Healing From ME: The Many Benefits of the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

In the last week, I have worked a lot with clients using the Emotional Freedom technique (EFT) - and in a number of different ways - to manage the physical symptoms of ME, beliefs around health and illness as well as a way of just feeling more calm and more happy. I am also using it myself a lot at the moment.

And yet again, I was struck by how powerful this simple technique is. For those of you who don't know much about it, it is part of the emerging new paradigm in alte
ative medicine called "energy psychology." It is based on the same idea as the other energy healing work I do: that we are more than just our physical bodies, and that when stressful events happen in our lives, and we are unable to fully process the emotions around those events, we hold that energy in our energy field. Over time, this leads to energy blockages, which can then manifest in the physical body as one kind of illness or another.

Chinese medicine recognises energetic pathways that run through the body, called meridians. In the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) we tap on the end points of those meridians, (the main acupuncture points) whilst talking about the particular emotional or physical problem we would like to heal. Doing this can lead to energy blockages releasing - which in turn leads to a healing of the physical or emotional problem.

I have also read more recently that tapping these points enables the brain to be in a more relaxed state, where healing can take place. You have probably heard of the "flight or fight" response. Basically, this high alert state comes into being when we are under threat - like when we were about to be attacked by a saber toothed tiger.Then, once the threat of attack is over, we go back to our usual, relaxed state. Of course, the problem nowadays, with the stresses of modern life, is that we are often feeling under "attack" from different things, and we are routinely in this "flight or fight" response a lot of the time. Tapping then means that we are redressing the balance and spending more time in a relaxed state - just where we are meant to be the marority of the time.And in my experience it is in this relaxed, open space that healing takes place.

People typically think of using the Emotional Freedom Technique for things like phobias and addictions. And it is true that there can be astonishingly quick results using EFT in these areas. A typical demonstration of how EFT works in a group focuses on chocolate - and within minutes someone who considers themselves a real chocolate love
doesn't want the chocolate!

But there is much more to EFT than this. A lot of Emotional Freedom Technique practitioners and teachers say "tap on everything!" And I'm one of them! As the name implies, you can use EFT when you're in the "grip" of an emotional state you experience as difficult. You can also use it for physical symptoms. I used it a lot when I was recovering from ME on things like the brain fog I used to experience, my inability to concentrate, and of course the fatigue itself.

EFT is also incredibly helpful in working on limiting beliefs. Typically, when we have been ill for a while, we (quite understandably) have a lot of different beliefs around our condition: "I will never get better." "Other people may recover, but not me." Or "this runs in my family, so I can't do anything about it." Again, this was a huge part of my recovery from ME. And releasing a limiting belief has a huge effect on the whole energy field as beliefs play such a big role in the state of our emotional bodies, and therefore our physical body.

Of course, the beliefs work is much wider than just illness. It can be used for general self development and living life well. One of the first times I came across the Emotional Freedom Technique was when I did a training course in public speaking which used EFT to overcome all the blocks you may have around speaking in front of a group of people - and it was a very powerful day, which helped me in lots of ways in addition to the public speaking.

I still have more to say about this powerful and simple technique in relation to healing from ME, so I will write more in a further article.