Tapping While Listening to Songs

I have always loved music, so it should come as no surprise when I stumbled upon the idea of EFT tapping while listening to songs that held certain emotions for me.

I was first introduced to EFT by a wonderful holistic practitioner by the name of LB. It wasn’t something I knew a lot about, but I was familiar with other forms of energy healing, as I had studied level II Reiki, Quantum Touch, and ThetaHealing. A friend recommended EFT as a means to clean out old emotional debris, and LB was the only practitioner in my small hometown. My first meeting with L was amazing; she is an empath, so she reads and senses one’s inner thoughts and feelings. This makes her very powerful with EFT because she can gently offer guidance when one is confused or unclear. Needless to say, L and I became very close friends in a short period of time. One day, as I was bemoaning my utter failure in the relationship department, L offered to coach me. Her method involved me following certain steps, after which she designed personalized scripts for me to follow and tap on. This was true EFT, at its finest and most intense.

As I worked through her process, I learned more about EFT, how it worked, and the theory behind it. I also discovered how to make EFT more effective for myself. I found that if I really focused on recreating the negative memory or emotion that I was working on, my EFT sessions were more powerful and efficient. Thus, when I went through my scripts and the tapping sequence, the emotion was right there to be released. I oftentimes felt very powerful releases, which I recorded in a journal. L was instrumental, and sometimes, when she knew I was feeling whatever emotion I needed to work on, she would have me forgo the scripts, and just tap.

After working for several weeks, I was ready to face one of my demons. I mentioned before my interest in music. I have always loved music; I played piano growing up, and I also love to sing, even though I am more suited to singing in the shower. For some reason, music speaks to me, and there are always many songs which seem to say exactly how I feel; certain songs resonate very strongly with me. For example, there were several songs that held very painful memories for me as a result of a particularly traumatic breakup. I had been unable to listen to these songs for almost 8 years because when I listened to them, I was right back in that place. So my test was to play those songs, and see if they still resonated with me – it was like a test to see how much progress I had made with L’s process. The first song was okay; I shed a few tears. The second song struck a very deep chord, and I remember sitting there, with the tears streaming down my cheeks, feeling as though I had failed at my EFT because I was still carrying all that hurt that I thought I had already released.

At that moment, I remembered what L had said about tapping, and so I just started to tap. I was reliving the painful memories, and I just kept tapping on them – not saying any scripts, but just tapping. I am unsure of when was the exact moment, but there came a point at which the pain just wasn’t there. There was still some sadness (a sign that further tapping was still necessary), but that gut-wrenching grief was no longer there, and I could observe the memory and listen to the song as an observer, and no longer the participant. It just didn’t resonate anymore as it was just a song, with no painful memories attached. It was such a wonderful experience, and I have repeated it for several different songs. I had not realized how strongly I related to music, and by tapping on whatever memories these songs held, I was able to release all of these negative emotions. Normally, I am a very reflective person, and I want to examine and understand these emotions in order to trace them to their origins and track my progress, but in a pinch, I found this method to be very quick, effective, and easy. Just listen to a song – perhaps a break-up song – feel the emotion that the song holds for you, and just tap.

I am very grateful for this realization, which is why I wanted to share it. I know that I cannot be the only person who feels so strongly about music, and it is my wish that others can benefit from this technique of using EFT.

Amber Clark
Meadow Lake, SK, Canada

From the EFTfree Archives, which are now a part of EFT International .
Originally published on September 26, 2010.