TFT

[teammate]

Is there any relation between TFT (Thought Freedom Technique) and EFT?

[Paddy Landau]

Yes.

Here's a potted history...

Dr Roger Callahan was treating a woman with a severe water phobia. She couldn't bath in more than an inch of water, for example, and even that was a difficult experience for her.

Callahan was getting frustrated at the lack of progress, and started to research "alternative" methods. He experimented.

Suddenly, one day, to his surprise and unexpectedly, the woman was cured within seconds. She ran to the swimming pool, splashed water over her face with laughter, and...

TFT (Thought Field Therapy) was born. Of course, it usually doesn't work that fast, but the point is that Callahan developed a new therapy.

TFT is quite involved and uses a number of different "algorithms" or patterns depending on the problem being addressed.

Now, one of his early students (who paid over $100,000 to learn these techniques) was a businessman, engineer and minister, Gary Craig (yes, all three were the same person).

Craig was highly taken with this new procedure. He applied his minister's mindset to wonder how he could bring this new treatment to the masses; his business mindset to make it work (and make a small profit); and his engineer's mindset to refine, simplify and improve TFT.

The result was EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique).

EFT has a number of advantages over TFT.

1. It's much cheaper to learn!
   
2. It's very much simpler, in that it has a far more flexible set of algorithms.
   
3. It's very open-minded. Craig is fond of saying, "We're at the first floor of a healing high rise." Unlike a number of inventors, he doesn't "protect" his invention against new ideas; instead, he actively encourages and welcomes them.
   

As a result, EFT has developed into a fairly hefty treatment with many aspects. However, the core remains even simpler than when Craig first developed it; the layperson can learn it as part of his therapy and "take it home" with him.

It should be noted that EFT is most successful when used with certain parts of NLP (as Craig himself mentions in his trainings). I've found that the combination of EFT, NLP and hypnosis is powerful indeed. And, if I show a client how to use EFT, self-hypnosis and a few small parts of NLP for himself, the client improves radically and ceases to become dependent on any therapist.

Of course, like any treatment, EFT is not the "be-all and end-all". A few people don't respond best to this (although, in my experience, it always makes some improvement). Other people respond so fast that it makes my jaw drop.

So, with thanks to both Roger Callahan and Gary Craig!

I hope that helps.

Paddy