WHAT IS EFT TAPPING?
The Science Behind the Practice
EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques. It is sometimes called tapping — because it involves gently tapping with your fingertips on specific acupressure points on the face and upper body, while honestly acknowledging what you are feeling emotionally.
It sounds simple. And in practice, it is. But what happens beneath the surface is genuinely remarkable.
What Is Happening in the Body
When any of us — or any of our clients — experiences fear, self-doubt, shame, grief, or any kind of contractive emotion, a tiny structure deep in the brain called the amygdala fires. The amygdala is essentially the brain's alarm system. When it perceives a threat — even an emotional or imagined one — it sends a stress signal cascading through the body. Heart rate goes up. Breathing becomes shallow. Muscles brace. The nervous system shifts into what we know as fight, flight, or freeze.
These are real, physical responses. Sweaty palms. A racing heart. Waking up at three in the morning wondering what on earth you have gotten yourself into.
Now here is where tapping becomes extraordinary...
When we tap gently on those acupressure points — while honestly acknowledging what we are feeling — we send a direct calming signal to that same amygdala. We are essentially communicating to the nervous system: you are not in danger. You are safe right now. And the stress response begins to de-escalate.
What Makes EFT Tapping Different
What makes EFT different from simply taking a deep breath or doing a traditional meditation is this — when we tap while holding a specific fear, belief, or memory consciously in mind, the emotional charge attached to that thought actually neutralizes over time. The thought does not disappear. But it loses its power to trigger the same contractive response in the body.
Here is an analogy I love:
Imagine you burned your hand on a hot stove when you were a child. You still remember it happened. EFT does not erase that memory. What it does is remove the flinch — the automatic physical recoil — every time you walk near a stove.
The Origins of EFT
EFT was developed in the 1990s by Gary Craig, a Stanford-trained engineer and personal performance coach, who drew from the earlier work of clinical psychologist Dr. Roger Callahan and his Thought Field Therapy (TFT). Craig simplified and refined the process, making it widely accessible — and generously shared his foundational work through his original resource at emofree.com. Today, EFT tapping is practiced in over one hundred countries and used by coaches, therapists, veterans’ programs, schools, and integrative health practitioners worldwide.
What the Research Shows
This is not fringe science. EFT has been the subject of more than one hundred peer-reviewed studies. It has been included in the SAMHSA National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices. The VA and military health systems use it with veterans experiencing PTSD. It has been formally endorsed by the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) as an evidence-based practice.
Dawson Church, Ph.D.
His landmark randomized controlled trial, published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (2012), found that a single hour of EFT produced a 24% drop in cortisol — the body’s primary stress hormone — compared to only 14% in the talk therapy and rest groups. Anxiety and depression scores also fell more than twice as much in the EFT group. A second study by Church and colleagues, also published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (2013), found that 86% of veterans with clinical PTSD no longer met diagnostic criteria after just six sessions of EFT — and maintained those improvements at six-month follow-up.
Peta Stapleton, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology at Bond University in Australia and a world authority on EFT research, Dr. Stapleton led the first-ever fMRI study of tapping, which used brain scans to show that after a four-week EFT program, activity in the brain regions associated with craving and emotional eating was significantly reduced — changes that were visible, measurable, and not seen in the control group. You can explore her full body of work at her Bond University research profile. In November 2024, Dr. Stapleton received the Australian Psychological Society’s Distinguished Contribution to Psychological Science Award in recognition of her years of EFT research.
David Feinstein, Ph.D.
His peer-reviewed work, including his 2018 paper in EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing, synthesizes more than one hundred outcome studies and fifty-one randomized controlled trials on acupoint tapping protocols, and consistently finds that EFT produces outcomes equivalent to — and in some cases surpassing — those of cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety and trauma.
The research continues to grow, and it is compelling.
Your Tapping Coach: Created Specifically for Heart-Centered Professionals
Here is what makes the Your Tapping Coach library different from the many EFT resources available today.
Most tapping content is created for a general audience — addressing everyday stress, sleep, or self-esteem in broad terms. That content has real value. But it was not built for you.
You are a coach or therapist. You have trained for this work. You have said yes to a calling that is both deeply meaningful and genuinely demanding. And the challenges you face are specific: the fear of putting yourself out there, the imposter syndrome that shows up just before a consultation call, the money blocks that surface when it is time to set your fees, the compassion fatigue that creeps in after a long season of holding space for others. These are not generic stress responses. They are the particular inner terrain of the heart-centered professional — and they deserve a tapping practice that meets them exactly where they are.
Every meditation in this library was created to address the real, nuanced, often unspoken inner work of building and sustaining a thriving practice. The language is clinical without being cold. The approach is somatic, nervous-system-informed, and grounded in years of working with and alongside practitioners like you. And each recording closes with something true: an acknowledgment of just how important the work you do actually is.
This is tapping for professionals, by a fellow professional — created to support you as fully as you support the people in your care.
Your Tapping Coach is the work of Jan Caimano — Certified Advanced Clinical Hypnotherapist, EFT Practitioner, and Certified DreamBuilder Coach. Jan has been studying and teaching EFT for many years and is a proud member of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP).