Most of the twenty V.A. Hospital patients treated by Craig and Fowlie enjoyed near-immediate, readily observable results for PTSD symptoms that had in many instances resisted years of psychotherapy. Sessions with six of these men, including the work with Rich, were videotaped and are available for inspection as part of a home study course that can be obtained through www.emofree.com.

You might think, based on these outcomes, that every V.A. Hospital in the country would be experimenting with these methods. That is not how it played out. Even with the conspicuously rapid help these men were enjoying for the stubborn symptoms of PTSD, none of their therapists accepted invitations to sit in on the sessions. No interest was shown in watching the videotapes. And though most of the patients expressed strong enthusiasm and appreciation, no one on the clinical staff indicated any curiosity to hear more or learn more.

The V.A. hospital episode is a microcosm of the way much of the psychotherapy community has responded to the first two decades of energy psychology. Though the professional atmosphere is becoming more receptive, this resistance is understandable. Seasoned clinicians have learned through hard experience to be reluctant about embracing new methods before they have been scientifically substantiated. Controlled research, of course, always lags behind new clinical innovations, but formal investigations that establish or discredit the reports of energy psychology practitioners have been particularly slow to appear. And even as they are beginning to emerge, experienced clinicians are skeptical upon hearing claims that strange and unfamiliar methods produced near-instant cures of longstanding problems. Therapy is not believed to be that rapid. Time is needed for building rapport, examining the antecedents of the problem, exploring the meaning of the symptoms in the person’s life, assessing which therapeutic modalities are most appropriate for the unique situation, applying them, observing, and revising.
What Are The Mechanisms?

What might account for the contrast between the videotaped outcomes with the patients at the V.A. hospital, corroborated by thousands of similar cases reported by growing numbers of energy-oriented therapists, and conventional wisdom regarding the therapeutic process? If we try to understand the results in terms of the stock concepts of psychotherapy—such as insight, cognitive restructuring, reward and punishment, or the curative powers of the relationship—they make no sense. If we examine electrochemical shifts in brain chemistry that are brought about by stimulating points on the skin that are known for their electrical conductivity, however, a coherent explanation for these rapid shifts in longstanding patterns of mind, emotion, and behavior begins to emerge.

Pre- and post-treatment brain scan images tell the story visually (click here to view).  This series shows the progression, over 12 sessions conducted during a 4-week period, of a patient being treated for generalized anxiety disorder. The treatment involved tapping electrochemically sensitive areas of the skin while anxiety-provoking images were brought to mind.  The neurological signature of generalized anxiety disorder is strong in the first session and has completely normalized by the 12^th session.

As the wave frequencies shifted toward normal levels, the symptoms of anxiety decreased in both their intensity and their frequency. Similar sequences of images and symptom reduction were also typical of other patients with generalized anxiety disorder who received energy-based treatments. Patients who were successfully treated with what has been the standard therapy for generalized anxiety disorder (Cognitive Behavior Therapy, combined with medication as needed), showed a similar progression in their brain scans during the pilot study (discussed further below) from which these images were taken. But it took a greater number of sessions to achieve equivalent improvements. And more importantly, on one-year follow-up, the brain wave ratios following the Cognitive Behavior Therapy protocol were more likely to have returned to their pre-treatment levels than they were for the patients who received the energy treatments.

An interesting tangent from this study was in the comparison between patients whose primary treatment was anti-anxiety medication vs. patients whose primary treatment involved stimulating energy points while holding anxiety-provoking images. Both groups enjoyed a reduction of symptoms. But the brain scans for the medication group did not show noticeable changes in the wave patterns, even though the symptoms of anxiety were reduced while the drug was being taken. This suggests that the medication was suppressing the symptoms without addressing the underlying wave frequency imbalances.
What Acupuncturists Have Always Known

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New understanding about the relationship between energy and the flow of information within the body is causing conventional medicine to rapidly update the perspective that views the person primarily as a biochemical entity. The EEG, EKG, PET, and MRI are diagnostic instruments that build on this principle. And as James Ochsman notes in Energy Medicine  in Therapeutics and Human Performance, there is “increasing awareness in the biomedical community that electrical and magnetic fields, as well as light and sound, affect cellular processes and can be used to stimulate healing in various tissues.”1

These principles are being applied within mental health settings as well. The magnetic stimulation of specific areas of the brain, for instance, has been shown to help with major depression that did not respond to other therapies,2 as well as with bipolar disorders.3  The surgical implantation of deep brain stimulators—devices that deliver precisely targeted electrical stimulation in the brain—has assisted thousands of patients with Parkinson’s disease. These “brain pacemakers” are also being applied with severe depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and other neurological conditions.4 Except for such still rare and sometimes invasive applications, however, Western medicine has produced few treatment modalities to date that take full advantage of the ways the body’s energies can be directed to mediate the complex flow of biological information to restore health.

But other cultures have. From Hindu yogic practices to traditional Chinese medicine to tribal healers throughout the world, models for working directly with the body as an energy system are plentiful. One of the most elaborately articulated models, and one that has held up relatively well to Western scientific scrutiny, is the practice of acupuncture. Acupuncture is not only among the oldest known medical treatments, extending back at least 4,500 years, it is one of the most widely used health care systems on the planet. The World Health Organization lists more than 50 conditions for which it is effective, including psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Anesthesia through acupuncture has been widely documented in procedures from appendectomies to heart surgery. In acupuncture, the tips of needles are inserted at specific points in the skin to treat pain or disease. While many Westerners find it challenging to assimilate this concept into their worldviews, once the well-established effectiveness of acupuncture as an anesthetic is accepted, evidence showing that stimulating a set of acupuncture points can reduce anxiety becomes more cognitively palatable.

An acupuncture point, or acupoint, is a tiny area of the skin with significantly lower electrical resistance (measured in “Ohms”) than other areas of the skin (12,000 to 14,000 Ohms vs. 300,000 to 400,000 Ohms). Acupoints also have a higher concentration of receptors that are sensitive to mechanical stimulation and can, when stimulated, send signals directly to areas of the brain that are associated with emotions. Their electromagnetic properties can be activated by tapping, massaging, or holding them, as well as through more intrusive means such as the insertion of needles or electrical stimulation. At least 360 acupoints are distributed along a network of energy pathways that are called the meridian system. A more accurate translation (from the Mandarin) than “point” is “hollow,” and because of their lower electrical resistance, acupuncture points have been called “windows” into the body’s energy system.5

These entryways into the body’s energy system can be used for restoring physical and mental health. Stimulating an acupoint can send impulses to areas of the body that are far away from the point itself. A 1998 article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, for instance, reporting research using functional MRI measurements, showed that an acupuncture treatment in a toe affected blood activity in the brain, though no nerve, vascular, or other physical connections are known to exist.6 Another study, coming out of Harvard Medical School, again based on fMRI measurements, demonstrated that “acupuncture needle manipulation modulates the activity of the limbic system and subcortical structures.”7 Stimulating specific points on the skin not only changed brain activity, it deactivated areas of the brain that are involved with the experience of fear and  pain!
A Basic Hypothesis

The implications of these findings for working with psychological issues are enormous. Here is a preliminary explanation for the near-instant, lasting results seen in the phobia and PTSD cases reported earlier:

AN EMOTIONAL PROBLEM A harmless sight, sound, smell, feeling, or thought (the trigger) is recognized by the part of the brain that identifies threat (the amygdala) as being similar to a previous experience that involved physical danger or emotional threat.   The amygdala sends impulses to the autonomic nervous system that elicit the "fight, flight, or freeze" alarm response. Chemicals such as adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol are released into the bloodstream, causing bodily processes to undergo a series of dramatic changes. At the same time, primitive areas of the brain, designed to respond to threat, shape perception and thought. The rational mind has little involvement in this sequence.   The physical sensations of the alarm response are experienced as anger-like feelings (fight), fear-like feelings (flight), or an inability to take action (freeze). AN ENERGY-BASED TREATMENT The triggering image is brought to mind while physically stimulating a series of acupoints that are believed to send impulses directly to the amygdala.   These impulses have the effect of interrupting the alarm response, and they plausibly result in the amygdala reducing the number of neural connections between the image and the alarm response.   After a number of repetitions of #1, the image can then be brought to mind, or the situation can actually be experienced, without eliciting the alarm response.

An evolutionary twist made the critical second step of the treatment possible. Simply bringing to mind an image that triggers an emotional response creates neurological changes. The response may become stronger or weaker. The apparent survival value of this mechanism is that, during primitive times, you could update your assessments about what is life-threatening based on more recent experiences. The scent of an animal that was not common in your locale might have been coded as mildly dangerous. But then you see the animal. It looks fiercer than you imagined. You recall a valley some distance from your cave where you had first noticed the scent. Neural connections between the image of the valley and the alarm response are immediately built. But the reprogramming can work in either direction. Any time a fearful memory is brought to mind, the neural connections between the image and the mechanisms that cause the emotional response may be increased or decreased.  The memory becomes labile when reactivated, susceptible to being consolidated in a new way.8 Energy interventions apparently take hold during this moment of increased "neural plasticity."

So far, we have introduced three basic principles of energy psychology that are supported by at least preliminary research:

1. Bringing a troubling image or memory to mind makes it temporarily responsive to interventions that alter the stress-activating circuitry in the amygdala and other brain structures (neural plasticity).9
    

2. Stimulating specific acupoints can, as demonstrated in the Harverd study,10 send signals that deactivate areas of the brain that are involved with the experiences of fear and pain.
    

3. Brain wave patterns that are markers of generalized anxiety and other mental disorders have been identified,11 and as you have seen, at least one early study suggests that stimulating acupoints while bringing anxiety-provoking images to mind changes these brain wave patterns.12

Other research focuses on energy interventions for enhancing peak performance rather than overcoming psychological problems. It is well known in sports psychology, for instance, that mental rehearsal can enhance performance. Vividly imagining 50 successful free throws initiates neurological shifts13 and improves your performance on the court.14 Reports from energy psychology practitioners suggest a fourth principle, that combining such imagery with acupoint stimulation intensifies this effect. Based upon these four principles, the following statement provides a tentative explanation for the rapid improvement that is so frequently reported after energy interventions.

Hypothesis: Stimulating specific electromagnetically-sensitive points on the skin while bringing a psychological problem or goal to mind can help a person overcome that problem or reach that goal by changing the circuitry in the amygdala and other areas of the brain.

This hypothesis is stated in the most reductionistic manner possible. It does not, however, rule out emotional, cognitive, and even spiritual correlates to the processes that can be described in neurological terms. It is likely, in fact, that effective interventions that enter from any of these levels can affect all of them.
What Does the Research Show?

Research to support or refute this hypothesis in clinical settings is only beginning to be conducted. Respectable peer-reviewed efficacy research does exist for related areas, such as acupuncture15 and Therapeutic Touch,16 but even the most fundamental questions remain unanswered about energy psychology. Are its treatments as rapid and effective as the early proponents are reporting? For what conditions are they most effective? Exactly which procedures constitute the “necessary and sufficient conditions” for therapeutic change? What are the precise mechanisms involved when the tapping of acupoints results in the reduction or elimination of a psychological symptom?

Different practitioners have different answers to these and related questions, and far more research is needed to address and eventually resolve many of the areas of confusion and controversy. A few early studies do shed some light on basic issues. For instance, are the clinical outcomes due to tapping the acupoints or are they simply a placebo effect due to focusing on the problem with a caring practitioner? This is a fundamental question that must be addressed before any new treatment is credibly established.

A study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology examined this question as well as the question of how much improvement could be gained in a single session with individuals who volunteered to receive help with strong irrational fears of insects or small animals, including rats, mice, spiders, and roaches. Acupoint tapping was compared with a relaxation technique that uses diaphragmatic breathing. Significantly greater improvement was found, based on standardized phobia scales and other measures, in the group that received the tapping treatment. On follow-ups, 6 to 9 months later, the improvements held.17 A study conducted at Queens College in New York to see if these findings could be replicated produced markedly similar results.18

With preliminary evidence suggesting that the stimulation of acupoints is more effective than relaxation training in the treatment of a phobia, a next logical question is whether it matters which points are tapped. Is there something about simply tapping the body that has a curative effect, or is there really something special about the points that were identified in ancient China? A preliminary investigation of this question suggested that in treating 49 people with height phobias, those who tapped the traditional points showed significantly more improvement than those who tapped “placebo” points.19 In a subsequent study, published in Anesthesia & Analgesia, treatments that involved stimulating acupoints were applied by the paramedic team after a minor injury and compared with treatments that stimulated areas of the skin that do not contain acupoints. Again, the treatments that used the traditional points were more effective, resulting in a significantly greater reduction of anxiety, pain, and elevated heart rate.20

Clinical reports of unusually rapid and powerful outcomes using energy interventions are abundant, with many of the 600 professional members of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology each having documented at least a few in their case notes. Some of the most dramatic results have been highly publicized, causing substantial suspicion among professionals and doing little to advance the scientific argument. Such “anecdotal” reports are highly subjective. A bit more credibility can be afforded systematic clinical observations. For instance, 105 victims of ethnic violence in Kosovo, after receiving energy psychology treatments from an international team over a period of several months (TFT, or “Thought Field Therapy,” was the primary modality), reported complete recovery from the post-traumatic emotional effects of 247 of the 249 memories of torture, rape, and witnessing the massacre of loved ones they had identified.21 Still scientifically equivocal, this is a mind-bending claim, and the impact on the local community was apparently profound. Dr. Skkelzen Syla, the equivalent of the Surgeon General of Kosovo, stated in a letter of appreciation:

Many well-funded relief organizations have treated the posttraumatic stress here in Kosova. Some of our people had limited improvement but Kosova had no major change or real hope until . . . we referred our most difficult patients to [the therapists using TFT]. The success from TFT was 100% for every patient, and they are still smiling until this day [i.e., on follow-up, each was free of relapse].

While systematic clinical observation, as in the Kosovo report, does not attempt to meet the stringent standards of controlled scientific research, early large-scale studies in clinical contexts provide the most objective information currently available about energy interventions.

The largest of the early studies, conducted over a 14-year period and involving more than 29,000 patients, was supervised by Joaquín Andrade, M.D. He introduced energy psychology methods to 11 allied clinics in Argentina and Uruguay after he was trained in the approach in the United States. Dr. Andrade had, as a young man, spent long periods of time in China, where he studied traditional acupuncture, and he had been applying it in his medical practice for thirty years. He was struck with the effectiveness of this new application, which focused directly on anxiety and other psychological disorders, and which did not use needles to stimulate the acupuncture points.

The staff of the 11 clinics met this new procedure with both excitement and skepticism. While the group had no funding for research, they decided to track the outcomes of treatments with these new methods and compare them with the treatments currently in place.

Standard record-keeping already maintained a patient’s intake evaluation, the interventions used, and the treatment outcomes. Dr. Andrade’s team added a simple procedure for briefly interviewing the patient, usually by telephone, at the close of treatment and then one month, three months, six months, and twelve months later. The interviewers had not been involved in the patient’s treatment. They had a record of the diagnosis and intake evaluation, but not of the treatment method. Their job was to determine if at the time of the interview the initial symptoms remained, had improved somewhat, or if the person was now symptom-free.

Over the 14-year period, 36 therapists were involved in treating the 29,000 patients whose progress was followed. Their impressions, supported by the data they collected, were that the energy interventions were more effective than their existing treatments for a range of conditions. They also conducted a number of sub-studies that allowed more precise conclusions.

The sub-studies included control groups, comparing energy interventions with the methods that were already in use at the clinics. They also used a formal randomized design so that any given patient had an equal chance of receiving the energy therapy or the conventional protocol.

The largest of the sub-studies, conducted over a five-and-one-half year period, followed the course of treatment of approximately 5,000 patients diagnosed with anxiety disorders. Half of them received energy therapy treatments and no medication. The other half received the standard treatment being used at the clinics for anxiety disorder, which was Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), supplemented by medication as needed. The interviews at the end of treatment, along with the follow-up interviews at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months, showed that the energy therapy was significantly more effective than the CBT/medication protocol in both the proportion of patients showing some improvement and the proportion of patients showing complete remission of symptoms:

Outcome Comparisons with 5,000
Anxiety Patients at Close of Therapy

	CBT / MEDICATION	ENERGY GROUP
Some Improvement	63%	90%
Complete Remission of Symptoms	51%	76%

While conducting telephone interviews to place people in one of three categories (“no improvement,” “some improvement,” “complete remission of symptoms”) is not the most stringent way to measure clinical outcomes, various other measures supported these findings, including pre- and post-treatment scores on standardized psychological tests, including the Beck Anxiety Inventory, the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Index, and the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale. Pre- and post-treatment brain scan images also matched the interviewer ratings. However, these more objective measures were not consistently applied or tracked.

In another sub-study, the length of treatment was dramatically shorter with energy therapy than with CBT supplemented with medication:

Length of Treatment
Comparisons within a Sampling of 190 Anxiety Patients

	CBT / MEDICATION	ENERGY GROUP
Typical Number of Sessions	9 to 20	1 to 7
Average Number of Sessions	15	3

Another question that will be of interest to anyone experimenting with energy interventions is whether tapping the acupoints is as effective as the traditional method of placing needles in them. As an acupuncturist, this was of particular interest to Dr. Andrade. A third sub-study, while very small, had a surprising outcome, suggesting that tapping the points in the treatment of anxiety disorders may actually be more effective than inserting needles into them:

Tapping vs. Acupuncture
Comparisons in the Treatment of 78 Anxiety Patients

	NEEDLES (N=38)	TAPPING (N=40)
Positive Response	50%	77.5%

It must once again be emphasized that these are preliminary findings. The study was initially envisioned as an exploratory in-house assessment of a new method and was not designed with publication in mind. Not all the variables that need to be controlled in robust research were tracked, not all criteria were defined with rigorous precision, the record-keeping was relatively informal, source data were not always maintained, and the degree to which any valid conclusions would generalize to other settings is unknown.

Nonetheless, the sub-studies did use randomized samples, control groups, and “blind” assessment, and the clinical outcomes were striking enough that the principal investigator did report them, initially in an earlier version of the Energy Psychology Interactive CD. That initial report, which includes greater detail on the background of the study, can be accessed by clicking here. If subsequent research corroborates these preliminary findings, it will be a notable development since CBT combined with medication as needed is currently the established standard of care for anxiety disorders, and the greater effectiveness of the energy approach suggested by this study would be highly significant.
Energy Interventions within Psychotherapy

The place of energy interventions within the field of psychotherapy is still unfolding. With some kinds of problems, such as uncomplicated phobias and many mild to moderate anxieties, the energy intervention itself can often overcome the problem. With other psychiatric disorders, energy interventions are being combined with more traditional approaches, and a growing number of clinical reports suggest that they significantly increase the effectiveness of the standard approaches. Therapy is still about insight, intention, positive thinking, cognitive restructuring, and the healing power of relationship, but being able to directly shift the energies that appear to impact the neurology which maintains psychological problems is a powerful adjunct.

While we know of no systematic research on indications and contraindications for energy psychotherapy, early clinical impressions suggest that they seem unusually effective with fear, anxiety, and the emotional difficulties of everyday life, from unwarranted anger to excessive feelings of guilt, shame, jealousy, rejection, isolation, and grief. They should probably be combined with other treatment modalities when working with mild to moderate reactive depression, learning skills disorders, substance abuse-related disorders, and eating disorders. They should probably be no more than a supplemental treatment modality when working with major endogenous depression, personality disorders, dissociative disorders, bipolar disorders, psychotic disorders, delirium, or dementia.
Consensus and Controversy within Energy Psychology

Energy psychology, as such, is a relatively new discipline. The first national professional meeting in the United States was held in 1999. Although research evidence is still preliminary, the anecdotal support is massive, and systematic investigation does support claims regarding energy treatments in related areas, such as acupuncture and Therapeutic Touch. In addition, numerous empirical demonstrations of energy fields and associated phenomena date back at least to Harold Burr’s work at Yale in the 1930s.

Additional discussion of the body's electromagnetic and subtle energy systems

While at this point there is still a lack of consensus about the essential mechanisms that might explain the favorable treatment outcomes, virtually all of the energy-based psychotherapies share two essential components:

1. They all have the client mentally access a “problem state.”

2. They simultaneously introduce an intervention designed to balance energies that become disturbed when that problem state is accessed.

There is also general agreement among practitioners that energy interventions retrain the body so that a stimulus which had triggered a disturbed emotional response no longer evokes that response.

Beyond these common denominators, major differences can be found among the various approaches. They differ, for example, in:

• The kinds of “problem state” they target. Some are more oriented toward the presenting problem; some concentrate on psychodynamic issues; some focus on past trauma; some promote “peak performance”; some conceive of treatment goals in spiritual terms.

• The specific energy systems they focus upon (the meridians, the chakras, the biofield, etc.).

• How they attempt to correct disturbances in those energies.

Some practitioners, for instance, use a uniform set of procedures to correct the energy disturbances. Others believe that, while this “one-size-fits-all” approach might be effective in a percentage of cases, there is also a “one-size-misses-many” effect. They introduce more elaborate assessments and interventions in an effort to increase the probability of successful treatment with a greater proportion of clients and issues. One of our most esteemed colleagues believes that the essential mechanism is to create sensory overload while, in line with LeDoux’s findings about neural plasticity, mentally activating the psychological issue. He believes that certain acupuncture points send strong signals to the relevant brain areas, but he also believes that any strong sensory input can have the effect of changing the circuitry to an anxiety-provoking image. He reports strong results in combining the stimulation of selected acupoints with other sensory stimulation—from eye movements to the taste of a strong peppermint candy to the smell of lavender perfume—while simultaneously focusing on the psychological problem via memory, imagination, or talk.

Energy Psychology Interactive examines the range of thinking among the leaders of the field on the issue of how elaborate an approach must be utilized. It includes a basic, relatively simple procedure as well as a progression of more sophisticated interventions that are also more complex to learn. Each of these interventions, however, and their underlying principles, can be systematized, divided into bite-sized units, and presented in an engaging manner. That is the purpose of this interactive CD.
What You Will Learn in Energy Psychology Interactive

As in any other form of treatment, energy psychology sessions vary widely from practitioner to practitioner, client to client, and session to session. However, certain features distinguish energy-based psychotherapy from other treatment approaches, and in this program you will gain skill and understanding about each of these components. Along with developing rapport and gathering information about the client’s background and treatment goals, the major elements of energy-based psychotherapy include:

1. Explaining the nature of an energy-oriented approach to psychological problems, discussing its relevance to the client’s concerns, and obtaining informed consent about proceeding.
    

2. Introducing procedures such as energy checking for assessing the body’s energies as they impact and are impacted by psychological problems.
    

3. Checking for and correcting specific forms of neurological disorganization that tend to interfere with the outcome of energy-based treatment techniques.
    

4. Checking for and correcting a specific variation of cognitive dissonance, called a psychological reversal, which also tends to interfere with treatment outcomes if left unchecked.
    

5. Identifying an initial target problem, often within a more comprehensive treatment plan, and formulating that problem in a manner that is appropriate for energy interventions.
    

6. Assessing the client’s subjective level of distress in relationship to the target problem as well as the level of distress in the body’s energetic response to the target problem.
    

7. Energetically "locking" the problem into the body (for the purposes of the treatment session).
    

8. Proceeding with a series of procedures designed to reprogram energy responses that are involved with the target problem.
    

9. Anchoring the gains by pairing energy methods with mental projections of positive back-home outcomes and teaching energy techniques for use in the back-home setting.

You will gain basic skills and knowledge in each of these areas by working through the modules in this CD. The program provides both an entry point for the clinician with little or no experience in energy-based approaches to psychotherapy and a resource for experienced practitioners.  It takes you step by step through many of the fundamentals of energy psychology.

Three books—Energy Psychology (Fred P. Gallo, CRC Press, 1999), Energy Diagnostic  and  Treatment Methods (also by Gallo, W.W. Norton, 2000), and Energy Medicine (Donna Eden, Tarcher/Penguin Putnam, 1999)—were primary sources in the formulation of this program and can be used as secondary texts.  Energy medicine, in particular, goes beyond the scope of this program as it introduces you to the larger field from which energy psychology emerged.  Click here to see which chapters in each of the three books correspond with the specific modules in the CD.
Getting Started

Each of the program’s 17 modules opens with a brief introduction to the topic you are about to explore and is then comprised primarily of interactive questions and answers.

These questions, rather than reviewing material you have already studied, are ways of introducing you to each new idea that will follow. They are to stimulate your interest and curiosity. They are not to test you, though you can subsequently use them to review the program and get a sense of the degree to which you have mastered the material. Also placed within many of the modules are suggestions for “practice sessions.” While not essential for continuing through the module, they serve as an early bridge across the divide between theory and practice. Video clips illustrate many of the procedures and can be accessed with a click of the mouse.

The program is designed for self-study. It also lends itself well to an ongoing study group. An excellent way to learn the materials is for two or more individuals to independently go through the program, a module at a time, and then meet to discuss the principles described in that module and practice the techniques it presents. This is also the way in which the program is typically used as a text for graduate classes in psychology and related fields.

The first module, titled “The Basic Basics,” is designed to provide you with an experience of how energy psychology works and feels. It introduces you to some of the discipline’s more fundamental methods and invites you to experience them with relatively little explanation. It also encourages you to read two tutorials in the “Embedded Topics” area that show you how the “basic basics” can be applied to a range of psychological problems and goals. Called "Focusing on Problems" and "Focusing on Potentials," we suggest you print out these tutorials and keep them with the Companion Book.

The remainder of the program then builds upon these “basic basics” and provides theory and rationale for each additional procedure that is introduced. When you have completed the first module and related materials, return to the Contents Page and find the next basic module, which is on “Energy Checking” (proceed down the list of the 17 Basic Modules).

Numerous charts, tables, and topics of interest that are accessed directly from the 17 Basic Modules are also listed in the Embedded Topics index (see Contents Page) so they can be studied independently as you wish. If you have not yet carefully read the six Use Considerations in the introductory material, please do so now. They frame the designers’ intentions regarding the relationship between the program and its user, and specify important disclaimers. Otherwise:

Jump to the first interactive module: The Basic Basics