It tells your body that you are safe, so it can come out of fight-or-flight.

When you feel unsafe, your body shifts gears. Your heart rate climbs and your highest thinking and creative problem-solving go offline, because in real danger you don’t need nuance, you need to survive. That is a brilliant design if you are outrunning a bear. It is not a helpful response when you are trying to process a hard conversation with a family member, years of accumulated emotions, or grief you haven’t had the space to feel.

Tapping on those calming points interrupts the fight-or-flight signal and reminds your body that there is no bear. And when you feel safe, you can look at your feelings without being swallowed by them. Like a surfer, you start to ride the waves instead of getting pulled under.

Because they are the natural calming areas of the body that God designed.

These points, called acupoints, contain more touch-sensitive cells and greater electrical conductivity than the surrounding tissue. Gently tapping on these points interrupts the fight-or-flight signals in your nervous system and communicates to the body that you are safe enough to settle while you process what you’re feeling.

You already instinctively use a version of this to calm your body when you are stressed:

• You rub your temples when you have a headache
• Your hand goes to your chest when something frightens you
• You might wring your hands or bite your nails when you are nervous

These are the natural calming areas of your body that our Creator placed there on purpose.

Yes, and the research is still growing.

EFT has been studied in over a hundred peer-reviewed studies, including randomized controlled trials, with research showing measurable changes in things like cortisol, heart-rate variability, brain activity, and emotional regulation.

Tapping may help your brain learn, “I can think about this without going into alarm,” which can change how strongly you react to that thought or memory in the future. At the same time, the exact mechanisms are still being studied, and the research continues to develop.

Source: https://eftinternational.org/discover-eft-tapping/eft-science-research/

No. Tapping is a physical scientific technique based on the way God designed our bodies, not a spiritual system.

New Age spirituality is a blend of teachings drawn from astrology, world religions, and metaphysics, centered on a few core ideas: that all things are one and divine, that spiritual growth means discovering your own inner divinity or a universal energy you're part of, and that we spiritually evolve over time through reincarnation and karma, guided by hidden spiritual masters.

It teaches that the power to heal comes from within you or from the universe you're one with.

EFT from a Christ-centered point of view affirms: God is the Creator and we are His creation (Genesis 1:27). Although we are made in the image of God, we are not our own healer, God alone is the healer.

When we tap, we're not unlocking hidden power inside ourselves. We're simply calming a body that God designed, and inviting God into that process (Exodus 15:26, "the Lord who heals you").

We're not tapping into our own power, we're partnering with the nervous system God already designed, and trusting Him as the one who heals.

Jehovah Rapha, "the Lord who heals," isn't a New Age title, it is His name (Exodus 15:26).

No. Science can now help us understand more about what ancient cultures discovered.

Chinese religion and Chinese medicine are two different things.

Religion involves worshiping gods, spirits, and ancestors. Traditional Chinese medicine is a 5,000 year old system for treating physical illness with herbs, specific points on the body, and lifestyle changes. It's closer to a very old clinical practice than to a faith.

And there's no eastern religious teaching, ritual, or belief system anywhere in EFT training.

Recent research (Feinstein, Frontiers in Psychology, 2025) has helped us understand that the acupoints aren't mystical or mysterious at all.

They're simply places on the skin with more nerve endings than the tissue around them.

When you tap there, your body does something it already knows how to do. It turns physical pressure into a signal and sends it to your brain, the same way you hear, feel touch, and keep your balance.

We can be grateful for what Ancient Chinese Medicine discovered through history and better understand it through today's science.

This is the body God designed! Scripture has a lot to say about this too! (see below)

Examples in Scripture show us how all truth is God’s truth.

Our approach to EFT tapping is that no matter who discovered something true about how our bodies were designed, it can be used to glorify God.

When Paul stood in Athens, he quoted a pagan poet back to the city: "in him we live and move and have our being." He used a line written by an unbeliever, about a false god, to preach the true one. He did not refuse the sentence because of who wrote it. He recognized it was true and he used it (Acts 17:28).

And when the church in Corinth was anxious about meat that had been offered in pagan temples, Paul's answer was startling. An idol is nothing. The earth and everything in it belongs to God. Food is food. Receive it with thanksgiving (1 Corinthians 8, 10:25-26).

Many Christians participate in practices that have roots well outside the church and/or scripture, some of them in our most sacred moments:

• Wedding rings (Pagan Roman Tradition)
• Aspirin (Ancient Egyptian temple medicine)
• Algebra (Islamic Golden Age scholarship)
• Days of the Week (named for Norse and Roman gods: Thursday is Thor's day)
• The Olympics (religious festival honoring Zeus)
• Our Number System (Hindu-Arabic Numerals)

Like Paul did, we can receive and redeem these practices and traditions for a Christ-centered purpose in our lives.

No, EFT doesn't use or reference chakras. The focus is on the nervous system. EFT does not include chakras, Hinduism, or any other spiritual tradition. What's actually happening when you tap is electrical and chemical signaling in your nervous system. It's the same kind of signal your body uses every time you hear a sound, feel a touch, or keep your balance. Ordinary, measurable, and already happening inside you a thousand times a day. That's the definition Christ Centered EFT works from. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). Nothing about tapping asks you to look anywhere else.

No. Gary Craig’s personal spiritual beliefs do not invalidate his scientific development of tapping on acupressure points to calm the body’s nervous system. They are separate. Gary Craig, who passed away in early 2026, developed EFT in the 1980s and 90s. He was a Stanford Engineering graduate and had a lifelong interest in how thoughts influence reality. He was a student of American psychologist Dr. Roger Callahan who developed Thought Field Therapy (TFT). Craig studied many different modalities (Adams & Davidson, 2011) and streamlined and simplified TFT into what we know today as EFT. Gary Craig had his own personal spiritual beliefs that were not a part of the framework of EFT. He was a minister in a church that embraced all religions and was also a student of A Course in Miracles, a text that while using Christian vocabulary, taught principles that were New Age and not in alignment with Biblical principles.

Here's why it doesn't change how we practice or teach EFT: the technique Gary Craig developed, tapping on acupressure points to calm the nervous system, is separate from his personal spiritual beliefs. What you're doing when you tap with us has nothing to do with Gary Craig's personal beliefs and everything to do with an evidence-backed practice of bringing your honest heart to Jesus and working within God’s design of our body. As we discussed earlier, like Paul did, even if something true about the universe was not discovered by a Christian, it does not make it any less true or useful to be redeemed and used by God to help us.

No. Occult practices reach for power apart from God. Tapping uses God’s design to calm the body. Scripture takes the occult seriously, and so should we. Passages like Deuteronomy 18:10-12, Leviticus 19:31, and Galatians 5:19-21 condemn divination, sorcery, and consulting the dead. In Acts 19:19, new believers burned their books of magic outright. Occult practice seeks hidden knowledge or power from a source other than God. Divination tries to see the future by forbidden means. Sorcery manipulates spiritual forces for personal gain. Mediumship seeks guidance from spirits instead of from God.

Tapping does none of that. There's no hidden knowledge. The whole technique is explainable, studied in randomized controlled trials, and simple enough to learn in one session. Nothing is withheld from you and nothing is revealed only to insiders. There's no attempt to see or control the future, no contact with spirits, and no spiritual force being manipulated. What's left is physiology. You're calming a nervous system God designed, and inviting God into that process. The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). Jesus came to heal (Luke 9:2). When you tap and invite God in, you're moving with that healing work, not against it.

Then don't do it, and please don't feel bad about it.

Paul reminds us that if a believer's conscience genuinely cannot make peace with a thing, do not push them, and do not look down on them (1 Cor 8:1-13). So let me say the same to you. If after all of this, it still does not settle in your spirit, that is not a failure, and nobody here is going to judge or push you.

You are allowed to sit with it. You are allowed to come back to it later, or not at all. Discernment is a gift, not a problem.

That is normal, and it usually means something real is moving.

Tapping gives feelings a safe place to be felt, and sometimes what surfaces is bigger than expected, especially if it has been pressed down for a long time. If that happens, simply tap on the points without any words while you tune-in to what you're feeling.

And if you are carrying significant trauma, tapping can surface intense memories. That is not a reason to avoid it, but it is a reason to do it with a trained, trauma-informed practitioner rather than alone. Learn more about coaching.

No. It belongs alongside your care, never in place of it.

Tapping is a complement to medical and/or mental health treatment, NOT a substitute for it. If you are living with diagnosed and ongoing anxiety, depression, trauma symptoms, panic attacks, or physical symptoms, please see a qualified health care provider who can assess and treat you comprehensively.

Tapping can be a somatic practice to help regulate your nervous system as you are being treated medically or psychologically. 

Under no circumstances should you make any changes in current or ongoing treatment, without first consulting your doctor or other prescribing professional and you should inform any existing professionals that you are using EFT Tapping as a modality.

Sandra McLagan, MSN Accredited Certified EFT Practitioner