Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) has a growing legion of advocates around the world; not only those people who apply the method as a self-administered therapy, but licensed health care professionals who specialize in psychology, psychiatry and interpersonal relationships. Those with the direct experience of using EFT, who witness the immediate and permanent changes it causes, staunchly claim it can relieve a wide list of psychological and physical conditions: anxiety, depression, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, general stress, addictions and more. Even more extensive reports have been cited that document multiple sclerosis, high blood pressure, and the like, have been improved with the application of EFT therapy.

To apply the basic EFT technique procedure requires that an individual with a particular issue simply holds the disturbing thought or memory, or stressful emotion, in mind while simultaneously using several fingertips to tap on a group of 12 specific acupuncture points located on the face, trunk and hands, that correspond to meridians used in Chinese medicine. Actually, the list includes a total of 15 points, if points nicknamed the "sore spot," "karate-chop point," and "gamut point" are included, since they are also a part of the series of areas stimulated to initiate the self-correction process that is part of the immune response of the body.

The basic theory upon which Emotional Freedom Technique is established, stemming from the practice of ancient Chinese acupuncture, is that all negative emotions that can affect a person are caused by disturbances or imbalances in the body's energy field; stimulating the disturbed or imbalanced meridians in any way, as in this case by tapping with the fingers, and while thinking about a negative emotion or life experience, will favorably alter the imbalanced energy field, and thus restore to "balance" so that the negative emotion or stressful life experience ceases to any longer cause a negative emotional response.

The Emotional Freedom technique theory maintains that all negative emotions occur in the following way: A stressful negative experience (small or large) occurs; as a result, a certain negative emotion is felt in response to this negative experience, which causes an inappropriate emotional response to be programmed in relation to the memory of that negative event; finally, the animating energy of the body becomes imbalanced or disrupted as a result of this negative emotion or experience. The further concept of EFT states that to remove the negative or inappropriate emotional response, simply working with or addressing the memory of the negative experience is not enough, since doing so does not address or correct the problem of the associated energy imbalance. To be truly effective, EFT doctrine maintains that the energy imbalance must be corrected to fully eliminate or reverse the negative emotional response or memory.

Those who use EFT are taught that the order or sequence, and in some cases the number, of tapping points is often unimportant. Therefore, each individual who uses EFT tapping procedures is free to experiment and alter the basic treatment strategy, since it is often found that satisfactory progress can be made while using different algorithms of the standard treatment protocol. While a full and comprehensive protocol can be used in treatment, it is often experienced that a reduced and markedly altered protocol can often result in satisfactory progress with stressful emotions and memory.
This last observation – that EFT can be truncated or altered in a variety of ways, and still succeed in gaining improvement over a variety of emotional issues – only suggests that the mechanism within the individual that actually causes the healing response to occur is forgiving and compliant, and can become initiated in a variety of ways. It attests to the unexplained wonders of the human organism, and not the limitation or fallacy of Emotional Freedom Technique.