Five Pointers on How to become a Professional EFT Tapping Practitioner

As tapping therapy, also known as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), has spread like wildfire across the planet many people are asking, how do I get trained to be a professional certified tapping practitioner or tapping therapist?

What Does it Mean to be a Professional EFT Tapping Practitioner?

Becoming a professional tapping therapist is a wonderful undertaking! It is an opportunity to do good in the world while helping people to overcome their pain. Often you will find that your clients have been in pain for a very long time. They have often tried everything and have nowhere left to turn. Often they have run out of hope. So when you take on the challenge of becoming a Tapping Therapist, you take on a very powerful role in society, that of the professional healer. It is a fulfilling and important role. It can bring you a sense of purpose in the world that few other professions can offer as you watch client after client heal and see their lives improve right in front of your eyes.  

A Word of Caution

One of the great things about tapping is that it is so easy to learn and so easy to do! Even a person who knows only a few of the main tapping points, as seen so readily on youtube, can get results and feel like a real pro! But this can be deceptive and sometimes leads to people who know very little hanging up a shingle and calling themselves a professional.  Or, perhaps worse, we have professionals (counselors, psychologists, life coaches, etc) experimenting with their existing clientele without getting proper training. 

The reality is that tapping is a largely self-regulated industry. It is not overseen by any government agency and so it IS possible to just say, “hey I’m a pro!” and then start taking clients and start charging money.  But the truth is that is both dangerous and misleading.  Yes, tapping works a high percentage of the time even if you know only a few points on the face. But a tapping PROFESSIONAL, has a skillset that goes well beyond what tapping a few points on the face can offer.

A Reality Check

The reality is that a tapping professional will encounter clients with very serious issues on a regular basis. Anxiety, Depression, Suicidal thoughts, grief, Alcoholism, Autoimmune disorders, eating disorders and so much more will show up at your door. Sexual abuse can be an almost daily occurrence for those who have a fulltime practice.  And your job, as a certified professional tapping therapist is to have the skillset to help them.  The danger here is three-fold.

1. Retraumatizing Your Client: If you don’t have the proper skillset you can make the matter worse by retraumatizing your client, sometimes causing long-term consequences for your client.
   
   
2. Failing Your Client. A well-trained professional is going to get results more than 90% of the time. But if you are standing in front of a client and have poor training, your results will be lackluster as well. Often these people have nowhere else to turn. If you don’t know what you are doing, they can remain in pain for no good reason.
   
   
3. Hurting the EFT Brand. When a poorly trained practitioner represents themselves as a tapping therapist and then has no idea what they are really doing, people start to think that tapping doesn’t work and the whole idea of tapping is hurt. This might not seem like a big deal, but tapping is a tool that has the potential to help millions and millions across the planet. Anything that stops that from happening is harmful on a grand scale.

So if you are serious about becoming a tapping professional, then it is important to find serious training that will offer you a serious skillet that truly can help those people who will be showing up at your door.

What Kind of Training Does It Take to Become a Certified EFT Tapping Therapist? 

1. Look for Accredited Training

Start by finding a credible course that offers training. Look for a course that is accredited by one one of the tapping associations. The main tapping associations include AEFTP (The Association of EFT Professionals), ACEP, and AAMET. This will help to distinguish whether the course is credible or not. Does the course offer professional tapping certification from the association? Or just a certificate of completion? Or perhaps no documentation at all. What requirements are involved to become an associate of the association once the training is complete? 

2. Find a Professional, Credible Trainer

Who is this person teaching the course? Do they have a well-known reputation in the industry? Have they had a professional practice of their own? How many years have they been in the industry? How many clients have they seen in their lifetime? How many people have they certified? What association are they accredited by?  Do they have testimonials from others who have taken the training? Will you have direct access to the trainer?  And is it it someone that you like and would enjoy learning from. All of these questions should be a part of your research into finding the trainer who is best for you.

3. Decide whether you want to learn online or in a weekend workshop

Do you learn better in a weekend workshop environment or do you prefer to learn online?  Weekend workshops can be a lot of fun and can be a great adventure including meeting people in person and getting the high of a live workshop. And the travel can be great fun as well. But weekend workshops also have a downside. Travel can be expensive and difficult to coordinate. But the greatest weakness perhaps is that it is virtually impossible to learn what you need to know in a weekend to be a well-trained tapping professional. Instead you need to travel many times to get the information you really need AND you get assigned to do many sessions once you return from the course to get the hands-on practice that you need. 

Online trainings offer an opportunity to get much more in-depth trainings over a longer period of time. Plus it offers an opportunity to review the content if you forget something or need to hear it a second time in order to really absorb the content. Online training also integrates the hands-on tapping with the teachings so you get to learn a concept, practice the concept, and then embody the concept.  It avoids the hassle and expense of travel and gives you access to tapping partners all over the world. It also offers a community of other trained tapping practitioners who you can turn to when you encounter a situation and really need someone you can trust to turn to for answers.

4. Look for Classic EFT Tapping Training

Look for a training that offers an unadulterated version of the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), aka Tapping, as taught by founder Gary Craig.  This will give you the strongest foundation including information on a wide variety of professional techniques including Tell the Story, Tearless Trauma, Movie Technique, Choices Technique, Chasing the Pain, Touch and Breathe, and more.  Many people are teaching their own version of tapping so be aware that it is not necessarily Classic or Gold Standard EFT and therefore might not be the real thing and you really don’t know what you are getting.

5. Check out the Cost

Professional Tapping certification can get very costly. Yes, it is much less expensive than 4 or 8 years of schooling required for many professional trainings (especially considering you can earn upwards of $100 an hour as a professional tapping therapist), but it often has many hoops you need to jump through, all of which can have an (often hidden) cost. How much is the training itself? How many classes do you need to take to get your certification? How many sessions do you need to do? Are they integrated into the training or do you have to do them afterwards? Do you have to pay to do sessions with a mentor associated with the course? How many sessions and how much are they? Often a course that is all-inclusive with costs can be the safest way to go, depending on the other factors. But price can be an important part of your decision making.

So when looking at becoming a certified tapping professional, these are some tips that can help you to find just the right course to meet your needs.

Check Out My Online EFT Tapping Certification Training

If you want, check out my training at www.onlineEFTcertification.com. These are some tips that can help you to find just the right course to meet your needs.