Written by: Candace Fox, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
An esteemed leader, teacher, and researcher in the global Energy Psychology community, Dr. Peta Stapleton is perhaps best known for her knowledge and expertise in the field of Clinical EFT. Her work and contributions as one of the primary researchers of Emotional Freedom Techniques (aka ‘Tapping’) have helped legitimize and spotlight the previously considered ‘on the fringe’ modality as an effective therapeutic intervention and self-help tool.
Juggling her various roles including Associate Professor in Psychology at Bond University, public speaker, and mum – I managed to steal some time with the self-professed ‘academic introvert’ from the comfort of our respective countries and climates. Hers – Australia, and mine…well, some cooler temperatures in Canada. As a fellow EFT enthusiast and practitioner, our conversation touched on her start in the research world, our collective appreciation for Tapping, and its growing acceptance globally by clinicians and professionals in the health and wellness community.
Being the curious person that I am, I also wanted to know about Dr. Stapleton’s own journey with EFT and how it has impacted her both personally and professionally. Last but certainly not least, I couldn’t leave the interview without getting intel on some of her most famous collaborators and friends in the self-help field. Aside from getting her to name drop…I asked the simple question, given the current climate of humanity and the world, is she/are they still hopeful?
Without further adieu, let’s dive in…
Q: Your name is synonymous with research, especially in the EFT community. Was that intentional on your part, to research the efficacy of EFT?
A: I came from a point of view where I wasn’t necessarily trying to prove EFT worked. At this time, 18 years ago I had already been teaching but I went into a role in a medical faculty and part of that position was research; half of my role was dedicated to research. I had been using this technique clinically and at that time we had zero idea of how it worked but I knew I wanted to explore that further. So, I sat down with a colleague, and she asked if the tool could be applied to obese adults to help reduce food cravings. I hadn’t done that, but I told her I could see that it probably would work and so we came from a point of view where we had no idea if this would work. We weren’t making any promises and we had no idea.
That very first trial we had 4,500 people wanting to be involved. My colleague and I were literally looking at each other like “Oh!”, we had no idea people might be interested in this…you know…tapping on your face thing [laughs]. We ended up rolling this out into lots of other areas but that’s how it began.
But yes, I am a researcher at heart. I’m an introvert. I do love the whole mapping out the process and looking at numbers and outcomes. It’s certainly not glamorous by any means.
Q. You’ve looked at everything from binge eating, chronic pain, and cancer, to depression disorders – did you go into each of these research trials expecting EFT to work or were you surprised?
A: I was surprised. We know we can reduce stress. We have done the cortisol testing so we know we can help with that. Whether we see an outcome in the behavioral symptomology someone is seeking relief in, we don’t fully come in expecting to see that even though we know we are going to be able to have an impact on that major stress response. Again, we never make any promises…we say, “you may get symptom relief” but we really don’t know.
Even in the chronic pain study that was most recently finished, we did functional MRI (fMRI) scans, and the participants were telling us subjectively their pain was less, but we didn’t know if we would see a difference in the brain at 6 weeks. It was funny, my colleague who analyzed the scans and isn’t into EFT at all came running down the hallway and he goes, “IT WORKED!”. So, we knew then that the brain was matching what the participants were telling us and that’s really cool!
Then of course the 6 month follow up which we just finished the paper for with that group, participants were telling us that they actually had forgotten they were even in our trial because they have zero pain. So that’s big and I actually want to keep that particular research going because the chronic pain area is quite important.
Q: You recently released another book, Memory Improvement Through EFT Tapping: A Way to Boost Recall and Clarity. What did you uncover for such things as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease?
A: There’s a whole chapter on Dementia, Alzheimer’s, and memory and tapping. Lots of people in the field who work in that area have contributed case studies of early-stage dementia, late-stage dementia, and how tapping has been used. It’s not that it might slow down dementia, but it’s able to help with the Sundowner’s effect and the agitation as the sun is going down and melatonin is released. With early stages of dementia, it helps people with their fear and anxiety around the diagnosis. It’s just about the peripheral stuff and tapping can be helpful in most areas of life.
Q. I’ve heard you refer to EFT and psychosomatic tools as the fourth wave of psychotherapy. Where are we globally with the acceptance and recognition of EFT as an ‘evidence-based’ modality?
A: I can tell you exactly where we are at! In November 2021 the American Psychological Association (APA) approved me to evaluate EFT for their evidence-based acceptance list. They have a set of criteria, this is where the term ‘evidence-based’ falls. The APA ultimately makes that decision, in Australia, we have the Australian Clinical Psychology Association (ACPA) in Canada you’ll have your own, but we all follow the APA.
Previously, Dawson Church published two papers, systematic reviews that showed EFT met the criteria set out over 7 years ago by the APA but they never put those on the website. So, I thought let’s try this again and because I work at a University they approved my request. We decided to run a study on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because I don’t run clinical trials for PTSD and EFT so I’m actually quite neutral.
It was an 11-month process, systematic review, meta-analysis, and we had an independent statistician in America not in the EFT world evaluate the meta-analysis that does exist. In October of last year, we resubmitted. I can tell you we’ve put in the updated meta-analysis for publication and the new effect size is 1.86 which is very large in statistics. We compared EFT to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, EMDR, and Narrative Exposure Therapy – it was absolutely equivalent. There were no statistical differences between what EFT achieved and the others. So, we packaged that up and sent that in.
I was sent back the interim report in late January of this year and was asked to fix some things and resubmit. The resubmission happened in late March, the final report is sitting with the APA right now and I can absolutely tell you that, hand on heart, we meet everything. They will obviously go through their due diligence. But really, when people ask if EFT is evidence-based, yes of course it is – there are over 300 studies that prove that but what they are really asking is if the APA has approved it.
So, we are almost there. We’re just waiting now but I’m already looking ahead to do another submission for stress reduction.
Q. EFT involves tapping along acupressure points located along energy channels in the body called Meridians. Previously thought of as quite ‘woo-woo’ these Meridian channels have now been validated as a physical system in the body. Can you speak to that?
A: I think it’s time we update our knowledge. I gave a keynote on this topic at a conference in Melbourne with the intent of sharing that information far and wide, you can view the refilmed version here https://youtu.be/GMa6Dv4OUrc. But the history of this begins with a study that was done by Professor Kim in the 1960s. He found that tiny vascular system but because those who replicated his study did not get the same replications – technology just wasn’t as sophisticated then, his work got buried.
About 40 years later another group of Korean researchers revisited the article Kim wrote – they were curious and of course, had better imaging technology. They were actually able to inject dye into the system and I have all those surgery slides now as well that show it very clearly. That research has since been replicated with others finding the same thing and now it is mostly called the Primo Vascular System.
Interestingly, the tracer dye coagulates at the known acupressure points so you can actually physically see where a sham point would be and where you should do sham tapping if you are going to run a dismantling study around EFT.
Q. Switching gears a bit here, how has EFT impacted your life both personally and professionally – do you tap every day?
A: I would have said 10 years ago that yes, I was using it every day. I probably don’t have too as much anymore. Certainly, all the ‘big trees in the forest’ would have been cleared out a very long time ago. But I did jump on it as soon as it came across my desk from my colleague who introduced it because I’m also trained in Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Timeline Therapy, Matrix Reimprinting…I’m always testing things on myself and any family members willing to lie down on my couch [laughs].
I definitely experience the benefit of it, absolutely. You know, I’m an introvert even though people might see me give a talk, I’m still very quiet – a stereotypical researcher. I can do those things today without any anxiety or nerves but as a child, I would absolutely have been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I was a worrier. I was anxious. I’m the eldest child so, you know, the first one in the family to be the ‘responsible’ one. I had an eating disorder as a teenager. So, all of that, part of my recovery was tapping and other tools. I don’t work in that area anymore – it’s almost like when it’s not your stuff your interest goes elsewhere too.
Today, none of that is part of my life. Even my husband, we’ve been married for 20 years this year would never believe I had an eating disorder, same with my girls – I have two daughters. It’s just not me, that’s no longer part of my identity. I might use tapping just to make sure I’m grounded and clear before I go on stage for a talk but nowadays, I mostly like to use tapping for goal setting. For example, the APA submission, I sat down and tapped through all the reasons why I thought it might not be accepted. If I imagine it being accepted, what comes up for me? So that’s what I use tapping for these days.
Q. Last but not least, you know a lot of familiar and famous faces in the personal development and self-help world. We have access to so much information and so many tools…are they changing the world? Is everyone in that field hopeful?
A: I would say yes, I am hopeful, we are hopeful. I think what I’ve noticed…people in this field actually do their own work, which isn’t necessarily seen in the traditional psychology field. Recently, Bessel van der Kolk was out here in Brisbane and I did the chronic pain research in conjunction with Stephen Porges, I know Dawson Church, David Feinstein, and Joe [Dispenza] is a very good friend of mine. I can tell you, they all do their own work, all of them, using their own techniques.
We are all relatively normal people [laughs], we aren’t doing this work for our own personal gain. We are doing it because we know it helps people. If there’s a better way of doing something we want people to know about it or at least have that option. We run these trials to give people the benefit and I can tell you, you don’t make money doing research so there has to be a bigger reason behind it. And that reason is bigger than each of us.
For more information on the work and research of Dr. Peta Stapleton, you can visit her website. To purchase a copy of her latest book Memory Improvement Through EFT Tapping: A Way to Boost Recall and Clarity, visit here.
Candace Fox, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Candace M. Fox is a Psychosensory/somatic Practitioner who works with Neurodivergent youth & adults, sharing self-regulation tools and resources to support them on their journey towards self-discovery and transformational growth. Born and raised on the prairies in Canada, Candace has always had a passion for helping others. Her journey of healing has been a wild ride and led to an AD[H]D diagnosis at the age of 35. Today, she's doing what she loves most ‒ using her past struggles as a catalyst to help others. A self-professed 'student of life', Candace admits her clients teach her just as much if not more than she does them.
