Email to a Friend ►

History of EFT

Home ► Articles ►The History of EFT

By EFT Master, Dr. Patricia Carrington

The psychological self-help and treatment method known as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT for short) has a venerable “family tree.”  Its origins lie in ancient Chinese medicine and the development of acupuncture, a healing technique that uses needles on areas on the “energy meridians” or energy pathways, as recognized by practitioners of this method.  These healing practitioners have refined their skills over many centuries and acupuncture is widely used today in the East.  It is also becoming recognized by Western medicine, mainly for its use for anesthesia in hospital settings.

It is important to realize, however, that acupuncture was not developed to treat emotional problems, but physical ones.  Although occasionally a practitioner will use it today to relax a patient or to relieve severe anxiety, acupuncture does not have a systematic way of applying this method for emotional problems; it is not viewed as a psychological treatment per se.

The development of “emotional acupuncture”, as it is sometimes referred to, was indirectly assisted by Dr. George Goodheart, a well known chiropractor in the United States who founded a branch of chiropractic based upon a precise method of testing the body for information about its own needs.

Goodheart had learned about acupuncture in 1962 from reading an interesting book written by the president of the Acupuncture Society in Britain. He was intrigued with the possibilities it promised for his own practice. He then studied acupuncture and soon introduced it into his own work as one of the bases of a new method he was developing called Applied Kinesiology (which uses muscle testing to determine the appropriateness of any form of treatment). 

Substituting simple manual pressure for needles, he found that he could obtain the same beneficial results by simply applying manual pressure to the acupuncture points, or by “percussing” or “tapping” on them; an advance which made this acupuncture-derived method accessible to many more people, since it was non-invasive.

Building on the work of Goodheart, in the 1970's an Australian psychiatrist, John Diamond, M.D., took this discovery a step further by creating a variation of it which he called “Behavioral Kinesiology”.  This derivative of Goodheart’s method added an interesting component. Diamond used affirmations (positive self-statements or thoughts) when the person was contacting selected acupuncture points, and did this specifically to treat emotional problems. His innovative departure in this respect foreshadowed the later development of the “meridian-based therapies” and Energy Psychology, in the forefront of which we find EFT today.

But before EFT could be invented, another step was necessary. The concept of using tapping of acupoints to treat psychological problems needed a structure to become widely applicable.  This structure was supplied by an American psychologist, Dr. Roger Callahan, who specialized in anxiety disorders.

In the early 1980’s, Dr. Callahan learned Applied Kinesiology and studied the meridian system of acupuncture in an effort to find better answers to some of the problems his patients faced, particularly those of anxiety and phobias.  He then took the step that was necessary to bring the tapping procedures into a full fledged form of psychological treatment, by combining the use of “tapping” for emotional problems with simultaneous focusing on the problem at hand.  Callahan had discovered that if a person is focusing on a specific fear of their own at the time they tap; this fear can be removed, often permanently.

Dr. Callahan’s new treatment came into being after he studied the meridian system, but, it was an unexpected occurrence which led to the precise clinical discovery that foreshadowed the later development of EFT. 

Callahan had been working for over two years with “Mary”, a patient of his who had such an overwhelming fear of water that she could not even get into a bathtub without this precipitating an anxiety attack.  Although he had tried many anxiety reduction techniques with her, the progress had been slow and discouraging.  Mary couldn’t even approach the swimming pool on the grounds of his office, or allow water to contact her body, without experiencing panic.

One day however, while they were working on this fear in his office, Mary told him for the first time that her fearful feeling was located in her stomach.  As it happens, there is an acupuncture point located directly beneath the eye which, according to traditional acupuncture, is linked to the stomach meridian.

Accordingly, Dr. Callahan asked her to tap on that point.  He did this on the assumption that this maneuver might balance a possible disturbance in her “meridian energy system” and thereby lessen her stomach symptoms. He had no idea that it would have profound implications for the future of his practice and for psychology.

Mary agreed to tap under her eyes and when she did so a totally unexpected thing happened.  Instead of merely experiencing relief from her stomach symptoms, she called out in surprise that her fear of water was suddenly gone!  Callahan didn’t take this too seriously at first because it seemed so unlikely, but when he watched her get up and run toward the swimming pool. When she reached it, she began splashing water on her face, he took notice. She was never been able to go near the pool before.

Continue Reading ► Page ► 1 ► 2