13/04/2024
Dr Peta Stapleton explains so brilliantly how the latest research shows how works.
Advances in neuroscience allow the mechanisms of acupoint tapping protocols to be explained. A range of hormonal and neurological shifts reliably follows acupoint tapping sessions 💖
E.g., reductions in cortisol production; normalization of brain-wave patterns; shifts in blood flow within the brain and changes in gene expression.
The Question Is: How and Why these protocols work?
After a target learning has been reactivated and mismatched, its neural circuits remain in a deconsolidated or labile state for about 5 hours
e.g. you ask a client to tell the story of what happened as they do EFT Tapping
It is during this “reconsolidation window” that the target learning is directly revisable by new learning and can be radically unlearned and no longer exist in emotional memory (without impairing autobiographical memory)
After 5 hours the labile neural circuits naturally reconsolidate and can no longer be altered by new learning, until reactivation and mismatch experiences are again created.
There are 3 steps to making this work -
1. Reactivate - Re-trigger the target knowledge by presenting cues or contexts from the original learning (e.g., talk about what happened and feel it all over again);
2. Mismatch - With reactivation occurring, create an experience that is significantly different with the target learning’s model and expectations of how the world functions. This step unlocks synapses and renders memory circuits labile (susceptible to being updated) EFT tapping provides this (as do other approaches) because the body is kept calm while they 'tell the story';
3. Erase or revise via new learning - repetitions of step 2 (keep tapping until there is little to no reaction in the body at the same time) - then test it a week or so later (to check!)
In transformational change, an unwanted state of mind, behaviour, or somatic disturbance ceases completely and lastingly, and no effort is needed for maintaining this liberating shift… 💗 The participants in our research trials can't remember what they tapped on when we follow them up 💗
Transformational change is the result of profound unlearning through the memory reconsolidation process - Dr Bruce Ecker