Remember to Roll Your Eyes!

A Deeper Understanding of the

Gamut Point Procedure
By Carol Prentice

You want me to do what? Roll my eyes and then hum and count?!
Many of us may have reacted this way when we first observed Gary Craig
teaching the Gamut Point Procedure. Some clients will ask for more details
about the seemingly strange technique and whether or not its even necessary.
In fact, some E.F.T. therapists have taken out the Gamut Point Procedure
completely and find that the tapping itself works wonders and skipping the
Gamut Point saves time (as if E.F.T. didnt work fast enough already!)

So the question is.do you have to use the Gamut Point Procedure? And how
does the Gamut Point procedure really work anyway? Why is it so important?
To begin, it is important to recognize that the Gamut Point Procedure essentially
contains two different components. The first component is the tapping of the
Gamut Point on the back of the hand and the second component includes the
eye movements, humming, and counting which essentially can be summarized
as bilateral stimulation of the brain.
The Gamut Point is found on the back of either hand between the knuckles at
the base of the ring finger and the little finger. It is the third point on the Triple
Warmer meridian, in connection with the spleen meridian point (the E.F.T. under
arm meridian point).
The Triple Warmer is responsible for turning on/off the fight or flight response
when we feel stressed or threatened. When this happens energy is first pulled
and drained from the spleen meridian and then from other meridians. Some
think that a spleen energy imbalance is what causes the majority of physical
issues from pain to allergies. You can tap on the under arm point to balance the
spleen when using the basic E.F.T. format, but some feel that adding in the 9
Gamut Procedure and tapping directly on the Gamut Point is more effective for
balancing. Some people find relief when they simply press or rub the Gamut
Point when they feel their body going into a stress reaction.
So why bother rolling your eyes, humming and counting if tapping the Gamut

Point on the back of the hand is enough to turn off the fight or flight stress
response in the body? The 9 movements that are included in the 9 Gamut Point
Procedure, as taught originally by Gary Craig include: looking down hard to the
right, looking down hard to the left, rolling the eyes in a circle in one direction,
rolling the eyes in the other direction, humming, counting and humming again.
Is all this really necessary? Absolutely!
Its important to understand that what is actually happening in the brain during
the eye movements, humming and counting is something called bilateral
stimulation of the brain. For example, when your eyes look right you are
actually firing the left hemisphere of the brain and vise versa. When you hum it
fires the right hemisphere of the brain and counting fires the left hemisphere.
This repeated stimulation of both sides of the brain creates a whole brain
experience or a blending of both hemispheres. This blending of both
hemispheres of the brain has also been used in other well known forms of
trauma therapy techniques including EMDR or Eye Movement Desensitization
and Reprocessing. The parallels between EMDR and the 9 Gamut Procedure
deserve further examination.
E.M.D.R. was first developed by psychologist Francine Shapiro, Ph.D., of the
Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California. The psychotherapeutic use of
EMDR evolved in the late 1980s after Dr. Shapiros walk in the park. It was
during this walk that Dr. Shapiro discovered that she could not maintain her
focus on painful images/memories while walking or when scanning her eyes
from side to side while looking at stones along the pathway. She later
discovered that purposefully moving the eyes rapidly from side to side for a brief
period while maintaining attention to a targeted traumatic experience produces
a dramatic relief from painful affect associated with the memory as well as a
shift in negative beliefs associated with the event.
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