Can ‘tapping’ unlock the secret to inner harmony? Kathy Walton investigates… 

“It may look strange at first, but it works,” says Christine Moran, an Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) practitioner from Little Chalfont, Bucks.

Emotional Freedom Technique, often called ‘tapping’, is a therapy that uses gentle finger taps on up to 14 points, mainly on the face and hands, to ‘unlock’ what the ancient Chinese called the ‘meridian’ or energy circuits of the body. Once blockages have been removed, past hurts are healed, relationships thrive and people reach their potential both personally and professionally.

Emotional Freedom Techniques can help people overcome a range of emotional problems –such as anxiety, trauma and phobias, as well as weight issues, addictions and painful childhood memories – in just a few sessions.

There are currently an estimated one thousand EFT practitioners in this country, whose work aims to ‘breathe fresh air into the healing process and work where nothing else will,’ and while there are inevitably sceptics in the scientific community, people who’ve been ‘tapped’ can’t speak highly enough of its benefits.

A former psychology tutor, Christine, 50, recalls stumbling across EFT online and feeling she had identified ‘the missing link’ that she had spent years seeking when she was trying to help her students ‘move on’ from whatever was holding them back. “In the course of all my career many people had insight into their emotional problems but they couldn’t shift them,” she says.

Now an advanced practitioner who trains others, Christine works with both adults and children. One of her clients, fifty-one-year-old Yvette Lynch from Hemel Hempstead, was tapped by Christine ten years ago when her night-time anxieties about dying were wrecking her sleep.

“I would leap out of bed for fear that I would die if I didn’t,” Yvette recalls. During tapping, it emerged that her fears were triggered by unresolved grief at the sudden death of her husband, who died at night at home, nine years earlier. After only three sessions, Yvette says her problems disappeared. “I haven’t had an anxiety attack since,” she says. Now, whenever she feels anxious, she taps herself, even in the car.

“Tapping allows you to accept that fears and pain are part of you and that it’s okay to acknowledge them, but by tapping you get rid of them. It is one of those tools that everyone should have in their toolkit,” Yvette says.

EFT practise has some really nice generalisation effects too. ” I had sustained bullying I suffered in my early twenties when I was working abroad. For a long time afterwards, whenever I encountered bullying at work, either passive (a colleague taking credit for my work) or overt (remarks about my appearance), I failed to stand up for myself. Tapping sessions inadvertently helped me to release much of the pent up anger and pain, which gave me the confidence to confront (successfully) a bully in my next job.”

16th October 2015 – Optima magazine