August 4, 2018
Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/does-tapping-really-work/
[00:00] Blue Apron Meal Kits/ Kion Flex Formula
[05:14] About Nicolas Ortner
[09:12] What Is Tapping?
[15:54] How Nick Discovered Tapping
[19:52] How Does Tapping Work?
[30:47] Daily Burn Video Workouts/ Organifi Gold Juices
[33:36] About the Tapping Routine
[38:36] Acupressure & Acupuncture
[57:19] Sleeping & Tapping
[1:00:25] Surprising Uses For Tapping
[1:06:50] End of the Podcast
Ben: Well hello, it's Ben Greenfield. I got my buddy Nick on today's show, he's kind of weird. He's into tapping like Emotional Freedom Technique and pushing little buttons all over your brain and your body. It's actually pretty intriguing what he does. I figure it’s high time we got somebody on to talk about tapping because I've used it. I've used for sleep and I've used it for stress, and for some weird reason, it seems to work, so call it what you will. Kind of woo-woo, but we're going to talk about it either way. But before we do, I want to get your mouth watering because on the menu this week are stuffed poblano peppers with tomato radish salsa and chipotle yogurt, a seared fish and farrow salad with summer vegetables and a peach and pickled pepper grilled cheese. My kids love grilled cheese. It has got butter, lettuce and radish salad with it. All of these are on the apron this week from Blue Apron, the leading meal kit delivery in all of America.
They make a ton of stuff, and they send it to your house, all the ingredients. So, it doesn't come to you cooked. No, you don't have to sit there and eat it right away before cools off. You get all the ingredients and the recipe cards to make it yourself. My kids have learned how to cook using these recipes. I've learned a bunch of tips because you just pull out the ingredients and follow the plan, and they've got a two-person meal plan, they've got a family meal plan. They even have a wine plan where they select certain wines and deliver them along with their recipes and their ingredients. Just comes in this box to your house, and boom, put it together. So, there's a lot of convenience and a lot of variety in the recipes. They give you 12 new recipes every single week, and they only use non-GMO ingredients, meat with no added hormones. It's healthy foods and chef-designed recipes, so they actually taste good. They've been tested. They're all hacks together, putting these things together over at Blue Apron. So, they're giving you $30 off your first order, and very simple. You go to blueapron.com/ben. That's simple blueapron.com/ben. $30 off Blue Apron, a better way to cook.
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Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield, and you may have heard of this thing called tapping before. I've heard of it, I've actually been messing around with it for four years now. It was actually today's podcast guest that first told me about it, and I thought it was really stupid and woo-woo, and I tried it. I'll keep it a mystery for you because I want him to tell you more about it, but tapping, it's also known as EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique, and it's just what sounds like. You tap different parts your body and then you say an affirmation, and supposedly, some wildly effective healing modalities that combines ancient Chinese acupressure and modern psychology.
So my guest is Nick Ortner, O-R-T-N-E-R, and he created this film called “The Tapping Solution” and wrote multiple books really on the same topic. I have to, here in my bookshelf, “The Tapping Solution” and also one that I actually used even more than “The Tapping Solution”. That's “The Tapping Solution For Pain Relief” because I do painful things to my body, and I want to put Nick in the hot seat today to learn about how this stuff works, if it works, if it's all just placebo and I'm wasting my time smacking different areas of my body around, and so if you do want to learn more about Nick, his Amazon page is a pretty comprehensive. His tapping solution book as well as his tapping solution film are both available in the show notes, and you can grab the show notes fittingly enough over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/tapping. So Nick, welcome to showman, man.
Nicolas: Ben, it is a pleasure to be on with you, and a fellow skeptic, because I was, so we can we can bash and laugh at it and see the results.
Ben: Were you skeptic, really?
Nicolas: Oh absolutely, I mean look. I wake up almost every morning, and this is what I do, right? I write books about this, and it's my life's work, and I still laugh about it because it's strange. Why we tapping ourselves? This isn't something that we grew up with, this isn't something we saw on TV. At least like deep breathing and yoga and meditation has been around a little longer, we have some reference point. So, I didn't have a reference point, and yeah, I'm a skeptic and here's the other part of it. Every time I hear a success story, I'm blown away. They don't get old. I'll hear someone say I had twenty years of pain, and I did this and it went away, and it surprises me just as much as the first time because it's just incredible that something could work this well.
Ben: Yeah I asked you that skeptic question 'cause honestly it's shocking how many people in our health and fitness industry are not skeptics and just try everything, some people said that about me though. They're like Ben Greenfield just tries everything and endorses everything. Well, you would be shocked that the number of boxes of unused shit is out in the garage, in the garbage can, and the number of emails that I simply reply to with a no thanks, not interested, whether that's people who want to come on the podcast or people who have some brand-new supplement. It's pretty crazy, and my filter is developing a more and more micro porous membrane when it comes to filtering through a lot of this stuff, and I'm incredibly picky and I take a pretty scientific approach to a lot of this stuff. Well, at the same time, I'm keeping an open mind to the idea that sometimes, thousands of years of Chinese medicine isn't wrong, even if there's not some double-blended clinical research, Western study behind it. So, it's an art and a science. I'm curious though, before I even ask about the history of tapping, because I actually am curious. You make it sound like it actually isn't as old as yoga or meditation or anything, so I want to hear a little more about how it came to be, but first of all, before we even start in that, let's just here. What is tapping. Give me the five-minute elevator pitch. I guess it's a really long elevator ride.
Nicolas: That's stuck in an elevator.
Ben: Give me the I'm-stuck-in-an-elevator-with-Nick-Ortner and ask-him-what-tapping-is.
Nicolas: So, you described it. The one-minute short explanation is that it's a combination of ancient Chinese acupressure and modern psychology because we are literally physically tapping on these endpoints of meridians on our body while saying certain statements, while focusing on the anxiety, the stress, the pain in our body, whatever's going on, and what the latest research is showing, the research that I'm really most excited about is that when we tap on these end points of meridians, we send a calming signal to the amygdala in the brain, and I know you know well and many of your listeners are so educated by your podcast and some of the work. They know about the amygdala, that fight or flight response, right? It's a part of us that gets activated when we're stressed out, it's that ancient part of us that served a good purpose. When we're being chased by a tiger or a lion, we want to activate that stress response. We want to fight, we want to flee. We want the blood to flow away from our forebrains into our arms and legs. The challenge, I think one of the real challenges of modern life is that we're activating that fight or flight response all day, every day so, and we're activating in situations where we can't do that fighting or fleeing. So, we get an email from our boss and it stresses us out. Really the best thing we can do besides tapping is to go for a run and just get that stress response out in some way have that physical activity. Get that cortisol to actually be used and move through the body.
Ben: Well that or reframe our response, right?
Nicolas: One hundred percent, but from the basic pathology of what our body was designed to do, right? It was designed to fight, flee or freeze.
Ben: Right, to curl up in a fetal position and shit our pants.
Nicolas: One hundred percent, so the tapping is sending that calming signal to the amygdala, but Ben, I love that you said to reframe your response because I agree with you, and the challenge for so many people. Let's say that you get angry about something, so your boss sends you an email, and you're angry. That can be such a primitive response, right? We've all had that experience where it's that cloud of anger where you can't even think straight, and you're looking at and you're going okay, I got to do better. What the tapping does, if we engage it in that moment, or if we engage it preventively and start changing our response and our behavior, we send that comic signal to the amygdala. Then the brain, the body relaxes. We're telling it it's safe, and then we can reframe it. We can then have that conscious thought that says, “Hey, I'm going to take the higher perspective here.”
One of the things that people struggle with initially when they first look at the tapping, especially if they've been into positive psychology in the self-help world is we usually start by focusing on the negative, start by focusing on the truth is what I say as opposed to the negative. Hey, this is how I feel. I'm going to take a moment to acknowledge how I feel that yes, I'm angry, yes, I'm anxious, as opposed to what people tend to do. When they learn about positive thinking as they go I'm angry, I'm anxious, so I'm just going to bury it and swallow it because that's not positive thinking. It's going to go deep down in my gut, and I'm going to make believe I'm happy about life, but I'm really not. We were talking just before we got on about Hay House who is my publisher, and Louise Hay, who is the queen of affirmations. I'm sure a lot of people know her name, bestselling author. She just passed away a year ago.
Ben: Is she who's behind Hay House, Louise Hay?
Nicolas: Yeah, Louise Hay is behind Hay House. She started her work in the 80s working with people with AIDS, one of the first people to actually look at that movement and bring love to that community and compassion to that community. So, I sat down with her. I had the honor of sitting down with her a couple years ago and interviewed her about tapping 'cause we had been doing some tapping together, and I said so you're the queen of affirmations and positive thinking. What are you doing tapping on the negative? And she paused very sweetly, as she was 85 years old at the time. She looked at me and she said, “honey, if you want to clean house, you have to see the dirt,” and that really blew me away in that moment. It encapsulated what we tend to do with the things in our life that aren't comfortable, right? We either think we don't have a tool to change them or shift them, so we're just going to ignore them, or we're going to be positive and happy without addressing how we truly feel just for a moment. We ignore the dirt.
So, with the tapping, we're focusing on what we feel in our body, on our pain, our anxiety, the stress, the anger. We're acknowledging that dirt, we're doing the tapping process to send that calming signal to the amygdala, and then that reframe happens automatically. That's when someone says you can make a positive statement and actually feel that it's true as opposed to trying to say a positive affirmation and having that part of your brain going, well, that's total BS 'cause that's not who I am. So that's your five minutes stuck in an elevator with me.
Ben: Okay, alright. What I want to do, maybe later on, is really get in to brass tacks like where you tap and what it's like. I know this is an audio podcast, but I'm pretty sure you can handle it. Anyways though, how did you actually learn about this? And before you dive into that, by the way, excellent book for people listening in. “Heal Your Body” by Louise Hay. Have you read that, Nick?
Nicolas: It’s like the Bible of…
Ben: Oh, really? I never heard of it 'till last year. Somebody sent it to me, and I actually gave it to my kids to show them how when they have certain emotions or even certain physical issues, how saying certain things to yourself, what I guess you would call an affirmation, can help you with that, and it's actually super, super thin and easy read.
Nicolas: It's an easy read, it's a great reference point. I'll often use it with tapping with people, so you could see what the challenge is. She addresses like okay, you have this physical challenge. It may be related to this emotional experience, and then you can actually use tapping with that?
Ben: Yes, so for any of you listening in, grab the book. It's got some cheesy cover like clouds or a rainbow or something, but anyways, it's good. Don't judge it by its cover. Is that what you call an 80s cover.
Nicolas: Yeah.
Ben: Exactly, so Nick, how did you actually discover tapping? What's the story?
Nicolas: So, I started using it personally, this isn't a technique that I invented. I'm just a user and a proponent of it and someone spreading the message on the world. You want to do a little bit of history of it, and then we'll get to my point in it?
Ben: Yeah, I actually am curious about the history of it, too.
Nicolas: Yeah, so let me give you some background because there's a history before me that is really important and critical. So late 1979, 1980, Dr. Roger Callahan was the traditional psychiatrist, psychologist, I think he was a psychologist, working with a client by the name of Mary, and Mary had an intense water phobia. So this isn't just I'm scared of swimming, this is scared of taking showers and drinking water. It was a full-blown phobia, and he was a traditionally-trained psychologist, so he did what he knew to do, right. Talk about it, try the exposure therapy. “Hey, let's look at the water. How do you feel? Relaxation and do deep breathing, and after a year and a half of working with her not getting anywhere, getting to the point where she would leave his sessions with migraine headaches from having to focus on the issue and being so stressed out about it, he was frustrated as you can imagine.
One particular day, they were at his home office, sitting outside, looking at the pool that he had in his house. So that was exposure therapy, “Hey, look at the pool. What do you feel, what are you thinking?” And she said, “When I look at the water, I get butterflies in the pit of my stomach,” and he had been reading about the Chinese Meridian system and the acupuncture system and had read that the stomach Meridian ends underneath the eye. So, on a whim, on a moment of inspiration, he said well, try tapping underneath your eye while you look at the water. So, she did that, she tapped for about a minute, and in that moment, which is still astounding, in that minute, the water phobia completely cleared. She just wasn't scared of it anymore. So, he was astonished as you can imagine. If you've been practicing you know for 20 years and all the sudden, one-minute handles this issue, so he started researching the meridian points, working on this tapping, and he developed what's called TFT, Thought Field Therapy, and with TFT, there's a bunch of different points, and for different issues, you do different sequence of points.
One of his students by the name of Gary Craig said this is great and it works great, but it's hard to remember and we're having to change things up all the time and its hard work, so let's hit all the main points every single time. That was one of his innovations among many, and he developed EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, so that's its current form where we do all the points at once. Right around 2003, I found Gary's material online, Patricia Carrington, other experts and started using it for myself. I shared it with friends and family, the running joke at the time was don't say anything is wrong around Nick because he will make you tap on it. I've got a much better sense then. I let people approach me, but then it was like, “hey, your shoulder hurt? Let's tap on it.”
I remember driving to a Yankees game, right around then, 2003, 2004, with my friend, Pete, and he's just a normal dude. We're going to a Yankees game, about an hour and a half drive from here, and he was complaining about how his shoulder hurt. He had a football injury, and it just wasn't going away, and I said, “Hey. I just learned this thing. Let's try it,” so we went through the points. This guy on the other, he thought I was crazy, so that addresses some of the questions about do you have to be a skeptic, right? He was a skeptic, or do you have to believe? He thought I was nuts, but he humored me that we were stuck in the car, and the pain in the shoulder went away. I was so astounded you know, one thing after another.
Ben: Alright, so I'm going to interrupt your story, dude. I know I was going to say this for later, but since you say the pain in his shoulder went away, can you tell me what you guys did for his shoulder? What did it look like that you did for his shoulder?
Nicolas: Yeah, and you want to do a quick pain relief session right now? We do five minutes, and people can have an experience.
Ben: Let's do it, as long as people can operate heavy machinery 'cause they might be in their cars driving. You don't want to be responsible for the pileup on 101.
Nicolas: So, pull over, do whatever you need to do. If you have pain in your body, tapping is so powerful for it. It can work so well to reduce or eliminating the pain, so focus on that now. You might decide to work on that, and it doesn't matter what your diagnosis is. Just give it a shot, and if you don't have pain, just pick something that you're stressed out about, anxious. You can also just tune into your body, you might tune in and say my shoulders are really tense. People hold a lot of tension in their neck, or my stomach is painful. Just tune into a place where their stress and anxiety overwhelm, and with tapping we want to pick one thing. You might have had a lot of things come up, just pick one place where you want to focus, that's something that you want to release. Maybe you're angry about something that happened a week ago or you're anxious about an upcoming event.
Ben: My right hamstring is a little tight, that's what I'm going to focus on.
Nicolas: Alright, and then as we tune into it give it a number in intensity on your stress, your emotion, your pain from zero to ten. So ten being the most intense, the most painful, zero not being there at all. Just pick whatever number comes up.
Ben: Yeah, for me it's a six.
Nicolas: Alright, and now we’re gonna start, we have our focus, we have our number. We're going to start by tapping on the side of the hand. It's called the karate chop point, and if you take four fingers of one hand and tap on the outside, below the pinky of the other hand. Doesn't matter which hand you use when you're just tapping gently on the side of the hand, tapping repeatedly and repeat after me.
Ben: Below the pinky?
Nicolas: Below the pinky, yes. So that whole meaty part of the hand, the four fingers fit perfectly there right below the pinky on the outside of each hand. And maybe, Ben, in the show notes, we can stick a diagram in there, some links that if people want to refer to it.
Ben: A video of you in a cute sailor's outfit.
Nicolas: [chuckles] Well I've got just the thing; how did you know?
Ben: I'm derailing you, go ahead.
Nicolas: Tapping on the side of the hand, feeling that issue, focusing on the stress or the pain or whatever's going on, repeat after me. Even though I'm holding on to this issue…
Ben: Even though I'm holding on to this issue.
Nicolas: I chose to relax now.
Ben: I chose to relax now.
Nicolas: Even though I feel this pain in my body…
Ben: Even though I feel this pain in my body…
Nicolas: And you can change the language if you want to say this anxiety or the stress or whatever it is, I chose to relax and feel safe now.
Ben: I chose to relax and feel safe now.
Nicolas: Now, still on the side of the hand, we're going to do it one more time. Even though I'm holding on so tightly…
Ben: Even though I'm holding on so tightly…
Nicolas: And it's hard to let this go…
Ben: And it's hard to let this go…
Nicolas: I chose to relax now.
Ben: I chose to relax now.
Nicolas: Now we're going to tap through the points. The first point is the eyebrow point, it's on the inside of the eyebrow, right where the hair ends, and it meets the nose, and you can tap with two fingers of one hand on one side or the other side or both sides. The meridians run down both sides of the body, and we're just tapping gently, and I want to just take a moment as you tap to focus in on that issue. We're bringing it up in order to send that calming signal to the amygdala in order to release that stress response, so if there's pain in your body, just feel in to that pain for a moment. And now we go on to the side of the eye, it's not at the temple, right next to the eye, on the bone. Again, one side or both sides.
If something stressful happened, I want you to just think about it. If that hamstring got hurt in a particular event, something you were doing, just bring that to mind. Where did this pain come from? When did it start? Now we move under the eye. Maybe as you tune into that pain or stress in your body, you notice some emotions. So, if I were to ask you if there was an emotion in that pain or there's an emotion your body, what would it be? And some people will say anger or grief or sadness or anxiety. Under the nose and just tune into those feelings now, being present with the pain, being present with your thoughts and feelings about the pain or about the stress or about the anxiety, and now we move underneath the mouth, below the lip, above the chin and that little crease in there, tapping gently.
Focusing on this stressful issue, focusing on what you're feeling and what you want to let go. For the collarbone point, feel for the two little bones of the collarbone, and go just right below, and you can tap with all ten fingers of both hands, tapping and thumping away focusing on that issue. What's this all about? What's this pain about, what's the stress about? What's coming up for you, and how can you let it go? Two points left in this round, we go underneath the arm, three inches underneath the armpit, right on the broad line for women, either side of the body, tapping gently, being focused on this challenge, this stress, this issue. Last point, right at the top of the head, right at the crown, tapping gently, being present to this stressful issue. And I will do one more quick round, back to the eyebrow. Now just say out loud. It's hard to let this go…
Ben: It's hard to let this go…
Nicolas: All this pain in my body…
Ben: All this pain my body…
Nicolas: Under the eye, it's safe to feel it…
Ben: It's safe to feel it…
Nicolas: Under the nose, and it's safe to begin to release it…
Ben: And it's safe to be in to release it…
Nicolas: Onto the mouth, letting it go…
Ben: Letting it go…
Nicolas: Collarbone, from every cell in my body…
Ben: From every cell in my body…
Nicolas: Under the arm, right now…
Ben: Right now…
Nicolas: Top of the head, right now.
Ben: Right now.
Nicolas: Take a deep breath. And let it go. That was a quick experience, and now we tune back in. So, you check in on that anxiety that was an eight, and where is it now? You check on the pain, where is it now? And then you also ask yourself what else came up? Now you know I'm guiding people through a very general process that using general language and cues. If you're working one on one with someone or working more specifically on something, you can talk about it. People will say I remember working with a lady, Cathy, who had terrible toothache for two and a half years. Multiple root canals, antibiotics, nothing would do the job, and I asked her when did this pain start, and she had never thought about that question or been asked that question 'cause it's not something doctors don't usually ask when it comes to a toothache. I said what was going on in your life, and she said my mom had just passed away. That weekend, we went to Vegas. It was a total surprise, it was a total shock, and she made that connection that horrible event happened right when her toothache happened and when that affection happened. We tapped, this was actually live on stage for Hay House, and I think we were in Baltimore and Washington D.C., and three thousand people.
She just came out from the audience. Her pain went from about an eight or nine to a two or three in those 15 minutes, and then my favorite part of it. She went home, got the book, did more tapping. Got rid of the pain completely, and listen to this, Ben, this my favorite part 'cause this is what I know you and your listeners who care about the science and research and the reality of this as they should. She had x-rays from her dentist before the tapping. She had x-rays because they do x-rays with the root canal, and you could clearly see, in all her x-rays, a huge infection around her tooth. So, her tooth was infected, and that's why it hurt. She took antibiotics, root canals, nothing worked. She did the tapping, pain goes away, and now people go, wow, was that in her head or whatever? She goes back, the infection's gone.
Ben: Really?
Nicolas: Yeah, I have the x-rays in the pain relief book.
Ben: It's like some Wim Hof stuff where he shuts down the cytokines from E. Coli by breathing and sending in cold snow.
Nicolas: Listen, I love Wim. Yes, she allowed her body to heal. The grief, the pain, the anxiety was continuing to stress the body, and then no matter what outside intervention she was given the body wouldn't heal and just from doing the tapping, and people say, “So oh, it's the tapping that cured the infection?” No, what I think happened is that tapping allowed her body to relax to let go, allow those healing mechanisms to turn on…
Ben: Right, put her in a de-stress place where she actually could heal.
Nicolas: Exactly.
Ben: It's like people say about cancer. I was listening to somebody talk about this earlier today about how the body is not going to heal itself with cancer if you're just constantly moving and asking the body to be performing all the time, under stress all the time, travelling all the time. It was my friend, Brian Johnson. He has this thing called Philosopher's Notes where he'll do certain books and cover certain books, and he covered this book called “Anti-Cancer”, and I think it was the author of the book. Eventually, he died. He went into a relapse for a long time and beat his cancer and actually died, and he said the reason was because he wrote this book or started speaking, and he just started make himself more available to the world and speaking and not giving his body a chance to just be unstressed and on its own, and eventually relapsed and that was how he died of cancer. Because he didn't put himself into a state where his body could heal, or it could stay healed.
Nicolas: It's like the go-go-go culture.
Ben: Right, so I got sick for the first time in seven years, four days ago. You can hear I'm still just a little bit congested. I got the flu, I was down and out for two days in bed, but it was right at the tail end of having a film team come to my house and film a documentary and a whole bunch of workouts to begin to prepare for this year's race season, and your body will force you to stop at some point. You can either do it yourself or your body can force you to do it, and in my case, my body just put me into bed where I couldn't move. It was a good reminder of my own mortality and a good way to keep me humble and a good way to help to remind me to slow down and to say no sometimes.
Nicolas: Seven years is a good run though, well done.
Ben: Yeah, as my friend Paul Chek says, you don't need to make yourself available to the world 24/7. As cool as that is and as much as a stokes the ego, there's drawbacks.
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Ben: So anyways, I want to get back to your football player and shoulder story, but already, I've got some skeptic questions for you based on what we just did. First of all, how much of this is me just doing the effort? Could I just stand there and do those affirmations that you said and not tap? Has anybody ever looked into what if you just do the affirmations or, I'm going to be very advanced devil's advocate now, what if you just do the tapping without the affirmations? Why do you do both?
Nicolas: Yeah, this is what I think. It is my belief there's been some research studies that, they call them dismantling studies where I try to pull apart the mechanisms and what's what in the tapping action. There are some mechanism papers that have shown specifically that the tapping is an active main ingredient that makes a difference. Now if you stand there and do those affirmations, that's good for you, too. So, I sort of think that all of it combines for the maximum effect. So, if you say great, we have the affirmations, and let's call that 10% of the result or plus 10 points on what result you going to get, okay? And then you have that happening and then that, by itself, can have something. Then you have working with someone who is good, so if you've got a one-on-one relationship with a competent practitioner who knows what they're doing, they're going to do a better job. So, as you stack all these different elements out, people always say the placebo effect. Is that the placebo effect? Yeah, of course it is, everything has a placebo effect in it, right? Like everything…
Ben: Except rib-eye steaks, rib-eye steaks are not a placebo at all. You cannot tell me I've eaten a rib-eye steak and can make me feel better, but I guarantee when I sink my teeth into a big, juicy, French-cut, bone in rib-eye, there's zero placebo. It's just 100% pure protein and ambrosia.
Nicolas: [laughs] So everything, we say the placebo effect as if it's a bad thing. No, it's a good thing, it's the power of the mind to heal, so we might as well use that placebo effect. If you're going to do something, I mean really, whatever you do, whether you do tapping or whether you listen to another podcast and say, “Hey, I'm going to try this.” If you go into it with that positive expectation, it's going to work better. If you pick up a supplement and you just listened to 10 podcasts telling you how great that supplement is, its efficacy is likely to improve because we've shown that. We've shown that the body creates these healing chemicals. So, my feeling is that it's all that combined, that's where the magic really happens.
Ben: But nobody's ever actually just studied what happens when you tap these points or what happens when you just do an affirmation?
Nicolas: No, they have studied it, so let me see if I can pull up a research study.
Ben: While you're pulling it up, I guess Louise Hay's book is all affirmations without tapping, right? That's an example of affirmations, I suppose. Maybe tapping, an example of tapping without affirmations would just be acupressure or acupuncture 'cause you're putting pressure on certain meridians, right?
Nicolas: Yeah, 100% and people was like, “Hey, you want to do acupuncture with it? Great.” There's been a couple of dismantling studies, the one that I'm reading here now. I mean there's over a hundred research studies on tapping. I never memorize them all, I'm too busy actually doing the tapping.
Ben: Where are you finding them?
Nicolas: So, the best link for everyone to check out, put this in the show notes too, is research.eftuniverse.com. That's my friend, Dawson Church, we funded a lot of the studies through our foundation, but he's the guy who actually gets them done, and you can see on their anxiety, PTSD, one after another showing really consistent results.
Ben: You funded the research though?
Nicolas: Some of it.
Ben: You guys aren't getting called out for that? ‘Cause you write a book and a documentary and stuff?
Nicolas: No honestly, and people say that. First off, I can only find a couple of them 'cause they're so expensive. They're so expensive, I funded the ones with cortisol like the saliva test because I want to prove it and show it. We're doing some with DNA and RNA because I want to prove it and show it. Look, I think the… “Oh you funded it, so it has to be a biased thing,” every single study is funded by somebody. We publish everything that comes up whatever happens, and that's it, and we need more of this research to show it.
Ben: Got it, okay. So I'm going to put a link to this research that you just mentioned in the show notes if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/tapping, his research at eftuniverse.com. Another question, what about this whole idea between acupressure and acupuncture? Have you done that before, Nick?
Nicolas: Have I done acupuncture?
Ben: Yeah, not to other people. Have you had it done to yourself?
Nicolas: Yeah, I love acupuncture. My acupuncturist moved down to Georgia and made me very sad because she was fantastic. I think the difference is with the tapping, we're bringing in that emotional response, that emotional equation, and one of things that I love about the tapping period. There's a lot of psychologist, psychiatrist who bring it into their practice from around the world, and they found it makes a big difference. What I love and what they often say to me is that they can give it to their patients to bring home, right? There's a great story of my friend Scarlett Lewis who lost her son, Jesse, in the Sandy Hook school shootings. Sandy Hook is 10 minutes from my house. I live in Newtown, Connecticut. It's the same town, so it really struck home when that happened, and that's when we actually formed the foundation to work with PTSD and trauma, and I had worked with Scarlett a couple times. She learned the tapping and found it very helpful. She woke up one night, in the middle of night, three in the morning, in the midst of a panic attack, and she had panic attacks before, so she knew the physiology of it.
She knew that she was unlikely to be able to bring herself down from that attack without medication, so she thought alright, I'll call 911. The ambulance will come here. My son, JT, her oldest son was sleeping in the room next door. Hopefully he doesn't see me leave. I mean it's crazy talk, right? Take the name in the middle of the night, leave your other son, but that's what she didn't know what else to do. She thought for that one moment. Okay, let me try tapping. This worked for my anxiety before, and at three in the morning, she did 10 minutes of tapping by herself in the midst of that panic attack, and when she was done, she was asleep. She went right to sleep, so to me, that's one of the powerful things about it as opposed to, and again I love acupuncture. It's not one is better than the other, but as opposed to those other therapies where you have to go see someone, this is something where you're back in control, that you can wake up at three in the morning and have a tool to use in those situations.
Ben: Okay, yeah that's what I like, so you can do on airplanes, when you're driving your car.
Nicolas: You know the airplanes are the only placed I've seen people do it publicly because I just don't think they care for that.
Ben: I do everything publicly on airplanes. I do squats and lunges and piss off the flight attendants by touching my toes back.
Nicolas: It's funny, Dr. Mercola, as you probably know is a huge fan of tapping.
Ben: I know, he's a skeptic.
Nicolas: He was instrumental in getting the movie made, he's in the tapping solution documentary film. He was a big supporter from the beginning and us getting our message out there, and he was out there clamoring about EFT long before he found that in his clinical practice, he saw a huge difference and saw that so many things really when people weren't getting better, if they followed his advice and didn't get better, it was likely because of an emotional issue, because of trauma, because of something they weren't letting go. So that's a big factor.
Ben: So, one other question before we get back to your story, how did you choose those points that you were tapping? Why the top of the eyebrows, on the side of the eyebrows, underneath and the chin and the collarbone and below the armpits into the top of the head. Why those and why that sequence?
Nicolas: Sure, that's a great question.
Ben: Of course, it's a great question. I'm a professional podcaster.
Nicolas: Professional podcaster, do you have a license on that, Ben? Are you licensed to do this?
Ben: Yeah, I do. I'm just like a plumber. I'm licensed.
Nicolas: So that's the EFT sequence, that's what Gary Gregg developed from the TFT. Those are the major end points meridians of the body. There are other points, so for example the inside of the wrist people will tap their two wrists together. That's another endpoint, there is a point on the back of the hand that's really good for trauma, so it's the back of the hand in between the pinky and the ring finger, that slit of that little bone here. The reason we do the same point all the time to keep it simple is that when you start incorporating a bunch of other points, people just get confused and they don't do anything, right? So that's the basic sequence that when you have a panic attack at three in the morning, that's sort of you go to, and then if you are doing other things and it doesn't seem to be working, you can research and incorporate some of those other points and strategies.
Ben: Okay, gotcha. So, in terms of the history of this, it's always been those points in that style of tapping.
Nicolas: Yup.
Ben: Was it just discovered through self-experimentation?
Nicolas: You know, Roger Callahan did it through a lot of muscle testing, self-experimentation and then working with those and looking at those Meridian ancient systems and Chinese textbooks and things like that to see where those maintenance points were. Muscle testing was a big part of what he was doing to test out.
Ben: Okay. Muscle testing like, describe that.
Nicolas: So, kinesiology which I believe in it. I could never do it properly, so I don't personally use it. The most basic thing is the idea that the body stay strong. So if I say a certain statement like my name is Nick, I pull out my hand, you press down on my hand that dealt with muscle stay strong because my name is Nick, and if I say my name is Ben, that suddenly shifted the energy system because that's not true. My hand goes weak. People who are trained to know how to do it can do it really well. I would feel like people are making up, but that's what Dr. Callahan, in part, worked on to develop that.
Nicolas: Interesting, a lot of people are pretty skeptical at muscle testing stuff. Yeah, have you done it?
Ben: Like kinesio testing? Oh yeah, I haven't tested myself, but I go to some of these fitness conferences where people like jump out of the woodworks, holding some bracelet or diluting some essential oil. You'd hold this in your hand and hold that in your hand and see whether you test stronger. This sounds mean, but I enjoy effing with those people a little bit and pretend to be super weak in some cases than super strong in other cases or not let them get the leverage advantage on me. Dude, I realize that there's something to the concept of certain things affecting your physiology to the extent where muscles can become weaker, muscles can become strengthen, but for example, if someone were to give me 20 grams of a really great fish oil and 20 grams of really crappy fish oil. They'd have me go do a back-squat workout or maybe even muscle test, eight hours later, okay, I'll give credence to the fact that could be a decent n=1 evaluation of what's going through mouth. Let's hope it's a Post-It note that says Vitamin C in my hand and then a Post-It note that says Vitamin D in my hand, and I'm weaker with Vitamin C or Vitamin D, and they say, “Oh you need more Vitamin C or less Vitamin D.” That's where I do get a little bit skeptical.
Nicolas: No, I'd disagree with you, and also if you're at a conference and someone has an agenda, then that's yeah. If you're trying to sell the bracelet, the person doing the muscle testing really has to be unbiased. They can't be selling their supplements and their C or D or whatever.
Ben: Yeah. Okay, so I want to get back to this guy with the shoulders, so you worked on him with a shoulder, but at that point, you weren't that familiar with tapping?
Nicolas: No, I just knew the basics which is what's so amazing about it, right? What will happen from this podcast, I've seen it time and again, there will be people who experience pain relief in the five minutes that we did, and they'll just be, “Wow, I can't believe it.” They'll be people who experience relief and then go tell their uncle about it the next day and say let's watch this video together, and the points are like this. It doesn't take a high level of expertise to get some results. I saw a comment on our Facebook page about a week ago. We're in the midst of our tenth annual tapping World Summit, an online event, and it was a comment where someone said, I just learned about this. I think there were physiotherapists or something like that, and I said I had a client who came in with fibromyalgia, been in pain for so long. We did this tapping video together, and they walked out of there pain free, and they were just ten exclamation marks, just didn't even know what happened.
It's the kind of thing that you see with pain relief. It unlocks something. It allows the body to relax. It addresses that, turns off that fight or flight response, that muscular tension. As you know, Ben, part of the problem with pain too, especially when it's chronic is that it's not just the injury. It's so psychological, right? There's the expectation of pain, there's the fear of pain. It's like you see that football player, that lineman who gets hurt again and again, and it's easy to say well, he's got a weakness here, weakness there, but half the time I think is that they go in scared. It's the first game back, and boom, they get hurt again because they have that fear. I remember working a couple years ago with a lady by the name of Bobby on her knee pain, and this was at a live event on pain relief. We tapped on her knee pain, we went back to a childhood event that was really traumatic for her.
Ben: What do you mean when you went back to a childhood event?
Nicolas: Yeah, we explored together, a childhood event, and we tap on it. So, what that meant was she talked about her fifth birthday where her father came home, probably drunk and said to her I wish you'd never been born. So that's the kind of imprint that, on a five-year-old is beyond shocking. It's turned the world upside down.
Ben: I can't imagine, I get guilty when I was up with my kids. They're making a Paleo-ketogenic bread for their podcast, and I felt like I was riding them too hard by interjecting during the podcast too much. And when I was sleeping that night, I was guilty as if I couldn't imagine telling my child to have never been born.
Nicolas: It's beyond awful, and she carried the burden and the weight of that, and especially in that time period, zero to seven when we just download everything, and we need our parents for safety. So, what we did is we replayed that event, and when we look at childhood traumas, if we think about something from our past and we still feel that tension or that anxiety or that anger, it means it's still affecting us. So, we went back, we tapped on it, she replayed the scenario, she created some new scenarios, so as a five-year-old, you're helpless. As an adult woman, she was able to take the cake and throw in her dad’s face to have like some sort of fight back for that kind of situation and then release that anger from her body and try to find some understanding and some forgiveness. So, we went through this whole process, and the pain goes away. This is the point for the psychological part of it, and the next day, she says that when she got out of bed, she turned, and she made a groaning noise and then she realized she didn't have any pain, that she was just making the noise that she always made when she got out of bed. So, that's just an example of these patterns that we establish in ourselves, in our lives that can really dictate us. She's groaning just because that's what she knew how to do even though the pain was gone.
Ben: She got so into this stuff after seeing your friend get healed that you just started writing books on it.
Nicolas: So, the first thing I did was make that documentary film, it was 2007, and I was in real estate. I was buying, fixing up and selling houses. 2007 was a terrible time to be doing that as you can imagine. When I made the decision to go make the film, the business was actually going okay. I left that business with my dad and brother. I still had responsibility for it, but I left it to make the movie and then the real estate market crashed. So, as I'm making the movie where hundreds of thousands, and then eventually, almost a million dollars in debt with that real estate business as I'm making this film that cost me 150,000 to make on credit cards and credit lines. We set out across the country with cameras, and film people like Dr. Mercola. In his office in Chicago, he was a big fan of tapping.
You mentioned right at the start of the podcast that there are so many people in this field who are huge fans. That was a big advantage to us because we knew that he was a huge fan that Jack Canfield from the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series was a huge fan. Joe Vitale and Bob Proctor from “The Secret” were big fans. Sheryl Richardson used it, so all these people, experts were using tapping in their lives, and what we did in the movie is we had them frame the issue and talk about tapping and their experiences, and then we brought 10 people from around the country together for a four-day retreat to do tapping. We went to their house beforehand, so we filmed John who had 30 years of chronic back pain, Vietnam veteran. Multiple surgeries, medications, everything, we go to his house in Minneapolis. You see him in massive pain, on meds groaning, and then he comes to the event. He wakes up the second morning pain free for the first time in 25 years or whatever it was, and that's what the film does.
It follows these ten people with pain, with anxiety, with all these other challenges, and we showed 'cause that was the thing for me with tapping, right? And it's still the thing. Hey, first off, try it if you're skeptical because you'll see that it either works for you or doesn't, and then you're done with it. But you can see the results, they are just there. We've had a lot more research since then, but 10 years ago, we didn't have that much research. So in the movie, I wanted to say hey, let's get these 10 people and see what happens, and that's what the movie did, and it did well, and that's what I spent the last 10 years doing and talking about.
Ben: Yeah, wow amazing. Now with the exercises and the style of tapping, forgive me if this is redundant, but this style, like what you said in your books and documentary, this is the same style as was originally invented. So, you didn't put any twists on it. You just basically learned it and figured out how to teach it for specific situations.
Nicolas: Yeah, for specific situations and certainly put on, I guess, my flavor on it which every practitioner does. Some people focus on different things. Over the last decade, I've seen more and more of what works and what doesn't work for people, both in the style and the languaging, how we approach the issues. The last book that I wrote, “The Tapping Solution For Manifesting Your Greater Self” was shorter chunks. It's a twenty-one-day process. It's little wins every day, a little tapping every day to build something bigger. One of things that I've found the last couple of years, as opposed to right in the beginning, is that people are really busy, right? We know this, and that even if the tapping works, they forget to use it or they say, “Look, I can't sit down and do this for an hour with a practitioner because I don't have the money or I don't have the time or I don't have the commitment, but what can you give me in seven minutes?” What's the experience that you can do? So, what we've been doing a lot in the last couple of years is finding ways to fit it into people's lives and finding ways too with the research that we're funding and the things with the Tapping Solution Foundation. One of our big initiatives is how do we get this accepted in an institutional basis? It's been a self-help tool, it's been in this field, it's been used you know by Dr. Mercola and Jack Canfield. Now how do we get it into a VA hospital? So, a veteran with PTSD gets access to this technique.
Ben: Have you done that?
Nicolas: Yeah, we just got official approval by the VA for EFT tapping as an approved therapy, which is huge. People been doing it for ages in with veterans 'cause it's so effective, but what would usually happen, I remember a story, three or four years ago that was heartbreaking. Somebody doing the tapping at Fort Hood, getting amazing results, and since it wasn’t approved, once someone found out they were doing it, they had to stop. So now it's approved, now we can actually do it officially and out there, and yeah, we're continuing to do that work.
Ben: Congratulations, dude. That's cool. Alright. So I want to get into some brass tacks for people 'cause I know some key pinpoints. My audience might go beyond just the shoulder thing that we were talking about, where the hamstring thing. I was going to ask you about chronic injuries or nagging pains, but it sounds like the key there is to do a style of tapping in a sequence, like the one you described where you're going to release tension and release stress, which a lot of times is what's actually causing an area to be in a state of spasm or in a guarded state. It's kind of similar to the way that John Sarno talks about back pain, right? He addresses a little back pain and how a lot of it really is. It's not in your head 'cause actually really does exist, but it's manifested by, more or less, what's going on in your brain that let's say an intense muscle tear or tissue hypoxigenation or something like that.
Nicolas: One hundred percent, and just on pain relief to that point, the other places to look at where I find a lot of results for people is asking yourself questions like what I said earlier, with Kathy, with the tooth pain. What was going on in my life when this happened? Oftentimes, the injury itself, so if it's a car accident, for example, tapping on the trauma of the accident, the fear and the pain and all that stuff, that can make a difference on it. So not looking at it, we tend to say okay, well that was the accidents. Well that happened and that's it, and now, especially when we go to the doctor and we get a diagnosis. The amount of people have said to me, “Oh well, my doctor told me I have this disc that is degenerative or this inflammation, or they get that diagnosis so then they go, that means it's not in my head, right, so then this won't work for it. And time and again, if they give it a shot, we show in the movie, Patricia, who fractured her L1 vertebrae in a boating accident. She had rods and screws in her back, the whole thing, and her doctors told her she'd be in pain the rest of her life. That's just the way it goes. Again, she shows up at the event. Second morning, she's pain-free. She goes on to do yoga. She even says, and this is pretty cool, Ben, you can see her saying in the movie when she came in, she could feel the rods and screws in her back. She described as a battery pack, and then after the tapping, she could no longer feel it. So, something happened in her musculature and in the tension in her back and potentially the trauma from the accident that was holding on tight, and when it let go, blood could flow in and the body could heal.
Ben: Interesting, what about for sleep? Let's be even more specific, I wake up at 3 a.m., and I can't get back to sleep, and I can either go smoke a bunch of weed or take a Valium or do tapping. I want to do tapping, so fill me in.
Nicolas: It's great, just two nights ago, on Sunday night, I did a Facebook live on sleep, and I did it in particular because I was reading about these kids in Parkland with the Parkland shooting and how they're having trouble sleeping and nightmares, and we're sending a trauma team down there to help them out. So I went to do a Facebook Live to frame that, and then we reached all these other people. And someone even said, I woke up at 3 a.m., and I wake up at 3 a.m. every night. So, what did I do? It was a 15-minute tapping, it wasn't much. The best place to start before bed, you tap, you think about your day. You just go through the points, and if your wife or husband's up for it, you know, my wife and I, not always, but once in a while we'll tap together for five minutes. We'll just talk about the things that are stressing us out, that download of the day and this and the others. So just tapping through the points and do that, you'll often find that when you tap even during the day, you'll yawn. People say what does that mean? That means that your body's relaxing. Often most of us need more sleep than we're getting so…
Ben: Or you're not breathing deeply enough?
Nicolas: Or you're not breathing deeply enough, now you're absolutely right. So just tapping through the points, thinking about your day, thinking about what's stressing you out. It's going to help you let that go and sleep more deeply, and if you have dealt with insomnia before, just likethe pain, insomnia is the thing where if you expect to wake up at three in the morning every night and you've done that for 10 years, your body's going to wake up at three in the morning. And you're likely to be anxious about it or angry about it, so before bed, you can tap and say even though I'm sure I'm going to wake up and I'm so frustrated with this and I'm anxious, I choose to relax now. And then if you do happen to wake up at three in the morning, you just tap for a few minutes then on what you feel. People are always looking for the magic word and the language. It's really what do you feel. Were you angry that you're up at three in the morning? Are you pissed that new supplement that you tried didn't work? What is going on your body? Tap and let it go, and I think you'll find it very effective.
Ben: Okay, got it. So you just basically wake up and you do it. What would be an example of an affirmation?
Nicolas: So again, speaking the truth of it. So, if it's three in the morning, even though it's three in the morning and I'm just so annoyed and I can't stop thinking about this, I choose to relax now. And then you can tap through the points and just say I choose to relax now. I choose to let this go, it's safe to go to sleep. Sleep is a very vulnerable situation for a man or woman, for humankind. We're vulnerable, we're open to danger, so we feel that we are in danger in some way. We don't feel safe in our bodies. It can affect sleep in a big way.
Ben: Yeah, okay cool. So you wake up during the night, you can tap. I know you probably have a rule for everything. You want to make a smoothie, just tap. High cortisol or stress, I wanted to ask you about that but obviously we addressed that and the amygdala. What would be something that has surprised you in terms of the use that someone has had for tapping?
Nicolas: Oh, that's a good question. Well there's always the funny, which they're funny to us, but they're not funny to them like the ridiculous phobias, like the clown phobia. It worked with a friend of mine, probably seven or eight years ago. He was just terrified of clowns, and we can all laugh about it. But it was uncomfortable for her, whether it showed up on TV or she walks into a store and there's a clown balloon, it just brought anxiety to her. We did tap on that like, any thought of weird phobias, and that's an encoding in the brain with the bodies. That says this is dangerous, whatever it is, and people have some weird stuff that they say is dangerous, and we could turn off that encoding. And then maybe not so surprising, but potentially what I'm maybe most excited about now is tapping for kids. Through our Tapping Solution Foundation, we're bringing this into schools.
Ben: Do you mean kids tapping or tapping to enable you to be able to have children?
Nicolas: Well yeah, fertility stuff, that's a different one.
Ben: Just got to be careful with your semantics, dude.
Nicolas: You are absolutely right, Ben. You can do both and certainly this stress around fertility is a huge issue.
Ben: But definitely don't call it tapping kids.
Nicolas: Tapping kids, yeah. So we put out this video about two months ago, just a two-minute video of our work in schools, and it's been viewed 43 million times as of this morning, shared almost a million times, showing that there's a demand and a desire to give our kids a different experience at school, at traditional schools where they're stressed or anxious, they're overwhelmed, and the tapping can help calm their bodies. A lot of teachers are bringing it in, just as a way. It's not like you're going to do an hour of psychotherapy with kids in that situation, but just to start the day. They come in with stress from home, especially in difficult situations at home and just to let go of the day, prime the body and the mind for learning.
Ben: Okay, got it, interesting. You probably should create another title soon about tapping for scary clown phobias.
Nicolas: You think that's the next big thing?
Ben: I could imagine, the cover, the red wig and the wicked smile. The leering clown peeking out from underneath the cover, you could even combine that with the kids like tapping for scary clown phobias… in kids.
Nicolas: In kids.
Ben: Yeah, there you go. I just made you a million bucks, baby. You and your friends at Hay House.
Nicolas: Pretty good to feel pumped.
Ben: There you go, if you get a book deal before I do, then I hate you.
Nicolas: Just really quick on that sleeping. I just pulled up Facebook Live, and there's a ton of comments, but this is what I love. So this lady Carolyn, she says, “I have horrible insomnia, tried everything. Going to try this now. I have heard of it and sort of tried it but trying it now.” And then she comes and comments the next day, she says, “Nick Ortner, I don't know whether it was your tapping or not, but I slept better last night than I have in quite a while. So, I'm going to try it get tonight.” Someone just having a quick experience.
Ben: There you go, I like it. It's not a double-blind clinical study, but I don't necessarily need those to know that something works.
Nicolas: We have both thankfully but look, I mean there are so many user cases, and when I first got into it a decade ago, I would have said look, forget the studies. You just try it, what do you need to study for. But, since then I've really learned more about it, especially when it comes institutions. Understandably, the VA can't allow everybody and anybody to do any therapy they think of or any crazy thing they think of. So there have to be some standards, and I'm willing to jump through the hoops to get the research done to pass those standards so we can help people.
Ben: Research.eftuniverse.com is where those studies are, for those who want to go check them out, and then as a reminder, you just get the books, but it's eyebrow, the side of the eye, under the eye, under the nose, chin, collarbone, under the arm, top of the head, and I recommend you get Nick's book, “Tapping Solution” but then also “The Tapping Solution For Pain Relief” I think is really good, and actually while you're over on Amazon, support Amazon. They need the money. So also “Heal Your Body” by Louise Hay, that's a really good one too.
Nicolas: We've got a bunch of stuff. If people just want to see the tapping points and some basic videos, just thetappingsolution.com. There's plenty of things. We also have a lot of science and research there where I took some of those research studies that can be hard to make sense of and wrote some blog posts about them. That way we can make sense of them for those that aren't as scientifically-inclined.
Ben: Yeah, cool. I dig it man, and for those you listening in, I've hung out with Nick and he's a cool, honest dude. He's not a physician, and he's not a white lab coat wearing fellow who's hunched over…
Nicolas: How do you know I'm not wearing a lab coat right now?
Ben: Hunched over a tiny mouse, tapping on the mouse. You might be wearing a lab coat, you might be wearing pasties in a sailor outfit or a scary clown mask for all I know because this is an audio podcast. However, either way, Nick's a good dude and his books are actually really good. Very practical, easy to understand. I've given to family members, I've given them to friends. His books for kids, my kids have read. They actually have two of them on their bookshelf, and they read them, they understand them, they like them. They've used them as well, so they were tapping when they were seven years old based on the books that Nick sent over. So, it's good stuff, and it’s stuff that I've tried, and I recommend you add it to your tool box of cool things that you can do to your body to enhance your health. So that being said, Nick, thanks for coming on the show, man.
Nicolas: Hey, Ben, it is a pleasure. I'm a fan, and I listen to many, many of your podcasts, and thanks for the good work you do in the world.
Ben: Thanks, man, I'm honored. Bengreenfieldfitness.com/tapping is where the show notes are, links to everything we talk about. Meantime, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Nick Ortner, signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.com. Have an amazing week.
Does tapping really work?
Tapping (also known as EFT or “emotional freedom technique”) is a practice in which you tap specific parts of your body and simultaneously say an affirmation. It is supposedly a wildly effective healing modality that combines ancient Chinese acupressure and modern psychology.
My guest on today’s episode – Nicolas Ortner – created and produced the breakthrough documentary film “The Tapping Solution,” which followed ten people who used tapping to overcome significant challenges, including chronic back pain, fibromyalgia, insomnia, devastating grief and more. He has also authored multiple books on tapping, including The Tapping Solution.
In today’s show, I put Nick in the hotseat to explore whether or not tapping really works.
During our discussion, you’ll discover:
-The fascinating history of tapping…9:40
-A short demonstration of tapping you can do on your own…15:50
-What if you just tap and don’t do any affirmations, or vice versa…33:30
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-The difference between tapping and acupuncture…38:30
-Who chooses which points are supposed to be tapped, and what happens if you “forget” a point…42:00
-Whether Nick’s “style” of tapping is different than other styles, and if so, how…52:30
-How tapping would look for a chronic injury or nagging pain in a joint that won’t go away…55:30
-How to tap for insomnia, high cortisol or stress…57:20
-And much more!
Resources from this episode:
–Nick’s “Tapping Solution” books on Amazon and his other titles
–EFTuniverse.com – EFT / Tapping Research
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Do you have questions, thoughts or feedback for Nick or me? Leave your comments below and one of us will reply!