Tap your way to freedom

My belief, supported by personal experience, is that all illness and pain has an emotional component that cannot be addressed with medication and food alone.

For this New Year I hope you will use this simple technique to remove hidden blocks that sabotage your happiness and enjoy a bountiful and healthy new beginning.

Living life as humans constantly ignites many emotions, both good and bad. It is again my belief that the consequences of the bad events get buried and lay dormant in our sub conscious mind and in the memory of our muscles and cells only to be triggered later by specific people, places and things that remind us of the original experience. 

For example I had a traumatic birth caught up in a twisted umbilical cord that cut off my air and made me panic. My mother was a mid wife by profession but never shared this experience with me until I asked.

I was in Antigua on holidays in 1985 and we decided to go snorkeling and scuba diving. I was excited.

I donned the gear and jumped overboard. Seemingly calm I followed the instructor. All of a sudden I panicked, I couldn't breathe, I flailed and  flogged my arms and legs. I couldn't wait to get to the surface. By all accounts it was the memory of my birth relived in the experience of drowning that caused this apparently inexplicable panic.

The good news is that there are many ways to remove the old cellular memory from long lost experiences but "Tapping" or EFT is one of the easiest and most independantly accessible ways to do it.

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) fondly named "Tapping", developed by Gary Craig in the 90's, provides relief from chronic pain, emotional problems, mental disorders, addictions, phobias, post traumatic stress disorder, and physical disease. Like acupuncture and acupressure, you can stimulate the important meridian points by tapping on them with your fingertips – literally tapping into your body’s own energy and healing power. 

You know that I am fundamentally a left brained scientist but the research is undeniable:

While I am not making medical claims EFT is known to produce real, lasting breakthroughs and may significantly improve or even eliminate conditions that hospital treatments, medication and years of psychotherapy have failed to adequately address. 

Studies and research done at  Harvard Medical School verify the assertion that the brain’s stress and fear response , which is controlled by the amygdala in the brain, is lessened by stimulating the meridian points used in "Tapping". 

The basic technique requires you to focus on the negative emotion at hand: a fear or anxiety, a bad memory, an unresolved problem, or anything that is causing anxiety, stress or bothers you. While maintaining your mental focus on this issue, use your fingertips to tap 5-7 times each of the body’s meridian points. Tapping on these meridian points – while concentrating on accepting and resolving the negative emotion – will access your body’s energy, restoring it to a balanced state. 

Tapping gives you the power to heal yourself, taking control of your destiny. 

Another exciting set of research was undertaken by Dr. Dawson Church. His team performed a randomized controlled trial to study how an hour-long tapping session would impact the stress levels of 83 veterans with PTSD. To do this, Dr. Church and his team measured their level of cortisol, a hormone secreted by the body when it undergoes stress.

Their findings?

The average level of cortisol reduction was 24%, with a whopping reduction of almost 50% in some subjects and 63% decrease in PTSD symptoms after six rounds of tapping! In comparison, there was no significant cortisol reduction in those who underwent an hour of traditional talk therapy. 

The tapping Acupressure points are as follows:

• Karate Chop Point on the outside of your palm

• Inside corner of your eyebrow; either side

• Temple

• Under the eye

• Under the nose

• Collar bone; inner corner

• Under the arm at the bra strap

• Under the breast

• Top of the head

Why don't you choose a benign topic that irritates you. Measure the level of irritation from 1-10. Follow along in the video  and check in after to see how much less you still feel irritated!

written by Marjolein Brugman

Marjolein Brugman is the founder of lighterliving and Aeropilates. “lighterliving is a movement and lifestyle choice we can all make. Let’s make it simple – make one decision a day to be better and watch the small steps lead to big changes. Eat smart, stay active, and you’ll live to feel a lighter life."