I Had My Bars Run Over 300 Times. Here's What I Actually Learned.

What This Page Is

If you've searched for "Access Bars benefits" or "Access Bars science," you're probably in one of two places: curious about whether it works, or already doing it and wondering why the results aren't quite what you hoped.

I can speak to both. Over a period of around five to six years, I had my Bars run somewhere between 300 and 400 times. My wife was a Bars Facilitator. We ran each other's Bars four or five times a week during peak involvement, hosted group swaps, and attended sessions at other people's homes. We were fully committed.

I'm not going to tell you Access Bars is worthless, because for some people, some of the time, something clearly happens. But I'm also going to be honest about what 300+ sessions actually produced for me. And about what I found when I eventually stopped looking for the answer there.

That's what this page is. Not a fan review, not a hit piece. Just an account from someone who's probably tried it more than anyone else you'll find writing about it online.

The Basics

What Is Access Bars?

Access Bars is an energy-based modality developed within the Access Consciousness organisation in the early 1990s. It involves light, stationary touch applied to 32 specific points on the head. Each point is said to correspond to a different area of life: money, relationships, creativity, ageing, body, and so on.

The idea is that these points store electromagnetic imprints of thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and judgements. In the Access framework, these are said to accumulate across this lifetime and past lifetimes too. When the points are gently held, the energy is said to "run," releasing these stored imprints and creating more space, more awareness, less mental noise.

A standard session lasts for 75 minutes. You lie fully clothed on a treatment table while a practitioner moves through the points in a set sequence. Many people find it deeply relaxing, not unlike a light meditation or a gentle massage.

The 32 Points of Access Bars

Some of the 32 points on the head that Access Bars addresses include:

What People Report

What Kind of Benefits Might You Get?

Experiences with Access Bars vary considerably between people, and often between sessions for the same person. These are the kinds of benefits practitioners and recipients commonly report:

I saw some of these effects in people I worked with. The relaxation piece was real and consistent. Almost everyone left a session feeling calmer and lighter than when they arrived.

The question, for me, was what happened next. And that's where my experience diverged from the testimonials.

The Evidence

The Science Behind Access Consciousness Bars

Practitioners frequently reference two bodies of research when making claims about Access Bars. It's worth looking at both honestly.

Dr. Jeffrey Fannin — EEG Brain Mapping

Dr. Fannin described his reaction to the results as genuine surprise. Whatever the mechanism, something was happening that the scans could detect.

This is interesting research. My honest read of it: it appears to show that Access Bars creates a measurable calming effect in brain activity. That aligns with what people report during and immediately after sessions: a genuine shift into a more relaxed state.

What it doesn't tell us is how long that shift lasts, or whether it translates into lasting change in how someone's life actually functions.

Dr. Lisa Cooney — Regulation Thermometry

Participants in her studies also reported significant self-reported changes: anxiety scores dropping from 8/10 to 1 or 2/10 in a single session, pain dropping to zero, clarity and relaxation markedly improved.

Again, something appears to be measurably happening in the short term. The caveats are the same: small samples, Access-affiliated researchers, no long-term follow-up, no peer review.

Practitioners cite findings like this as independent endorsement. To give you a sense of how that's framed within the Access community:

It's worth noting that all of these studies were conducted by Access-affiliated researchers or presented through Access channels. That doesn't automatically invalidate the findings, but independent replication hasn't followed.

Taken together, the science suggests Access Bars produces a genuine short-term relaxation response. The body calms down. Brainwave activity shifts. People feel lighter.

That much appears real. Whether it translates into the lasting life changes the organisation promises is a different question entirely — and one the research doesn't answer.

My Experience

What 300+ Sessions Actually Produced

You're probably wondering why someone would have their Bars run 300 to 400 times if it wasn't working.

It's a fair question, and I ask it myself sometimes. The honest answer is: hope. The Access framework is compelling, the community is enthusiastic and tightly bonded, fervent even, and the promise is enormous. When results don't materialise, there's always an explanation:

"You need more sessions, you're resisting, you're not being open enough, the clearing is working on levels you can't consciously perceive yet."

So what did I actually experience across those sessions? Relaxation on the table. Consistently. I'd get up feeling calm, lighter than when I arrived. And then I'd go about my life, and nothing had changed. Not physically, not emotionally, not in circumstances. The calm faded within an hour or two and I was back where I started.

That was my honest experience across five or six years, with hundreds of sessions. Not gradual improvement I wasn't noticing. Genuinely nothing that carried into daily life.

My wife was more deeply involved than I was. She trained as a Facilitator and gave sessions to many others. She got out when she witnessed things within the organisation itself that she found deeply troubling: the way it operates, the way it treats people, the ethics of it. That's a different matter from the question of results, and it's not something I'm going to detail here. What I will say is that she's not alone, and if you're thinking of getting involved at a deeper level, it's worth doing your own research on the organisation before you do.

What Changed

What I Found When I Stopped Looking There

Alongside the Bars work, I'd been exploring other approaches. One of them was the work of Dr. Kam Yuen: a Chinese-American martial artist, engineer, and chiropractor who spent over fifty years developing what has become, for me, an entirely different category of thing.

The contrast was immediate and has stayed immediate. A ten-minute Yuen session produces more that I can actually point to than those hundreds of hours on the Access Bars table. That's not an exaggeration, and it's not enthusiasm. It's what I've observed in myself and in the people I work with.

Here's the difference as I see it. With Access Bars, you lie on a table for 75 minutes while a practitioner works through a fixed sequence of points, and you hope that whatever is bothering you has shifted by the time you get up. There's no targeting. There's no way to know whether the thing you came in with has been addressed at all.

Dr. Yuen's approach works entirely differently. You name the problem. The work identifies the specific weaknesses that are creating and holding it in place. You clear those weaknesses. And you notice the difference, often within the session itself. It's precise where Access Bars is general. It's targeted where Access Bars is diffuse. And the results tend to last because you've removed what was actually in the way, rather than producing a temporary state shift and hoping for the best.

In my own life, the changes have been specific and lasting. The sinusitis I'd had for over thirty years is gone. The seasonal allergies that came with it: gone. Relationships are better, with myself as well as with others. Deep-seated fears and uncertainties that had been with me for as long as I could remember have shifted significantly. I'm calmer, more settled, less reactive.

That last point is worth saying plainly. Anger was something I wrestled with for years — the kind that showed up too big, too fast, in response to things that didn't warrant it. Explosive at times. Lingering long after it should have passed. The gap between the trigger and the response made no logical sense, but logic wasn't the issue. Clearing the underlying weaknesses was. That's gone too, or close enough to gone that it's no longer something I think about.

None of this came from 300 sessions on an Access Bars table. It came from work that knew what it was looking for. And it's what I now use with every client I work with.

Side By Side

Access Bars vs the Yuen Method

The table above lays out the practical differences clearly enough. But what it can't quite capture is the felt difference between an approach that works on everything at once and hopes something relevant shifts, and one that works on the specific thing you came in with.

If you're drawn to Access Bars because you want to feel calmer, more relaxed, less mentally noisy, it may well give you that, at least for a while. There's no shame in wanting that, and the experience itself is pleasant.

But if what you're looking for is something that hasn't responded to the things you've already tried, something you can actually point to and say "that's gone" or "that's different now" — that's a different conversation. And it's the one I'm set up to have.

What's Next

If You're Ready for Something That Goes Deeper

The book explains how the Yuen method works, what makes it different, and how to start applying it yourself. Or if you'd rather just experience it directly, you can book a session.