feel sad, I deeply and completely love and accept myself. And once we’ve got that setup statement and we’ve rated our feeling, we start tapping.”

She asks me for another emotion. I say anger toward my ex-boyfriend on a nine. Anger at the final seven minute conversation we had determining my impending relationship status and absolute desolation. The oh-so carefully chosen ‘it’s not you, it’s me’. The call that interrupted a buttery scones and coffee breakfast in a game park. In Johannesburg. In the continent of the natural animalistic thriving life.

“Even though I feel angry, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.”

Then, she demonstrates a two-finger tapping series on “acupressure points”. On the hands, between the eyebrows, to the side of the eye, under the eye, under the nose, on the chin, on the collarbone, under the arm, finishing with the top of the head. We’re tapping, all the while saying the set-up statement – “even though I feel angry, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.”

To be completely honest in the heat of this first session, I felt that the act was just unnecessarily monotonous, germy and repetitive. It was overloading so much so that it took me approximately three ‘rounds’ for a rush of tears to pour down my face. But the tear-bursting was unsolicited – a bizarrely, breathless surge – and as funny as it is to say, I just could not put my finger on it. I was confused, taken back and unsure as to why it was happening.

Ann consoles me, urging me to not worry. “It is all part of the process…this is all part of the release.”

And she’s right.

Step two: Hello internet world of evidence backed fact and hardcore research.

Dr Bruce Lipton is an influential researcher and scientist who has conducted many studies on EFT. He states that through tapping while focusing on our body or emotions, we can reprogram our brain to achieve specific results. The efficacy of Emotional Freedom Technique is that it uses similar meridians to Chinese traditional medicine as well as modern psychology.

In the 2017 Netflix documentary Heal, EFT practitioner Patti Penn says that “Emotional freedom is being able to go to the thing that we suppress and allow it to come up.”

EFT is, as Dr Lipton highlights on his website, a “natural healing systems to heal your pain, stress, fear, depression and disease.”

His perspective in the documentary is that it just all a matter of us changing our perception. “If I change my belief about life,” he says, “I change the signals that are adjusting the functioning of our cells.”

“I took to it like the proverbial duck to water…my primordiality ever since.”

In The Power of Tapping – revolutionary techniques for creating a stress free life by Margaret Munoz, the specialist author states that the cognitive shifts from tapping “offer relief…create hope and optimism, where previously there was none.” I am intrigued by this statement; is it possible to shift so much of a negative thought process to utter sanguinity? I decided I had to call this woman.

Step three: Become inspired. Realise that the words EFT practitioners may also be synonymous with blonde radiating women of light.

When she answers the phone, her voice, breathily soft, oozes a sense of the cool and is very fitting to the words that flow out of her mouth. She had already done multiple energy healing workshops and consultations when she was introduced to EFT after being told that there was one type of energy medicine was so fast and simple and could take her “completely out of the body.”

“I took to it like the proverbial duck to water,” she says, “that’s been my primordiality ever since.”

In fact, she vows that it has the power to transform the most arduous of circumstances.

“I was working with this woman who had a highly malignant brain tumor… a brain haemorrhage and she lost a lot more movement and she couldn’t speak,” she tells me, “so, I thought I’ll tap on her and just concentrate on her finding peace…forgiveness.” The act of tapping helped this unconscious woman gain consciousness again with the doctor assessing her situation saying that she was far more alert, regaining movement in her arms and legs.

“I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing,” she says, “with things like that there are so many issues that arise. You can use tapping on both ends of the spectrum, from helping little kids to people that are dying.”

This miraculous story brings to the fore this lingering question for me, is it just our mind and spirit or can it be justified by science?

And Margaret states it can be justified by science. “EFT works through the amygdala,” she says, “it’s responsible for our long-term memories, our fight/flight response and our emotional being…EFT has been to shown to work to decrease the levels of cortisol in people’s bloodstream.”

Step four: Go to world of internet again and put up a fight of science.

According to a Harvard Medical school study, “the simulation of acupuncture points has been shown…to rapidly reduce limbic system arousal.” When you are in a state of anxiety, the amygdala within the limbic system is engaged and through using EFT this proves to reduce levels of stress.

One example of the profound impact of EFT on the brain was a study by Dr Dawson Church conducted to examine veteran patients’ post-traumatic disorders and their engagement with EFT. Dr Church is a health researcher who has written over thirty papers on the technique; one of the most effective studies conducted being one looking at the results of using EFT for posttraumatic stress disorder. Although I may not be a veteran or even close to it, I found the results fascinating. 86% of veterans, people who had been through a world of pain and trauma proved subclinical after six sessions of EFT.

In an interview with bulletproof radio, Dr Church describes the power of EFT as “electric.”

“People at a one-week EFT retreat had their baseline cortisol dropping by over 40% in one week. Their baseline cortisol…So big resets go on in the body’s physiology when you tap.”

Dr P S conducted the world’s first clinical trial combining issues with food cravings and whether EFT could help in weight loss. The emotional eating, munching of foods excessively as a response to a feeling of stress of anxiety was set out as the issue to combat. After four weeks of using tapping, almost all of the participants reported a shift in their behaviours toward food. Since, Dr P S and her work has been featured on extremely recognisable media outlets such as 7NEWS and Channel 9 News.

So looking at all this fascinating research, I wait for my big reset. There is a gleaming desire for my amygdala to start buzzing with serenity. I know what I need to do, so I start my own tapping sessions, seeing Ann once to twice a week.

Step five: Continual rounds with Ann, on me. Although pricey somehow I’m getting wealthier...

The changes I notice initially are pretty minimal; a bit less mind chatter and after doing the rounds, a senseless bliss that permeates through my body. We tap on a lot; stories of stress, friendship clunk but mainly my stagnation in moving on from the straining relationship abyss.

“Even though I feel doubtful and afraid, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.” The mantra is repeated in call-response fashion until we both sigh with a “I’ve released doubt and fear and this feels good I’ll stick with this feeling.”

“Can you feel how light that brings you?”, Ann asks me, “The energy it brings you?”

I agree saying that a weight feels lifted off my shoulders. There seems like not as much muscle shoulder tension anymore.

“That’s why people talk about emotional baggage,” she tells me, “when you bury feelings, you pack them away in suitcases and you’re pretending. But you’ll get so good at releasing negative emotion from your system, from your energy base.”

It seems almost miraculous; light shoulders, light heart. I’ve never found a drug to solve the tension in my back as effective.

“It’s because drugs don’t necessarily address the emotional situation,” Margaret tells me, “the emotions that have been trapped in the body…cause the physical sensations.”

These emotions that are trapped Ann describes as the legs of a table; “there might be say, abandonment written across the tabletop but something supports that belief around being abandoned,” she says, “so what the tapping does, is make the legs collapse. If you’ve tapped through the idea that you’ll be abandoned, there will be nothing left to support it.”

And guess what, two months and approximately 1,903 taps later my legs are broken. The tabletop has been smashed and insecurity, fear, doubt and boyfriend trauma are in shards of wood on the floor. A girl close to shattering her inner psyche now glued back together with self-love and care. Presence and appreciation.

With a laugh and grin Ann smiles, “Doesn’t it feel good? Say it with me – I’ll stick with this feeling.”

Step complete: A plethora of Rs – The release and relief to rejoice.

References:

Ball, N. (2019). Working with Trauma: The connection Between EFT and the Amygdala. Retrieved from https://www.eftuniverse.com/trauma-and-ptsd/working-with-trauma-the-connection-between-eft-and-the-amygdala

Bulletproof. (2018). Tap Into Tapping: The EFT Episode - Dawson Church #474 [Video]. Youtube.

Church, D. (2019). Brief Biography - Dawson Church. Retrieved from https://dawsonchurch.com/vitae/

Church, D. (2019). The Science and Research. Retrieved from https://www.thetappingsolution.com/science-and-research/

Craig, G. (2019). The Unseen Therapist. Emofree.com.

Lipton, B. (2016). Presentation with Bruce Lipton. Retrieved from https://www.thetappingsolution.com/free-screening/free-screening-bruce.php

Munoz, M. (2005). The Power of Tapping: Revolutionary techniques for creating a stress-free life. Sydney: Griffin Press.

Noonan, K. (2017). Heal [Film]. Los Angeles, USA: Netflix.

Stapleton, P. (2019). What is EFT or tapping?. Retrieved from https://petastapleton.com/what-is-eft-or-tapping/

The Amygdala: Definition, Role & Function - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com. (2019). Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-amygdala-definition-role-function.html

What is EFT?. (2019). Retrieved from http://australiantappinginstitute.com.au/what-is-eft/