What is the History of EFT Tapping?

The Incredible History of EFT Tapping

At the Center for EFT Studies, we teach the Gary Craig EFT Training, also known as Classic or Gold Standard EFT.

For this reason, it is important to dive into the History of EFT and its incredible beginnings.

So let’s talk about the history of EFT, also known as the Emotional Freedom Techniques or EFT Tapping.

In 1991, Stanford-trained engineer and personal performance coach Gary Craig changed the world.

It all started with a class in, “Thought Field Therapy” which was taught by Dr. Roger Callahan and was an offshoot of training he had taken in “Touch for Health” which was devised by John Thie and George Goodheart.

Each man learned from the other and built one upon the other. As Gary himself said, “I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Together they created the backbone of what would later be considered “Energy Psychology.

It All Started with Roger Callahan and Thought Field Therapy

The legend goes that Dr. Callahan, a clinical psychologist with more than 40 years of experience, had a patient named Mary, who suffered from a severe water phobia. Her phobia was so severe she couldn’t even bathe or go out in rainy conditions without experiencing distress.

Like many practitioners before him, Dr. Callahan was having little success in helping Mary.

On this fateful day, having just returned from training in Touch for Health with John Thie, he opted to try something new.

During the session, Mary indicated that she felt distress in her stomach when she even thought about water. Having just learned that the meridian point under her eye was related to the stomach, he guided her to tap on that point.

Almost instantly, Mary experienced relief.

Within minutes she was able to get into his swimming pool without any symptoms whatsoever.

And thus Thought Field Therapy was born.

Over the course of the next decade, Callahan developed a set of “algorithms” for tapping on specific acupuncture points, with each specific algorithm being appropriate for specific ailments and dysfunctions.

The algorithms were complicated and required use of special machinery, all of which was extremely expensive and blocked the growth of Thought Field Therapy.

However, something even better was on the horizon.

Enter Gary Craig, Founder of the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)

In 1991, after completing the Thought Field Therapy training himself, Gary Craig began to examine, deconstruct, and experiment with the algorithms.

Eventually, he streamlined the process, creating what is now known as the Basic Recipe in The Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). Ultimately results turned out to be equal or better, without the complicated algorithms.

So in 1995, Gary Craig’s EFT Training was born.

Over the course of the next 30 years, EFT spread across the planet like wildfire, largely due to its amazing efficacy and to the Gary Craig EFT Training.

The obvious results in areas generally considered to be “incurable” was noted by many; especially considering the low cost, the lack of negative side effects, and the sheer speed and seeming simplicity of the technique.

In 1995 Gary Craig EFT Training was Born

Over the course of the next 30 years, EFT spread across the planet like wildfire, largely due to its amazing efficacy and to the Gary Craig EFT Training.

Retirement and the Future of the Gary Craig EFT Training

In March of 2010, Gary shocked the world by announcing his retirement. The stress of managing this fast-growing technique had taken its toll and his doctor announced that he had, quite surprisingly even to him, experienced a “small heart attack.” That in combination with his growing frustrations over events going on in the community that he could no longer manage or contain, and his desire to experiment with new ideas, led to his retirement.

In an act as classy as the man himself, he “gifted EFT to the world.”

In his retirement, Gary was free to continue his experimentation with EFT, eventually creating a variation of the technique he called Optimal EFT, which is based on his deep love of A Course in Miracles.

So What Happened to the Gary Craig EFT Training?

EFT Certification training was taken over by the community itself based on the detailed training guidelines that Gary himself created.

Some teachers, like myself, continue to teach Classic EFT, which is very similar to the original Gary Craig EFT Training, but which has continued to grow and develop over the 20-plus years since his retirement.

Other teachers have created alterations of the original Classic Gary Craig EFT Training, including variations such as Clinical EFT, Matrix Reimprinting, Faster EFT, Meridian Tapping Therapy, and the like.