Emotional freedom technique is a psychological form of acupuncture. It is used to neutralize negative emotions associated around a thought. This is done by tapping certain acupuncture points with your fingers while tuning into a specific thought.

This simple process removes negative emotions around a thought. This process has been shown to help with behaviour change, phobias, physical pain and emotional issues. Often EFT produces results in just minutes which are one of the reasons it is the fastest growing branch of psychology today.

History of emotional freedom technique (EFT)
It was discovered in 1980 when Dr Roger Callaghan was treating his patient for an intense water phobia. She complained in that session of stomach pain so he told her to tap under her eye as knew the energy meridian of the stomach ended here (from acupuncture theory) and to his surprise the ladies fear of water disappeared.

From that point on he began studying this phenomenon and went on to create a new branch of therapy called energy psychology. A student of Dr Callaghan, Gary Craig, a Stamford engineer trained under him and then advanced the theory and made it accessible to all by creating emotional freedom technique (EFT).

What is the theory behind it?
The premise of the theory is summed up by its discovery statement:
“The cause of all negative or unwanted emotion is a disruption to the body’s electrical energy system”
This is inherently different to the way traditional psychology would view emotions, they would see it as:

Distressing memory................... Negative emotion
Emotional freedom technique would say there is an intermediate step:

Distressing........ Disrupted electrical........ Negative emotion memory pattern 

To dissolve the negative emotion associated with the memory you do not need to treat your memory, but instead re-align the energy pattern associated with that memory.

How do you re-align the energy around a distressing memory?
To realign the disrupted energy you need to simply tap (with your fingers) on some of the key acupuncture points. The key to success is discovering what exact thoughts and different aspects to these thoughts to tap on. Even with this element almost anyone can harness some benefits EFT has to offer.

What is the point? How does this relate to anything?
If the problem you are trying to resolve can be pictured like a table top. The many factors contributing to the problem can be thought of as the legs to this table.
The tabletop (your problem /issue), may have many table legs underneath (different emotional contributors). The idea of EFT is to collapse the table legs to the point that there are not enough to support the table top. In other words, if you collapse enough emotional issues under your problem you will resolve that problem.
What we are looking for is the specific memories from your past that can still cause a negative emotion today. These will be the table legs to one or more table tops. As you collapse each event, e.g. remove the negative emotion associated with that thought you will begin to positively influence the problem you are trying to resolve.
Different table legs can be thicker (more influential on a problem) than others. Breaking these down will accelerate collapsing an issue.

EFT
EFT like acupuncture and acupressure works by impacting directly upon the body’s energy flow. It uses processes that work with the energy meridians of the body and balances the body’s energy system, removing any disturbance or emotional blocks to the energy flow around the body. We do this by ‘tapping’ on specific meridian points about the face and hands whilst using spoken affirmations to focus us directly onto the issues.

EFT is a powerful new discovery that combines two well established sciences so you can benefit from both at the same time:

1. Mind Body Medicine
2. Acupuncture (without needles).

In essence, EFT is an emotional version of acupuncture wherein we stimulate certain meridian points by tapping on them with our fingertips. This addresses a new cause for emotional issues (unbalanced energy meridians). Properly done, this frequently reduces the therapeutic process from months or years down to hours or minutes. And, since emotional stress can contribute to pain, disease and physical ailments, we often find that EFT provides astonishing physical relief.