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Cases

Tapping variations

Important Note: This article was written prior to 2010 and is now outdated. Please use my newest advancement, Optimal EFT. It is more efficient, more powerful and clearly explained in my free e-book, The Unseen Therapist™.  Best wishes, Gary

by Fred Gallo, Ph.D.

When I began doing this work in 1992, like others who had been doing this work before me, I quickly found that some patients would report that after making tapping a regular part of their therapeutic routine, often they could merely think about tapping and this would work to relieve distress as well as actual physical tapping. I then demonstrated this in workshops and have always made a point of alerting therapists to this non-tapping tapping phenomenon.

Since I do the tapping on myself while the patient also taps, frequently I have experimented with simply tapping on myself without having the patient tap. One of my earliest interventions of this sort occurred by accident when I was talking with an Opera Singer who had to stop singing do to a problem with her voice that she traced back to emotional traumas in her relationship with her former husband. While we were discussing these traumas and the little progress that she had realized in therapy (with another therapist), I talked to her about what I might do if I were to be treating her for the traumas. I said that I might have her tap at the beginning of one or both eyebrows while she was thinking about the trauma. I modeled this procedure on myself. I pointed out that I might then have her tap under one or both of her eyes, again demonstrating on myself. And so on. She never tapped on herself, but the next day she told me that she had been singing all day and that she was singing better than she had in years. I'm not sure what she attributed the change to, but I thought that possibly the tapping on myself had done the trick. (Also note that we had not singled out one trauma, but rather the class of all traumas related to her former husband that had contributed to her singing disability).

A few days ago I saw a lady that I have been treating for a bit. She has a chronic back pain problem, along with agoraphobia with panic, and depression. We've been getting wonderful results for her. However, when she came in the other day she expressed concern about the tapping, noting that while she is able to consistently relieve the physical pain, it has "caused" an increase in panic and depression the past week. Now I've learned to not simply believe what the patient has to say, since often they have their facts wrong. At first it sounded like she experienced a surge of panic/depression immediately after tapping, which caused me to hypothesize that the pain might actual be a distraction from the negative emotions or a physical manifestation of them. However, on closer inquiry it became clear that the depression/panic did not emerge immediately after the tapping, but rather days later. Therefore the tapping did not cause the emotional reaction, at least not immediately (if at all). Nonetheless she was afraid to tap and therefore came to the office in pain, in depression, and with notable anxiety. After preparing the way, I asked her if she would mind if I tapped on myself for her. I explained a bit about this being a theory, a very odd theory, but that it probably couldn't hurt her. She consented and I tapped away, intuiting where the tapping might best occur. Within moments all the pain, anxiety and depression was gone. She said she preferred this to her tapping on herself.

So why does this work when it does? Could it be that since we live in a sea of energy, the tapping on myself resonates into the patient? Or could it be that while I'm tapping on myself, the patients direct their attention to those sections of their bodies and therefore stimulate the meridians? And what if the patient doesn't know we are tapping for them? Is that equivalent with Dossey's research on prayer? And could it ever be unethical to pray for someone's welfare? I don't think so.

There are many deeper aspects of this work that are increasingly emerging as we all do this work. Wonderfully awesome discoveries await us! I think these findings can be empirically researched as easily as actual physical tapping can be. So we ought to get started before long. I think we need empirical research to help us hold on to reality, otherwise the "woowoo factor" might get the best of us. I think Kant said it best in the "Critique of Pure Reason." The bird needs the resistance of the air in order to fly.

Warmly,

Fred

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