Reducing Fear

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Reducing Fear
Originally published 12:41 p.m., June 17, 2008
Updated 12:41 p.m., June 17, 2008
By Joey Berlin
The Emporia Gazette
ThereÌs hating to go to the dentist Û a feeling shared by pretty much every tooth-owning citizen in the free world Û and then thereÌs having a real phobia of going there.

Emporia State University psychology professors Julius Cohen, James Persinger and Jon Sward recently presented the results of a study that examined how fear of dental treatment might be reduced, or eliminated, by the affected person without psychotherapy or drugs. What the relatively new procedure does involve might seem unbelievable: self-applied tapping.

Tap, tap, tap on certain meridian points of your body for as little as four minutes, the study showed, and eventually you can significantly reduce or even eliminate your fear. The treatment is one of a number of Emotional Freedom Techniques, or EFT, that can purportedly be used to treat a host of physical and psychological problems.

On the surface, EFT might sound too metaphysical to be believed. But the EFT movement, founded by Stanford engineering graduate Gary Craig, is gaining believers in the medical, psychological and philosophical communities, including noted mind/body medicine author Deepak Chopra, M.D.

Cohen, Persinger and Sward are believers too, and their study of 44 ESU students showed that one session of self-tapping can reduce the fear of dental treatment by as much as 30 percent.

ÏI donÌt think anybody fully knows (why it works),Ó Sward said. ÏFrom a Western science perspective, there are some French neurologists who have studied the meridian systems that the Chinese describe (in the body). The French people use radioactive isotopes; they can be tracked, and they clearly get picked up, and follow some kind of pathway through the body thatÌs pretty close to where the Chinese say these energy meridians are.

ÏThe French researchers think itÌs a subtle electrical system in the body. ... But in terms of exactly why the procedure works, I donÌt think anybody knows. People donÌt know why acupuncture works, per se. ...Ó

A veteran student of EFT and the way it has helped people overcome many problems, Cohen began the ESU study after collecting a series of articles on dental fear over the years. He said the phobia intrigued him.

ÏBecause I had read years ago, in 1994, a statement made by an ... American Dental Association expert, who talked about the fact that there were 30 million people in the United States who were afraid to go to the dentist, because of their fear of being hurt, fear of pain,Ó Cohen said.

The ESU students were given extra credit in exchange for their participation in the study in 2005. The students tapped on the instructed meridian points and, Cohen said, experienced an overall 72 percent improvement in the short session. After each tapping session, the students were asked to evaluate their fear on a scale from one to 10.

ÏThey tap five spots on their face, and two on their torso, and thereÌs two spots on their hand,Ó he said. ÏThe torso is called the kidney spot ... and then thereÌs a spot under the arm, which is related to the spleen meridian.Ó

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