[This is one of a series of 30-Day Experiments to do this year instead of New Year’s resolutions.]
A friend once told me about a hiccups cure that sounded so wacky I wouldn’t try it in front of him. I was sure he was just trying to trick me into doing something silly. But when I got home I tried it, and sure enough, it worked. What’s more, it has worked 95% of the times I have tried it since then.
That’s a little how Emotional Freedom Technique (also known as EFT, or tapping) seems to me. It looks weird, and it doesn’t seem like it should have any effect. But in my experience, it does.
In a nutshell, EFT is a process where you tap on different points on your body while focusing on a particular issue you’re having trouble with, maybe an uncomfortable emotional response to something, or some pain in your body. The goal is to diminish or eliminate the problem.
Your 30-Day Experiment: Tap every day for 30 days.
To get you started, here is a video with a good introduction to the tapping process.
Start your 30-Day Experiment by making a list of things you would like to change for the better. That might include things like a sore shoulder, a feeling of irritation with someone, or a negative feeling about yourself. Then pick one and follow the EFT process while tapping on it (caveat: please don’t try this without professional support on something that is heavily triggering, like a traumatic childhood event).
Keep doing that every day. I follow my morning meditation every day with a round of tapping. Sometimes something is seriously up for me (e.g., I’m having a negative response to something someone did, or my inner critic is raging), other times I have to look for something to tap on.
If you want to dive deeper into the process, here’s an excellent basic EFT primer from the man who developed it, Gary Craig.
I didn’t really become a diehard fan of EFT until I started using it on a regular, ongoing basis. I had tried it once here, another time there, with mixed results. But when I started using it daily, I discovered that there seems to be a cumulative effect to it for me.
As always, your mileage may vary. You might discover that it has an immense impact on you, or that it has little to none. That’s the beauty of an experiment – you get to try it and see!
(By the way, here’s that hiccups cure: Take a glass of water with ice in it. With a metal spoon, stir the water fifteen times. Then put the round back side of the spoon against your temple and guzzle the entire glass of water.)
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