The Emotional Freedom Technique refocused (clarity-EFT)

Preface — Why a new, independent incarnation of the EFT?

From late 2005 to October 2018 I had here on the precursor to this page an introduction to the original EFT, albeit with a significant addition suffixed to the original basic setup statement format. I went into some detail about using setup statements, but didn't cover the tapping aspect, instead recommending a very small, succinct and inexpensive pocket book by Isy Grigg, who introduced me to the EFT, which described and illustrated the tapping sequence and all the recognised tapping positions of the standard EFT.

I took relatively little trouble about that page because, back then in late 2005, I was actually in a rather desperate situation with disruptive attacks and wrecking tactics from what I nowadays call the garbage (mistakenly equated with 'forces of darkness', 'dark force', 'forces of evil') — and the EFT, despite its evident good points, wasn't obviously stemming the attacks, so I was putting more attention on finding effective means to resolve that issue.

Also, I never felt comfortable about the basis of the EFT tapping system, for the so-called aura and all its structures seemed alien and 'not right' to me, and simply didn't make sense to my own penetrating and questioning intellect. I didn't see how anything non-physical could have physical form and structure, because anything non-physical surely wouldn't be physically located. Also, it never rang true for me, that specific emotional stresses were or could be stored in specific different organs of the body — or indeed in any organs or other parts of the body at all, except in the brain — i.e., if indeed anywhere physical at all. Yes, particular stored emotions could quite possibly do harm to specific organs, but not actually be stored in them!

Indeed, to me that whole belief was and still is 100% nonsensical (as in reality beliefs all are intrinsically), and clearly a bit of superstitious old-wifery. Unfortunately, within the realm of 'spirituality', any amount of such ill-founded or completely unfounded old-wifery is unquestioningly accepted as fact — even purported 'scientific fact'! That's one very good reason for dropping spirituality like a hot brick even before you begin to understand its underlying sinister and fundamentally seriously harmful nature.

But then, soon after I started using the EFT I found The Work, which I could see worked at a more fundamental level and had a fully rational basis, and had more potential for me in beginning to address my issue — and then later in 2005 I came across the Energy Egg, which, despite some serious shortcomings that were to come to light later, still got me starting to point in a direction that was to enable me to clear my desperate garbage shenanigans and eventually progressively build up this site, with its life-changing and life-saving rationally-based working model and methodology that leaves all belief-based systems right out in the cold.

However, because of the good points of the EFT, and recognising that all it really needed was a replacement for its tapping system, I kept the precursor of this page on this site, with only small updates apart from notes cautioning that I was now regarding it as a legacy page because the EFT was largely redundant anyway, with my more effective and soundly-based methods and The Work available on this site.

Then in October 2018 I decided to demote that page further and removed most of the links to it from other pages, so that I was no longer giving any impression on this site of the EFT being a recommended method. But of course, no sooner had I done that, than it came to me that I'd recently developed my own methodology in such a way that it should be a simple matter for me myself to overhaul the EFT, replacing its shakily-based tapping system with a simpler and much better-focused one based in my own methodology. Instead of a system based upon some very harmful and quite complex old-wifery, I could easily give the EFT a tapping system that is focused, soundly based, and much more grounding.

In doing that I'd actually not be the first to produce a version of the EFT well-removed from the original horror-story basis of the harmful illusory meridian system. A certain Dr Michael Bohne has already done that (he calls his version PEP), and, for all I know, others may have also created their own 'evolutionary forks' of the EFT for the same reason.

In Bohne's case, he spoils his pitch a bit, at least in my books, by his jargonistic technical language about his basis for his (different) tapping points (which sounds to me uncomfortably like pseudo-science), but as far as I can make out from his shakily Google-translated German, he reckons that really the effects of the EFT tapping are nothing to do with non-physical 'energies' and unverifiable 'meridian' system, so he's set up a system of tapping points supposedly based on purely physical criteria.

I've no doubt he's right in that general principle — it simply makes sense to me, and my inner inquiry supports the hypothesis that he has indeed 'got it' to a certain degree even though his dubious-sounding psycho-medical concepts and jargon prevent him from going further as I'm doing — and by the look of things he's firmly wedded to the materialist-reductionist belief system.

However, quite apart from Bohne's materialistic reductionism and his fog of professional-sounding jargon, which would presumably be hiding significant weaknesses in his particular approach, there's another thing that he's missed — the matter of having multiple tapping points at all, and it's a bit weird that he still perpetuates it. I've come to understand that, however one may 'justify' continuing to have multiple tapping points for supposedly improved versions of the EFT, those versions cannot be much improved in effectiveness because multiple tapping points, supposedly to address each type of emotion, means a quite crippled effectiveness!

It's a serious error to imagine that our emotions neatly fall into the categories that are identified in our language and concepts. My understanding, gained through my observations on how the garbage uses our stored emotional stress material in its attacks and control attempts upon us, is that that stress material exists not in neatly identifiable categories at all, but as a continuum — a spectrum of distorted 'consciousness energy'. It's thus in a way like the even colour gradient of a rainbow. If you capture samples of each obvious colour that you recognise out of a rainbow, you would most certainly not have sampled (and potentially been able to modify) much of the rainbow at all.

So, by concentrating EFT tapping to just one position, far from taking on an inferior 'lazy' approach, at last I'm bringing proper focus and efficiency to the EFT, and ceasing to categorize emotions, instead focusing on the mechanisms by which any parts of the emotional 'spectrum' are distorted. It's like the difference between a torch with a wide-angle beam and one with a very narrow beam, or even a laser when you intend to do a bit of surgery. For our purposes a narrow, focused beam would undoubtedly be most effective and indeed, in the case of a laser, could be the surgery tool itself!

What I'm doing here, then, is taking the EFT forward to a new level altogether — all the more so because I'm tying it in with the whole business of cultivating alignment of one's conscious intent with the much more powerful and effective healing intent of one's deepest aspects.

For the new tapping arrangement, then, subject to variation of tapping point for some specific purpose as indicated by one's own Helpfulness Testing on a specific occasion, here we're talking about just ONE specific Clarity-EFT tapping point — and anyone who is already familiar with my current methods would guess at once which spot it would most likely be. — Yes, the top of the sternum. One does tap elsewhere too, BUT that is in the 'before' and 'after' stages that are intrinsic in my methodology rather than the adapted-EFT bit. All will be explained further below.

Introduction — Virtually all of us carry emotional stresses / traumas

A large part of what we need to heal in order to bring about positive change in our lives and move towards enlightenment and optimal self-realization / self-actualization is stored emotional stresses and traumas. Most people, at least in the West, don't understand how much emotional trauma they're carrying or internally connected to. The usual healers' interpretation, as happened in my case, is that a great deal of the buried trauma that we're carrying is from past lives of ours.

However, there are alternative interpretations, such as our getting 'parasitic' connections from 'lost souls', thought forms or memories or indeed archetypes in the 'Earth consciousness' or the 'human collective consciousness' when we start our current lives — these attachments then masquerading as parts of our own minds so that we have experiences and emotions and memories actually from long-past lifetimes that were not ours.

I've come to a working understanding of what is the source of many apparently past life traumas and memories that actually don't belong to us, which very many people are carrying, and it comes down to two main factors:

• Past life traumas of what I call parasitic 'lost' souls that are attached or at least connected to many people.

• 'Active' connections (actually via parasitic lost souls, for some reason) to primary archetypes, which are actually loaded with a massive load of trauma emotion energy, and which generate all manner of fictitious stressful scenarios that readily appear to be past life trauma or otherwise stressful events.

In fact we don't need to know anything about the origin of particular traumas or difficult feelings or patterns in order to be able to release them. Neither do we need to have any belief in past lives. However, on that point I'd say that, although actual belief is always unhelpful, acceptance of at least the possibility of past lives or other sources outside one's own current lifetime from which emotional stress and traumas derive is really necessary for a particular reason, even though there's normally no need to know about specific sources outside your current lifetime.

The point is that if you do accept that extraneous sources of trauma emotions are a possibility, then you're much more open to accepting that there may be more to release than might be accounted for in what may appear to be a relatively untroubled lifetime that you're living. People love going into denial about emotional issues that they're carrying, so having a healthily open outlook on what issues you may be carrying, and how much, makes it much easier to access those issues for healing purposes.

Buried traumas reveal themselves, at least to aware people who are 'in the know', through the rigid and limiting patterns of outlook and behaviour that they cause. Without such patterns each of us would naturally be joyfully peaceful, totally positive, alert, tremendously loving, non-judgmental, creative, full of energy… And the list of positive attributes goes on. Anything less than that and there's something in the way, which needs healing attention.

For much of my life up to the early 2000s I'd been using the basics of Re-evaluation Counselling (RC) to enable me to release the traumas and stresses that I appeared to be carrying, and to go against rigid patterns. RC facilitates the allowing of our natural emotional healing processes of:

• crying (for grief),

• trembling (for fear and related emotions),

• laughter (for anxiety and the lighter level of fear-based emotions),

• bright indignant storming (frustration),

• yawning and stretching (the physical element of traumas)

• interested, non-repetitive talking (not analysing) about the trauma situation.

For me this proved to be a lengthy, rough and rocky ride. I did hundreds — probably in total even thousands — of hours of crying since I started with RC in 1972. Indeed, it's effectively certain that my load of supposed past life traumas was altogether too large* to be released in this lifetime just through the natural emotional release processes listed above. In fact most people who are into self-healing don't readily spend a lot of time on natural emotional release at all, so a fast-track method must be very welcome for us all.

What the Clarity-EFT does

As already noted, the original EFT is based on the false 'insight' (sourced of course from the garbage) that unhealed emotional trauma 'energies' are stored in particular parts of the body and cause blockages to 'energy' flow in particular subtle energy channels (meridians) (which latter are actually illusory — i.e., nonexistent!). The principle, then, is to get in touch with the feelings of a particular stress / trauma while simultaneously tapping on a sequence of specific points on various meridians, so supposedly releasing the energy blocks in those meridians and the organs with which they connect. The claimed effect of this is to speedily release the particular trauma emotion.

The basics of the Clarity-EFT are really just the same, but without the absurd, belief-based element. In other words we still use 'setup statements' as in the original EFT, and do our tapping while holding a particular setup statement in our mind (to get in touch with the particular emotion(s) in a specific helpful way) — but that tapping would be in slow groups of three on the top of the sternum (normally only there), and would be briefer because it's much more concentrated and effective this way. As you will see further below, even with the 'before' and 'after' additions this version is simpler and more direct than the original.

In fact, this approach leaves behind the notion of the tapping itself being 'EFT', because in this case what we're doing is using my already well established and tested Feedback-Loop Zapper procedure accompanying the focus upon the setup statement or parts thereof. You could therefore even use the alternative non-tapping Feedback-Loop Zapper procedure, though you would still have the 'before' and 'after' tapping procedures to execute.

Getting clear about what the tapping does

One important thing to understand, which would help clarify as to why the single tapping point is at least potentially much more effective, is that in reality the tapping does NOT significantly release any 'energy' blocks relating to the emotional stress material, because they're fictional or, at best, illusory in the first place and thus are not there to be released (!) — at least in the form that is generally believed.

That's true no matter whose version or 'port' of the EFT we're talking about. So, when people are using the original EFT and thinking that their tapping is releasing energy blocks in meridians, what it's actually doing is exactly what it does in my own methodology — actually two primary things, which together have the potential to have an effect similar to that of my much more efficient Feedback-Loop Zapper procedure, albeit not nearly as effective:

• Making connections with one's deepest aspects that enable that deeply-sourced healing source and intent to manifest and strongly facilitate emotional clearance;

• Grounding and focusing one's conscious awareness on something very physical (the tapping) while mentally reviewing a particular emotional screw-up (an ungrounded state).

But the trouble is that because those people have a distorted understanding of what's going on and what they're seeking to achieve, the effectiveness of that tapping is way below par, even though they do still achieve quite a lot at times — at least, as compared with using catharsis-based methods such as Re-evaluation Counselling.

Also, their focus is woefully scattered, because they're tapping on one spot for one emotion and another spot for another emotion — and they haven't used Helpfulness Testing, as I've done, to establish what would be the most effective spot for connecting properly with one's deepest aspects for the whole task of emotional clearance. That again means a serious lack of really significant alignment of intent between conscious 'mind' and deepest aspects. It's truly a wonder that those people get as far as they do, working with such handicaps! — But then again, this explains nicely why the original EFT was so lacking in any obvious ability to reduce or altogether eliminate the garbage attacks I was getting.

As to why I involve a tapping procedure called Feedback-Loop Zapper in particular, there really is a straightforward reason for this. When you're experiencing or having restimulation of any emotional stress, a feedback loop is operating in your non-physical aspects, and Feedback-Loop Zapper both stalls the immediate feedback loop and initiates the healing of the specific underlying vulnerability (weak spot / distortion) in your non-physical aspects, which has been enabling that particular feedback loop to occur.

But then also, my methodology includes a procedure called Grounding Point, which enables you to dissolve particular illusory realities that are being used in such feedback loops, so giving an additional whole level of clearance. It's by far the most effective to use both procedures in the course of clearing an issue.

Why use an emotional healing method at all?

Many people seek to justify their holding onto their issues (and thus not releasing or healing them) by imagining that if they released the stresses / traumas they'd then be devoid of emotions, and that would be a Bad Thing. That misunderstanding is also fuelled by statements about 'releasing emotions', where what we really mean by 'emotional release' is releasing particular stress or trauma states involving the particular emotions — or releasing oneself from the compulsive grip of a particular emotion.

Sometimes the process is described as 'releasing emotional blockages', which is a bit confusing because what is commonly being meant by that is releasing 'energy' blockages associated with particular emotional stresses, and that refers to something (non-physical 'energy') that has no objective existence and so is best disregarded. On the other hand it could much more meaningfully refer to patterns caused by the particular emotional stresses.

If you're healing a trauma complex relating to feelings of separation and isolation, with masses of grief and loneliness, you'd eventually come to a point where you still feel grief, sadness, loneliness or isolation when it's appropriate to do so (and that would be only briefly), but those emotions would no longer be colouring your everyday life, and would arise only rarely in response to specific circumstances, and have no valid cause to arise if you didn't encounter the relevant circumstances.

After all, they simply wouldn't belong with you then as an everyday experience because they'd be feelings relating to past events that aren't happening for you now or even in this lifetime (or, more likely, relating to trauma material that wasn't yours in the first place, as I've already explained). So, why hang onto them — except through fear of positive change (which itself can be addressed with the EFT as well as other methods that I present on this site)?

To at least a very considerable degree this appears to be my own state nowadays, in which what people usually think of as emotions are fleeting when they're felt at all, and have a more 'transparent' quality about them than they used to, because I'm now so much more in touch with my basic state of a sort of light-hearted playful and creative vibrancy that is intrinsic to me and so isn't transient at all; it can only be temporarily clouded, but, unlike the 'ordinary' emotions, it itself doesn't fluctuate except in 'flavour'.

Life like this has a much freer, more abundant feel to it, with experiences being more vivid but without any 'clinging' or compulsive quality about them. When one experience passes away, rather than seeking to repeat it, I'm immediately open to the next experience, which thus can be more 'immediate' and vivid, because it's not being clouded by any attachment to particular previous experiences. This is a much happier way to be living — but the catch is that people generally can't understand that simple fact until and unless they get clear of their own addictions and attachments.

The Clarity-EFT procedure

Just as in the original EFT, a certain clarity and skill is required to make best use of the Clarity-EFT, in order to create just the right setup statement to use, for it needs to be one that really gets in touch with the feelings related to the issue that you intend to be addressing. If you lack the will or the awareness to home in on the particular feelings, then you could for evermore be creating setup statements that may sound as though you're an EFT expert but don't take you very far — and thus you could fool yourself into thinking that you don't have much to release, or that the EFT doesn't work much for you.

Note that in this updated EFT version, for maximum effectiveness, in line with my current overall self-actualization methodology ALL tapping is done with what I call the five-finger tapping mudra held by the dominant hand, or, in particular cases, done in unison by both hands on one point.

The procedure goes as follows. Note that I give the fixed parts of the statement in blue bold text; all the normal text is just placeholder for your own text. I've added in examples of what I used in a session that I gave myself just before starting to write the original of this page in 2005.

1. Formulate setup statement

Recognise the 'difficult' emotional feelings, and form from them the following setup statement, substituting your own equivalents for the placeholder text below.

Example 1.

Even though [statement of negative / stressful thoughts / impressions, e.g., I feel cut off from companionship, friendship, love, support and any meaningful future],
I deeply and completely love and accept myself
and I choose to stand my full height and [statement of relevant positive intent, e.g. let go of the past and joyfully step into my new life].

(example reminder phrases for first part: cut off; no companionship; no meaningful future — and for second part: stand my full height; let go of past; joyfully step into; my new life)

Example 2.

Even though I have misfortune upon misfortune and nothing goes right in my life and I feel to be an ongoing victim of life,
I deeply and completely love and accept myself
and I choose to stand my full height and joyfully take command of each life situation and turn it around.

(example reminder phrases for first part: blighted by misfortune; nothing goes right; perpetual victim — and for second part: stand my full height; joyfully take command; turn each situation around)

The parts in bold above are the standard structure of any setup statement, and those parts in normal type are what I've filled in, which are uniquely appropriate to what I was seeking to address at that point. The 'and I choose to' part of the statement (which I got from Isy Grigg, who introduced me to the EFT) is actually an addition to the basic one you will normally come across, but it's so effective that I recommend to everyone that they use it in every setup statement.

The stand my full height addition is a later one of my own, but I found it so empowering in ALL my applications of the EFT that I recommend that it be used as a regular part of the and I choose to part of the core statement.

It's best to have the statement written down, though not essential, so you can glance at it to remind yourself during the session.

2. Alignment of intent (important!)

This is to tunnel or punch through the normal blockage to undistorted communication between your deepest aspects, where your really strong and aware self-healing power is, and your conscious 'mind', so that the deeply-sourced healing intent is given as much opportunity as currently possible to manifest.

This creates a very temporary 'clearway' through your normal inner blocks and confusions, but each time you do this it has a very slight more permanent weakening effect on all that crud. So, over a period of regular use of this or any other of my self-actualization procedures, preceded each time by alignment of intent, the methods all become progressively more effective as your inner blocks progressively weaken.

In Some potent self-actualization / healing practices I give three nested levels of alignment of intent procedure — Basic, Intermediate, and Power. Really the Power option (three stages) always makes best sense to use wherever possible / workable. Please refer to that page for full details and learn them from there.

3. First stage of tapping — repeating first part of the setup statement

The tapping here is with dominant hand on the front aspect of the top of the sternum, being careful not to tap at all into the soft recess immediately above. In order to avoid confusion with other procedures involving tapping on that position, you need to use a specific rhythmic pattern for this. My recommendation may change, as this is new territory for me, but currently it's the Feedback-Loop Zapper pattern, which is a slow group of three taps.

You don't continuously repeat that, but rather, you execute it just once each time at the end of your focusing on one particular part (or the whole) or aspect of the setup phrase, so that you'd probably repeat it only a few to several times during that particular session. More continuous tapping would take you away from Feedback-Loop Zapper and so is likely to be significantly less effective.

If your careful Helpfulness Testing indicates that a different tapping pattern would work better for you, by all means try that, but you'd need to Helpfulness-Test again after trying the different tapping pattern, because your deepest aspects may have determined that it isn't working as well for you as had been expected, and that the default tapping pattern that I suggest (or indeed a different one again) would be better after all.

As for repeating the setup statement while tapping, there are various ways to go about this, but the least helpful thing is just mechanically to repeat it word-for-word each time. A more effective way, that puts you more in touch with the statement is to start off just repeating a 'reminder' word or phrase for the first line of the statement only, getting as in-touch as possible with the meaning and feelings of that part of the statement.

There's no clear requirement or need to stick strictly to just the first part here, but generally it's most effective to put prime focus on it at this stage, with relatively cursory attention to the second part if you are going to include it at all before the next step.

4. The Healthy Break sequence

This replaces the 9 Gamut procedure in the middle of the tapping sequence in the original EFT. As in the latter, it can be omitted with no great loss, but my indications are that it does have some real beneficial effects when used at this point in the tapping sequence. After all, here we're at the point of switching over from involvement in the troublesome emotions to focusing on a specific pattern-breaking positive / constructive statement, and it makes sense at this point to give the brain 'machinery' a little pattern-breaking 'surprise jolt', which suddenly interrupts the 'stuck recording' of the troublesome emotion and underlying memories, to leave your 'mind' suddenly more open than usual to looking at things differently.

Although the 9 Gamut actions given for the EFT would work fine (apart from tapping on a nonexistent 'meridian'!), I strongly recommend that one uses different 'silly' actions in order to maintain a very clear mental separation from the original EFT and its particular unhelpful baggage — this being particularly important for anyone who's previously been using the original EFT.

My provisional suggestions are as follows (do all three):

1. Carry out one cycle of the Eight-Point Eye Movements, with your eyes open.

2. Do a 'voice sweep' up and down, starting as low as you can easily reach, and sliding up to about your highest non-straining pitch, and then descending again to the bottom, using a vowel gradient, say from a low 'w' to a high 'ee' and back down — anything of that sort, which gives a great gloopy sense of an even upward then downward slide, without being 'precious' about it.

   This isn't a concert performance and needs to have a sense of nonsense and irrelevance about it in the context. Definitely to be done with a smile! If in a place where it would be problematical to make such a sound, you could do it just as a whispered whistle. Not as effective, but much better than skipping that step altogether.

3. Very briefly recite at least a bit of this completely nonsensical tongue twister or something else equally nonsensical and challenging to say aloud at a normal speed:
   A chic cheat sheep leek fleet sleeps in cheap sleek sheets, all served up on a shifty shelf of selfish shellfish in the kitchen's chicken checkout., allowing yourself to stumble and feel enjoyably silly and have a little laugh at your efforts.

4. Repeat 1.

5. Second stage of tapping — repeat the whole setup statement, this time dwelling primarily on the second ('positive') part — again using reminder words / phrases to make it work more effectively.

6. End of Practice Procedure.
This is standard for any of my practices / procedures. It amplifies the effects of the immediately preceding practice / procedure, also reinforcing the alignment of intent and increasing the odds for the resultant healing / clearance process(es) running for longer and thus getting more done. Learn the procedure at Some potent self-actualization / healing practices.

This sequence can be repeated up to several times in the particular session, usually with thoughtfully intuited amendments to the setup statement. It's fine and good to modify and sharpen up the setup statement during the session. As you get in touch with the feel of the statement more during the session, it makes perfect sense to try out variations as you go, to see which version gets you most in touch with the underlying feelings so that you're releasing more through this and the Feedback-Loop Zapper tapping.

When substantial emotional issues are involved, one to a few sessions with any version of the EFT couldn't reasonably be expected to clear the whole issue, though still may occur here and there. However, in this particular case it's more likely that the odd ones would fully clear — and in any case, if you use The Work or especially Grounding Point and Self-Power Walking too, progressive clearance of many major issues to more or less completion would happen much more readily — though depending on how effectively the methods are being used, which in turn depends a lot on how much soul programming the person has, if any; none is best by far.

With Re-evaluation Counselling you have to work in a similar way, using the natural cathartic emotional healing processes instead of any simple shortcuts like the tapping, but with the EFT it's all so much quicker, with much less effort, and without the potentially serious problems that readily arise in a co-counselling environment as you get when you're using RC*.

Postscript — More uses for the setup statement

In fact the setup statement, including the 'and I choose…' section, is a powerful tool that can be used in any healing systems, for no healing is complete without attention to positive life change and breaking patterns. I strongly recommend that it be taken up and used widely by all 'healers' in any system, also in Re-evaluation Counselling and indeed by professional counsellors — though of course the practitioners would need to have the means to give the requisite emotional support, and then the use of Clarity-EFT would greatly reduce the amount of any of the natural emotional release that might be necessary.

In my own experience certain setup statements seemed to be very useful to repeat in my mind in situations where tapping was inappropriate. In that usage I didn't concentrate on getting strong emotional feelings but instead focused on the positive change aspect. For example, on one of my hikes when I was taking a 'pit stop' and was just waiting for my pee to start (this has been quite a problem area for me), I was repeating something like Even though people are about to pass by and see what I'm doing, and might wonder why I'm just standing here with nothing coming out, I deeply and completely love and accept myself, and I choose to honour myself and enjoy letting it flow anyway for all to see.*

If I can't accept the statement I deeply and completely love and accept myself, can I still find any benefit from EFT by substituting another positive statement in its place?

Well, sort-of, though it's important to keep in mind that I deeply and completely love and accept myself is a crucial part of anyone's self-healing and self-actualization process, and so it's necessary to come to terms with and fully embrace that statement as soon as you can possibly manage it. A good interim alternative to use would be something like I'm coming towards deeply and completely loving and accepting myself. Indeed, that would also be assisting you in focusing your intent on becoming able to deeply and completely love yourself, so it would be very beneficial while you have that particular block — though you'd need to stick with an intent that you'd move on to the unattenuated statement at a very early stage, otherwise you'd just be self-sabotaging and getting nowhere fast.

Also, you can directly address the issue with the EFT, using a setup statement something like:

colorDarkBlue">Even though at the moment I feel I can't (deeply and completely) love and accept myself, I actually love myself enough that I'm working right now to make it possible, and I choose to stand my full height and joyfully to accept the most fundamental positive change in my life".

…But it's important for each person to use wording that's most appropriate for them and doesn't turn them off, so my suggestion here is simply one that you can use as a basis for a setup statement of your own.

However, there's more that you can do to enable you to move very quickly to deeply and completely loving yourself — one way being to use The Work on the issue. The way I'd expect to go about it for myself would be to see what thoughts arise in my mind to justify my apparent inability to deeply and completely love and accept myself. Such thoughts might be ones like I'm bad because I'm unloving to others / to xxxx, I'm bad because I feel resentful / jealous / angry at people, I'm ugly / fat / disabled [you name it!], or maybe I'm bad because I did xyz.

Having written down those particular thoughts that arise, then I'd examine them further with the aim of making them and any related thoughts into the most effective format for putting to inquiry using The Work — and then I'd work through the list I'd created, putting each of those thoughts to inquiry.

Actually, probably rigorous use of Grounding Point would be the best option of all, because that could easily be used to zap the illusory realities underlying any feeling that you couldn't accept the setup statement in full and without amendment.

Best to use at least two methods — try The Work as well!

In fact, although it might appear that theoretically a person could clear all their emotional issues with just one method, the practical reality is that few people indeed would manage to do so.* This applies not only to all versions of the EFT but indeed to any emotional clearance method, never mind how good, that requires one to identify particular issues, or 'handles' upon those issues, to work on. All such methods are limited by the user's own 'blind spots' and limitations on their thoroughness of using a particular method. For this reason I recommend that, even if you really love Clarity-EFT and get on with it just great, you take on one or more at least equally powerful method(s) to use in addition. Belt and braces is King!

One such method is The Work, developed by Byron Katie. It's a process of methodical inner inquiry based on four fundamental questions and a turnaround that are applied to each of one's beliefs, judgments and stressful thoughts. This simple but powerful method rapidly sorts out one's life and, at least theoretically, brings about a self-actualization process, putting enlightenment and enlightened living theoretically within reach of many.

I came into what seemed to be an excellent approach to using both these methods. If a clear judgment or belief came into my mind and was the predominant experience rather than a stressful feeling at that time, then I'd write it down and put it to inquiry using The Work. However, if a particular stressful feeling was more prominent, then I used the EFT. Then quite often, as the setup statement clarified during the tapping stages, I arrive at a specific belief or judgment that was strongly amenable to putting to inquiry, and so I wrote that down and finished off the clearance of that issue (or that part of an issue) by doing The Work on it.

Indeed, I recommend finishing off ANY issue by using The Work on it — for a very important reason. When you use the EFT or other method that primarily releases the emotional charge or payload of an issue, what can readily happen is that you release the emotional charge to such a level that you no longer very much notice it and so you're no longer motivated to continue clearing it — indeed you may well believe that you've already cleared it. Yet you may not have released enough for full inner re-evaluation of the underlying believed or misunderstood thought(s), so that you'd still to some extent be carrying limiting patterns and beliefs caused by the particular underlying beliefs / misunderstandings.

Therefore it makes sense to finish off each issue with The Work, because that method focuses precisely on achieving inner re-evaluation. Indeed, I know of no other method which is so direct and precise in achieving re-evaluation. Inner re-evaluation marks the final clearance of any issue.

 

Yes, but what a hassle!

More efficient methods are right here!

From mid 2007 I started taking up methods that effectively made the original EFT and The Work redundant for me, never mind how good they were in relation to what had been available before they'd been developed. Nowadays, on reading through all the above on this page, and indeed on my page for The Work, my immediate gut response is Phew! What a bloody hassle!.

At least by spending some time using those methods people can see how much easier and simpler and indeed more powerful it is to use the Self-Power Walking and Grounding Point methods, especially when these are combined with use of exceptionally powerful affirmations and declarations of intent for comprehensive genuine self-actualization. One thing that's especially great about Self-Power Walking is that no particular mental acuity is required to use it.

The EFT — even Clarity-EFT — and The Work can't work effectively at all for the vast majority of people under their own direction, for they lack the sort of mental clarity that would enable them to be sufficiently focused to make major gains from those particular methods (even though many people could no doubt make welcome limited gains with them).

Also, a combination of Self-Power Walking, Grounding Point and various other practices that I present in Some potent self-actualization / healing practices is much more effective in progressively healing and eventually clearing out any parasitic lost souls or indeed other attached 'entities', which may well be the true owners of most or even virtually all of the emotional issues that you're carrying — and also, as already noted, I present on this site a method specifically for at least reducing the impact of one's connections to primary archetypes.

However, both The Work and Clarity-EFT are very suitable to be used by counsellors and therapists for guiding clients through addressing specific issues, where the people involved have no special motivation towards genuine comprehensive self-actualization. They would thus be used in the context of more limited life improvement rather than the comprehensive self-actualization that I promote, and that's why I'm not involving myself in that way, apart from being open to the giving of workshops to groups of mental healthcare professionals who want to start bringing real healing into the mental 'healthcare' services (at long last!).

Also — and this is why I finally troubled to revamp the original EFT despite its longueurs and limitations — I came to recognise that both The Work and the EFT in their different ways, although largely peripheral to my methodology, are excellent for people new to the latter, to use for a relatively short period in order to gain particular insights into extremely helpful ways to view and handle their emotional issues. This is particularly true of The Work, but we each can also gain some very helpful insights and training through a short initial period of ongoing use of the Clarity-EFT with its different approach. I recommend one to three months with The Work, and one to a few weeks of Clarity-EFT.

However, when you want something to shift quickly or/and more dependably, then it would be best policy to use other methods of mine, such as Self-Power Walking and Grounding Point, and generally soon to leave The Work and Clarity-EFT (or any other version of the EFT) behind in favour of the greater efficiency of my own core methodology, while still benefiting from the insights that you'd gained from your past use of those two peripheral methods.