Energy Psychology:
Safe and Competent Practice

From Energy Psychology Interactive website and reprinted with permission of Innersource, © Innersource, 2001-2006.

The experience within the energy therapy community is that its methods can be taught to licensed clinicians at a level where they can responsibly introduce them into their practices within less than 100 hours of training.

The number varies widely depending upon the practitioner or organization conducting the training.

There is no established standard on this issue, and one of the reasons that EPI was created was to offer standards regarding the specific knowledge and skill areas that should be mastered before clinicians introduce the methods into their practices, based on a consensus of the field's leadership.

The EPI Advisory Board, under whose auspices the program was developed, consists of 24 of the field's pioneers and recognized leaders, including 10 psychologists, 5 physicians, and 9 other licensed health or mental health professionals.

On the opening page of the their Interactive CD, the program represents itself as a 40-hour course.

Whether requiring 40 hours or 100 hours, however, the experience of this therapy community is that the methods can be taught to psychotherapists within a reasonable training period and without mastering a separate discipline such as acupuncture, yoga, or qi gong.

In fact, the essential techniques used in energy techniques are unregulated. Anyone, as long as they are not diagnosing or treating illness, can teach another person to self-stimulate energy points for positive effects.

Energy psychology does not utilize invasive procedures. It does not involve surgery, medication, physical first aid, or even the superficial insertion of tiny needles. The methods are perhaps most akin to those taught in Touch for Health.

Tens of thousands of laypeople have been certified in Touch for Health over the past three decades, and no more training than that is required for a psychologist to effectively apply energy interventions to help people with anxiety and other psychological issues.

Comparison with Systematic Desensitization

As with systematic desensitization, a stimulus that causes an unwanted or dysfunctional emotional response is brought to mind and a physical intervention is used to replace a disturbed response with a neutral response.

In systematic desensitization, muscle tension is replaced with muscle relaxation by teaching the client the willful induction of muscular tension and release.

In energy psychology, an unwanted or dysfunctional emotional response is replaced with a neutral response by teaching the client to stimulate electrically reactive areas of the skin.

Systematic desensitization is of course not the only clinical procedure to utilize overtly physical interventions, and many physical interventions used by psychotherapists, particularly in aversion therapies, are not only physical but also invasive.

The physical interventions used within energy psychology are non-invasive, painless, and generally self-applied by the client.

Use in Clinical Practice

Assuming they are not specifically prohibited, one of the most responsible and self-protective steps you can take during this period while the professions are coming to terms with the energy paradigm is to be certain that you have obtained clear informed consent from your clients before you utilize energy interventions.

This site's Interactive CD includes sample wording that can be copied into your word processor, revised for the particulars of your practice, and integrated into your informed consent statement.

In deciding how to regard energy interventions, the clinical professions will best serve themselves and their clients by being very careful not to define their scope of practice so it omits safe, unregulated procedures that are, according to evidence that is rapidly accumulating, also highly effective for treating certain psychological issues.

The profession of psychology, for instance, which is fighting to gain drug prescription privileges, would be taking a significant step backward if it defines these non-invasive methods as being outside the scope of practice of psychologists who have taken training in stimulating the body's energy centers for psychological benefit.

The clinical professions should, in fact, be leading the way in setting standards for the responsible application of energy interventions as their use by laypeople is proliferating, sometimes in troubling ways. Energy Psychology Interactive offers clinicians a readily accessible and authoritative resource for educating themselves about the responsible uses of energy interventions with psychological issues.

You can find brain scan images demonstrating the impact of tapping techniques on brain function by clicking on www.innersource.net
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