Tapas Acupressure Technique

Tapas Acupressure Technique (or TAT) is a controversial complementary healing modality promoted to clear negative emotions and past traumas. Though the full technique was invented in 1993 by Tapas Fleming, a licensed acupuncturist in California, TAT incorporates elements of and builds on other acupressure techniques. Like other energy therapies, TAT relies on a putative energy for which no scientific basis has been found and no biophysical means of action determined.cite web | url=http://nccam.nih.gov/health/backgrounds/energymed.htm | title=Energy Medicine Overview | author=The 'National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine |date=October 13 2006 ]

History

Invented in 1993 by Ms. Tapas Fleming, a California licensed acupuncturist, TAT is marketed as "an easy process for ending traumatic stress, reducing allergic reactions, and freeing yourself of negative beliefs." It is also promoted as a tested treatment for weight loss following an ambivalent preliminary study funded by Kaiser Permanente and National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The underlying idea claims that trauma leads to a blockage of the natural flow a putative energy. Practitioners of TAT claim that application of light pressure to four areas (inner corner of both eyes, one-half-inch above the space between the eyebrows, and the back of head) while placing attention on a series of steps releases this blockage and allows for healing.

cientific study

A preliminary unblinded randomized trial of Tapas Acupressure Technique found a possible weak correlation with weight loss maintenance using TAT versus Qigong or self-directed support, suggesting that TAT might outperform the other methods studied. The results were not statistically significant, but a separation test indicated that further study might be warranted. cite journal|title=Phase I/II randomized trial of Tapas Acupressure for weightloss maintenance|journal=Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies|date=2005|first=S.|last=Mist|coauthors=C. Elder, M. Aikin, C Ritenbaugh|volume=10|issue=|pages=38–9|id= |url=http://www.medicinescomplete.com/journals/fact/current/fact1005a13a60.htm|format=|accessdate=2008-02-09 ] A full randomized trial of TAT versus standard weightloss management intervention is currently being conducted, funded by the NCCAM. cite web|url=http://crisp.cit.nih.gov/crisp/CRISP_LIB.getdoc?textkey=7316164&p_grant_num=1R01AT003928-01A1&p_query=&ticket=54364940&p_audit_session_id=285837869&p_keywords= |title=Randomized Trial of Tapas Acupressure Technique for Weightloss Maintenance |accessdate=2008-02-11 |last=Elder |first=Charles R. ]

No scientifically plausible method of action is proposed for Tapas Acupressure Technique, instead relying on unvalidated putative energy and meridians with no identified biophysical or histological basis. A 2005 review of so-called "Power Therapies" concluded that TAT and similar techniques "offered no new scientifically valid theories of action, show only non-specific efficacy, show no evidence that they offer substantive improvements to extant psychiatric care, yet display many characteristics consistent with pseudoscience."cite journal | title=Power Therapies and possible threats to the science of psychology and psychiatry | author=Grant J. Devilly | url=http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1440-1614.2005.01601.x | journal=Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry | year=2005 |volume=39 | pages=437–445 | doi=10.1111/j.1440-1614.2005.01601.x] TAT also conforms to the "nine practices of pseudoscience" as identified by AR Pratkins.cite web | author=AR Pratkins | title=How to sell a pseudoscience | url=http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/pratkanis.htm]

References

External links

http://www.tatlife.com/