I heard with great sadness that the beloved creator of EFT, Gary Craig, passed away in January 2026. I cannot even begin to describe the gratitude I have for Gary and what he gave us.
Gary's Contribution
Gary’s enormous contribution to the field of energy psychology was not that he discovered the EFT points or created the process of ‘tapping’. Those already existed. Rather, it was that
he took something complex he learned from his mentor, psychologist Dr Roger Callahan, and made it extremely simple for anyone to learn.
Dr Roger Callahan created TFT (Thought Field Therapy) where practitioners followed complex algorithms for healing. It also involved muscle testing for accuracy. For instance, one recipe existed for ‘anxiety’, another for ‘fear’, another for ‘anger’, and so on.
Gary Graig, a Stanford Engineer with a huge heart,
decided it had to be much simpler so everyone could benefit and he proceeded to create the ‘Basic EFT Recipe’: the same recipe (tapping sequence) for every problem, regardless of the topic.
In the beginning (early 1990’s), Gary taught the ‘long’ form of EFT. In later years he realised it was possible to get the same results with a briefer form. Older practitioners (who learned EFT between the 1990’s and early 2000's), will remember the long form. It included the finger
points and 9 Gamut procedure. I still use this piece a lot in my sessions, while those who learned EFT more recently may not be aware of it.
How EFT found me
To duly honour Gary and his incredible legacy, I’d love to briefly tell you how EFT came across my awareness, and what it’s done for me.
I 2005, I met
Andrew, who has now been my husband for 20 years. One day, early on in our relationship, I mentioned I had to go to the dentist, and that I was terrified.
He got this shy-ish expression on his face, and said “I might know of something that can help you… I don’t know if it will, and we could try?”
I was intrigued… Andrew was an engineer himself, and also a Reiki Master and busy with a Life Coaching Course: a fascinating mix of logic and
‘woo-woo’.
Gary’s DVD’s
Andrew switched on the DVD (yes, 20 years ago DVD's were the main way of learning!) with Gary teaching EFT and I kid you not, I was instantly hooked. I was a computer programmer at the time (all logical yes) and yet, this weird thing made sense to me on such a deep, deep level. I couldn’t explain why I loved it - I just totally did.
In those days, Gary sold his trainings on DVD’s. He was incredibly generous and allowed anyone
who purchased a set, to make 50 copies and dish it out to others, free of charge. No royalties.
I could not get enough of those DVD’s and studied the EFT Manual (which Gary also generously made available free of charge).
The more I read, the more I knew: this unbelievably strange technique was going to be a very big part of my future.
Remember – in those days (2005), hardly anyone knew about ‘tapping’ or EFT. It was considered
woo-woo. There was no science, no research, nothing that ‘proved’ it worked. Yet the people who used it, felt the results.
Training
In 2006, I discovered a trainer close to me in Johannesburg, South Africa. I initially learned EFT to help myself. Growing up in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, there were hardly any tools to deal with emotion.Suppression, stuffing it down, or denying it was how we handled it – and that sadly lead me to depression in my teens, 20s and early
30s.
At the age of 38, the more I used EFT, the more I wanted to learn… so I became a Practitioner, and later an EFT Trainer.
Gary made online tests available for those who did not live close to him as a form of certification. I had to study those DVD’s for hours, making notes, learning his principles… and (toot-toot-tooting my horn) I was lucky to be the only person in South Africa to pass his test. I feel like I learned from the Master himself,
having studied those beautiful, masterful ways in which he helped clients right on stage to be rid of fears, phobias, all sorts of beliefs and intense emotions.
Since then, I've had the privilege to learn from many original EFT Masters. There were 29, and Gary gave them that designation personally since they learned directly from him before passing stringent tests and public demo's.
There are multiple newer additions like EFT with Matrix
Reimprinting (Karl Dawson) and IEP (Intention Energy Process - Steve Wells) that were created by people who learned directly from Gary - and I've added those to my tool box, too.
Give me EFT-anything! It's all useful in a session.
A career, and making a difference
So here I am, 21 years after EFT found me, with a career I absolute love. I feel profoundly privileged to support my beautiful clients with a tool that makes a
difference in every single session.
I use EFT almost every day for myself. When there’s a difficult emotion of any kind, my hand instantly goes to my collarbone (one of the points we use) and it starts tapping. I don’t have to think about it… it just happens.
Sometimes I do a longer session (20-30 minutes) for myself, and mostly it’s simply a few minutes here and there, as I go through my days. A habit of taking care of emotions as they arise.
Exactly like brushing our teeth, taking a daily shower, or washing our hair.
I have used EFT so many, many times for family members and friends going through a hard time, too. It’s been useful every time. When I otherwise would have felt hopeless or useless during difficult times in my family, I now had a way to make a difference, in a very gentle yet profoundly effective way.
Thank you, Gary
Gary, you’ve made such a difference in my family, in my own life,
and in the lives of my clients. Those ripples will continue to spread outwards in so many ways, for so many years. None of us can even know how far.
I will forever be so incredibly grateful to you for your logical mind that made it simple and do-able, for your generosity of bringing this tool to the world, and also for all the Giants on whose shoulders you stood.
May you rest gently in beautiful peace, knowing what a difference you made and
leaving the world a better place than before.
