Healing Trauma in the Field –
Past Wounds, Present Solutions, Future Resilience
On November 16th, 2024 EFTi hosted a Symposium exploring how Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) can revolutionise healing for anyone working with individuals affected by trauma.
All video recordings and resources from the event are now available for purchase: £70 (£50 for EFTi Members)
Past Wounds:
The theme acknowledges the lasting impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and generational trauma. These past wounds often create deep-seated patterns of pain and dysfunction that can persist across lifetimes. Understanding the roots of these traumas is essential for anyone working with affected individuals or communities. The symposium explored how EFT can be a powerful tool in addressing these deeply embedded issues, helping to break the cycle of generational trauma and fostering healing at both individual and collective levels.
Present Solutions:
In the face of ongoing traumatic events—whether natural disasters, pandemics, or man-made catastrophes—there is a critical need for effective, compassionate responses. The theme emphasises the role of practitioners in supporting individuals and communities during these challenging times. By applying EFT and trauma-informed practices, professionals can provide immediate relief and support to those affected, helping them navigate the complexities of their experiences and begin the process of healing.
Future Resilience:
Looking ahead, the theme focuses on how we can rebuild communities, heal collectively, and foster post-traumatic growth. It highlights the importance of creating strategies that not only address the immediate impacts of trauma but also promote long-term resilience and well-being. By integrating EFT into this future-focused approach, practitioners can empower individuals and communities to recover stronger, embracing growth and positive transformation as they move forward.
In essence, Healing Trauma in the Field: Past Wounds, Present Solutions, Future Resilience calls for a comprehensive approach to trauma recovery—one that respects the past, responds to the present, and builds a resilient future. This theme underscores the need for all practitioners to be trauma-informed, equipping them with the skills and insights necessary to support lasting healing and growth in those they serve.
Prof. Peta Stapleton
Prof. Peta Stapleton
Meet Prof. Peta Stapleton: Peta has 25 years experience as a registered Clinical and Health Psychologist and is currently a Professor in Psychology at Bond University in Queensland, Australia. In 2019 she was named Psychologist of the Year by the Australian Allied Health Awards.
She is a world leading researcher in EFT and has established herself as one of Australia’s leading Health Professionals. Her research focuses on the 4th wave of psychological therapies that focus on the mind and body.
About the Presentation: In this keynote presentation, Prof. Peta Stapleton will delve into the transformative potential of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and its application in trauma healing and recovery. EFT, an innovative approach within energy psychology, has emerged as a powerful tool for addressing a range of trauma-related conditions, including Post-Traumatic Stress, Post-Traumatic Stress Injuries, and PTSD. Prof. Stapleton will provide an overview of the research supporting EFT’s efficacy in these areas, highlighting its ability to facilitate trauma recovery and promote resilience and long-term healing.
Visit Peta online at PetaStapleton.com
Jess Mór
Jess Mór
Meet Jess Mór: Jessica comes to the world of EFT from a background in the Arts and Education. For the past 13 years, she has had the privilege of accompanying heroic clients on their journeys of discovery and recovery from complex emotional wounds using Energy Psychology and Energy Healing.
Jessica has an acutely sensitive understanding born from lived experience, of extreme childhood trauma, attachment wounding, domestic abuse, single parenthood, queer and trans experiences, neuro-diversity, mental health issues, complex health conditions, and the expat life.
About the Presentation: Miracles and Minefields. Helping the healing of complex emotional wounds with EFT.
In medicine a complex wound is defined as, ‘a disruption or damage in the normal anatomical tissue structure and function’.* They are difficult to heal, they challenge medical and nursing teams, they defy cure using conventional and simple ‘dressings’ therapy, and can have a major socioeconomic impact.*
Complex emotional wounds are similarly challenging to heal. They cause disruption and damage to our attachment system, nervous system, concept of self, relationship to others, and ability to embody a basic sense of trust and safety in the world. They too can have a lifelong socioeconomic impact.
How can we offer Emotional Freedom Techniques to a field of such wounds? Specific, originating events can be impossible to isolate, let alone list. Both the internal, and external experience is a generalised, continuously activated, distressing event. Tuning into one wound risks detonating them all.
How do we create a set up statement when there is no ‘I’ that can have the ‘this’? How can we guide those we are helping to tune in to their experience in a way that builds internal strength and increases self knowledge? How do we fine-tune the words of a tapping round to maximise safety and positive change?
It would seem to go directly against our founding teachings but could it be possible to help the past with EFT without working with it directly? Unfortunately I cannot deliver definitive answers to any of this! What I do have are stories to share and inspire, and ideas to interest and illuminate.
“…we are called to not run from the discomfort and not run from the grief or the feelings of outrage or even fear… when we look at it, when we take it in our hands, when we can just be with it and keep breathing, then it turns. It turns to reveal its other face, and the other face of our pain for the world is our love for the world…” Dr. Joanna Macy, 2010 interview
Visit Jess online at JessicaMor.com
David Feinstein, PhD
David Feinstein, PhD
Meet Dr. David Feinstein: David Feinstein, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and leader in the field of energy psychology. He has served on the faculties of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Antioch College, and the California School of Professional Psychology.
David is the author of nine books and more than 100 professional papers. Together with his wife, Donna Eden, he has coauthored The Promise of Energy Psychology and the New York Times best seller The Energies of Love. He has won nine national awards, including the U.S. Book News’ Best Psychology/Mental Health Book of 2007.
About the Presentation: The session by David Feinstein, “Uses of Energy Psychology Following Catastrophic Events,” explores the role of energy psychology in trauma relief after natural and human-made disasters. With over 120 clinical trials supporting its efficacy for PTSD, anxiety, and depression, this approach has been used in more than 30 countries post-disaster. Dr Feinstein will present four tiers of intervention, starting with immediate relief and stabilisation, and advancing toward long-term recovery and optimal functioning. In his session Feinstein will discuss both the benefits and challenges of this approach, including cultural sensitivities and broader delivery methods like group sessions and digital technology.
Dr Feinstein highlights successful applications in disaster recovery, from mass shootings to natural disasters, showing rapid and lasting relief for survivors.
Dr. Christine Gibson
Meet Christine Gibson: Dr. Christine Gibson is a family physician, trauma therapist, and author of The Modern Trauma Toolkit. You can find her on TikTok with the handle TikTokTraumaDoc with >130k followers and her two TEDx talks online. Dr. Gibson has a passion for Health Equity and systems change, having created a residency and run programs for and with equity-deserving communities. She runs an international non-profit called the Global Family Med Foundation and a company where she trains professionals on how to manage workplace trauma – Safer Spaces Training (and The Belong Foundation).
“A physician in the middle of a pandemic, one who survived the earthquakes in Nepal, Christy realised the mounting rates of trauma. Seeing these showing up but not being recognised, she felt compelled to share what she knew about healing skills. So she started creating on TikTok in January of 2021. People listened, not just because she shared tools they could use, but also because she looked at it from a systems lens. How trauma shows up in bodies, in families, and in communities.”
Physician Christy Gibson says, “It took me so many years to recognise trauma underlies so much of physical and mental ill health that I saw. It took more years to learn why this happens in individuals and families and communities, especially those placed at risk in their social positions. It’s now time to share what can be done at all these levels – to provide some hope and a solution focus. Without hope, trauma intensifies.”
About the Presentation: Join Dr. Christy Gibson in this engaging talk about the difference between resilience and post-traumatic growth, what a mindset shift looks like that involves the body, and how you can facilitate this process using EFT. As we face unprecedented collective traumas-like pandemics, the climate emergency, and rampant inequity-we need to share the tools for nervous system regulation, for operating in the window of tolerance, and for personal and community growth.
Visit Christine online at ChristineGibson.net
Panel Discussions
Last year’s Symposium offered three panel discussions and presentations featuring EFTi members Gwyneth Moss, Jondi Whitis, Pearl Lopian, George Brooks, and special guests Eleni Vardaki, Lori Leyden, Kerri Rhodes, Amy Gaesser and Roger Kingerlee.
Nancy Brooker – Symposium Host
Meet Nancy: Nancy Brooker is a Menopause Coaching Specialist, Advanced Certified EFT, and Certified Matrix Reimprinting Practitioner dedicated to helping women reclaim their well-being during menopause. With more than eight years of specialized experience, Nancy offers a uniquely compassionate, trauma-informed approach to trigger release and personal growth, rooted in her own journey of resilience through life’s challenges—including brain tumor surgery, caregiving for aging parents, and enduring loss amid the pandemic, while dealing with the challenges of menopause.
Nancy’s coaching expertise is tailored to help peri and postmenopausal women transform self-judgment into self-empowerment. In her practice, she provides a safe, non-judgmental space to explore and release triggers, embrace healing, and restore confidence. Known for her warmth and empathetic listening, Nancy is committed to helping women set clear intentions, reclaim their personal power, and feel good in their bodies again.
Whether it’s managing sleep disturbances, health changes, or emotional shifts, Nancy is there to guide women on a path of self-acceptance and growth. She is passionate about helping clients connect with their unique strengths, support their relationships, and experience a meaningful, fulfilling menopause journey.
Visit Nancy online at www.nancybrooker.ca
Panel 1 – Past Wounds
Sonia Munafo – Panel Chair
Meet Sonia: Sonia is a passionate advocate for holistic wellness. She is an Educator and Facilitator who consciously empowers people to enhance their Physical, Energetic and Emotional/Mental Wellbeing by providing them with the knowledge, skills and tools to embody healthy habits and behaviours of health and wellbeing.
She uses different modalities to address and optimize the clients health, fitness and wellbeing. These modalities range from EFT to Family Constellations, to Kinesiology/Autonomic Response Testing, to Somatic Movement Therapy/ Applied Movement Neurology, to Sports MassageTherapy/ Trigger Points/ Myofascia release, to Nutritional Therapy and many more. Sonia has also the ability to build rapport with a wide range of people from all over the world through excellent teaching and communication skills, her extensive language skills, fluent in Italian, German, English and French and her sensitivity to individual needs ensures that she is successful in supporting clients at all levels.
Sonia has been supporting the online EFTi Symposium since 2020 in various roles and this year she will be moderating the “Past Wounds Panel Discussion”
Visit Sonia online at www.somabodymind.com
Gwyneth Moss
Meet Gwyneth: Gwyneth is known as an innovator of EFT techniques such as EFT Imagineering, the 3:2:1 model of Surrogate Tapping and Protective Distancing. Her training courses are praised for their clarity and use of teaching metaphors. She was recognised by Gary Craig in 2005 as one of the original EFT Masters. Though much of her Cambridge Physics degree is long forgotten she is fascinated by exploring how experiences of tapping inform our understanding of consciousness. Ten years ago Gwyneth founded the EFT Guild, a community of learning and support which acts as a sister association to EFTi.
Visit Gwyneth online at EFThelps.com
Panel 2 – Present Solutions
Aga Kehinde – Panel Chair
Meet Aga: Aga Kehinde is a Trauma Consultant, Cancer Nurse Specialist, and Trauma-Informed Health Coach with over 25 years of experience.
As a certified practitioner in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), and Trauma-Informed Health Coaching, she employs these approaches to help communities and individuals overcome challenges and reclaim their sense of purpose.
Her work seamlessly integrates trauma, addiction recovery, psychology, and public health, focusing on the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on high-risk behaviours.
As a clinical director and co-founder of The Arukah Project CIC Aga leads trauma-informed care, combining extensive experience in healthcare, criminal justice, and community transformation to drive systemic change.
Website : www.agakehinde.com
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/AgaKehindeCoaching/
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/aga-kehinde-59721860/
Jondi Whitis
Meet Jondi: Well-known for her commitment to practical excellence with EFT, Jondi Whitis delivers gentle techniques with powerful results. In her hands, EFT is fully integrated with compassionate truth, deep experiential wisdom and committed service. Popular for her warm, accessible style and focus upon safe, humane support, she’s an Accredited Certified Master Trainer of Trainers with EFT International and a long time member of its Training & Accreditation Committee. She pursues a special focus in providing Tapping and training services to Veterans, Native American and Humanitarian outreach, using rapid regulation tools and techniques derived from her years of work with different constituencies and cultures.
Website : www.JondiWhitis.com
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/FeelBetterFastNow
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/jondiwhitis/
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondi-whitis-7250505/
Lori Leyden
Meet Lori: Lori Leyden PhD, MBA, is an internationally known trauma healing expert using EFT and the Embodying Grace Heartmap. She has worked extensively with traumatised communities for over 17 years. As the founder of the non-profit founder Create Global Healing, a non-profit committed to developing heart-centred healing & leadership programs for traumatised youth, US students and humanitarians. Her latest book, Embodying Grace: Trusting Yourself, Your Life and Your Divinity, debuted as a #1 International Bestseller across 8 countries. She is the 2024 recipient of ACEP’s Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Energy Psychology Award.
Visit Lori online at www.DrLoriLeyden.com
Pearl Lopian
Meet Pearl: Pearl is a Psychotherapist and EFT Master Trainer. Since 2009, she has conducted over 7,000 individual tapping sessions. Her passion is empowering other EFT practitioners to reach their full potential, making it easy for them to replicate what she does. Pearl specialises in Surrogate Tapping, particularly working with parents for their children, and runs workshops focused on attracting money and abundance.
Website : https://www.efttappinginstitute.com/
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/pearl.lopian
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/tappingwithpearl/
Panel 3 – Future Resilience
Kathleen Weber – Panel Chair
Meet Kathleen: As an Advanced Certified and Accredited EFT Practitioner, Kathleen is passionate about supporting educators who are struggling with burnout and chronic health issues. Having experienced debilitating Chronic Lyme Disease, she understands the significance of using gentle techniques to meet her clients exactly where they are and to support them with deep empathy and safety. Kathleen is also passionate about bringing EFT into schools. She has created several professional development programs based on her vast experience in education and her knowledge of best practices in supporting students. She believes that EFT belongs in the hands of every educator and every student. She is on a mission to make EFT accessible for all school community members.
Website : kathleenwebereft.com
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/KathleenWeberEFT
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/kathleen.weber.eft/
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleen-weber-a1721373/
Eleni Vardaki
Meet Eleni: Eleni has 20 years experience working in twelve different schools as a teacher trainee/intern, UK-qualified classroom teacher, and school staff trainer. For the past four years, she has been working full time as an Academic Coach, EFT Practitioner, and Educational Consultant specialised in stress, anxiety, and academic success. Since 2021, she has delivered 11 context-specific introductions to EFT Tapping for four international schools and two Greek state schools for PreK-High School students and staff.
Eleni believes that if we care about addressing student mental health and trauma, we need to also care about staff mental health and trauma. She is in awe at the power of both EFT Tapping and a recently developed tapping protocol for processing trauma called Trauma-Focused EFT. Not only has EFT gently but effectively addressed her own mental health challenges that arose during her teaching career due to work-related trauma, but it has also proven invaluable in her current role supporting student and staff mental health as a therapeutic coach and school trainer.
Website : elenivardaki.com
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/campvardaki/
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/vardakieleni/
Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/eleni-vardaki-m-ed
George Brooks
Meet George: George Brooks is an Accredited EFTi Master Trainer, BACP Accredited Counsellor & Clinical Supervisor, Dip. Couns., Dip Supervision, M.A. Educational Psychology University of Manchester, B.Ed. Hon. George offers EFT training across the world in person and on-line at level 1,2&3. He is also a BACP accredited counsellor and clinical supervisor who is the CEO of Brooks Counselling Ltd, providing Counselling, Training & Supervision services in the Education, Health & Public sector since 1999.
Since 2007 he has worked part-time as a teaching fellow at Manchester University where he has taught Counsellors and Educational Psychologists on Masters & Doctorate programmes. More recently George has developed this Trauma focused protocol for EFT, we have called (TF-EFT) with Christina Buxton.
Website : www.brookscounselling.co.uk
Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-brooks-798b351b
Roger Kingerlee
Meet Roger: Dr Roger Kingerlee is Consultant Clinical Psychologist with Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust and Op Courage, the NHS Veterans’ mental health service in the East of England. Dr Kingerlee co-wrote and co-leads the Veterans’ Stabilisation Programme (VSP), now in its 10th anniversary year. Dr Kingerlee specialises in complex trauma, dissociation, and male psychologies, and has published in various areas, including as second co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health (2019) which has had 115K chapter downloads internationally.
Linkedin : https://uk.linkedin.com/in/roger-kingerlee-64a3a618b
Kerri Rhodes
Meet Kerri: Kerri Rhodes is a licensed mental health clinician in Virginia with 30 years of experience, personally touched by the opioid epidemic and fueled by the loss of her son, Taylor. With a powerful message and rapidly growing platform, Kerri is challenging and changing how America treats and addresses mental health, trauma, substance use disorder, and how pain is managed.
Kerri has spent the last 29 years working in community mental health, schools, the justice system, and private practice. She brings to bear that experience and expertise, in addition to the lessons Taylor taught her, as she educates and empowers.
She shares her message and those tools that would have helped Taylor in his battle. Her platform has reached schools, prisons, healthcare, and national leaders. The invitations to speak, collaborate, and teach are growing and have included Weill Cornell Medicine, Shatterproof, Discovery Channel Plus, Senator Patrick Kennedy, Psychology Today, the National Safety Council, and The Executive Office of the President.
Kerri is currently the Director, Behavioral and Mental Health Division in the Chesterfield County Jail and works with the H.A.R.P program, which helps to heal those incarcerated with substance use and mental health issues.
Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerri-rhodes-427bbb188
Amy Gaesser
Meet Amy: Dr. Amy Gaesser, LMHC, NCC is currently an Associate Professor of Counselor Education at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Brockport with over 25 years of experience in mental health, specialising in the efficacious use of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) with children and adolescents especially in school settings. She also maintains a private counselling practice. Her present research includes interventions to reduce anxiety and address trauma for children and adolescents, including the efficacy of EFT. She publishes and presents at international, national, regional, and local levels on EFT for stress and anxiety management.
Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyhgaesser/
Clips from the Event
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