EFT & Hypnosis - Is EFT A Form Of Hypnosis Or Hypnotherapy?

I get asked often if EFT is a form of hypnosis or hypnotherapy.

Actually, EFT is a form of acupuncture, only that the needles replaced by a person's own fingertips.

It is a physiological process, based on the meridian system, and it's effect lies in stimulating important junction points of main body meridians - the "EFT Tapping Points".

The meridians are channels in a person's ENERGY BODY - EFT affects the ENERGY BODY which is how it works.

EFT is a meridian based protocol which was originally designed for *self help* from a more complex type of acupuncture-like treatment for psychological problems, namely Thought Field Therapy or TFT.

In TFT, the main meridian points are stimulated in a complex order and sequence, known as an "algorithm", by an experienced practitioner who has learned many standard algorithms throughout a long and arduous training programme.

The designer of EFT Emotional Freedom Techniques, Gary Graig, was originally a Stanford engineer and he applied the concept of "total redundancy" to TFT - instead of having to know which points to tap on, he simply created a protocol where one would tap *all* the points for every problem, thus always being guaranteed to "hit the right ones" by default.

EFT being both content free - the person who is treating themselves chooses what they are treating themselves for and concentrate on this by repeating a statement of the problem in question - and also extremely simple once learned, it is the perfect *adjunct* to many already existing therapies.

EFT is used both as a homework protocol to give a client to do at home, by themselves, any time to help with a treatment in progress, as well as being used to treat psychological problems in a therapeutic session, with a therapist teaching the EFT protocol and guiding the client through the process.

Amongst the practitioners using EFT as a part of their work are all helping and caring professions, such as:

- Nurses

- Care and Aid Workers

- Psychologists

- Massage Therapists

- Hypnotherapists

- Counsellors

- Homeopaths

- Herbalists

- Acupuncturists

- Medical Doctors

- Dentists

- Clinical Psychologists

- Community Care Staff

- Kinesiologists

... and indeed, the whole range of care providers both allopathic and holistic.

EFT is, in spite of it's simplicity, a very profound process that has direct effects on a person's mind and body.

When a trained practitioner works with a client on an important, life changing issue, it is a very intensive and often moving process that might lead an outside observer to wonder whether there is more going on than just tapping the meridian points, and it is here where the word "hypnotherapy" comes in.

EFT is not hypnotherapy, no more so than a full body massage, a reflexology session or an acupuncture treatment.

Like these other physiologically based treatments, with a good practitioner, it is an intensive experience and very emotional; and if one was to define "hypnotherapy" as any therapy where a client and practitioner work together with concentration, full focus on the problem and a good understanding between them, you could class EFT as such of course.

However, the simple facts are that:

EFT can be done by anyone at all, just by reading the instructions from a piece of paper, all by themselves, without any psychology knowledge or training whatsoever, and over 65% of people experience a real shift in the problem they were working on under these circumstances. This is mainly why EFT is as successful as it is, and why it is spreading as rapidly as it is. EFT has been called, "The best self help technique EVER." for this reason.

Clearly, without any practitioner present who could "suggest" anything, the process works very well.

EFT is being taught and shown by hundreds and thousands of people around the world and the great majority have no experience of hypnotherapy at all. For example, Red Cross workers in Cossovo and Nigeria were taught the protocol and in turn, taught it to those they care for; these, in turn, taught their families, children and friends.

EFT is so simple that a child can use it, AND a child can teach ANOTHER to use it.

Lastly, and this is very important, EFT relies entirely and totally on *what the user or client says* - the tapping routine is always the same, every time. The difference in the individual treatments lies in the person's words who are using the treatment, and these words are *the person's own words* - even when there is a trained Meridian Energy Therapies practitioner present, all they do is ASK the client how they feel, what their problem is, to reveal the person's OWN OPENING STATEMENTS.

There is nothing suggested, nothing added from the practitioner at all - all they do is to ELICIT an opening statement for the treatment from the client.

With experience, a practitioner will become good at listening to a client and being able to pick out amongst all the words they said and phrases they used just what will make the most effective statement for the problem - but the WORDS ARE ALWAYS THE CLIENT'S OWN WORDS.

Indeed, much time is spent in the training of practitioners who may have been counsellors for many years and who are used to rephrasing what the client said into their own words that this doesn't work with EFT - the client has to say what ails them and how they feel IN THEIR OWN WORDS and only then does the treatment work as it was designed to be.

This is a unique and wonderful thing, for EFT thus puts the keys to the problem AND the solution right back where it belongs - namely with each individual person themselves.

In conclusion, I would like to repeat something the creator of EFT, Gary Craig, says in his seminars right at the beginning.

He says,

"Please try and keep an open mind. EFT is not like anything you have experienced before - it is really a NEW experience. Don't judge it in terms of it being this, or that. Keep an open mind, try it for yourself and then, and only then, will you know just what it is."

Silvia Hartmann

Director, Association For Meridian Energy Therapies

Author, "Adventures In EFT Emotional Freedom Techniques"

https://starfields.org