The quest to be whole - Exploring Tapping
Welcome to ‘The quest to be whole’ - a series where I explore one by one, many of the healing remedies and practices I have encountered in my own healing journey after I lost my mum to suicide at 17, and that I share with clients in my Kinesiology practice. Perhaps like me, you’ve discovered that there isn’t just one healing path that works for everyone and that trauma and grief cannot be healed using the mind alone. Hopefully by reading these stories you will gain more insight about what is open to you- inspiring you to follow your heart and intuition to your own healing path.
Well I have to say that when I first heard about ‘tapping’ I honestly couldn’t understand how it could help a person!
That was about 10 years ago and at the beginning of my healing journey - since then I have experienced the benefits of tapping personally and have witnessed the same in clients, family and friends.
The term tapping commonly refers to Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and less commonly, Thought Field Therapy (TFT) . They are both forms of energy psychology and here I’m exploring specifically how they help process, integrate and heal trauma, grief, anxiety and depression.
TFT was the original form of tapping and was discovered quite by accident by American Psychologist Roger Callahan in the eighties. Callahan, who had been practising traditional psychology for many years, had recently undertaken studies in applied Kinesiology, becoming aware of the principles of Ancient Chinese medicine and the way energy moves along meridians and is connected to our holistic well-being. He decided to experiment with Mary, a client of his who had an extreme phobia of water and described a sick feeling in her stomach when she encountered her fear. Where nothing had worked previously, encouraging her to tap a stomach meridian point under the eye whilst focusing on water, the phobia and all associated psychological and physiological symptoms DISAPPEARED!…FOREVER….
And so it was here that energy psychology was born. In the years following, Callahan developed a number of tapping algorithms or recipes for specific conditions like trauma, grief, anger and anxiety. Following that, in 1995, Gary Craig simplified TFT, introducing EFT which uses specific words together with tapping to help relieve any condition. EFT has become popular in recent years as a self-help tool for managing stress, performance and even pain.
Clients who have used tapping with me have described feeling less ‘emotionally charged’ about whatever has been bothering them (traumatic memories, fears, anxieties), and that many previous triggers in their lives just don’t affect them anymore. They’ve described feeling more free and that they’ve been able to move forward in all areas of their life - even where they hadn’t realised they were holding back. Clients have reported feeling the change immediately and the effect holding over time, although sometimes we will use tapping again in future sessions to work through different but sometimes related issues.
So how does tapping do this? Sometimes called psychological acupuncture, tapping is based on the premise that experiences like trauma and grief don’t just affect the mind but also the body and its energy systems. So that, even if we might talk through our experiences many times in the hope of gaining relief through sharing, the feelings can stay stuck and cause anxiety and depression.
Tapping works on shifting the ‘stuckness’ in a number of ways:
In both TFT and EFT, we ‘tune in’ to the stressful thoughts or feelings. While we’re ‘tuned in’, it is understood that the touch aspect of the tapping itself brings a calming effect to the body despite the stress. The Amygdala which is the part of the brain that detects stress, is then off duty and doesn’t need to set the stress response in motion halting the production of cortisol- the stress hormone.
In both TFT and EFT, we tap either the beginning or ends of meridian lines. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), meridians are the channels of energy that run around our bodies supporting our life force. Each meridian corresponds to an organ or major function of the body and there are particular emotions and experiences that affect specific meridians. If these emotions and experiences aren’t integrated or processed, the energy of that meridian becomes imbalanced which can cause emotional, mental and physical problems. So by tapping these points while we are tuned in to the stressful thoughts or feelings, we are allowing the stuck energy of these emotions and experiences to be released, balancing the energy and allowing the emotional, mental and physical issues to resolve.
Both TFT and some forms of EFT also use a range of eye movements and singing as well as maths - yes Maths!! in order to help integrate the changes to all parts of our brains - I find this part of the practice super powerful.
EFT also brings some words into the picture. By ‘tuning in’ and bringing a verbal statement about the stress to the practice, we are touching on the principles of exposure therapy in that we are not hiding from the feelings, memories or thoughts but bringing them into our awareness. In EFT, we also confirm verbally that, despite the stress, we deeply and completely love and accept ourselves (the wording sometimes differs but these particular words are my favourite!). This part of the practice is understood to engage the prefrontal cortex in the brain, allowing our cognitive function to change our thinking about the stress.
TFT had a big win for recognition recently when it was listed as an evidence-based practice by ‘The Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration’ in the U.S. As with many complimentary therapies however, the evidence of its’ efficacy is primarily anecdotal with people reporting their own experiences of healing with tapping globally.
As with all the practices I use in my clinic, I use them because I have seen and felt them work, AND by using muscle testing, people’s bodies ask for what will work for them! One particularly memorable case was a lovely man who was suffering with debilitating panic attacks on a regular basis. Through muscle monitoring in a Kinesiology session, we were able to find a number of traumatic events throughout his life, including an anaphylactic reaction to a bee sting when he was 5 and a physical attack by another man he had suffered in his 20’s. His body communicated that these traumas were contributing to his current panic attacks. One by one, we used TFT to help clear the emotional charge of the traumatic memories. After 2 sessions, this lovely man was so happy to report that he was no longer having panic attacks and 3 years later he is still panic attack free!
Both EFT and TFT have also been a constant support to me in processing the grief and trauma I held onto for many years following my mum’s suicide. With complex emotions like these, there have been many layers to work through and even now, 23 years later - I discover elements connected to that grief and trauma that have been hidden from my awareness. As I bring more feelings into the light, tapping is one of the tools in my sacred kit that help bring freedom to my body, mind and soul by integrating my experiences and transforming my energy so that I can move forward.
Maybe tapping could help you too? Have you tried it? I’d love to hear your story.
Renee x