Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) has been referred to as "psychological acupressure". In acupuncture and acupressure, energy channels are recognized throughout your body. These are specifically located superhighways of energy flow, and they can become blocked by environmental toxins, mental stress and anxiety, poor diet and several other causes. Acupressure and acupuncture work to clear up any blockages in these energy meridians, so your energy flows freely, and mental and physical health problems are abated.
EFT is a practice in the emerging field of energy psychology that recognizes emotional problems can lead to physical symptoms, diseases and illness. EFT is sometimes called tapping, because this treatment uses light tapping motions with your fingers on specific areas where energy meridians are located. This is a much less invasive and frightful experience than the implanting of small needles, which is practiced in acupuncture. However, the idea is the same.
EFT tapping unblocks your clogged energy pathways, and both mental and physical symptoms and health problems are cleared up. This leads to energy harmony, and a stronger control of your emotions, as well as a control of your responses to your emotions.
Emotional Eating and EFT Tapping
Several experts on the subject believe that often people eat for emotional reasons, not physical hunger. This can be problematic for several reasons. First off, your health can take a turn for the worse. You can become overweight or obese, develop diabetes or heart disease, and experience a long list of negative health consequences directly related to overeating and consuming junk food and comfort food. Fortunately, EFT is an excellent methodology to help you decrease, or eliminate, your emotional eating episodes.
How to “Tap” to Stop Emotional Eating
Emotional eaters often crave a particular food. When you feel an emotional eating episode or unhealthy craving coming on, ask yourself what is it about the food that you like so much? What is it doing for you? What positive feelings is it giving you? Is it the tastiness or crunchiness of the food? Is it the fact that after eating, you feel happy, relaxed, soothed or content?
Now that you have an idea about what the food does for you when you eat emotionally, recognize that positive emotion. Give yourself the permission to feel the good sensations or emotions you get when you eat emotionally.
Next, create a "Reminder Phrase". This should be a phrase that reminds you of the current physical, mental or emotional problem you are experiencing, in the case of emotional eating, a craving to eat for the wrong reasons. Your reminder phrase may be, "I am craving a large pizza with all the works and extra cheese."
Before you get started tapping, create and say your "Setup Affirmation" 3 times, while simultaneously tapping on the focus point. (The focus points are listed below). This affirmation should be formed as, "Even though ________, I profoundly and deeply love and accept myself."
You place your reminder phrase in the blank. In this example, you would say, "Even though I am craving a large pizza with all the works and extra cheese, I profoundly and deeply love and accept myself."
The Tapping Sequence
1 – Top of the head
2 – The inside ends of the eyebrows
3 – The outside of your eyes
4 – Directly under your eyes
5 – Beneath your nose and above your upper lip
6 – The center of your chin in the indentation below your lower lip
7 – The inner ends of your collarbones
8 – 3 or 4 inches below each of your armpits
9 – The inside of your wrist, below your palm
10 – Karate-chop point, located on the outside of your palm below your pinkie finger
Now you are going to move through the 10 energy meridian tapping points listed above. Say your reminder phrase out loud once or twice while tapping at each meridian point during the first sequence. Tap lightly and quickly with the tips of the pointer and middle fingers of one hand. For the meridian points that have 2 sides, such as the collarbones, choose one side or the other. After moving through all 10 tapping points once, repeat the process, saying the reminder phrase one time per point.
When you have done so, after a few sequences, this unblocks important channels of energy that can lead to poor emotional and behavioral choices, such as emotional eating. Keep the positive and negative memories you have from eating whatever it is that you are craving.
Focus on those memories and emotions as you tap. After tapping all 10 tapping energy channels 2 or 3 times, express your level of emotional pain on a scale of 0 to 10, 10 being the most painful.
Then tap through another series and check your painful emotions again. After a few sequences, you should be able to get the pain attached to your emotional eating cravings down to 3 or lower.
This means you have identified emotions as causing your eating behavior, not physical hunger, you are in control, and you most likely won't feel like eating any longer.
Since EFT recognizes emotional reasons are at the core of most health problems, whether they are physical or emotional, it makes the perfect treatment for emotion-based eating disorders. Not only do your negative emotions cause an imbalance in your body's natural energy system, but any imbalance in your energy flow can lead to emotions that you answer with unhealthy eating habits.
If you have tried in vain to conquer emotional eating, perhaps this relatively new form of energy healing will provide the relief you're looking for.