Ever tap your head to help you remember? It's a sort of instinctive thing that many of us do. I have no idea if it works. It doesn't look odd and provided you don't do it too hard, people won't laugh at you.

But the technique I recently learned may cause a few to snigger behind your back or maybe right in front of you. I'm not sure how you can master doing it discreetly.

I learned the Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT in a seminar given by local therapist Monica Dobbie as part of the Elbow Beach Wellness Series. Ms Dobbie completely changed her career about 10 years ago. In the 1970s she was one of the first women to rise in the reinsurance business at Lloyd's of London. Her success brought her to Bermuda but, after years in the industry, she followed an inner calling to study holistic health and in 1996 started her own company.

EFT is a technique she is trained in and she taught it to us in just a few minutes full of promises on how it can help us rid ourselves of not only pain, but also disease. She described it as the emotional version of acupuncture and explained that it works by removing blockages in your energy field.

"It gives you the power to help yourself and requires no equipment," she said. "It is safe, gentle, simple to do, produces rapid relief and has long lasting effects," she added.

We all couldn't wait to try this EFT thing out. We each did it but I don't think anyone experienced a significant change. She said it is very good for reducing anxiety, and ending cravings. Nervous creature that I am, I figured this could make a real big impact. But I wasn't nervous when I tried it in the room, and I wasn't craving chocolate, or tea or anything at all, so I wasn't sure how to test it really.

Many in the group admitted a chocolate love and so many practiced trying to reduce this craving. At the end, people said their craving was lower but admitted it was likely because they shifted their focus from the chocolate to trying the technique. While the chocolate lovers chanted about chocolate, I chanted about anxiety and tried to tap it away.

But I didn't feel any different after. I figured part of the problem was probably that I wasn't anxious when I was doing the tapping. I thought I'd leave it until I felt nervous and then see if it worked. I started a new job and the atmosphere was very unsettling. I became anxious but completely forgot about even trying to use the EFT technique.

Then my husband was feeling unwell and I remembered. I tried it on him. He had a pain in his neck. I asked him to rate it between one and 10 with 10 being unbearable. He rated it at five and then I did the technique on him. It lasted less than five minutes and at the end he laughed but said the neck pain had diminished to about a two. I couldn't tell if he was honestly feeling that much better or just wanted me to stop using him as guinea pig.

Finally I had a chance to use it on myself. I woke up uneasy and anxious and was trying to force myself mentally to relax when I remembered the technique. I tried it and it did greatly diminish the anxiety. I'm not convinced it was the tapping, like the people at the seminar, I think concentrating on doing the technique was calming in itself. I wish I could try it at work but I'd get anxious that people might see me and think I'm weird. But at home when I remember, I will use.