Dr. Mercola's Comment

Many of my patients have expressed concerns about the potential new age implications of EFT and other energy psychology techniques. Dr. Nimms is an ordained Christian minister and was the first psychologist to learn Thought Field Therapy from Dr. Callahan in the 1980s.

He provides an excellent review of this important area and it should help address many people's fears of this technology.

His technique is BSFF and is also very effective. I have settled on promoting EFT largely due to Gary Craig's excellent supporting material and web site that provide such marvelous training. I have conducted EFT workshops that are available as a ten hour video series. Gary also has about 60 hours of tapes that you could learn in the comfort of your own home.

by Dr. Larry Nimms

To err is human and to forgive divine, according to the old adage, but humans who forgive are known to experience significant physical and mental health benefits from doing so.

Now researchers report that these beneficial health effects appear to vary by age, along with the willingness to forgive others, the willingness to forgive oneself and the feeling of being forgiven by God.

Forgiveness is a multidimensional phenomenon. There are age differences in some forms of forgiveness and in their relationship to health.

In general, young adults (18-44 years) reported that they were less likely to forgive others than middle-aged (45-64) and older adults (65 and older).

They were also less likely than older adults to believe that they had been forgiven by God.

Among survey participants of all ages, however, reports of forgiveness of themselves and others were associated with decreased psychological distress, including feelings of restlessness, hopelessness and nervousness.

Further, young adults who reported high levels of self-forgiveness were more likely to be satisfied with their lives, whereas middle age and older adults who reported high levels of forgiveness of others were more likely to report increased life satisfaction.

But not all forgiving is immediately beneficial, the findings suggest.

Proactive forgiveness-asking for forgiveness, rather than granting it -- was associated with increased psychological distress among all study participants. Other acts of proactive forgiveness would include asking God's forgiveness for hurting someone or praying for someone who has hurt them.

The researchers speculate that this may be because such proactive individuals are "'taking the first step' in the process of forgiveness," which may lead to heightened stress.

In other findings, attendance at religious services was associated with decreased psychological distress, particularly among young and middle-aged adults, and increased life satisfaction among young and old adults. Service attendance was also associated with higher self-rated health among all age groups.

Journal of Adult Development 2001;8:249-257

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

My own clinical experience absolutely confirms the above findings. I am constantly amazed at the enormous health benefits that occur once someone has truly and authentically forgiven someone. My experience with forgiveness though is that many people struggle with doing this at all levels. It is relatively easy to forgive someone at a conscious or intellectual level. But true forgiveness at the emotional level is another experience entirely. There are certainly many paths to authentic forgiveness, and I suspect the most common one is prayer. My own experience though is that, for whatever reason, many people are not able to use prayer effectively in this manner. Recently I have been using EFT to help people bridge the gap between authentic and intellectual forgiveness. In my recent workshops (which are now available on video) I did a demonstration on a woman who had severe fibromyalgia in her hips. Her pain was so severe that she was unable to sit for any length of time in an auto or plane seat and, because of this, she had been unable to visit her family for several years. I used EFT directly for the pain and that provided partial relief, but it wasn't until we did some tapping on forgiveness for the truck driver who had hit her and caused her to go to the intensive care unit that her pain disappeared completely. It really was a miracle, and everyone in the audience knew it. The pain disappeared completely. My take on it is that when the neurological circuit that has facilitated the pain is disrupted energetically through a technique like EFT, the true cause of the problem is finally addressed and healing can finally occur. If one were to use EFT for forgiveness the common phrase that would be used with the tapping would be: "Even though (name the person's name) did this (name the event) I choose to forgive them. They were only doing the best they could." If the person is unable to say the above statement because they don't believe it then the reason they don't believe it would be blocking them. Gary Craig calls this a "tail-ender" or "writing on your wall". This reason would need to be tapped through and then the forgiveness phrase can be used. The absolutely amazing thing about EFT is that when it works (in my experience it has an above 85% success rate) the relief is instant and permanent. Folks, it just doesn't get much better than that.