Have you heard of tapping? I hadn’t either until recently. It is also known as EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)

What is Tapping?

Tapping is a holistic healing technique proven effective for a whole range of issues, from stress and anxiety to weight loss and chronic pain.

It’s an ancient practice of tapping on certain meridian endpoints on the body. By tapping on these spots and focusing on emotions and sensations, you can reprogram your brain to respond differently to situations.

This sparked my interest since I get acupuncture on a regular basis. Like acupuncture, tapping follows meridian pathways in the body to release blocked energy.  Acupuncture uses needles, tapping uses your fingertips to tap on the area. Same concept just a different method.

Does it work?

Most of the holistic things I try draw a major eye roll from skeptics. While these things may seem weird, they do work for some people. Like anything – some things are effective for some people and not others. We are all unique and wired differently. It’s a matter of finding what works for YOU. There is research that backs the belief that it does in fact work. If you are like me and want to see the proof behind the pudding… visit www.thetappingsolution.com This website has a lot of helpful information.

How do you do it?

Tapping is very simple. You tap with your fingers on certain parts of the body. To get started, I would highly suggest downloading the app on www.thetappingsolution.com website. There are a lot of free, guided sessions to walk you through tapping along with a short instructional video.

You can click here to watch the video.

The main tapping points are:

• Eyebrows
• Side of the Eye
• Under the Eye
• Below the Nose
• Below the Mouth
• Collarbone
• Under the Arm
• Top of the Head

The guided sessions take you through the points in that particular order.  At the beginning and the end of the session, you rate the intensity level of the problem, which I kind of liked. It makes you really stop and think about the issue at hand.

The hardest thing for me is not feeling extremely silly while tapping. Once I got past that, I found it very relaxing. The other night I did a “wind down” session. I would suggest sitting up while you do it, because a couple of spots are hard to reach laying down. I fell asleep quicker than I normally would have, but not sure my sleep was any deeper or better. Like acupuncture, the more you do it the more effective it is. You probably won’t do it once or twice and notice phenomenal results! So stick with it.

Once thing I found interesting was during the guided sessions, it spends some time focusing on the problem at hand and takes you right through the negative aspects of your feelings before it redirects you to the positive perspective. It seems as though tapping really deals with the issues at hand instead of skipping over them.

So – are you going to try it? The nice thing about tapping is that it really can’t hurt you to try it and you can do it anywhere. The only thing you have to lose is a few minutes of your time!