Benefits of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) , a 43% reduction in cortisol with 1 hour of group EFT.
As we become more aware of the impacts on health of long term stress, measured through the hormone cortisol, many people are looking for effective ways to reduce their stress. One of the big questions is, what actually does work to lower cortisol?One tool that has been proven to lower cortisol is clinical Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT).
Research and results
The first triple blind study to test the impacts on cortisol was in 2012 when Dr Dawson Church had separate groups of individuals to either receive psychoeducation, read magazines or have a 1 hour clinical EFT session. Cortisol levels were tested with saliva swabs before and after the study. The results showed in the individual psychoeducation participants and those who read magazines, cortisol reduced on average 12%. However the EFT participants had a much more significant decrease with an average of 24% from 1 hour of clinical EFT. View the research document here.
In 2019 Dr Peta Stapleton recreated this study in the same way, except for one difference of the participants being in groups instead of as individuals. The group that read magazines had an average increase of 2% cortisol, the psychoeducation group a decrease of 19.5% and again more significantly the group that used EFT had an average reduction of 43% cortisol just from 1 hour of group EFT. View the research document here.
In these studies, the average decrease in cortisol differed between the two studies, likely due to differences in the participants’ baseline cortisol levels and the addition of borrowed benefits of group EFT. The key takeaway is that when EFT was compared to other methods, it produced significantly greater reductions in cortisol than the alternative approaches.
Clinical EFT vs social media EFT
Both studies involved using clinical EFT (which is what I am accredited in) as it is a standardised version of EFT which means the same methods can be used by different practitioners and still produce consistent results in both practice and research.
Tapping that is often seen in social media does not necessarily use this standard and may even be led by untrained people so the results from following along with social media tapping can not be proven as having the same benefits.
How to access individual and group EFT?
I offer individual clinical EFT sessions online and host group EFT sessions both online and in person.
