The speed and effectiveness of EFT is the result of treating the problem at its source, the imbalances in the body's energy system.  Stressful and traumatic experiences, that are not resolved, leave the body’s energy system in a state of imbalance, and we experience strong negative emotions that are difficult to let go of as a result. Once these imbalances are corrected, the negative emotion quickly shifts into a positive emotion.  EFT does this by having the recipient "tune into" the negative emotion, tap a set of acupressure treatment points and perform other energy balancing exercises to help the mind/body heal itself. This process can take from five minutes to an hour depending on the number of aspects (separate emotional parts of a feeling or a memory) which need to be treated.

EFT was developed by a Stanford engineer named Gary Craig. He had a life long interest in helping people become more successful and eventually became a personal performance coach. In the early 90's he studied Thought Field Therapy^TM with its discoverer, Roger Callahan, Ph.D., a psychologist. Callahan applied the principles of Applied Kinesiology (AK) to the treatment of emotional disturbance. He first discovered the effectiveness of this approach when treating a woman who was powerfully phobic of water:

"My first subject for this new treatment," he wrote, "was a woman who had lived most of her life with a severe phobia of water. She became sick to her stomach if she had to stand near a pool (which she only did when treatment demanded), if she was caught in the rain, or if she drove past a lake or along the ocean shore. She developed a splitting headache every time she came in for treatment, and she literally could not look at water, even from a distance, without feeling ill. Even thinking about water caused her to have headaches and an upset stomach.

"She could not recall a time in her life when she was free from this fear. I had been treating her, using systematic desensitization and R.E.T. (Rational Emotive Therapy) for a year and a half, which is not all unusual for such deep-seated phobias, and I had so far had minimal success.

"One day after learning about and studying Applied Kinesiology, I tried this new approach. The treatment took only about 1 minute. When I tested her after the treatment, it appeared that she had lost her fear. She knew immediately—even before any verification by testing—that the fear was gone.

"The following day, she reported on her first night of ‘freedom’. That evening we had a terrible thunderstorm. I was well aware that this event would normally be an occasion of particular fear for her. But she told me she had felt a wish to stand and watch the storm over the ocean in order to give an acid test to the cure. She drove to the shore (something she had never done before, even with company), parked her car, and walked down to the dark raging water. She told me that, standing there—alone—she felt a deep inner joy. Her lifetime fear was ended."²

After this amazing discovery, Dr. Callahan undertook a study of the application of AK to the treatment of phobias. He published what he learned in his first book, in 1985, Five Minute Phobia Cure³. He discovered that, not only phobias, but most all emotional distress could be relieved. He used AK to diagnose which energy meridians needed treatment and then applied treatment to those meridians. Dr. James Durlacher in his book, Freedom From Fear Forever⁴, and Dr. William Whiesenant his book, Psychological Kinesiololgy⁵, also describe how they used AK to treat negative emotions.

Therapies such as Thought Field Therapy and Psychological Kinesiology, which are based on Kinesiology, all involve diagnosing the specific imbalances which are causing the negative emotion and then treating that meridian. Mr. Gary Craig made a major contribution to the field by discovering that while disruptions could be diagnosed and treated specifically, through the use of AK muscle testing, this was unnecessary in most cases. Craig found that, usually, all that is necessary is for the client to focus on the distressing emotion or memory and then tap a set of specific points. This allows any negative emotion to be treated by the same process and makes Emotional Freedom Techniques a very comprehensive, simple, and easy to learn approach that resolves most emotional distress.

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1. Craig, Gary, from his webpage: http://www.emofree.com.
2. Callahan, Roger, Five Minute Phobia Cure. Dr. Callahan’s Treatment for Fears, Phobias and Self-Sabotage, Enterprise Publishing, Inc., Delaware, 1985, pp 32-33.
3. Callahan, Roger, Five Minute Phobia Cure. Dr. Callahan’s Treatment for Fears, Phobias, and Self-Sabotage, Enterprise Publishing, Inc., Delaware, 1985.
4. Durlacher, James, Freedom From Fear Forever, Van Ness Publishing Co., Arizona, 1994.
5. Whisenant, William, Psychological Kinesiology. Changing the Body’s Beliefs, Monarch Butterfly Productions, Hawaii, 1994.

Page 4, updated November 25, 2004.