What is EFT?
Before you read this, realize that you don't need to know precisely how Tapping works to find relief from negative beliefs and emotions such as cravings, grief, fears, phobias and even physical pain. You don't even have to believe that it will work. Fortunately for most, if you try it, and watch your body and mind carefully to see what happens, you will find that it does work.
A Belief is a Thought That We Are Emotionally Attached To
If
I tell you that I have a painting of a tree above my bed, your mind will
accept that information. If I then tell you actually, it's not a painting
of a tree, it's a painting of a lake, your mind will accept that information
too. A thought is like that - easy to change. You receive new information
and your mind accepts it.
If, however, you touch a hot stove and feel pain, your mind will receive the programming that stoves are not safe to touch. If someone tells you that the glowing red stove is safe to touch, you will not accept what they are telling you. The difference is the emotion of physical pain, which is attached to the information.
This is the difference between a thought and a belief. An emotion becomes attached to the thought, as a signal to the mind that the thought is necessary for survival, and as a result the thought can not be easily changed.
Tapping removes Negative Beliefs. In fact, there is no difference as far as the body is concerned between a Negative and a "Positive" Belief. A Negative belief is just one that you have judged is unhelpful to your well-being, and a Positive one is a belief you have judged to be helpful.
In
fact, we don't need the thought "Hot Stoves Give Pain" to be
a belief in order to follow it. Thoughts that are not beliefs, fit into
our Understanding of the world and we live our life accordingly.
In fact, when our Understanding becomes a strong belief we start
to behave irrationally. For example, someone might be burned by a stove
as a child and when they are older still be very afraid of lighting a gas
stove. There's no rational reason for anyone to be afraid of lighting a
stove, but it affects their life in a negative way.
Bad Emotions Are Imbalances in the Nervous System
Good
emotions occur when nervous energy can roam freely in the body. Bad emotions
occur when nervous energy gets stuck. You can picture it as a standing
wave of energy formed in one of the nerve channels in the body.
This is why we feel different emotions in different parts of our body. Sometimes we feel nervous in our stomachs, stress in our shoulders, fear in our hands, etc. Energy is trapped in nerve channels that run through those parts of the body.
Sometimes we tap on a feeling, and sometimes on an actual belief. There is, if fact, no difference. The emotion that is attached to a particular belief might be very strong, so we don't even notice the belief, just the feeling. It might be very weak so we don't even notice that there is a feeling attached to the words. But the feeling is there, otherwise, we would not hold the belief.
Tapping Balances the Nervous System
When we tap, we say the belief out loud to bring up the corresponding emotion in the nervous system. Then we tap the various points to reset the system. Each point is the end of a nerve channel in the body. Tapping sends a shockwave down that channel.
There is no easy way to know which nerve channel is holding a particular emotion, so we just tap them all. Sometimes when you have done a lot of tapping you'll be able to just feel where it is, and you'll feel it clear as you tap it.
When the emotion is gone, your mind is no longer attached to the belief. Suddenly, your mind is free to reprocess, and realize it isn't true or that there are easy ways around it.