By CJ Puotinen

If you've ever auditioned for a part, performed onstage, or even made a presentation to a class in school or a group at work, you know the symptoms.

Most of us are literally more afraid of public speaking than we are of snakes. When performance anxiety goes beyond a light flutter of butterflies in the stomach, it can be truly incapacitating -- and it can trigger a phobia that will interfere with life's opportunities forever.

Try to imagine a scenario more likely to induce performance anxiety than a performance critique class. Here students do their best, one at a time, in return for immediate feedback and criticism in front of a live audience. You might as well be on a reality TV show!

Nancy Gnecco attended a choral music camp in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and on the first day, she observed a Master Class in which the instructor critiqued individual performances.

The performers were all such nervous wrecks that Gnecco volunteered to teach them a procedure that would help quell their nerves. "I immediately realized that this was fertile ground for EFT," she says.

EFT, which stands for the Emotional Freedom Techniques, combines focused thought with gentle fingertip tapping on key acupuncture points, most of which are on the face and torso. You wouldn't think that something so simple could eliminate stage fright, but thousands of formerly audience-phobic performers of all ages swear by this method.

It has helped inarticulate executives sell themselves in meetings, helped athletes overcome the pressures of competition, and yes, it helped the music camp singers relax and enjoy themselves.

Twenty-seven singers attended Gnecco's hour-long "EFT for Performance Anxiety" workshop the following day. The results, as she explains in a report posted on the official EFT Web site,  were impressive. "Word got out very rapidly," she says, "and I was asked to do another class the next day. In all, I offered the class three times and did several individual sessions."

One of the camp's success stories involved a young handicapped woman who had nearly vomited the previous year before her Master Class. "This year," says Gnecco, "after covering several aspects beforehand with EFT, she sailed through it.

Once into her piece, she sang so beautifully that the voice teacher's only comment was, 'I have nothing to say. It was beautiful.' What a gift of self-esteem for this young woman for whom everything in life is a struggle."

Success stories like these and EFT's high success rate have helped make it the world's fastest-growing self-help technique. In addition to eliminating performance anxiety, EFT has been a consistently effective healing tool for hundreds of other physical, mental and emotional ailments. 

For more information, explore the EFT Web site and its numerous success stories regarding fears, phobias, emotional traumas and physical ailments.

While a complete description of EFT is beyond the scope of this article, you can learn the basics from the free EFT Get Started Package on the EFT Web site. This includes a free download of the 79-page EFT Manual. Those wishing to save time and dive in can study the affordable five-star training DVDs.