What Is EFT Tapping? Your Guide To Emotional Freedom Technique

It involves tapping specific points on your body while focusing on an emotion or issue you want to release

Could a few well-placed taps on your body be what it takes to help reduce stress and even ease physical pain? It may sound unbelievable, but there’s some compelling science behind the Emotional Freedom Technique, more commonly known as EFT tapping.

In fact, a 2022 review of more than 50 research studies found that EFT tapping is moderately to largely effective in managing a variety of conditions, including anxiety, phobias, depression, PTSD, insomnia, pain and athletic performance.

Functional medicine specialist Melissa Young, MD, explains what EFT tapping is, how to do it and what it may be able to do for you.

What is EFT tapping?

It’s hard to imagine that using your fingers to tap, tap, tap on your eyebrow or clavicle could help melt away stress and relieve some of your pain, but that’s the idea behind Emotional Freedom Technique.

This holistic, evidence-based practice is one that you can do on your own, anywhere and at any time, without any special tools. You use your fingertips to tap on specific points on your body — mainly on your head and face — while you focus your mind on a particular issue or emotion.

“I like to think of it as a blend of modern psychology and acupressure points to lower stress and help with issues like anxiety, mood and even pain,” Dr. Young says. “It’s a nice blend of connecting the mind and body to help calm stress.”

EFT tapping, which was developed in the 1970s and ’80s, is rooted in the idea of acupoints. According to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), 12 primary meridians (channels) carry energy throughout the body. Acupoints sit along these meridians and can be stimulated by acupuncture or acupressure.

“In EFT tapping, we utilize nine of those points,” Dr. Young says. The idea is that tapping on these points helps to reduce stress and anxiety and, as some proponents believe, to balance the body’s energy system.

The benefits of EFT tapping

EFT tapping might simply make you feel better, period, whether or not you’re feeling bad to start with. One study found that at the time it was performed, EFT tapping increased happiness by 31%.

“Another study showed that it can lead to up to a 43% decrease in cortisol levels, which is one of the body’s primary stress hormones,” Dr. Young points out, “so that’s pretty impressive.”

Other studies on EFT tapping have shown that it may be able to help relieve symptoms of various conditions:

Anxiety: “We see the most evidence for its capacity for lowering anxiety,” Dr. Young says. Studies on EFT tapping found that it leads to a significant decrease in anxiety, though more research is needed to see how well it works compared to standard treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy.

Depression: A survey of 20 studies on EFT tapping for depression found that it reduced depressive symptoms at least as well as other treatments.

Pain: EFT tapping has been shown to benefit people with tension headaches, frozen shoulder and other chronic pain.

Post-traumatic stress disorder: EFT tapping may help military veterans living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One study found that veterans who were trained in this method “significantly reduced” their psychological stress; within six months, 80% of them no longer met the clinical criteria for having PTSD.

Cravings: Multiple studies show that EFT tapping can help reduce food cravings and lessen the perceived power of food, making it a helpful addition to traditional weight loss techniques like a healthy diet and exercise.

Phobias: A small study showed that EFT tapping significantly reduced anxiety related to specific phobias.

But it’s important to note that EFT tapping shouldn’t take the place of seeking medical care from a licensed healthcare provider and following any prescribed treatment plans. A 2023 commentary on a review of research on EFT tapping for PTSD noted that many studies use self-reported diagnoses and symptom relief when publishing results. This means that some EFT research relies on individuals, not healthcare providers, to confirm their diagnoses and to assess their changes in symptoms, and could be biased.

If you think you have a specific health condition, or already have a diagnosis, you should discuss the use of EFT tapping to manage your symptoms with your provider before beginning.

Like breathwork techniques, EFT tapping is relatively easy to learn and perform, and you can do it just about anywhere — meaning that if you’re in the midst of a busy or stressful day, all you need to do is duck out for five to 15 minutes of solitude. It’s also:

• Free.
• Noninvasive.
• Nonpharmaceutical
• No known negative side effects.

Ready to learn more about what it is and how to do it? Let’s dive in.

What are the steps to EFT tapping?

EFT tapping (literally) taps into nine acupoints in a specific sequence. But it’s not all tapping: The tapping sequence is bookended by an exercise in thinking about the issue that you want to address, whether it’s stress, anger, pain, cravings or something else.

Dr. Young walks us through how to do EFT tapping.

1. Identify the issue

The first step to EFT tapping isn’t tapping at all. First, identify the emotion or problem that’s bothering you in this moment, whether it’s anger, stress, anxiety, depression or even pain.

“I like to call this ‘tuning in,’” Dr. Young says. “You may want to put a hand on your chest and close your eyes as you focus inward on the emotion or issue that you want to deal with.”

2. Rate the intensity

Once you’ve identified the emotion or issue that you’re facing, rate its intensity on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is “totally fine” and 10 is “the absolute worst.” Setting a benchmark for your state of mind before the EFT tapping allows you to better assess how you feel once you’re done with the process.

3. Choose your setup statement

Adopt a phrase that acknowledges both the issue you’re facing and your own self-acceptance, for example, “Even though I feel stress in my body, I fully and deeply accept myself.”

Your setup statement should be self-reflective and about what’s going on with you, rather than focused on someone else or the environment around you.

“In today’s society, we tend to want to push things away,” Dr. Young notes. “It’s about what you’re feeling and being able to acknowledge, ‘I am feeling this, but it’s OK and I accept myself despite it.’”

4. Begin your EFT tapping sequence

You’re now ready to work your way through nine tapping points.

As you start the tapping sequence, continue to repeat the phrase that you’ve come up with and expand on it as you go through each tapping point. Variations might include, for example, “I feel stress in my body, but I am open to releasing it now,” and, “Even though I have all this stress in my body, I am choosing to let it go.”

Now, you’re ready to begin. Gently tap each of the following points seven to nine times apiece, slowly working your way through them and repeating variations on your setup statement as you go.

1. To start, use four fingers to tap on the side of your other hand, just beneath your pinky.

2. Then, use two fingers to gently tap through each of these spots:

• The inner edge of your eyebrow, near the bridge of your nose.
• The side of your eye, right on the bone. 
• Underneath your eye, right on the bone.
• Under the nose, right above your lip.
• Under your lip, just above the chin.
• One or both sides or the center of your collarbone (clavicle).

3. Use three fingers to tap under your arm, just beneath your armpit.

4. Finally, use three or four fingers to tap on the very top (crown) of your head.

“As you tap, continue to think about the stress in your life and in your body,” Dr. Young instructs. “This is a time we want to bring up those feelings. We want to feel them because we’re working on that mind/body connection.”

5. Rate the intensity again

Dr. Young recommends completing five to seven rounds of the tapping sequence. When you’re done, finish by assessing the final intensity of the emotion or problem that you were trying to address through EFT tapping.

“If that feeling hasn’t resolved or calmed, or if you feel like you still have more work to do, you can certainly do more rounds than that,” she says.

With that, though, comes an important caveat: If at any time you feel overwhelmed by the intensity of your feelings and can’t seem to make a dent in them on your own, reach out to a healthcare professional, like a therapist or a family care provider.

Does it matter which side you do EFT tapping on?

You may choose to tap on only one side of your body (for example, below the left pinky, inside the left eyebrow, etc.) or on both sides (for example, below the left pinky, then below the right pinky, inside the left eyebrow and then inside the right eyebrow, and so on).

You may choose to tap on only one side of your body (for example, below the left pinky, inside the left eyebrow, etc.) or on both sides (for example, below the left pinky, then below the right pinky, inside the left eyebrow and then inside the right eyebrow, and so on).

“It’s all up to your personal preference, so if you’re right- or left-handed or one feels better than the other, just choose that,” Dr. Young says. “There’s no data on this, but I’m partial to tapping on both sides so that both sides of the brain are getting input.”

But whichever you choose, just try to remain consistent throughout your tapping session.

How often should I do EFT tapping?

While this therapy hasn’t become as commonplace as other traditional Chinese medicine-based techniques, like acupuncture, there’s no harm in adding EFT tapping to your daily or weekly routine. In fact, the more often you practice EFT tapping, the more helpful it may be. That’s not because practice makes perfect (what is “perfect,” anyway?!), but because your body starts to get used to it and welcome it as a means of calming down.

“Being consistent in your practice helps your nervous system to better shift out of fight-or-flight mode (aka sympathetic mode) and into rest-and-digest mode (aka parasympathetic mode),” Dr. Young explains.

“Even practicing in smaller amounts of time throughout the course of a day can be helpful.”