East Java Tourism News

Prisoner therapy uses tapping, prayer for quick healing

August 29th, 2008

Agnes Winarti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Amassed in a large tent and shielded from the sun’s scorching heat, some 500 convicted substance abusers sat tapping their chests, then their heads and faces, while listening to a therapist’s instructions.

“Feel your pain and your addiction. Focus your mind on them. Believe that you can be cured from within,” therapist Ahmad Faiz Zainuddin told his audience Tuesday at the Cipinang Penitentiary in East Jakarta.

“Say it clearly: Although I am sick, I am willing to accept my illness and I surrender to You, God, so that you will heal me,” Faiz continued, while the prisoners around him could be heard murmuring and mimicking.

Since 2005, Faiz has been promoting an instant healing therapy known as the Spiritual Emotional Freedom Technique (SEFT), said to treat mental and physical illnesses and addictions through a combination of prayer and needleless acupuncture using finger-tapping on the body’s pressure points.

According to Faiz, SEFT has been known as a universal and instant healing aid, with an 80 percent recovery rate for patients in the U.S., Australia and the United Kingdom over the past 20 years.

“It can be used to treat various illnesses, as all illness — we believe — is rooted in the same cause: the disruption of the body’s energy system,” he added.

“With this method, anyone can independently heal themselves,” said Faiz, a former student of psychology at Airlangga University in Surabaya, East Java.

SEFT combines 14 different therapy methods, including behavioral and spiritual therapy, hypnosis, affirmative suggestion and psychoanalysis, he added.

It is compatible with other types of treatment usually offered to prisoners with substance abuse problems, including methadone and community therapy, he said.

“About 80 percent of the 2,860 prisoners here are drug users and addicts. This is a simple and easy-to-use therapy, which we hope prisoners can use to cure themselves,” said Tribowo, head of prisoner management at Cipinang Penitentiary.

In less than two hours, Faiz, founder of the PT LOGOS Institute, introduced prisoners to the therapy, which he said was self-applicable and capable of being completed within 5 to 10 minutes.

Johan, one of several prisoners who came forward to receive the therapy, remarked, “The session is too short. I wish it was more than just once. It would be better if it were done once a week, so I could learn to do it myself.”

Saying he hoped to quit smoking, he received nine taps over various parts of his body, including the left portion of his chest, his head, forehead and face, from one of the 40 SEFT therapists present.

Minutes later, with a cigarette between his lips and seemingly awestruck, the convicted drug-user who has served two years in prison, remarked, “It doesn’t taste as pleasant as before. In fact, it’s tasteless. I hope I really can quit smoking this way.”

Therapist Faiz said he planned to hold demonstrations at other penitentiaries, as well as in low-income areas around the city, such as informal housing settlements, to help introduce the technique.

“We will use 25 convicts in this penitentiary as a sample, to begin providing SEFT treatment once a week,” he added.

Cipinang Penitentiary is the second correctional facility to host an introduction to SEFT therapy, following Medaeng Penitentiary in Surabaya, East Java, he said.

SEFT has been performed on some 12,000 individuals, a fourth of whom went on to become certified therapists by paying Rp 3.75 million (US$412) for a two-day training session.

Source: The Jakarta Post

Entry Filed under: East Java News