I published this article in my newsletter in January 2026. I’ve been thinking about my career in EFT and what it’s meant to me, my friends, family, and my clients. I wanted to honour Gary Craig’s Legacy here on my website, too.

With great sadness, I heard that the beloved creator of EFT, Gary Craig, passed away in January 2026. I cannot even begin to describe my gratitude to Gary and for 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. Dr Patricia Carrington was ‘tapping’ before Gary Craig made it well known.

Gary 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 used 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.

In 2005, I met Andrew, who I’ve now been married to since 2005. 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 logic), 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 training on DVD’s. He was incredibly generous and allowed anyone who purchased a set to make 50 copies and hand it out to others, free of charge. No royalties.

I could not get enough of those DVD’s and 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. People still considered it ver 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 led 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 were unable to attend his live training, 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 blessed 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 of the 29 original EFT Masters. Gary awarded them that designation personally, since they learned directly from him before passing stringent tests and public demos.

Gary started calling his original EFT ‘Gold Standard EFT’ to distinguish it from ‘simple tapping,’ which is available all over the internet.

There are multiple newer additions like EFT with Matrix Reimprinting (Karl Dawson) and IEP (Intention Energy Process — Steve Wells) — created by people who learned directly from Gary. I’ve added those to my toolbox, 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 absolutely 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, 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, my own life, and my clients’ lives. 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, which made it simple and doable… for your generosity in 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.