Movie Technique vs. Tell the Story

While Gary often used these terms interchangably there is a difference between the Movie Technique and Tell the Story.

In Tell the Story the person does just that, tells a story of what happened out loud. The Movie Technique is used primarily for privacy. The person runs the movie of their story in their head and taps at the first point of intensity. You then tap for each aspect with any level of intensity in the order that it occurs before moving on to the next aspect.In both Tell the Story and the Movie Technique, you address each part of the event in the order it happened.

After tapping to reduce the intensity of each part of the movie to 0 the client then tells the story and stops to clear any remaining intensity as the story progresses. (However, the client can choose to keep their story and details to themselves.) As a final test they rerun the movie. Ask them to make their movie vivid with what they “see, hear, feel, smell and taste.” Continue to tap if necessary to deal with any remaining intensity. Often they “see” the movie very differently and the entire scene is “reframed.”

What is confusing for those learning EFT is the difference between the tutorial instructions for using the Movie Technique and what Gary demonstrated on the DVDs. The tutorial stated “go through the movie in their mind, starting with a low intensity segment…” Gary, however, often tapped first for what he called the “crescendo” of the story, then the second most important crescendo, etc, until they reported the overall movie intensity was a 0. Because of the generalization effect, it often does work to address the “big” sections first, however, as a practitioner your job is help your client clear their issue completely. This is best done by being methodical and through and addressing each involved aspect in turn.