My friend Magnus (creator of Tapping.com) has created an EFT Practitioner Directory, judging by his other popular web sites it will soon be the best place to find an EFT Practitioner in your area.

EFT Practitioner Directory

Women who undergo IVF increase their chances of pregnancy if they are also treated with acupuncture, a new analysis suggests.The benefits may be large — a 65 per cent increase in the chance of becoming pregnant, and a 91 per cent increase in the number of live births.

Read the rest here: Course of acupuncture may raise success of IVF treatment by 65%

I only started to become interested in acupuncture after I started using EFT which is sometimes referred to as an acupressure technique. One of the explanation for EFT is that it involves manipulating the energy that flow through meridians which are pathways in your body. I don’t know if that’s how it works. But it’s interesting to note the similarities.

An interesting side note is that in the Chinese martial arts I practice we are sometimes shown nerve points which are very sensitive and hurt a lot if you happen to get pocked or prodded there. That knowledge must come from Chinese medicine.

With regards to the above article; what baffles me time and again is how some of these phenomenon are dismissed as a mere placebo. Fine, but what is this amazing placebo affect and shouldn’t we be investigating it?

I’ve been reading the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle again and I’m able to notice negative thoughts a lot better recently. These aren’t big negative beliefs rather little agitated or irritated pieces of inner dialogue; ‘Why are those people always like that?’, ‘Why does this always happen?’ So short they’ve usually passed by before I’ve had a chance to notice them. I guess once you’ve noticed the big issues and worked with them it’s time to notice the smaller things and mop them up as well.

Eckhart suggests that you only need to acknowledge the negative thought in order to reduce its power. But I’ve be experimenting with tapping them and the deeper issues behind them. I see them as symptoms of underlying issues.

One of the important skills to learn is this ability to notice negative thought patterns, beliefs and emotions. It’s part of what Magnus calls emotional literacy. It can be challenging because you’ll often hide the things you need to work on from yourself. That’s why most EFT’ers ought to work with fellow tappers to uncover issues lurking in their blind spots. In the mean time emotional literacy can be cultivated by being present in your body as Eckhart describes.

Applying the principles of the Power of Now together with EFT seems to work really well and I recommend you all try it.

Admit it, EFT is weird. Tapping on your face to get rid of negative emotions, come on!

Even though I’ve been using EFT for a couple of years I still think it’s a bit strange. But the difference between myself and people that like to pretend that they ‘think outside of the box’ is that I really do. And I don’t let any preconceptions from myself or others stop me from exploring new ideas. At the end of the day I’ll do what works and I have no fear of having my map of reality questioned because I’m comfortable holding different and contradictory ideas and concepts in my mind at the same time.

Now I was first shown EFT three years ago and I remember using it on anxiousness around certain social situations. My anxiousness disappeared straight and I found myself taking action before I even realised what I was doing. But after that I only used it intermittently over the next few years. I didn’t realise just how widely it can be applied. You can literally tap everything including your beliefs about EFT itself.

• ‘Even though EFT isn’t scientific…’

• ‘Even though EFT is weird…’

• ‘Even though EFT is weird hippy-shit…’

• ‘Even though EFT is New-Age nonsense…’

• ‘Even though tapping on my face is completely ridiculous…’

• ‘Even though EFT will never work for me…’

You get the idea.

The skill you’re employing here is a very useful. Being able to observe your own beliefs, thoughts and emotions is called metacognition and it’s something not many people do.

More mainstream attention for EFT. Not everyone is convinced that it works because of ‘energy’. Still good to see the exposure.

Rebecca Lamy looked out of her window on to a garden covered with gravel. No grass. Not one flower. Strangely, this barren outlook calmed her. Nothing to attract wasps. Even the thought of the black and yellow insects made her heart thud. “I’d never been stung, but was terrified that I might be. I had visions of suffering some terrible allergic reaction,” explains Lamy, 27, a training manager for Marks & Spencer, from Jersey. A friend recommended emotional freedom technique (EFT) which, like acupuncture, is based on the idea that energy flows around the body along 14 meridian lines. Sometimes, according to the theory, these pathways get blocked by negative emotion, causing anxiety, phobias, even physical illness.

Read the rest at the Times: Tap away the Trauma.

It also reminded me to put a link up to this older article about EFT being used my Medical Doctors on Iraq-War Veterans. Unorthodox therapy gains local following.

And of course try out some EFT using free videos at Tapping.com

1. Make sure you drink plenty of water.

Your brain / nervous system is doing a lot of work when you’re doing EFT and your body will need water to fuel this.

Apparently 85% of the weight of the brain is water and under normal circumstance you need to drink 8 glasses of water a day. So if you’re doing some EFT make sure keep a bottle or large glass handy.

Don’t underestimate the importance of this. I’ve heard that a lot of people are not drinking enough water as it is and this causes you to feel sluggish and slow both in your body and your mind. If you’re doing extra brain work you’ll need more water.

2. Don’t tap too hard.

I was certainly guilty of this when I first started, made evident by soreness around my eyes. If you are leaving yourself with bruises (easily done as a lot of tapping points are on sensitive skin) then you’re tapping too hard.

3. Rest

Once you’ve done a lot of EFT you might start to feel tired and you’ll need time to process everything. Most people start to tire after an hour but this varies from person to person. Don’t do anything mentally too taxing, have a nap, go for a walk or do some light reading.

Watch out for the possibility that you’re unconsciously avoiding doing the work on yourself. If you find that you are tiring quickly, say after ten minutes or so, or that you seem to get tired more easily around certain subjects, then try tapping around that tired feeling.

‘Even though I’m tired I deeply and completely accept myself’, ‘Even though I’m not in the mood to do EFT right now..’ etc.

My friend Magnus has made some videos to introduce you to EFT. It can seem strange and a bit New-Agey, but give it a try