Research on acupoint tapping therapies proliferating around the world

Systematic review📚 91 studies reviewedPreliminary✓ Source-checked📍 United States

In plain English. This paper systematically hunted for EFT and SEFT studies published in non-English journals (mostly Indonesian) that don't show up in standard Western research databases, finding 91 additional studies covering conditions like anxiety, depression, and hypertension. It's a discovery/mapping exercise showing there's a much larger global evidence base than commonly recognized in English-language literature, though it doesn't itself analyze or pool the findings of those 91 studies statistically.

What they found

studies reviewed

A search identified 91 previously 'invisible' research studies on acupoint tapping in non-English-language regional journals (71% from Indonesia); EFT was used in 47% of studies and 'Spiritual EFT' (SEFT) in the remainder, targeting conditions such as anxiety (29%), depression (15%), and hypertension (11%), mostly using single-group or comparative clinical trial designs (84%).

How the study worked

Who took partinternational, non-English-language published EFT/SEFT research

What they didThis systematic review gathered and appraised the body of published studies against a defined method.

💡 Where this could help

Picture a community health worker in a rural Indonesian village who has taught SEFT to neighbors for years, unaware their work sits outside any Western research database — work made possible in the first place because tapping needs no clinician, no equipment, and no fee once someone learns it. If these previously 'invisible' studies get properly analyzed, it could mean recognizing parts of the developing world as leaders in accessible, community-taught mental health tools rather than followers, and could open funding and rigor to research communities historically overlooked by English-language science.

🔬 What to study next

With 91 previously overlooked studies now identified, mostly from Indonesia, the next step is a systematic quality assessment and, where possible, a pooled re-analysis using consistent outcome measures across this body of work, including any that captured physiological data like blood pressure, given that hypertension was among the conditions studied. Translating and properly indexing this research could also open the door to multi-site replication trials that pair local, community-taught delivery with modern biomarker measurement.

The full record

Design	Systematic review
Participants	91 studies pooled
Population	international, non-English-language published EFT/SEFT research
Journal	Energy Psychology Journal
Year	2022
Country	United States
Language	English
Method	EFT / tapping
Publication type	Review or meta-analysis
Verification	✓ Confirmed against the primary source

Read the original study →

Cite this study

APA

Freedom, J., Hux, M., & Warner, J. (2022). Research on acupoint tapping therapies proliferating around the world. Energy Psychology Journal. https://doi.org/10.9769/EPJ.2022.14.1.JF

This record is part of the Tapping Evidence Base — an openly-sourced, fully-referenced directory of the research on EFT/tapping.