Around the World in 365 Studies

I want to say that again, because it still surprises people (it still surprises me sometimes): three hundred and sixty-five studies. Randomized controlled trials, meta-analyses, fMRI brain imaging, cortisol measurements, gene expression analyses, the whole lot.

And these are studies conducted by top researchers at universities and hospitals in more than 20 countries.

But almost nobody knows they exist.

I’ve been sharing Tapping for over 20 years now, and the question I still get most often is some version of “But is there actual science behind this?”

I actually love that question. Because the answer isn’t just yes — it’s yes, and the results are staggering.

So let me take you on a quick trip around the world. Each stop is a different study, in a different country, with different people facing different struggles.

What they have in common is what happened when those people started Tapping.

Peru: Sixteen Boys, One Session

In Lima, a group of adolescent boys ages 12 to 17 were living in a residential facility after being removed from their homes due to physical and psychological abuse. All of them had PTSD, scoring an average of 36 out of 88 on the Impact of Events Scale (a PTSD scoring system), well into the clinical range. [1]

Researchers split 16 boys randomly into two groups. One group received a single EFT session. The other received no treatment as a wait-list control group.

The wait-list group’s scores barely moved: 32 to 31.

The EFT group’s scores went from 36 to 3.

Every single boy in the EFT group dropped below the clinical threshold for PTSD. And remember, that’s after just one session.

This study was published in Traumatology, a peer-reviewed journal from the American Psychological Association’s Division of Trauma Psychology.

Haiti: After the Earthquake

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti, killing over 100,000 people and displacing more than a million. Among the survivors: 77 seminarians at a theological school in Port-au-Prince.

Researchers assessed all 77 for PTSD. Forty-eight of them scored in the clinical range. They received two days of EFT training, and afterward the number scoring in the clinical PTSD range dropped from 48 to zero. On average, their PTSD scores decreased by 72%. [2]

And that was after just two days of EFT Tapping.

Rwanda: Genocide Survivors at an Orphanage

In 2009, a team of trauma practitioners traveled to Rwanda to work with orphaned survivors of the 1994 genocide. These weren’t children who had heard about it secondhand; they had witnessed it. Many had lost every member of their family and had been carrying this for 15 years.

A group of 48 orphans (now teenagers and young adults serving as heads of their own households) scored in the clinical range for PTSD. Over two days of energy psychology treatment (which included EFT as a primary method), the practitioners worked with them directly. The results were published in the Energy Psychology Journal. [3]

After the Tapping intervention, PTSD symptoms decreased by 18%, on average. 21% of the group dropped below the clinical cutoff for PTSD.

The United States: The Veterans Study

This is the one that, for me, moved the conversation from “the research is promising” to “the research is clear.”

Fifty-nine U.S. military veterans who met clinical criteria for PTSD were randomized into two groups. One received six one-hour EFT sessions alongside standard care. The other received standard care alone. [4]

And 60% of the veterans had already crossed that threshold after just three sessions — halfway through the protocol. When the wait-list group eventually received EFT, the same pattern held: 86% remission after six sessions. That result held at three months and at six months.

This research was published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, one of the oldest continuously published medical journals in the world.

Edinburgh: EFT vs. EMDR, Head to Head

In Scotland, researchers asked a question no one had formally tested before: How does EFT compare against EMDR, the therapy widely considered the gold standard for treating PTSD?

Forty-six patients with diagnosed PTSD were randomly assigned to receive either EMDR or EFT. Both produced significant gains, and both maintained those gains at three-month follow-up. The effect sizes were comparable. [5]

Here’s the difference. EMDR requires a licensed clinician with specialized training. EFT is something you can learn and practice on your own, at home, for free. And in this trial, it performed on par with one of the most established trauma therapies in the world.

The Democratic Republic of Congo: EFT vs. CBT

In eastern Congo, 50 female refugees who had survived sexual violence were enrolled in a randomized controlled trial. Half received Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and half received EFT. They received eight sessions over four weeks. [6]

Both groups improved significantly, and both maintained those improvements at six-month follow-up.

Here’s why that matters so much. To deliver CBT properly, you need a licensed clinician — someone with a master’s or doctoral degree and years of supervised clinical training. That’s a pipeline that takes six to eight years in the West. Eastern Congo doesn’t have that pipeline.

EFT can be taught to local practitioners in days. Organizations like EFT Global routinely train community health workers in five-day intensive programs, and those workers go on to deliver it independently.

So a technique that can be learned in a week matched the outcomes of a therapy that takes nearly a decade of professional training. And that’s important. Because in places with almost no mental health infrastructure, that’s the difference between people getting help and people getting nothing.

Turkey: An Effect Size That Made Researchers Do a Double-Take

In Istanbul, 76 nursing students with public speaking anxiety were randomized into three groups: EFT, breathing therapy, or no treatment. [7]

Both interventions reduced anxiety. But looking at score changes on the Speech Anxiety Scale, EFT produced an effect size of d=3.18. Breathing therapy came in at d=1.46.

For some context: in clinical research, an effect size of 0.8 is considered “large.” Anything above 1.0 is enough to get a paper published in a top journal. EFT’s effect was nearly four times the threshold for “large.”

The results were measured using three different validated scales, and the outcomes were published in the reputable journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing.

Iraq: Traumatized Students in a War Zone

In Iraq, 60 male students aged 16 to 19 who met DSM-IV criteria for PTSD were randomly divided into three treatment groups: EFT, Narrative Exposure Therapy (a well-established trauma treatment), or no treatment. [8]

Both therapies worked. But at the 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month follow-ups, the EFT group’s improvements remained stable across all PTSD symptom clusters (intrusion, avoidance, and hyperarousal). The Narrative Exposure Therapy group’s gains were less stable over time.

That’s one of the things Tapping does so well. It doesn’t just produce immediate results; it creates long-lasting shifts that help people feel better over time.

Australia: What the Brain Scans Actually Show

Peta Stapleton at Bond University in Queensland has been doing something nobody else has — testing Tapping under an fMRI scanner. [9]

In one study, 24 adults with chronic pain went through six weeks of online group EFT and had their brains scanned before and after.

After Tapping, pain interference dropped by an average of 21%. Anxiety dropped 37%.

But the brain scans told the deeper story.

After EFT treatment, the scans suggested significantly decreased connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and areas of the brain involved in pain catastrophizing and modulation — the posterior cingulate cortex and thalamus.

The brain’s pain-amplification circuit quieted down, not because participants were told to think differently, but because the neural wiring was impacted by the Tapping process.

Australia Again: The Cortisol Replication

In a separate study, Stapleton’s team measured salivary cortisol — the stress hormone — before and after a single 60-minute session. [10]

The EFT group showed a 43% drop in cortisol. The psychoeducation group dropped 19%. The no-treatment group dropped 2%.

That replicated and nearly doubled the results of an earlier 2012 study by Dawson Church, Ph.D., which had found a 24% cortisol reduction.

Independent replication is the gold standard of science; it helps us gain confidence that the initial result wasn’t just a fluke. Independent replication that finds an even larger effect? That almost never happens.

These findings published in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy — an American Psychological Association journal.

Bosnia: Twenty Years of War Trauma

Nearly two decades after the Bosnian War, civilian survivors were still carrying the trauma. Researchers from Staffordshire University in the UK traveled to Bosnia to work with 18 war survivors through the Healing Hands Network. [11]

After a two-week intervention using EFT and a technique called Matrix Reimprinting, PTSD scores dropped significantly and continued to improve at the four-week follow-up.

Physical, psychological, and emotional improvements were also reported.

Greece: Chronic Headache Sufferers

At the Headache Clinic of Korgialenio Benakio Hospital in Athens, 35 patients with frequent tension-type headaches were randomized to either EFT or standard care. [12]

The EFT group practiced the technique twice daily for two months. Looking at the results afterwards, the researchers found that in the group who did EFT, headache pain reduced significantly compared to the control group, along with measurable improvements in headache frequency, perceived stress, and quality of life.

Mexico: Tapping in Classrooms

In a more recent study published in 2025 in PLOS One, researchers tested what happens when teachers, not therapists, lead acupoint Tapping in classrooms. [13]

In a Mexican community experiencing high levels of violence, middle-school students received a daily ten-minute teacher-led Tapping protocol (Thought Field Therapy, a method closely related to EFT that uses many of the same acupuncture points). A control school did ten minutes of unguided drawing instead.

After five months, the Tapping group showed large improvements in both reading and math scores. The control group showed no change in reading and a moderate decline in math.

Here’s what I take from this; when you bring a kid’s stress level down, their brain has more room to learn.

New Zealand: Fears and Phobias

In 2003, researchers in New Zealand published the first-ever randomized controlled trial on EFT.

Thirty-five people with specific phobias of small animals (the kind of fear that makes you leave a room if you see a spider) were split into two groups. Half received a single 30-minute EFT session, the other half received 30 minutes of diaphragmatic breathing. [14]

The EFT group showed significantly greater improvement in fear, and those gains held at the six-to-nine-month follow-up.

Remember that was just one session, only thirty minutes long.

That study was conducted way back in 2003. Since then, 364 more studies have followed, building a robust evidence base.

The Pattern

When you step back and look at 365 studies across more than 20 countries, three things stand out.

Speed. One session in Peru. Two days in Haiti. Six sessions for combat veterans carrying years of trauma. Traditional treatments for things like PTSD typically take months to years to work, and many people never fully respond. In study after study, Tapping produces measurable change faster than most clinicians would expect.

Biology. Cortisol dropping 43% in a single session. fMRI scans showing the brain’s pain circuits changing in real time. This goes well beyond people saying they feel better — researchers can see what’s changing in the body, and they can measure it.

Accessibility. EFT matched CBT and EMDR in head-to-head trials — therapies that require years of graduate training and a licensed clinician to deliver. Tapping can be taught to community health workers in days and practiced by anyone, anywhere, for free. The WHO estimates 75% of people with mental health conditions in low-income countries receive no treatment at all. In that context, accessibility isn’t a nice feature. It changes everything.

And the pace of research is accelerating. In the last five years alone, 148 new studies have been published; nearly half of the entire body of research.

As we speak, Tapping is being studied by top universities around the world, with even more groundbreaking results on the way.

Don’t have the app yet? You can learn all about it and download it for free here.

References

[1] Church, D., Piña, O., Reategui, C., & Brooks, A. (2012). Single session reduction of the intensity of traumatic memories in abused adolescents after EFT: A randomized controlled pilot study. Traumatology, 18(3), 73–79.

[2] Gurret, J-M., Caufour, C., Palmer-Hoffman, J., & Church, D. (2012). Post-earthquake rehabilitation of clinical PTSD in Haitian seminarians. Energy Psychology: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 4(2), 33–40.

[3] Stone, B., Leyden, L., & Fellows, B. (2009). Energy psychology treatment for posttraumatic stress in genocide survivors in a Rwandan orphanage: A pilot investigation. Energy Psychology: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 1(1), 73–82.

[4] Church, D., Hawk, C., Brooks, A. J., et al. (2013). Psychological trauma symptom improvement in veterans using Emotional Freedom Techniques: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 201(2), 153–160.

[5] Karatzias, T., Power, K., Brown, K., et al. (2011). A controlled comparison of the effectiveness and efficiency of two psychological therapies for posttraumatic stress disorder: Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing vs. Emotional Freedom Techniques. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 199(6), 372–378.

[6] Nemiro, A., & Papworth, S. (2015). Efficacy of two evidence-based therapies, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), for the treatment of gender violence in the Congo: A randomized controlled trial. Energy Psychology: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 7(2), 13–25.

[7] Dincer, B., Özçelik, S. K., Özer, Z., & Bahçecik, N. (2022). Breathing therapy and Emotional Freedom Techniques on public speaking anxiety in Turkish nursing students: A randomized controlled study. Explore, 18(2), 226–233.

[8] Al-Hadethe, A., Hunt, N., Al-Qaysi, G., & Thomas, S. (2015). Randomized controlled study comparing two psychological therapies for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) vs. Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET). Journal of Traumatic Stress Disorders and Treatment, 4(4).

[9] Stapleton, P., Baumann, O., O’Keefe, T., & Bhuta, S. (2022). Neural changes after Emotional Freedom Techniques treatment for chronic pain sufferers. Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, 49, 101653.

[10] Stapleton, P., Crighton, G., Sabot, D., & O’Neill, H. M. (2020). Reexamining the effect of Emotional Freedom Techniques on stress biochemistry: A randomized controlled trial. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(8), 869–877.

[11] Boath, E., Stewart, T., & Rolling, C. (2014). The impact of EFT and Matrix Reimprinting on the civilian survivors of war in Bosnia: A pilot study. Current Research in Psychology, 5(1), 64–72.

[12] Bougea, A. M., Spandideas, N., Alexopoulos, E. C., Thomaides, T., Chrousos, G. P., & Darviri, C. (2013). Effect of the Emotional Freedom Technique on perceived stress, quality of life, and cortisol salivary levels in tension-type headache sufferers: A randomized controlled trial. Explore, 9(2), 91–99.

[13] Connolly, S. M., Menchaca, L. Z., et al. (2025). A teacher-led classroom intervention in an area of Mexico experiencing community violence: A controlled mixed-method feasibility study. PLOS One.

[14] Wells, S., Polglase, K., Andrews, H. B., Carrington, P., & Baker, A. H. (2003). Evaluation of a meridian-based intervention, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), for reducing specific phobias of small animals. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 59(9), 943–966.