GoE History
In the 1980s, Dr. Roger Callahan, a US psychologist, was looking for a way to help people overcome phobias and fears. He studies with John Diamond, who has found that tapping on meridian points can have an effect on emotions. Dr. Callahan cures a client “Mary” of a severe water phobia which disappears when she taps under her eye. Dr. Callahan’s method became known as Thought Field Therapy (TFT), and was acknowledged as the first modern energy technique in the world.
Dr. Callahan then set about creating a professional body, qualifications and certification programs for established professionals to see clients and thus gain practice insurance.
However, when Dr Callahan's student Gary Craig simplified his tapping method and created his version called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT or Classic EFT), Gary Craig didn't want to go down the route of providing professional training programs.
By the late 1990s Classic EFT was becoming increasingly popular with English language speakers, which is partly due to Gary Craig's "open hand policy", and also the relatively new and rapidly expanding possibilities of the internet. People right round the world were getting excited about this "try it on everything!" technique.
Whilst Classic EFT was proving itself highly effective for self-help, professional practitioners were not able to treat clients because they needed to be registered with a professional body to gain practice insurance, and meet other requirements that set out to protect members of the public.
In December 1998, The Association for Meridian Therapies (The AMT) was founded by Silvia Hartmann (Chairperson, 1998-current) and Chrissie Hardisty in the United Kingdom and became the original Classic EFT training organisation and professional body. The name was later changed to The Association for Meridian and Energy Therapies in 2006 and finally to The Guild of Energists (GoE) in 2016.
After the professional body was founded, Silvia Hartmann wrote the original, much loved (and later, much plagiarised) modern energy professional training program called the "Meridian and Energy Therapy Practitioner" (MET Prac) training.
The MET Prac comprised a number of first generation modern energy based techniques from the time, and also included Classic EFT. By being certified by the GoE and renewing their license annually, the very first Classic EFT practitioners were able to gain practice insurance, allowing Classic EFT to be practised professionally through existing therapy channels.
On 19th December 1998, the GoE started an online group hosted by Yahoo, called the "Meridian Therapy Discussion Group" (MET List). This became the focal point for the world-wide modern energy community, including Classic EFT, BSFF and TAT.
The following year, Silvia Hartmann wrote the first book on Classic EFT called "Adventures in EFT: Your Essential Guide to Emotional Freedom", which 15 years later is currently in its sixth edition. Gary Craig praised "Silvia's masterful work" and ACEP's Patricia Carrington called it "The best book written on (Classic) EFT."
Under Silvia Hartmann's stewardship, the "Classic EFT On A Page" program was launched in 1999, which created translations of the Classic EFT Protocol in many different languages by GoE members, and kick-started the awareness of Classic EFT tapping around the world.
Later that year, the GoE website was launched, utilising a revolutionary content management system, which allowed the creation and maintenance of a reference library, documenting the development of modern energy techniques through technical articles, case stories and essays.
Also in 1998, the GoE hosted the first "GoE Energy Conference" at the aptly named Meridian Hotel in Gatwick, UK. Many of the attendants of that first conference, would go on to become leading lights of the modern energists movement.
The GoE continued to provide valuable services for its trainers and practitioners worldwide as the "World of Classic EFT" began to fall apart and many warring factions emerged. In the meantime, Silvia Hartmann pushed on the research on modern energy work, leading to the discovery of Guiding Stars in 2000, and the formulation of EMO Energy In Motion (originally called EMO), which laid down the principles for modern energy work for the first time.
In 2002, Alex Kent joined the GoE after graduating from University with a honours degree in Computer Science & Management Studies. His role with the organisation started out being the original Global Member Support Manager, as well as taking an active development role within the IT department. By 2010, Alex Kent had become CEO of the GoE and responsible for the day-to-day management of the organisation with the vision and course catalogue being developed by GoE chairperson Silvia Hartmann.
EMO was first presented at the second GoE Energy Conference in 2002 at Lady Margaret College, Oxford.
EMO had profound implications for modern energy work both in theory and in practice. Breakthrough after breakthrough was achieved between 2002 and 2009, establishing modern energy as absolutely instrumental in understanding not just human "psychology" but hitherto mysterious cause and effect connections between energy body stress and performance in mind, body and spirit.
The ongoing research into EMO culminated in 2009 in the publication of "Events Psychology," which carries the foundational theory of applied modern energy work or energism, and contains new, paradigm shifting instruments to work in a logical fashion with the human energy body.
The most well known of these new instruments was the SUE Scale (Subjective Units of Experience, Hartmann 2009) and the objective Energy Body Scale (The Stress Chart), which maps behavioural and intellectual disturbances directly to the state of the energy body for the first time.
During this time, GoE members, trainers and members of the research group under the leadership of Silvia Hartmann, tested the new theory, and the methods and techniques deriving from this, as the new field of true modern energy began to emerge for the first time.
Especially the EMO annual conferences and "energy labs" produced a wealth new approaches and techniques which were centred in the understanding that modern energy techniques are indeed, energy based rather than some form of strange psychology.
While the rest of the energy psychology world did their best to downplay the energy angle of even "Energy Psychology," the GoE stood alone in holding firm in the knowledge that working with energy is essentially not psychology at all, but a Third Field in its own right.
In 2010, Craig announced his retirement and it was time for Classic EFT to be upgraded in the light of the discoveries from the previous decade.
The GoE trainers met at Gatwick to pool their experience in working with Classic EFT as an introduction to modern energy work, and the new Energy EFT protocol was created. Hartmann then wrote the Energy EFT Master Practitioner training course for the GoE, which was first taught it to a large group of students at the 2011 GoE Energy Conference in Gatwick, England. The new certification was an immediate success, and just five years later, over 1,100 energists in 50+ different countries were certified as Energy EFT Master Practitioners.
Also at the 2011 GoE Energy Conference in Gatwick, UK, Silvia Hartmann gave the seminal keynote speech of modern energy and at the trainer's meeting which followed, the GoE voted unanimously to make that move to the Third Field, which is neither physiology/medicine nor psychology but in fact, the missing puzzle piece to human endeavour and progress.
In July 2013, membership numbers continued to grow and Zoe Hobden was invited to join the GoE to become Member Support manager. Zoe brought with her a wealth of experience and is a highly efficient organiser. Her job role was to be first contact for GoE members, practitioners and trainers, thus allowing them to do more of what they do best.
Stephen Kent joined the GoE in Summer 2014 to become editor to launch a new magazine for the growing GoE membership comprised of professional practitioners, professional trainers, retired professionals and modern energy enthusiasts. Later that year, the first issue of “The Energist” was published and this was known as the “Voyager Edition”.
Building on the success of the Energy EFT Master Practitioner course, in 2015 Hartmann created the Modern Stress Management (MSM) facilitator certification, which was the first next-level, direct course to take after becoming an Energy EFT Master Practitioner. MSM teaches advanced self-stress management for the facilitator, how to create personalised MSM plans for clients, businesses and organisations, and how to raise our energy levels without the use of EFT.
Later in 2015, the “GoE Rosetta Project” was launched with the aim to provide many manuals, documents, videos, diagrams and slide shows in languages other than English. With members in 62 countries (March 2016), this work was seen as increasingly important by the international network of GoE trainers looking to take modern energy into new areas.
In consultation with Silvia Hartmann, Alex Kent developed the “GoE Rosetta Software Tool” which utilises the GoE’s network of bilingual members in coordination with machine translation tools, to make it much easier to translate files than ever before. To trial out the software, the GoE asked for translations to the “Energy EFT on a Page” tapping sheet and within a month GoE members had provided new documents in 17 languages.
In January 2016, Silvia Hartmann wrote and illustrated a new course called “GoE Energy EFT Foundation” with the GoE Rosetta Project in mind so that it will be easy for GoE trainers to translate. The training manual for the course was the first GoE manual to be produced in full colour and students praised the energy of the manual. In just a few months, the manual was available in English, Turkish, Dutch, Portuguese, French and Spanish.
Also released later in that year was the second foundation level course “GoE Modern Stress Management Foundation” which is currently available in English and Turkish, with many other languages in the pipeline.
The year 2016 was hallmarked as the year of change. No longer only dealing with meridians, or therapy, for that matter, it was decided to change the name to The Guild of Energists as this better serves the dual remit to continue research into modern energy, and to provide foundational training in modern energy.
The lessons from modern energy are too important to be confined to therapy and healing; this is knowledge that every person in the world deserves. modern energy, being structural, logical, provable and scientific in its deepest core, holds the answers to innumerable age old questions which could never be resolved without that missing 16.7% of information about the world.
Modern energy is a superb treasure trove of brand new solutions for the oldest problems; of additional information; it is a key to unlock the potential of an individual, as it is the key to unlock the powers of love and logic in humanity itself.
Free from the constrictions of the past, and powered by modern, intelligent human beings from every race, every background, gender and age working together as equals, modern energy is a step into freedom. The Guild of Energists continues in its quest to make the age old mysteries of human endeavour logical, practical and accessible to every man, woman or child who wants to make the world a better place.
The Future Of The GoE
Knowledge about these relatively new modern energy techniques continues to be passed on through the work of GoE practitioners, GoE trainers, by celebrity endorsements, publishing, social media, traditional media, foundation level training courses like the Energy EFT Foundation training - and most importantly of all - by word of mouth.
The GoE membership offers boundless energy, enthusiasm, talent and knowledge for making the world a better place. We recognise that our role as the professional body is to promote and support the work they do every day to bring this much needed information into people’s homes, communities, schools and businesses.
As a modern organisation that has gone through incredible growth these past few years, the GoE looks forward to growing and adapting to serve our members needs. This work includes reaching more people in their own language and also encouraging local Energist Meetup groups.
We envision a world where modern energy techniques like Energy EFT are taught in schools, people live free of stress and know how to turn their emotional problems into positive solutions.
Added Dec 1, 1998
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