I am amazed how many people think it is more important to know about the problem rather than do something about it.
Maybe it’s articles in Cosmo, pop psychology books or diluted Freudian-ism that gives people the idea that if they understand the problem well enough it will change.
I think that is a dangerous misunderstanding, but it’s not a new one.
More than 2,500 years ago the Buddha addressed the same confusion with this teaching story.
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In this talk Rick Hanson, neuroscientist and author of The Buddha’s Brain, talks about neuroplasticity – what it is and how to get the best out of it.
The part that resonates most with me is:
You can use your mind to change your brain to change your mind for the better.
That’s very good news for anyone who thinks their mental world is stuck and will always be stuck in the same way (it’s also a pretty good definition of therapy).
The video was hosted by Greater Good – The Science Of A Meaningful Life which is well worth a visit.
Shortly after posting this, Steve Wells and Helen Walker (bless their hearts) emailed to let me know I had got it wrong (as usual by not reading the small print).
The EFT research does meet the standards of the APA but it has not yet recognised as evidence based by the APA – a big difference.
So I’ll strike out the bits that aren’t yet true and leave the post up as a reminder to me: post in haste, repent at leisure.
Sorry about that
One of the difficulties of getting EFT into mainstream organisations (such as the NHS here in the UK) is that opponents or doubters say that it is not evidenced based.
Many people in many places have been doing the hard work of researching the effects of EFT for various problems, all this work is paying off.
The American Psychological Association wrote in its journal Review of General Psychology:
“A literature search identified 50 peer-reviewed papers that report or investigate clinical outcomes following the tapping of acupuncture points to address psychological issues. The 17 randomized controlled trials in this sample were critically evaluated for design quality, leading to the conclusion that they consistently demonstrated positive statistical results that far exceed chance and showed moderate to large effect sizes after relatively few treatment sessions. Criteria for evidence-based treatments proposed by Division 12 of the American Psychological Association were also applied and found to be met for a number of conditions, including PTSD.”
This is great new for EFT and for the people it can help.
It’s also great news for the hardy folk in the NHS who want to add EFT to their therapeutic toolkit (although I imagine it will take a while)
You can find out more about the EFT research method at EFTUniverse.com
We are brilliant learners.
If we are lucky we can grow up to become physicists, philosophers, saints or sages.
Unfortunately for us we learn the important lessons in life, who we are and what life is all about, at a time when we are least capable of making sense of it.
The conclusions we come to can bless us or blight us.
We are evolved beings, we have survived and thrived against all the odds through our long evolutionary journey.
We have large brains and it takes us a long time for them to mature. Our faculties of judgement don’t fully mature until we are in our early twenties. So we have very long childhoods to give us time to upload our cultural software.
Throughout this process we are dependent on our caregivers for survival and learning life’s lessons, but we don’t get to choose which lessons we learn.
Martine Moorby and I are running an AAMET EFT Level3 training on July 7th & 8th in Harrogate.
A few weeks ago we recorded a conversation about the training and how we approached advanced EFT. Listen in to find out how we could help you take your EFT skills to the next level.
Part 1 – We talk about what attendees can look forward to in this training and how we will be co-training.
| Andy Hunt 0745 700 9116 andy@practicalwellbeing.co.uk |  |
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