Grief expert, David Kessler interviews Nick Ortner, about tapping / EFT

Many of you have been joining us daily and some of you may be brand new. It is a group that was set up because of COVID 19. So many of you got displaced from your.

Grief groups and you've also then had deaths that you had to deal with where you couldn't say goodbye to a loved one. We've also had situations where you haven't been able to have a funeral, a memorial. So we can't be with one another during this time. It's beginning to open up, but as the world begins to move on, you're not able to. So I'm bringing amazing people to you. I have Nick here with me tonight and we're going to be talking about tapping and he's going to explain it to all of us. I know Nick from Louise Hay, a mutual friend of many, many years. So, Nick, I'm really glad you're here with us.

David, it's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely. So one of the things I like to do for people who are coming on, and we're all here because a loved one has died. I don't want to just talk about them. I like the idea that we also connect with them. So if we could just take a moment in honor of those who have died and just send them love wherever you believe they are in your heart, the afterlife, heaven. So just join me, everyone, if you would, and let's send them love.

Thank you for that. Just moment of silence there to honor them. So, Nick, I'm so glad you're here. And you know, when I was asking who people would like to see and hear from, your name came up a lot. So welcome.

Tell us how you've gotten into this world. Tell us a little bit about you. I mean, I know all about you, Tapping New York Times bestselling author. But I'd like to just have everyone hear a little bit from you.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. So tapping, or eft, Emotional Freedom Technique, we call it tapping because we're literally physically tapping on these endpoints of meridians of our body. My new Covid disclaimer now is you have to wash your hands before you touch your face. We're all, I think, you know, eight weeks in, 12 weeks in, whatever it is. Now, we all know that we gotta wash our hands before we do that. But we call tapping because we are tapping on these endpoints of meridians of our body. And what the latest research is showing is that when we tap in these places in our body, we send a calming signal to the amygdala in the brain that fight, flight, or freeze response center. It's a part of us that when we are stressed, when we are scared, when we are in shock, when we receive shocking news, when we go through trauma is activated. And what the tapping does in really miraculous ways, is that it begins to unlock some of that trauma. It begins to turn off that fight or flight response. And what I'll often hear, you know, I got started in tapping, just using it with friends and family. I decided to make a documentary film about it in 2007. And we set off filming people around the country for a year. A bunch of experts spoke about tapping. And then we brought these 10 people to an event to show it tap, like happening in person. And we put out feelers throughout the country. Anybody who would want to come to the event, they applied. And I remember so clearly, my sister was put up flyers in the Bronx. I don't know how she ended up in the Bronx. We live in Connecticut. It's about an hour from here. She was just going for diversity and getting the flyers up to get people and put it up in the Bronx. And from that flyer, we met Renee. Renee, his fiance had passed away in a car accident crossing the George Washington Bridge. And he was driving, so. So he was driving kids in the back. You can imagine now it's not only the shock of the loss, but the trauma of the actual accident. And that's something that we see oftentimes in these kinds of events. When something like that happens, that's so tragic and traumatic, there's so much more that comes with it. Not that any loss is easy, but it's certainly different than having an elderly grandparent and being able to have that process where there's that connection where you spend time with them, where you see it coming, for lack of a better word.

And now with COVID so many people aren't having those moments.

Well, exactly. And so that's a little bit of what we're dealing with with COVID where everything's been turned upside down. It wasn't easy to start with. And now we don't have the funerals, we don't have those experiences. FaceTime doesn't count. I mean, it's. We do our best here, but to connecting to a loved one, when it's just FaceTime, boom. Boy, that is so tough. So I remember tapping with Renee, and you see it in the movie that we filmed. And one of the first things we did was tap on the accident itself. So the trauma that was in his body and over the next couple days, he did the process, and he says towards the end of the movie that he felt a closeness to his fiance that he hadn't felt three days earlier. A lot of times people, when I say tapping for grief, and we have some tapping for grief tapping meditations in our app, I think people instinctually, especially when they know tapping can reduce anxiety or release anger, they go, okay, well, is this going to release grief? Like, is this a mind eraser of some sorts? And it doesn't. What it helps us do so beautifully is it helps us to process those emotions. It helps us to release some of the noise around so then we can actually feel. I don't need to tell you how many people have unresolved grief in their hearts where they haven't gone through the process of grieving. They haven't felt those emotions either because something else was binding up all that energy or because they just didn't feel safe to feel those emotions. If we don't know how to process something, if we don't have a framework, if we don't have a guide like you to take us through it or support group, it can be really scary. We're not supposed to feel these emotions on our own. We're supposed to do them together with the help of those that we love. So tapping is a beautiful adjunct to really anything you do to start bringing down that noise. If there is a traumatic experience, start calming down that trauma and then get to the real feeling part of that process.

Okay, so let me do some yes buts to get.

Yeah, please.

So many people think of tapping as something that's going to help us get better, get over, move on. And there's a sense like, no, no, no, I don't want to tap and lose the disconnection with my loved one. I love what you said about Renee. That felt closer, but there is a sense of, well, I don't want to tap the pain away. What if that's my connection? What if things go wrong in grief and I, you know, release the pain and there's nothing there? I mean, I'm a big believer that I'm always telling people when you release the pain, you'll be connected only in love. Yeah, but, you know, I think we get so attached to the trauma. So can you reassure us that when we do this, we're not. We're going to lose the things we don't want. We're going to lose the trauma, but we're not going to lose the connections?

Yeah, we're going to lose the anxiety we're going to lose the fear that overtakes us. We're going to lose the anger that can be overpowering another person that I tap with on grief. And this was, you know, one of the more powerful experiences I've ever had. I live in Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut. The Sandy Hook school shooting is 10 minutes from where I'm recording this in my home office right now. So in that fateful day in 2012, I was shocked. Like, the whole world was shocked, especially when we realized that what happened. But it's also extra shocking when it's in your hometown. We always. It's just, you know, everything you've seen about Newtown and Sandy Hook, it's a Connecticut town, nice, you know, green, rolling pastures. And so that was shocking. But I knew I had a tool to help. So we put out the word that we were in town, that we were helping, and that following Tuesday. So, I mean, we're talking, you know, four or five days after this horrible, horrible event. I sat down with Scarlett Lewis. Scarlett had lost her son Jesse in the shooting, and she was familiar with tapping. She was a big fan of Louise Hay and Wayne Dyer. So she was open to this kind of thinking, but it was really shortly afterwards. So when we sat down, I didn't sit with her and say, okay, let's tap on the grief about Jesse. Right? It doesn't make any sense. It's just happened. I sat down and I asked her, when you just close your eyes and you tune in to what you're feeling right now, what's coming up for you? And she actually felt all this anger about other things. She had other traumas come up. She had things that have happened the previous couple days. She had all this noise. I mean, noise is the best way to describe these kinds of things that get in the way. So she had this noise. That's what was present for her. And we did the tapping for her to be able to release that anger, release that noise, and then again, find that love, find that connection, find that heart opening, which she did very quickly. She is a model for grieving, a model for forgiveness. If you ever dealt with, you know, a tragedy and trauma when for where forgiveness might be needed. Scarlett Lewis Nurturing, Healing Love is a book that she wrote about her son Jesse and everything that happened. So another example of we're working on the noise. We're working on reducing the anxiety, calming down the body to feel that deeper connection.

Okay, so teach us. How do we do it?

How do we do it? Well, so we start by trying to determine what we want to work on. So I've mentioned the noise a couple times, so go ahead. And if it's safe to do so, just close your eyes and take a moment to tune in.

Everyone out there, join us in doing this, please, please.

And we're actually going to take a moment to tune into the anxiety, the anger, the overwhelm. A couple years back, I asked our mutual dear departed friend Louise Hay said, louise, why are you doing this tapping thing that focuses on the negative first? And she said, honey, if you want to clean a house, you have to see the dirt. So that's all we're doing here.

We're.

We are just looking around and saying, where is there some dirt, some anxiety, some anger?

Just tune into the stress and see if you can focus on one thing. So you're anxious about. You could just be anxious about COVID 19, about coronavirus. Maybe that is just creating so much noise in your life, so much stress and worry. Maybe you're worried about work.

Or maybe you're going right to a loss. You're feeling whatever it is. Just pick one thing to release.

And then as you tune in, give it a number on a scale of 0 to 10 with intensity. So 10 would be most anxious, most angry, most overwhelmed. Zero would be completely at peace.

And then you can gently open your eyes and we'll do some tapping together. We start by tapping on the side of the hand. It's called the karate chop point. Use whatever hand feels comfortable. Don't worry about getting it right or perfect. Just follow along. So tapping on the side of the hand and repeat after me. Even though I'm holding on to all the stress.

Even though I'm holding on.

To all this stress, I choose to relax and feel safe now.

I choose to relax and feel safe now.

We're going to do that two more times. Staying on the side of the hand. Even though I'm holding on to all the stress in my body.

Even though I'm holding on to all the stress.

In my body, it's safe to feel it and let it go.

It's safe to feel it and let it go.

We're to do that one more time and just tune into that stress. If you can close your eyes. Where are you feeling all that tension, all that overwhelm? Even though I've been really overwhelmed.

Even though I've been really overwhelmed.

I choose to feel safe and secure now.

I choose to feel safe and secure now.

We're going to tap through the points. The first point is the eyebrow point where the hair ends and it meets the nose. You can take two fingers of one hand, the other hand, or both hands. The meridians run down both sides of the body. And we are just tapping gently and just tune into that stress.

All we're looking to do is to activate it. Then send that calming signal.

Moving to the side of the eye. It's not at the temple. Right on the side of the eye, right on the bone, tapping gently.

Where in your body are you holding on so tight?

Is your breathing shallow? Are your muscles tense?

Just notice that now.

Now under the eye, right on the bone, you're tapping gently, breathing gently. Think the thoughts that have been. That have been bringing you anxiety. So you've been thinking about a loved one, about COVID 19. If you're worried about someone else, if you're feeling pain in your body, stressed about everything that's going on, just think about it. Now.

Under the nose, right on the bone, tapping gently.

Tuning into that stress.

See the movie, see the picture of the thing that's bothering you.

Under the mouth, it's above the chin, below the lip, in that little crease there. Tapping gently, breathing gently.

Beginning to notice as you tune in, as you focus on that stress and anxiety, it begins to fade away.

For the collarbone, Just feel for the two little bones of the collarbone. Go right below it. All ten fingers of both hands.

Tuning in, thinking those thoughts.

Notice how they lessen their grip, how your body begins to relax.

Underneath the arm, Three inches underneath the arm, armpits, right on the side of the body.

Either side of the body, tapping gently. And the last point in the sequence is right at the top of the head.

Tapping gently. We'll do one more round of the points back to the eyebrow and repeat after me, either in your mind or out loud. It's safe to relax.

It's safe to relax.

Side of the eye, it's safe to feel safe.

It's safe to feel safe.

Under the eye, it's safe to release some of this pain.

It's safe to release some of this pain.

Under the nose, it's safe to release some of this heartache.

Safe to release some of this heartache.

Under the mouth, feeling safe in my body.

It's okay to feel safe in my body.

Collarbone. Feeling safe in my body now.

Feeling safe in my body now.

Under the arm. I am safe.

I am safe.

Top of the head, letting go.

And now take a gentle breath in. You can stop tapping.

And now we tune back in. So take a moment to tune back in to that original number, the stress, the Anxiety, the overwhelm, the thing that you were focused on and see what's changed. So you might have been anxious at a nine, and maybe it's an eight or seven or a six, or sometimes something else comes up. That was two really quick rounds of tapping, beginning to open up the body, quiet the noise, and from there you can continue on. You can go as long as you want, as short as you want, trying to get to the place where you want to get.

So that worked for me with anxiety. My mind's full, it's overwhelmed almost. It's tough. What if my mind had gone to something like, I'm missing my son.

Yeah.

So I kind of. My first thought is, well, I don't want to lessen that. So what is the goal? And those kind of feelings when they come up in grief.

Yes. So we can just allow them. The tapping process is so simple in that it's really using your own experience and language. So I use very general language for everybody then to guide them through, because we have all people from around the world having different experiences. But you can sit. So you do that tapping and then you start feeling that feeling and you sit with it. And if you want, you can give that feeling a number of intensity, and you can give that feeling a name. Say, is this sadness that I'm feeling now, is this anger that I'm feeling now, is this. Give that feeling a name, give it a number, and then you can simply tap. Even though I'm missing my son, I love and accept myself. Even though I'm missing my son, I choose to feel safe. Now, what's beautiful about the tapping process, and especially there's a lot of psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, coaches who bring this into their practice. And a big paradigm shift whenever I've done training with them, and we especially did a lot in Sandy Hook, is that as opposed to some modalities where the therapist might be doing the reframing of the situation, the tapping is a natural evolving of the situation. And what you find more often than not is that the individual does the reframing. So you just say, I'm missing my son. And this is just the truth of how I feel. And as you process those emotions, you choose to feel differently or not. You choose to feel love and compassion, or say, no, I'm not ready for that right now. You choose to feel forgiveness or say, no, I'm still in anger. And to me, that healthy expression of these emotions and bringing the body back in, that's the real breakthrough with tapping. And any somatic Therapy is that we're getting out of our heads and we're bringing this body in that holds this trauma, that holds these emotions that keeps us stuck.

You know, one of the things is a lot of people deal with so much anger at their friends who aren't showing up for them in the way we want them to show up in grief. And I think this would be so good if you're going to talk to a friend about how you haven't been there, for me, to sort of tap.

It out first 100%. And here's what you can do beautifully with that process. We have a free tapping meditation on anger in the app. We have one on anxiety. I think the anger one's free. If not, there's a whole bunch of free ones on the app. But here's what you do. You can just do it on your own. You tap through the points, you close your eyes, you imagine your friend. You say all the things that you want to say from that place of anger, right? So you're like, I just cannot believe how you've treated me. I've never been so angry in my whole life. I feel it in my heart. You betrayed me. You can swear at them. You give a voice to whatever you feel. You process that. And then you can still go tell your friend that you're pissed off at them. You can still do that. But at least you've gotten to a place where you've expressed it and processed it in a way that is healthier for the body to say, I'm so angry. You know, it's not healthy in our regular society to go screaming and yelling at people and swearing at them and all these things, but sometimes our body needs to do that. Sometimes our body needs to rage and say, I'm just so angry about this. We do the tapping, and then what always happens is just clarity. And it's either clarity that says, you know what? I don't need to do this, because I see that they're hurt. I see that they're struggling with their issues, whatever it is, or it's clarity that says, yes, I do need to do this. I'm going to say something, but it's from a place of confidence, of peace, and frankly, from a place of love that says, this is how I've been heard. I'm expressing my vulnerability now, my love to you, by sharing how I've been hurt.

Can we take some questions and comment? Of course.

Absolutely.

All right. There was a couple of them. Doris says, the tapping became more intense for me. You work, but now maybe eight months is too soon. Did it for years. Unfortunately, worked the opposite today.

Yeah. Well, so that what will often happen is we can. We can unleash some emotions. I. A lot of people will say even when they're not tapping on grief, that they'll just start crying. Like they'll just. They're here about tapping from a co worker at work, and they'll start doing it on anxiety and just start crying. Because the body, I mean, we go so fast for so long without breathing, without stopping. This was a moment to breathe, to begin to feel safe in our bodies. So I would suggest just keep doing it. If things feel too big, reach out to a therapist. Reach out to a practitioner, psychologist, psychiatrist. You can also just tap on. Even though this is overwhelming, I choose to feel safe. You can put things back in the box. We don't have to fix everything at once. Right. We could just say, I choose to feel safe and grounded. We have a free tapping meditation for panic attacks. So that could be good, just getting grounded in your body.

Well, you know, the other thing I would say is it's easy. And we talk about this so many times. People go, I don't want to do counseling. It's too painful. I don't want to do this. It's too painful. It's easy to think the pain is in the counselor's office or the pain is in the tapping, but the pain is in you. And, you know, we can stop tapping, but the pain didn't want to, didn't go away. So, you know, just to realize your. Your emotions are saying, I need movement, I need to be released. I need to be attended to.

Yeah.

Sandra says tapping is great to get in touch with everything. I tap on everything, and it brings me closer to my feelings in that moment, bringing me into the present moment. Beth says, bringing it into the body. And love that the client gets to place of reframing. Beth did an amazing one on here. A session, a guest session about dealing with death of a fiance. So you guys can go back and watch that. So one of the things I want to ask about is how often would you do this in a day?

Yeah, that's a great question. So when I first started using it for myself personally, I was just like, I want to clean things up from the past. I want to let go of these old patterns. I want to let go of the traumas, the things that are holding me back. So I did a lot. I mean, and by a lot, it might have been, you know, 30 to 40 minutes a day. But it was like every day I'm just cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Now, for me personally, I'll do it once a day, anywhere between five and 15 minutes. What's helpful about the app, which I mentioned a couple times, we have a lot of free guided sessions.

Yeah, Information at the end.

They help guide you in the process and stick with it because what can happen if I tap for myself, for example, by myself in the middle of the day, I'll do a couple rounds, I'll feel better, but just in that moment of feeling better, then you go to do something else. When you have a guided session or you're with a practitioner, you tend to just sit in it a little bit longer and go a little bit deeper. That's why the guided help can make a difference. But look, if you're. Some people when they were going to work in offices, would tap in the bathroom, you know, tap underneath the table at meetings when something was just kind of riling them up and they needed to bring it down.

So Lavanda says, do you tap with children?

Yeah, great question. You absolutely can. My daughter June just turned five on Saturday and we have a little routine. It's pretty funny because we have a go to sleep meditation in the app. Most of the meditations in the app are done by myself or my sister Jessica, but my brother Alex has also been working a lot with children. So it's Uncle Alex who does the tapping with June at night for kids in the app. Right now we have all free meditations on sleep Focus. We created them specifically for the homeschooling environment that everyone is dealing with because many parents were losing their minds when their kids couldn't focus. And then we have coronavirus anxiety with four different age groups to talk about what's happening in language that's appropriate for them. So it's fabulous with kids. What I keep hearing time again. I'm a big meditator and I love meditating, so it's not like a tapping versus meditation contest. But I hear from a lot of parents who say I've tried to get my kids to breathe and meditate and I just can't get them to sit still. This is a nice in between to get them to do something active, calm down their bodies and then move into that more peaceful place.

Okay. Maribel says tapping allows us to take full responsibility for our own well being. That's beautiful.

Let's see. Maribel says it brings Maribel again. She says it brings up the junk so we can clean and clear.

All right.

How does this relate to emdr yeah.

So I would sort of consider them cousins. You know, EMDR has to be done with a therapist, a trained therapist. So that's fabulous in a lot of ways. And a limitation for some people who can't afford a therapist or just want to practice to do at home, they complement each other beautifully. You'll find that most EMDR therapists either use EFT or are familiar with EFT and the other way around.

Okay. Deborah asks, can you use tapping for depression and fatigue?

Yeah, for sure. You might have found. So two things happen with tapping. It can either be very relaxing and you'll see a lot of yawning that happens. Now. People say, well, I don't want to yawn if I have fatigue, but it probably means you need to sleep better. Right. You need to rest more. So if you start yawning, it's the body relaxing. It works great for sleep, which is often related to fatigue. And then for other people, like, I'll often do tapping in the morning to get motivated for a productive day. So I find it energizing, doing in that moment. It's sort of. You know what they say about the medicinal mushrooms like reishi and chaga, if you're familiar with them and other herbs, they're adaptogens, which means if your immune system needs a boost, it boosts it up. If you need to come down, it brings it down. I think tapping is the same way, just brings the body back in balance.

Janice says, today, I was full of anxiety prior to this meeting, 29 weeks today of my husband's death by suicide, and I want to exercise, which is what we were doing before he died. I'm afraid to go to the park, but this tapping exercise helped me. Yeah, I could see that. You're like, wait a minute, if I exercise, that's going to bring up all the trauma.

Yeah, yeah.

And tapping can help reduce the fear of what's going to come up.

Yeah. And it might. So this is what's beautiful about this technique. I mean, you've learned the basics. You now the energy's opened up to go to the park and exercise. Now, that doesn't mean you're not going to get to the park and all of a sudden something's going to hit you. Well, guess what? Go do it right there. Who cares what people think of you? You know, everyone's wearing masks and all this stuff. I know. So it's all going crazy, Right. So you just start tapping through the points and you don't have to say anything. You could just feel the feelings. I Can't believe I'm here. Whatever it brings up and it just calms the body back down.

Nora wants to know, when did. Where did tapping start?

Yeah, so the basis of this process was developed by Roger Callahan in 1980. So would you believe that now we're talking 40 years ago? I think we're finally breaking through some mainstream stuff. He developed tft Thought Field Therapy. And the forum that I just taught you, that I learned, is called eft, and that was developed by one of Roger's students, Gary Craig. What Gary did was basically simplify Roger's method so it'd be easier to use and learn and then shared it with the world. And I'm just a guy out here excited about it and doing my part to share with the world.

Do you need to go through all the steps to have it help?

Yeah, great question. You don't. If you're just anxious and you're in the park and you don't want to tap through all the points, you can just go to the collarbone point, go over to the side of hand. I mean, the side of the hand is an easy one to just sort of look like you're fidgeting. There is no perfect process. There's other points. If you work with a practitioner, they might do a point called the nine gamut, which is good for trauma. The two wrists together can be really good for anxiety. So these are all major endpoints of meridians where we hit the big ones to keep it simple. But don't worry about getting it perfect or right.

Christina says thank you, Nick and company, for introducing me to eft. Have been doing this process daily for over a year, and it really assisted with healing on all levels. Still having problems with actually feeling forgiveness. Any suggestions are appreciated.

Yeah, I mean.

I would say go check out Scarlet's book, Nurturing, Healing Love. She is an example of forgiveness. And look at her work. And just. If you want to. But, you know, I mean.

What'S that?

I think we're gonna have her on here.

Are you? Yeah. You know, I can't talk about forgiveness the way she can because, you know, she has an experience that I've never had. And what's unbelievable about Scarlet is that it's easy to talk about forgiveness, but she's just embodied it. I mean, I've been with her, I've had lunch with her so many times. And, you know, you hear someone say they forgive someone, and then you hear someone say it, and then you go, oh, you really do. Like, you're not just saying this, like, this, you have actualized this in your body and your being in your mission and every part of you. So I'd recommend to check out her work as an example of that. And certainly we have tapping on forgiveness. You can do that process, but it's nice to have a role model for what is possible there.

And of course, Deborah asked one of my questions. Is it possible to do it wrong? Like, what if you do it in the wrong order?

Yeah, the order doesn't matter. We go that way just for ease of use. So you could go backwards. You do want to have a general idea of the point. So if I say underneath the eye, there isn't a meridian endpoint here, and it's not at the end of the nose. Right. So we want to, you know, on our website, in the app, there's charts so you can look more closely if need be. So you want to do that generally. Correct.

Lisa says, what's the science behind this? Has that been looked into?

Great question. It has. And we are getting more and more research every day, which I'm so excited about. One study that I just saw, which was a replication study. So this was another study that had been completed, and they said, let's see if we can do this again, which is an important part of science. Oftentimes replication studies fail. And the original authors are like, I don't know. You know, in this study, they had three groups, and they did cortisol before and after. Just really easy to measure cortisol. You spit in the tube, your saliva right now is full of cortisol, a stress hormone. One group did tapping for an hour and actually did group tapping. So it was an interesting look at the group energy and what it's like when we're together doing this kind of thing. The second group did psychoeducation, so they learned about stress and the body. And the third group, that poor control group, just read magazines for an hour in the waiting room. The tapping group saw a 43% decrease in cortisol in an hour, which is a massive drop in cortisol. So when you do two rounds and you start to feel relaxed, that is cortisol dropping in the body. The psychoeducation group saw a 19% decrease. And I think that's a good example of how learning, how being in an active learning state can actually help drop the stress in our body. When we take empowering action, we can drop that stress. And the poor magazine group, their cortisol went up 2%. So reading magazines, sitting in a waiting room is going to raise the stress levels in your body. So that's just one study that came out. There's many more on everything from depression to anxiety to pain. We're funding research and it's coming in fast and furious. And I really like the physical stuff like cortisol went down because we know we feel better, but it's nice to go. There was a physical, concrete effect in my body.

Betsy says I'm new. My 26 year old son died three years ago this May 24th. Oh, so you've got the date coming up, Betsy. My counselor Kathleen recommended this site. Betsy, I'm so glad you're here. We have a different speaker. Like we have wonderful Nick Ortner. Tonight we're going to have James Mellon will be tomorrow night. He's a reverend whose child died. Then Wednesday we're going to have someone from the American foundation of Suicide Prevention. Thursday's Vanessa Williams, Friday's Kathy Ireland. So lots of different voices. There's no one voice in grief. So a lot of people. Robin says, I can't wait to do this with my husband. He is so stressed between the death of a daughter and working in corrections. Working in corrections and death of a daughter. I mean those are like heavy duty things. It will relieve the stress, anxiety and bring in balance.

Thank you.

Maura says I'm Reiki certified and cannot get my son to settle down. And he is on the spectrum. I want to try tapping with my son. Have been full of anxiety off and on as I'm an empath as well. So what about someone like your child who may be dealing with other issues and when you're an empathy.

Yeah. So step one is to do the tapping for yourself. And this applies whether it's your child or husband. Oh, I gotta get so and so. Look, I spent a decade trying to convince my friends and family to do all this stuff and it wasn't until I just said, I'm gonna do my own work. And then they started coming to me. Then they started saying, oh, something's different. Or you know, with the kids, I just let them catch you tapping, you know, sit on the couch doing the tapping. Oh, what are you doing, Mommy? I'm just doing this thing to help me relax. Let them come to you and you be that shining light. And especially if you're an empath, because you're an empath, you've got ideas about what you want them to do. And you guys are in this whole energetic dance that first needs to be calmed down a little bit. Deal with your own anxiety, deal with that Stress. And then oftentimes it's great if they can tap. But what I'm blown away by is how other people transform when we take care of our own stuff.

Right.

Teresa says can you elaborate on the meridians as they apply to tapping?

Yeah. So the meridians, the meridian system, ancient Chinese system, if you're familiar with acupuncture or acupressure, these are channels of energy throughout the body. And we tend to think of our bodies as very chemical processes because we take pills and we take supplements and we eat food and that's how we think of things. We digest stuff. But the reality is that our body's really electric. I mean, our brain right now is firing with electricity. We have electric channels throughout the body, and this is what we're tapping into. No pun intended.

Okay. Sherry says I'm afraid to sleep at night since my husband passed two months ago, so my days and nights are turned around. It sounds like I could use tapping, hopefully to get ready at bedtime.

Yeah, 100%. We have a free tapping meditation called Quiet My Racing Mind. So it'll take you right through the process and. Yeah. Puts people right to sleep. Yeah.

Wonderful. So, Nick, tell us, is there any time. Is there anyone that shouldn't be doing tapping?

Yeah, it's a great question. So if you're dealing with a serious mental disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar, something where you already know that you're in the care of a psychiatrist or a psychologist, where it feels unsafe to do this work, go reach out to them and say, I'd like to try tapping with you, or find a psychiatrist who uses tapping. It can be really helpful to have a guide when you feel like it doesn't feel safe to go to these places. If you're dealing with PTSD and just the thought of thinking about something for a moment brings you fear, anxiety and overwhelming, and you completely shut down. That's an opportunity to go and see someone. But at the very least, just the tapping on releasing anxiety, the stress of your life, getting grounded, I think it's really healthy. It's sort of like a little exercise for the body. Just don't go where it doesn't feel safe to go.

How long have you been tapping?

So it is now going to be 17 years. 2003 was when I first started using it.

Does it change over time?

Does it change for me personally or how I teach it or.

Well, I could ask Owen, but I guess for anyone, if we're going to do this over time, I don't know, is there a better we get at it. Or do we get deeper, or does it shift over time, or it's just something that's always useful?

Great question. Definitely deeper. And as you just. I mean, the first phase is to just release it, figuring out the points, but that happens pretty quickly. And then you'll find what works best for you, where you land, where the places in your life are that it fits. So for me, it is certainly deepened. The way I teach it has really deepened. And. And I think that's been about.

Being able to take people to a deeper place than they might have gone on their own, usually through this medium. As an example, one of our most popular tapping meditations that I put out recently is called you Are Enough. And it's the concept of youf Are enough embodied in a tapping meditation. And for me, that was about just feeling that feeling through and through and being that anchor for an individual who is sitting there around the world, listening to it, and knowing that big part of them doesn't feel like they're enough, because that's the human experience and we all deal with it. So for me, it's been like, how do. How do I set that anchor point? And what is the feeling of being enough? Like, how do I embody that completely and then communicate that so the person listening can have that same experience?

So it's interesting that you mentioned I'm not enough. One of the things that people in grief, we all do, and I've seen this over the years, is we all have our own wounds. Then when grief comes along, we project our old wounds onto them. So it's already bad enough that someone dies, but then we're like, well, of course they were going to die on me. No one ever stays. I'm completely unlovable. So I always tell people they have to separate out their old wounds from their current grief. So how could I. Any advice on sort of separating out the old wound? Because the old wound, I always say, is, you're not enough or you're too much.

Yeah, yeah, I haven't done your too much. Maybe I should do that one next. You know, look, I think going through that process, what people will do is they'll actually do it. It's one of the ones where they do over and over and over again because they have an experience. And maybe they might cry the first time and they'll have some memories and things from their childhood come up, and then they do it again the next day. And it's the same process, but all sorts of new stuff comes up or the memory unfolds. So I think just doing that process, we haven't started it yet, and then sometime in the next couple weeks, we'll actually be doing a you are enough challenge where we all do it together, straight for eight days, inspired by someone on Facebook who did it for eight days on her own. And she said, the world is a different color right now from doing that process. So I think finding, you know, doing that process, finding that strength, and I think the repetition is a really positive part of it too, you know, because we tend to go around and do so many different things all the time, and this, that, and the other, just like, hey, ground in this process and find that healing.

Right, let's see. So it's interesting. They talk about.

The idea of trying to fix other people, and I love how you addressed it. It's really the same concept in grief. Sometimes we want our husband, our wife, our children to do their grief work. And I'm always like, you cannot force anyone else to do their work. You can only demonstrate it and model it so it sounds like it's the same. When we get those things about, this person needs it. How can I get them? Because it's interesting. We get filled with anxiety when we think they need something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. Do your own work. The place in between that I often recommend when people are really struggling with that, there's a process called surrogate tapping. And surrogate tapping is when you tap for someone else. Right. In the same way that there's, like, you know, energy healing. What we do in that process is step one in the surrogate tapping is to do your own work, feel your anxiety about that relationship, about that situation. But then it goes into doing the tapping for their energy. I've heard unbelievable stories about it. I like the way we structured in that we have both. So we're not saying, oh, hey, you're going to do all this for them. It's do some of your own work, and it's within the same process, and then you transition into doing it for them and see what happens.

Okay. Naomi says, does the formula need to be. Even though I feel I am, can you say one positive word? Safe, et cetera? Does the word you use have to be what you are wanting more of? Peace, groundedness, Groundedness, or what you want to release anxiety or stress? So I guess she's asking about the formula. Do the words have to be that?

Yeah, absolutely. Great question. They don't have to be there. I mean, an insightful question. So we start by tapping on the side of the hand Even though I'm angry, I love and accept myself. I'm angry. I choose to release this anger. Now, there's all sorts of different variations. You can say, even though I'm angry, I envision myself being full of love. The basic thing is saying I acknowledge how I feel. Even though. Which is just so powerful because we tend to just swallow things down, push them away, not think about it. We say, even though I'm anxious, even though I miss my son, even though this is the truth of how I feel. And with that feeling, I love and accept myself. I choose to relax, I choose to feel safe. I think right there, that part of the process is such a grounding effort to go like, okay, this is where I am, and this is where I'm going to move towards.

So we have a lot of people here with us who. They're at home, they're in isolation. A spouse has died. There's intense loneliness from the spouse dying, and we're in a pandemic. How could we do this? What. How would it work with loneliness? Even though.

Just feeling the feelings, even though I'm so lonely, I feel so isolated. I miss my husband or my wife, and I miss society, and I'm just overwhelmed about everything that's going on. You just give a voice to it. If you have a friend that you can call, the other thing you can do is tap and talk. So you call. Call a friend, and you can say the things that you're mad about, say the things you're scared about, share the lonely feelings, and just tap as you do it. We're allowing ourselves to process it, to let it go. And then what usually happens is now we can tell these stories or feel these feelings once or twice or maybe three times, but not for a decade, not for 20 years. What we want to do is shorten the process of releasing these emotions, not for the sake of running through them, but so we don't hold on to anger for 20 years.

Right? Yeah. We often talk about grief getting stuck. And I often say stuck is when you're just like rerunning the same emotion over and over. And you like, tackle the first 25% of it and tackle the first 25%, and it just sits there sort of unhandled and unfelt.

Yeah. And, you know, with grief, I mean, it's interesting connection. Right. Now, you probably know that our. Our dear friend Louise Hay would say that one of the things with grief is in the lungs. So, you know, feeling having unresolved grief in the lungs, maybe there's something going on there and is adding to all the emotional grief we feel, all the grief we feel as a society for how times have changed and those we've lost.

And I also think about Louise and think about how we think. Like, even when I'm out now in public doing something and someone gets close to me, I want to, like, treat them like they're a nuclear bomb.

Yeah, yeah.

And I have to go, you know, they're another human being. We just have to kindly find a way to have our six feet.

Yeah.

To not react from the dangerousness. But they were loving enough to keep each other safe.

Yeah, yeah. It's going to take. It's going to take some work on all of our parts. I mean, I'm sure we've all had the experience. I'm watching something on Netflix. I was watching a show the other day and they were at an arcade and the arcade was full and they're hitting the knobs and playing and I'm looking at it going, oh, my gosh, look at them. They're not washing their hands in between every arcade game. We are so conditioned now to see these old things from our past. And look, I hope that we can go back there in some way and that we haven't lost that sense of connection. I don't think we have. I think we'll find our way there. But. But it's going to take a little bit of work.

Well, and I think the opposite. I look back now at people at parties and they're all literally like looking at their phone and I'm like, we were at parties, we were at get togethers with one another where we get close and we could touch. And we squandered that by staring into our phones.

I love that. Hey, if the one thing comes out of this, if we're all out at dinner and there's no one looking at their phones and they're present and with each other and that would be a good thing.

That would be good. So tell us, how can we find you? How can we find the app? Give us all the connection stuff.

Yeah, of course. So the main website is just thetappingsolution.com thetappingsolution.com youm'll see a bunch of research. Some people asked about research that's on the bottom of the page. Some great videos. Videos about our work with ptsd with veterans and Sandy Hook. So if you want to get a broad scope for everything we do, that's atthe tapping solution.com. and then wherever you get an app. So if you go, if you're on the Apple. You go to the Apple Store or Google Play, it's free to download. We have right around 25 free meditations right now just on coronavirus, anxiety. So we created ones just for that. I mean, we have pregnant during a pandemic, like we have the ones for kids. We have all these new issues that we've come up with. Being stuck at home, feeling lonely, stress at work. So those are all free. And then there's 200 plus meditations for those that want to upgrade to a premium membership. And the last thing is we're also making the premium membership free for six months for healthcare workers, first responders, teachers and mental health providers. And I know that doesn't cover everybody, but that's been 12,000 people so far who have taken us up on that, including one male FBI agent. That was my the coolest signup I've seen so far. So we know tapping is spreading far and wide when there's a male FBI agent taking us up on it. So yeah, try it. Download it. It's free to download. Share it with friends and family. Use it. It's transformed my life. You've probably had an experience of what it's done today and I think it can be really life changing.

Thank you so much for taking the time and being here. Stick around for a moment, Nick. I'll chat with you after. And I really appreciate all of you showing up. Nick is here. Like so many of the speakers, they're all volunteering. They're all giving their time. We want you to know you are not forgotten. I'll be on tomorrow at 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern. We'll take on a topic tomorrow, then tomorrow night for the rest of the week. We have more guests. James Mellon, a minister, his daughter died. He'll be sharing that story.

The physician from American foundation for Suicide Prevention will also be joining us on Wednesday. Vanessa Williams, Kathy Ireland, we want you to know while we all feel so alone and you especially in your grief, we can hold each other's hand virtually. If you know someone who's alone trying to get through this by themselves, please let them know about us because we want to make sure that we don't come out of this with post traumatic stress. We want to come out of this with post traumatic growth and we want to find a way to live and honor those who have died and never forget them. So thank you all for being here. Nick, thank you.

Thank you so much. So much love to everyone out there.

See you all tomorrow. Thanks.