7 Major Differences Between EFT and FasterEFT

[2012 Original Article Updated: January 2021]

Before exploring the differences between EFT^[i](which I originally studied) and FasterEFT, I want to make it clear to you that, although in some ways I prefer FasterEFT, I have immense respect for EFT and all other energy therapies, their founders and their practitioners. I also have immense respect for the people who blazed the trails for today’s energy practitioners: Dr. Roger Callahan (TFT), Gary Craig (EFT), Dr. Larry Nims (BSFF), Richard Bandler and John Grinder (NLP) who codified the work of Dr. Milton H. Erickson.

EFT and FasterEFT have much in common. But each method approaches tapping and healing from a different mindset or perspective. And practitioners of each modality staunchly defend their preference. When I first published this article in 2012, I managed, unwittingly, to estrange followers of both camps.

I do understand the human tendency to want to defend our positions, protect our territory, and find proofs that we are in the right. But I wasn’t quite prepared to have to defend from all parties what I thought was a fairly neutral stance.

To be clear, if I aligned myself more on the side of FEFT, it was because of my decision to focus on what made most sense to me. Without consideration for the founders’ personalities.

There. Now that this is out of the way, let’s look first at what the two modalities have in common.

How EFT and FasterEFT (F-EFT) Are Alike

Both are universal healing tools that are based on the belief that the mind and body are one.

Both involve tapping. In a moment, I’ll discuss the differing viewpoints as to why tapping works and what tapping accomplishes.

Both are relatively painless. Any emotional discomfort is minimal and lasts only a few moments. There is no need to relive all of the horrid details of earlier experiences that shaped our lives. Even if it does hurt momentarily, it’s no worse than what we are doing to ourselves in our heads on a consistent basis. Done correctly in a session, a client relives the bad memory for the very last time.

Both approaches address the natural resistance that most people have to giving up familiar patterns and beliefs, although they do so in dramatically dissimilar ways. I’ll have more to say about that in a moment.

Both have “stunning” success rates and produce profound and lasting results. Now, here’s one of the reasons for my bias: EFT produces lasting results if you get to all the aspects associated with a troubling experience.

F-EFT produces results because you’re changing how the subconscious mind encodes, processes and reproduces events from the past. You’re not just doing away with a negative experience, but rather you’re getting rid of the way your mind keeps re-creating the problem.

Both empower people to take responsibility for their own healing, to tap on their own and not become dependent on therapists or practitioners for their healing.

Both were born of genius and guts[ii]. I think of genius as the ability to see through and simplify the complex. Most people would agree it takes guts to be able to challenge and break away from accepted belief systems, risking the scorn of one’s mentors and peers.

Gary Craig[iii], founder of EFT, said he looked forward to a time that EFT would become obsolete because an even more elegant way of releasing issues had been discovered. Then, he said, he could retire. I wondered at one time if F-EFT was the “more elegant way” he referred to. But no. He has evolved to a more spiritual method, The Hidden Therapist.

That’s how the two are similar.

Now for the differences . . .

How EFT and Faster EFT/eutaptics^® Differ

Difference #1: Core Principles

Essence of EFT

The EFT I studied is based on the belief that “The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system.” It is “a literal disruption in the energy flow.”

According to EFT, memories may contribute but are not the direct cause of the negative emotions. The cause is the emotional charge or disruption. When the energy system is disrupted, we experience physical, mental or emotional symptoms.

Gary Craig was objecting to common practices in conventional psycho-therapy, which believes that memories are the cause of our problems. In order to treat a person, traditional therapy requires a person to relive the memory of an emotionally painful event in vivid detail. (Often without resolution, I might add. I write this from years of personal experience.)

Having studied various forms of psychotherapy in the past few decades, including an intensive three-year Gestalt Therapy practitioner program . . . and having spent over $153,000 in pursuit of relief from the pain of my own sad past, I can assure you that traditional therapy is painful and does not necessarily cause positive changes or make one happier in the process.

So, when I first encountered EFT and finally began to see results in my own life, I totally bought into the belief that the reason we have problems is a disruption in the energy system. And that tapping works because it clears the disruption by restoring the free flow of energy. It made all the sense in the world. And I was deeply appreciative of Gary Craig’s insights and brilliance.

And then . . . along came another perspective.[iv]

Essence of FasterEFT in a Nutshell

Robert’s system, now transitioning to eutaptics^® operates from the belief that there is no disruption in the energy system. In fact, he says, that is physically impossible because if our energy were blocked with a negative emotion such as anger for example, we would be stuck with anger. But, if in the next moment we can experience a positive emotion such as love for a small baby, then obviously the meridian isn’t blocked.

“It is not a disruption but a creation. It’s about subconscious imprints recorded in the brain in childhood and our emotional attachments to what we have perceived.”
~ Robert G. Smith, Founder, FasterEFT/eutaptics^®

If the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in our energy system, then that means something inside of us is broken . . . something isn’t working correctly. But, Robert insists, there are no broken people. All of us are successfully producing whatever it is we know how to produce based on what we have encoded within us. F-EFT puts a big emphasis on empowering ourselves by taking responsibility for everything that we create in our lives. If we have the power to create it, then we have the power to change it or cure it.

Childhood Imprints

The source of our problems, he says, is birth! From the moment of birth (indeed, from the moment of conception) we’re recording our experiences of the world as subconscious imprints in the brain. We have problems because we were born into a world where the people around us had problems, and we learned how to cope . . . from them.

He teaches that the real cause of all our problems is perception, meaning that we see and interpret what’s happening to us now through the filters and recorded information from our past. We “know” how to interpret and deal with what’s happening to us now based on what we learned from past memories and references.

It’s a Creation

The past does not exist . . . it’s over. However our past seems real to us because of the emotional charge that is still present when we remember things. The future likewise doesn’t exist, except that we take our emotional programming from our past experiences and project it onto the future. Nothing is real except the present moment. All else is fantasy and re-creation, based on what is in the subconscious mind.

While EFT treats physical, mental and emotional symptoms as a disruption in the energy system, F-EFT treats these symptoms as a skillful creation of the subconscious mind. We’re doing something right in order to create and re-create an emotion over and over again. We’re doing something right in order to have a problem and in order to keep producing it. If we’re doing something right, that means we are skillful.

“You’re successfully manifesting what you have been imprinted with. If you’re the creator of your memories, you can change your life by changing your memories.”
~ Robert G. Smith, Founder, FasterEFT/eutaptics^®

If our subconscious is the cause of our own problems, then we can address the whole subconscious system that produced those problems. Here we see the influence of Dr. Larry Nims and BSFF[v].

The task of a F-EFT/ FasterEFT/eutaptics^® practitioner is to figure out what people are doing inside their mind to create, manifest and produce the problem. I’ll have more to say about that in the discussion of the role of NLP (next up).

It Seems Real Because of the Physical Reaction

“Stress is the body’s reaction to negative perceptions.” Since the mind and the body are one, our thoughts manifest as symptoms or emotions in the physical body. Whatever we think, our body reflects. It’s the physical manifestation that makes it seem real.

This means that at any moment, you and I can create sadness or anger if we know how. We just have to think a sad or angry thought. Our mind will trigger our body and make it seem real somewhere in the body.

“Both systems are operating from two different models of the world. One believes that ‘energy is out to get you.’ The other is, ‘you’re creating the energy and you can change how you feel. You can change your mind. You can change your life.’”

Now get this . . .

Where EFT says that our problems are caused by an energy disruption, F-EFT says what we want to do is create a disruption in the communication system. We want to temporarily disrupt the message of stress from reaching the body. When we create a disruption, then we create changes.

So the tapping actually breaks the pattern that has been creating chaos in the body’s central nervous system. This causes a positive mind/body shift.

Difference #2: The Role of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming)

In simple terms, NLP is the study of how we think, how we structure our thoughts, how we communicate, and how we internally process our experiences.

While Gary Craig studied NLP, it is not incorporated in the EFT training to the same degree. So its influence is not nearly as evident in as it is in F-EFT.

NLP is a major component of F-EFT. Its ultimate goal is to change the past and the future through restructuring a person’s thinking in the present.

Internal States of Mind

So, the F-EFT emphasis is on the structure of the thinking and the structure of the problem itself. How does a person internally represent and hold in memory the things that happened in their past? How do we process thoughts and memories (visual, kinesthetic, auditory) of the things that happened to us? And how do we repress or replay them in our minds? What are we doing inside our mind to keep past memories alive and make them seem real today?

When we step into a person’s mind using the skills taught in NLP, we start to understand how they produce their world. And once we are able to access these internal states of mind it’s easier to make the desired changes.

Trance

Don’t let the “t” word scare you. You and I automatically go into hypnotic trances many times each day. How many times have you had this experience . . . you’ve been driving your car and your thoughts are elsewhere, and you arrive home safely? You know you’ve been on the road. You may even have been driving in the dark. You know you must have stopped at red lights and stop signs. But you have no conscious recollection of the drive. It’s like your car knew the way and drove itself home. That’s what a trance is.

When we’re feeling bad, we’re slipping out of the present tense and into that old, familiar, negative hypnotic state or trance. It takes no effort at all to get there. Our unconscious takes over. That’s how we keep the past alive. As Robert says, “memories buried alive never die.” (Until you aim at them and tap them away, of course.)

When you look at Tapping videos on YouTube you can actually see the client go into a hypnotic trance. Sometimes their eyes glaze over as the person relives a past experience. It’s like a past event has come alive again, in the present moment. You can see the emotion in their face and eyes and their whole physiology changes.

Whenever we are not fully engaged right here in the present, we are in a trance. These trances seem real but they aren’t, because only the present moment is real. The past is past and the future isn’t here yet.

The moment we go back to any point beyond this present moment, it’s all made up. We feel it to be true because while we’re in a trance we’re experiencing real sensations in our body. Someone might have hurt you or me in the past, but it isn’t happening in the moment, except in our minds.

And by the way, when we remember something and re-experience all of the details and pain, all of the actors in that memory are actually our own self. (The perpetrator isn’t here now.) This is why Robert says, “When you remember something from the past and it causes you pain, it’s now you doing it to you.”

The effective practitioner is pulling the person in and out of the trance state. Into the trance, then back into the moment, into the trance, then back into the present moment. Each time this happens, the practitioner is allowed deeper access to the client’s subconscious model of the world, where they can pull out interlocking threads.

Tapping breaks a bad trance and causes a disruption in the mind/body system and in the creative process.

As you start tapping, the structure of problems starts to crumble and disintegrate. The brain changes.[vi]

Difference #3: Meridian Tapping

Tapping works, no matter who does it, because it addresses the mind|body system via electrical impulses that travel along the meridian system.

But How?

Viewed from their two very different perspectives, tapping is effective for very different reasons.

EFT uses tapping to remove “static” from your electrical system. An EFT practitioner might say that the most powerful part of EFT is the tapping and the words that accompany the tapping.

Not so with FasterEFT. The FEFT practitioner is working, not with conscious information, but with unconscious data.

Further Influence of NLP

F-EFT believes you get quicker results when you incorporate NLP understandings of how the mind works with the tapping. Knowing how a person encodes and processes information through their five senses and working with the way that information is encoded and communicated makes deep, deep changes.

For example, rather than searching for the right words to use, or labeling the feelings, F-EFT will tell the client, “Go inside and notice how you know that you have a problem,” and then we tap. Notice that we are allowing the client’s subconscious mind to do all of the work, and we are tapping at subconscious structure or process rather than content.

What Does The Tapping Accomplish?

Modern science shows us that tapping has some pretty spectacular effects.[vii] We now have proof that tapping . . .

destroys the neurological connections in the mind | body.
restructures the brain.
rewires neural pathways.
causes the brain to recode itself.
changes the emotional attachments we have within us.

As you can imagine, this creates changes at a deep, unconscious, cellular level.

F-EFT maintains that tapping breaks bad trances and creates a new trance of peace. The effectiveness of the tapping depends on the person and the depth of their trance. Some people get right into it. Others need to be prompted to move into their internal process.

All the tapping modalities cause chemical changes in the brain. Clients consistently report that they feel “lighter.” You can see their entire physiology lighten up with an onrush of feel-good endorphins.

Tapping creates changes that feel so natural that a client often forgets how bad things once were. That can only mean that profound changes have taken place in the person’s creative process.

Whether you prefer the EFT or FasterEFT philosophy, tapping liberates you from your problems, increases your freedom to choose, and makes life a lot more fun.

The Most Obvious Difference

As you probably know, Faster EFT simplifies the tapping protocol and pares it down to just 5 points: forehead, outer eye, under eye, under collarbone, and wrist. So it is faster in that the tapping sequence is shorter.

I agree with people who feel that the name FasterEFT is therefore misleading.[viii]

Whether it was conscious or not, and although some of us feel it wasn’t fair to Gary Craig, naming it FasterEFT was a brilliant strategy from a marketing standpoint. From the perspective of the originator of EFT, however, it was not an ethical marketing practice. Who can blame him?

Difference #4: The Psychological Reversal[ix]

“If someone has Psychological Reversal and you haven’t corrected it, then you can tap all day long and it aint goin’ anywhere.”
~ Gary Craig, Founder, EFT

There has been a lot of conversation around the term.

The EFT I studied taught that “Your energy system is a set of electrical circuits and psychological reversal is like your batteries are in backwards.”

So in order for the rest of the process to work, you had to take care of any interfering energy blockages in the system by setting up the tapping with an “even though” statement or affirmation, said three times while tapping on the Karate Chop point (now renamed side of hand) or the sore spot.

For our purposes here, let’s just say that Gary Craig used to believe in it and doesn’t any more. But many practitioners who learned EFT still use the “Even though I deeply and completely love and accept myself . . .” statements.

F-EFT does not believe in psychological reversal.

“If you understand and eliminate the structure of problems
there is no psychological reversal.”
~ Robert G. Smith, Founder, FasterEFT/eutaptics^®

And if there is no psychological reversal there is no need for set-up statements for tapping to be effective.

F-EFT focuses on disrupting the brain’s repetitive patterns of reconstructing and replaying negative memories and sensations, thereby keeping them alive.

But There Is Resistance

One of the prime directives of our subconscious mind is to keep us safe. And one of the ways the subconscious does this is by resisting change because, from a childlike perspective, how we learned to approach life when we were young is how we stay safe. So certainly, one needs to neutralize or overcome the natural resistance to change.

Fortunately, since we are working directly with the subconscious mind and all its resources, if there is any fear or resistance, we need only tap and say some reassuring words: “Let go of the resistance.” “It’s safe to let it go.” “I made it through that event and I’m here now safe.” “It’s no big deal.” “And I’m okay.” “Peace.”

EFT psychological reversal affirmations look clumsy by comparison. Their elimination makes FasterEFT cleaner and – in that respect at least – faster. The word that comes to mind is streamlined.

Perhaps you will agree.

Difference #5: Emotions

No matter which modality we’re working with, we have to address the emotions. They are the juice behind our memories. Emotions make memories seem real in the moment. They drive our behavior without our consciously knowing why we act the way we do. Trance again.

If you know anything about tapping you know that if you don’t aim the tapping at an emotion, you can tap until the cows come home and you will not make deep, significant changes. After all, the inability to deal with emotions lies at the heart of all the matters we work with, from addictions to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to an endless list of lifelong themes such as abandonment, struggle and betrayal.

The EFT training I took – and this was reflected in the exam questions – stressed the importance of identifying and naming specific emotions and treating them as separate aspects of a memory. If we failed to do that, we would not succeed in erasing the negative experience.

With FasterEFT, there is no need to be precise and no need to name the emotion.

FasterEFT aims at collapsing the entire program of the memory (how a person recorded and replays an event over and over). That way, we capture all aspects at one time.

The Unconscious Provides the Answers

The unconscious does all the work. It’s letting go of pictures in the mind’s eye, sensations in the body, and voices in one’s head. Not just emotions. (I’ll cover this in more detail in Difference #7.)

F-EFT asks you to notice what you are doing inside your mind to produce the feelings and feel the emotions while you tap. Just follow the emotions and the physical sensations.

You don’t need to know where the emotions came from or who gave them to you. That is, you don’t necessarily have to find the “root cause event.” All you have to do is have the client “notice how they know that they have a problem.” (This pulls them into trance.) And then your tapping aims at the structure or process of the problem. You say to the client, “Let the feeling bother you, and then notice how you know it bothers you.” Then tap and say, “Let it go.” “Let go of everything that supports this memory or feeling.”

How great is that?

Just Aim And Release It

The F-EFT practitioner might tell you to notice what you’re doing in your mind. They might say, “What do you have to think about in order to get this feeling or create this problem? How do you know you feel afraid? Where do you feel it in your body? Do you have tightness in your stomach, a lump in your throat, or a pain in your heart?”

These questions are asking you to recall your experiences in the way you recorded them in memory. What is your perception? What are you doing inside your head to make the problem real? That way, we can aim directly at the problem and its creation.

With FasterEFT’s Super Power Tap™, you can stack memories and negative emotions and let the unconscious mind do the work of collapsing all of them in one fell swoop. Again, you can see the ease and simplicity of this method.

Difference #6: Words

Almost all of my clients are already familiar with EFT by the time they contact me. They have used the EFT or F-EFT process on themselves, are more or less convinced that it works, but haven’t achieved the success they were hoping for. They often tell me they don’t know what to say when tapping. As though there is some sort of magic in saying the right words or having the right script.

In fact, my EFT training told me that the words you use while tapping are important. When I was practicing EFT and working with a client who could not describe what she was feeling, I would refer her to a full page list of emotional feeling words to help her pinpoint the emotion.

The Words Aren’t Important

What is important is tapping to let go of the emotion you feel as you recall and replay a memory. There is no need to make up statements – as many practitioners do in group online trainings– for tapping to be effective. (To be fair, this was not a practice taught by Gary Craig, and he does not approve.) You can say, “Whatever this emotion is.” “Whatever it means or represents.” “Wherever it comes from.” “Whatever it attaches to.”

From the standpoint of the person who wants to practice tapping, it’s a simpler process again because there are no scripts to write or commit to memory.

Because emotions are not made of words.

Difference #7: Process and Protocol

Diagnosis

Unlike many energy psychology methods such as TFT and BSFF, neither EFT nor F-EFT requires diagnosis through arm testing. EFT did away with the need for arm testing by tapping on all the body’s meridians for all situations.

Update 2020:

I first used muscle testing in my Quantum Method process (1991) and began using it again in my practice a few years ago, after becoming certified in Awakening Dynamics with Brent Michael Phillips.

Once we have cleared negative emotions, I find it useful to identify and clear, at the source, the subconscious programs and imprints that get in the way of the life we want.

Intuition

Skillful EFT practitioners diagnose through intuition.

In fact, I think that in order to get dazzling results with EFT, a practitioner has to be intuitive, if not highly intuitive.

Not so with F-EFT. The F-EFT process itself is fairly mechanical, logical and objective. This keeps the practitioner from projecting onto the client. (Too bad. Those of us with strong intuitive skills may miss the little buzz we get when that sixth sense kicks in and we get to wow the client!)

Specifics

With EFT, you need a specific target to work on in order to be most effective: a specific conflict, event, symptom, or emotion. Not being specific enough and not addressing all parts or aspects of the problem are considered major mistakes.

As mentioned above, with FasterEFT you do not need to focus on specifics. There is no need to be precise. You as the practitioner don’t even need to know how the problem started or where it came from. What is important is that the client notice how they know they have the problem. Because you’re aiming at what the mind/body is doing internally to produce the emotion right now.

Again, F-EFT aims at the entire program that the mind has created. It’s not a matter of clearing an energy blockage on a specific part or aspect of an issue.

Work Within The Structure

The brain/body/mind/heart records what it perceives through the five senses. If we get triggered it’s because we start to remember and replay the memory in our mind. Whatever this memory is, as we think about it, the body starts to make it seem real.

With F-EFT we actually step into the memory as the person starts to relive it, using the same mental strategies and patterns the person relies on to keep the memory alive. (See The Influence of NLP in the next paragraph.) We just keep working with the images, thoughts, words, feelings and physical sensations that surface.

Once More, The Influence Of NLP

Visual: Do you know because you can’t get the picture out of your mind? Or is it a movie? Are you in the picture or looking in from the outside? Is it black and white or in color? Can you see the faces . . . what are their expressions?

Auditory: Do you know because you’re having a non-stop conversation in your head about it? Are the words you say to yourself your own or someone else’s?

Kinesthetic: Do you know because you feel a sensation in your body? Is there a specific location? Is it an ache? A pain? Is it pressure in your chest? How big is it?

Like a bulldog, the practitioner keeps asking the client to try to get the problem or feeling or memory back. Then we tap away every avenue the subconscious mind had for being able to create the problem. We do this over and over again until there is nothing left of the structure of the problem . . . no emotions, no triggers, and no discomfort.

Speaking of which . . .

Reimprinting

The reimprinting process is a key aspect of the F-EFT protocol. I found this piece missing in EFT and it’s one of the reasons I came to prefer F-EFT. Today, practitioners of all modalities incorporate this brilliant method to transform memories from negative to positive.

Once we have disrupted and changed all of the ways that a client used to be able to create a problem, and once we have neutralized all of the bad feelings associated with a memory, we are then able to “flip” a memory.

Flipping means that we literally change what was happening in a memory so that, when we think about it again, it feels good and positive. One way we accomplish this is by changing the facial expressions of the various parties in the memory. Or morphing them into cartoon characters. Another way would be to send love and understanding back to the younger “you” in the memory. By reimprinting memories, we change the past and create new possibilities for the future.

Other Protocols

We practitioners all inject our own personalities into our tapping protocol, according to our own experiences, beliefs, preferences, and prior training. (You’ve noticed this . . . People who are trained in resolving childhood traumas find that everything can be explained in terms of childhood trauma. People who work with color inject color into their process.) Many EFT practitioners combine EFT with chakras, auras, hypnosis, healing the inner child and Matrix Reimprinting, among other modalities. I work with various tapping modalities and am certified in changing subconscious imprints and programs at their source.

But it seems to me that, since Gary Craig’s retirement in 2010[x], there have been all sorts of changes and additions to the EFT process and protocol and certification training (without his endorsement and to his dismay).

So the practice of Tapping is changing and evolving. What I have written about here are the differences I see at this time between EFT and FasterEFT.

One Last Word

In closing, I want to say that, from my perspective, and although few people may agree with me, F-EFT is not a rejection of Gary Craig’s work. Not in the least. It is an evolutionary leap.

EFT and FasterEFT are precious, precious gifts to the world. Where Gary paid the late Dr. Roger Callahan $10,000 for the original Callaghan Techniques training and $100,000 for his Voice Technology secret that would allow a practitioner to do the work over the phone (Roger’s view was that what is going on in the energy system is encoded in the voice) Gary pretty much gave his training away. And made millionaires of many of his followers.

Today, you and I get to watch and learn life-changing technologies from YouTube videos for free.

Can you think of a greater gift than this?

Special Thanks

I want to express my thanks to Eric B. Robins, MD, Urologist and Surgeon, for his generosity in reading the final manuscript of my original article and making several valuable suggestions.

It was an honor to include his contribution in this article.

About The Author

I am a certified FasterEFT Practitioner Level III. My specialty is working with people who have tried everything and not had results on their own. In addition to having certified in various therapies throughout the years, I have a degree in education and business certifications in consulting, coaching, sales, and human resources, am an award-winning business author and internet radio show host and have been in business for myself since 1988.

Since writing this article in 2012, I have authored the Amazon Best Seller, TAPPING | Transform Your World (with a Foreword by Dr. Eric B. Robins).

If you would like to contact me, the best way is through my contact page.

Permission to Quote, Excerpt, or Reprint

Want to use this article or parts of this article in your ezine or website? You can! Just please first contact me to ask permission. I will send you a short bio to include at the end of the document.

ENDNOTES:

[i]To make for easier, faster reading, I have used the acronyms: EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), F-EFT (FasterEFT) (Faster Emotionally Focused Transformations), BSFF (Be Set Free Fast: “Behavioral & Emotional Symptom Elimination Training For Resolving Excess Emotion: Fear, Anger, Sadness & Trauma.”), NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), and TFT (Thought Field Therapy).

Robert G. Smith has been in process of renaming his modality eutaptics® since 2017.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of meridian therapies. If you want to learn more, go to http://www.meridiantappingtechniques.com.

[ii] That’s the sort of pluck that Dr. Roger Callahan, the late founder of Thought Field Therapy (TFT) required in order to break with traditional psychotherapy. He was the brains behind combining Applied Kinesiology and acupuncture with his knowledge of the human mind to make groundbreaking strides in the world of energy psychology.

It’s the courage EFT’s founder, Gary Craig, needed to break with Dr. Callahan’s elaborate procedure of muscle testing. As a scientist (Gary was a Stanford-trained engineer) he questioned the need for Roger’s algorithms to diagnose which meridians to tap for specific emotions and streamlined the system to tapping on 14 meridians in all situations. He also found that the order in which you tap the points is not important.

It’s the audacity Robert Smith showed in breaking with the basic EFT belief system accepted by thousands of practitioners around the world who revere Gary Craig. He did away with the notion of Psychological Reversal, further streamlined the tapping process to five points, and incorporated elements of NLP and hypnosis.

(This is a bit like Einstein, a mathematician, challenging existing thought and making a breakthrough called Quantum Physics. More recently, Brittany Wenger, 17, from Sarasota, Florida coded a sophisticated computer program to help doctors detect breast cancer using a less invasive form of biopsy that is 100% accurate in diagnosing malignancies. Seasoned scientists have been unable to accomplish this feat for decades.)

Don’t you just have to respect genius and guts!

[iii] In Gary Craig’s own words, “This is to romance for you the idea that we are on the ground floor of a healing high-rise. Nobody has the answer. In the scientific community, you start getting results and you put a theory behind it. That theory explains the results. After a while, when you get different results, you have to change your theory to match the results. That’s how science goes until you finally get an explanation that works. In the meantime, you deal with your workable theories. Maybe in 10 years’ time EFT will be obsolete.”

iii Apparently Dr. Eric Robins, whose EFT testimonial still appears on eftuniverse.com, is of the same opinion:

“I’ve been using EFT, NLP, and hypnosis in my medical practice for 20 years now and thought that I was doing a pretty good job of it. Then I learned about FasterEFT and it has blown my socks off. This is the most powerful, simple, complete, and easy to learn mind/body/emotional healing system I’ve ever encountered. It is fast enough to use in a busy medical practice (or therapy or coaching practice) and the changes you can make in people will border on the miraculous. You will be able to clear emotional issues at a deep enough level that profound physical healing results. If you want to learn how to do EFT at a mastery level, or what it’s evolved into, I highly recommend that you start studying Robert’s materials.”

~ Eric B. Robins, MD, Urologist and Surgeon, Co-author, “Your Hands Can Heal You” and “The Power of Prana.”

[v] “BE SET FREE FAST℠ [BSFF] by Larry Nims, Ph.D, is a highly focused Energy Therapy method for eliminating the emotional roots and self-limiting belief systems that are embedded in the subconscious mind, and which automatically determine and control most of our experience, self-expression and behavior. These unresolved negative emotions and beliefs create and maintain psychological and physical symptoms, which automatically result in mental, emotional, physical, energetic, spiritual, and life adjustment problems, including many medical, and health problems. BSFF eliminates these subconscious programs quickly and gently. BE SET FREE FAST℠ is a descriptive acronym for “Behavioral & Emotional Symptom Elimination Training For Resolving Excess Emotion: Fear, Anger, Sadness & Trauma.”

[vi] Norman Doidge, M.D. has written two excellent books on the topic: The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (2007), and The Brain’s Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity (2016)

More recently, Dawson Church, with a Foreword by Dr. Joe Dispenza, has published Mind to Matter: The Astonishing Science of How Your Brain Creates Material Reality (2018)

^[vii] The Summary of Scientific Published Studies provides the most current database of Energy Psychology (EP) and Tapping research. You can download a free copy here. The Summary of Scientific Published Studies provides the most current database of Energy Psychology (EP) and Tapping research. It consists of peer-reviewed outcome studies, including randomized controlled clinical trials (RCT) and systematic reviews in peer reviewed journals. The broad range of studies includes PTSD, Stress and Trauma.

[viii] I should point out that “FasterEFT” does not imply that people require fewer sessions. My focus, for example, is total transformation and it’s a commitment between me and my client to weekly sessions over a 5 or 6-month period.

[ix] Since the original publication of this paper, Gary Craig has stated in his Official EFT newsletter (February 01, 2013): “Among other things, the concept of Psychological Reversal has been eliminated and the tapping routine has been streamlined.”

More recently I heard Gary Craig say in a radio interview with Jondi Whitis that a “major point that (Roger Callahan) was quite proud of was Psychological Reversal . . . the battery in backwards . . . the effect is that it psychologically reverses one against getting over their issue . . . I bought it and taught it to others because it seemed okay to do, but kept questioning it . . . Once I found the right core issue, Psychological Reversal mattered nothing.”

While Gary Craig no longer believes in Psychological Reversal this message has not got through to many of the people he trained who are still perpetuating the belief. In his words, “Some seasoned EFT’ers have overlooked these improvements and are still teaching the older method.”

However, the EFT Setup phrase still begins with “Even though . . .”. Gary explains this apparent contradiction [my opinion] as “using the set-up process to do detective work, reframing upfront which is part of the art of delivery. None of that to me is geared toward anything called Psychological Reversal.”

And finally . . . seeing as this is running a bit long . . . “Psychological Reversal can be used as an excuse for why we’re not making progress. If that’s what the belief is you don’t go any farther. But if you don’t believe in Psychological Reversal, the question is ‘What am I missing here?’ I’ve got to be a detective. I’ve got to get to some core issue. That’s when you really start to get good at the art of delivery with EFT. Psychological Reversal can stop you the therapist from making real headway.”

Robert Smith saw this years ahead of Gary Craig.

What I liked most about FEFT is that it does away with complexity and targets core issues directly.

[x] Gary came out of retirement to found Official EFT™. He generously offers a complete, free training in Optimal EFT™ and The Unseen Therapist. I have not yet taken the training and so I am not aware of the updates to his original work.

Readers Comments [Unsolicited]

“This is a huge body of work and you did an awesome job. How you organized and sequenced a large and difficult topic is brilliant.”

~ Eric B. Robins, MD Urologist and Surgeon

“As a new FasterEFT practitioner I needed a detailed explanation of the differences between EFT and FasterEFT. Your article explained the differences with such clarity that I was able to find answers to my questions and more.

I was so pleased with the information – most strikingly with the ‘end notes’ and your genuine comments – that I decided to ask permission to translate the article into Turkish first for myself and then for ‘future’ Turkish FasterEFT practitioners. Thank you for that permission.”

~ Esin Akan (Turkey)

“Thank you so much for your exquisite article on differences between EFT and FasterEFT. As a FasterEFT Level III Practitioner I had some struggles explaining the discrepancies between both modalities myself. Now I have a great tool to apply! Awesome.

“I would like to ask you for permission to use this article for my website and translate it into German – of course giving you the credits you demand and that you truly deserve. I will send you a preliminary version for your release if you like.”

Annette Nathanielsz (Germany)

“Hi, Mia. I just read your article on the 7 Major Differences between Official EFT and FasterEFT, and it is fabulous! so well-written. I am studying Level II F-EFT having used EFT and TFT over the past 20 years personally and professionally. What a gift to find F-EFT. Looking forward to connecting on FB! Thanks so much.”

~ Sheilah M. Wilson

“It´s thanks to you and your report “7 Major Differences Between EFT and FasterEFT” that I discovered Faster EFT and decided to become a certified practitioner. It was very well written and informative, thank you!”

~ Susanne Nilsjö

“ Here is a great article by The Tapping Hub’s very own Mia Doucet 😉 It highlights the differences between EFT and FasterEFT in a beautiful and articulate way – honoring both approaches while clearly showing why she prefers one to the other.

Both techniques are wonderful platforms upon which many new thoughts and innovative techniques are emerging and evolving from. We are lucky to have many of those forward thinkers and creators here in this group! ♥ “

~ Diana Kottle, Licensed Psychotherapist, Private Clinical Practice

“Great article…so clearly written. Thank you!!”

~ Melanie Thomas Coughlin, Adjunct Professor, Pepperdine University, Graduate School of Education & Psychology; Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, Private Clinical Practice

“Wow Mia, It is a wonderfully written paper. I bought Rob Smith’s smoking cessation video and it blew me away and have been using the techniques in my own way ever since. I agree with everything in the paper and will read it again to really absorb it. Thanks for sharing.”

~ Sharon Hall, Sharon Hall Hypnotherapy

“Hello Mia , I have just read your article on the differences between feft and eft and I am prompted to write and thank you for such a clarifying piece of work . I look forward to learning more from you. In the meantime here’s to much healing – ourselves first and then shining the light of awareness in our world. Peace always, Deirdre.”

~ Deirdre Maguire, FasterEFT Master

“What a delight to have come across this comparison between EFT and FasterEFT. As a lay person it is not easy to understand the difference between the two methods. Mia did a fantastic job explaining them and pointing out where they differ. As she says neither is better, they are just different. I suggest you give both a try and then decide on the one you resonate more with.”

~ Marlies Cohen, wellness.mcuniverse.com

“I came across your article ‘7 Major Differences’ on Robert’s FasterEFT site and loved it. I am a Level 2 practitioner and was wondering if I could quote and reference you in an e-book I am writing. . . . your article clarifies for me what has been a little nebulous and tricky to grasp. So thanks a lot for the article and I hope you’re OK with me quoting you. Thank you and god bless you, Mia.”

~ Sue Girdler

“Greetings Mia, I am setting up my own FEFT business and came across your article . . . and just about to submit my documentation and fees in order to receive my level 4 certification. I found your article very well written and easy going, and would love to use it on my new website as a reference with your permission of course. Please let me know if I am allowed to use it. Thank You, George”

~ George Tsanis

“Mia, I just read “Differences FasterEFT vs. EFT” article. It’s literally the best article I’ve ever read on the subject without taking sides or injecting judgements. Thanks, Randall”