by Crystal Hawk

A version of this article first appeared in 'Bridges', Volume 11 No1, Spring 2000, the Newsletter of The International Society for the Study of Subtle Energy and Energy Medicine, based in Colorado.

Tapping came into my life several years ago. In a conference workshop, while following a simple pattern of tapping various meridian points on my face, a long-standing and to that moment totally unconscious anger at the adults who did not get me proper medical attention when I had an accident with my ear drum as a young child surfaced and was eliminated from my psyche.  As a result, my shoulders which must has tightened some 62 years ago when the accident happened, loosened and lowered considerably. Those same shoulders had been the site of my bursitis. I was intrigued and continued to explore this modality and began to use it with my clients. It was almost always successful and always amazing, and easy for my clients to learn to do for themselves.

At another conference luncheon that same year, a young lady expressed her paralyzing fear of flying back to Alaska. I did a quick session with her and later received a thank you telling me that she was now easily flying all over Alaska. That's when I decided to take it out of my office and teach it publicly.

Today I'm teaching Emotional Freedom Technique - EFT - mostly to health care workers, medical personnel and to Therapeutic Touch (TT) practitioners and other energy workers. With their highly developed intuition, focused intention, their acceptance of subtle energy, the human energy system and the reality of the bodymind integration, EFT comes very naturally to energy workers. They are using it often and well, both on themselves, with family members, clients and patients. The parallels between TT and EFT make it especially easy for TT practitioners and those familiar with subtle energies to become quickly proficient. Both modalities look silly to outsiders.  In a TT session a practitioner appears to be waving their hands in mid air while in EFT we ask the client to tap themselves on both their face and fingers in a particular pattern and then to hum and count out loud, and this doesn't bother or embarrass us. Both modalities involve an energy system which most of us cannot 'see', the outcome is always in the client's hands, so to speak, and there is no rational explanation of how either of them  work. But work they both do and they stand firmly on their effective outcomes.