Ilana Friedman, Advanced Clinical Fellow

The holidays, although often both merry and bright, can also be incredibly stressful. There’s travel, expectations, balancing gift-giving and budgets, lots and lots of parties and cookies, and I haven’t even mentioned family yet! I want to introduce you to a simple yet incredibly effective technique you can utilize when you feel the holiday panic arising!

“Tapping”, also known as the Emotional Freedom Technique, works with the same energy meridians as acupuncture to balance energy in the body, which helps clear stagnancy, reduce pain, and ease suffering. As stated on the official EFT website, “EFT combines the physical benefits of acupuncture with the cognitive benefits of conventional therapy for a much faster, more complete treatment of emotional issues, and the physical and performance issues that often result.”1 EFT has been heavily studied and its efficacy has been scientifically proven. If you want to learn more about these studies, please visit this ARTICLE by David Feinstein.

Tapping: The Basic Process

1. The Concern. Choose the concern you want to work on! For the sake of this example, let’s use “feeling anxiety about being back home with family for the holidays.” (This could also be “fear of public speaking” or even something physical like “lower back pain.”)

2. Initial Intensity. Ask yourself, “What is the intensity of this from 1-10?” If you’re having trouble figuring it out, take a moment to sense the sensations, memories, and feelings coming up around your concern.

3. The Setup. Develop “The Setup” The setup is a simple phrase that captures the concern and asserts that you also deeply and completely accept yourself. It’s radical self-acceptance, baby! With our example, this could be something like, “Even though I feel anxiety about being home and around family, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
   You then say this phrase while repeatedly tapping with two or more fingers on our first point, Karate Chop (KC). This is the fleshy point on the outside of your hand between the base of your pinkie and your wrist. This wakes up our system and lets it know we are ready to move some energy! 

4. The Sequence. Perform “The Sequence”. This is the real meat of the holiday meal, so to speak! You will use your fingers to tap between 3 and 7 times on a sequence of points while staying present with our concern through repeating a “reminder phrase.” This is a simplified statement of our concern i.e., “this anxiety” or “this anxiety around family and home” or “this anxiety I am feeling.” The sequence is as follows:

   1. Top of the Head (TOH): On the very center of the top of your head, also known as the “crown chakra.”

   2. Beginning of the Eyebrow (EB): At the centermost point of one eyebrow where the hair begins.

   3. Side of the Eye (SE): On the ridge of bone where the eye socket meets the temple.

   4. Under the Eye (UE): On the bottom ridge of the eye socket directly beneath

      your pupil.

   5. Under the Nose (UN): In the divot between the cupid’s bow of your upper lip

      and the bottom of your nose.

   6. Chin (Ch): The spot halfway between the tip of your chin and the line of your

      lower lip. 

   7. Collarbone (CB): At the meeting point of the collarbone, sternum, and first rib.

      You can find it by starting at the depression at the top of your sternum, moving

      down toward your feet about one inch, and then out one inch. It should feel tender when you are in the right spot.

   8. Under the Arm (UA): On your side about 4 inches below your armpit or about

      at the center of a bra strap.

5. Current Intensity. Take a deep breath and ask yourself, “What is the intensity of this now

   from 1-10?” If you are down to “0”, amazing! If not, repeat the sequence until you reach

   “0” intensity or a more comfortable level.

Tapping is an easy and actionable tool that can be done anywhere and at any time! For a great demonstration of the process and the location of the tapping points by the founder, Gary Craig himself, please view this YouTube Video. Give it a try and let me know in the comments what you notice!

Lipton, B. (n.d.). What is EFT? - Theory, science, and uses. Official EFT. https://www.emofree.com/eft-tutorial/tapping-basics/what-is-eft.html

Craig, G. (n.d.). How to do the EFT tapping basics - The basic recipe. https://www.emofree.com/eft-tutorial/tapping-basics/how-to-do-eft.html