What is tapping?

How much more manageable would life be if we could quickly release difficult feelings from our bodies?

Can you think of a time when you had a very stressful interaction and your body became flooded with anxiety? Maybe your heart rate increased, you had a heavy sensation in your chest, your stomach started to churn. This might have been accompanied by your breath shortening and a sense of coming up into your head and out of your body.

Or maybe a time when you’ve experienced a more enduring stuckness, a blockage of some sort? A feeling you just can’t shake.

We all intuitively know that when we have an emotional problem, it shows up in our bodies. Tapping really attends to the mind-body link, quickly and simply altering your experiences.

Here's how to do it

Sitting and tapping certain points on your body alone won’t do a whole lot…you have to intentionally address the imbalance you’re experiencing while you do so.  

Whilst you’re tapping, you need to say (out loud) a phrase that addresses what you’re feeling. The phrase has two key parts:

-          Naming the issue or feeling

-          Accepting yourself despite the issue or feeling

What do I mean? Let me give you an example.

Imagine you have a relative come to visit. Someone who every time you see them, you feel anxious. They don’t listen, they ask uncomfortable questions and subtly criticise throughout the conversation. The longer you spend with them, the more activated your system becomes. You start to feel stressed and twitchy, you become more short and irritable and your body is telling you it wants to run.

Thankfully, they leave. And you decide to give tapping a go. You might say:

"Even though I feel anxious and overwhelmed in response to [name of relative], I wholly and completely accept myself."

Using all four fingers, tap on the side of your other hand. You're aiming for the fleshy space between the base of your little finger and your wrist (see the picture at the top of the blog).

Tap continuously on this acupoint and repeat your chosen phrase for a minute or so. Take a deep breath in, and a long breath out. Observe your inner experience and see whether the intensity of the feeling has lessened.

My initial reflections

I wasn’t sold when tapping came across my path as an idea, but I’m generally open to experiencing alternative techniques to find out for myself. And I have to say, I’ve been stunned at its effectiveness. For me, it has become a regular practice in clearing blockages and resetting throughout my week. The original feeling isn’t always 100% gone, but I can definitely feel it lessen. Tapping feels like another tool to add to the armoury for taking good care of ourselves. There’s something quite empowering about being able to simply and quickly clear out the pathways.

So all in all, it’s a thumbs up so far from me!

You might be wondering where tapping came from and how it actually works.

Gary Craig developed this Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) in the early 1990s, with the intention of balancing the body’s energy systems. The purpose of EFT is to be more emotionally free – he wrote “when you release stuck emotional energy, you free yourself to live fully” [1].

The technique combines modern psychology with ancient Chinese acupressure. Traditional Chinese medicine understands the body to have energy pathways called meridians. It’s through these pathways that our vital life force energy flows. Researchers believe there are links between the meridians, the nervous system and brain activity [2]. When tapping, we are stimulating certain points along the meridians to bring the body systems back into balance.

If you prefer videos, this is Gray Craigs introduction to EFT. You can get the gist in the first three minutes. EFT (Tapping) Intro by Gary Craig, EFT Founder.

Are you intrigued? Are you willing to give it a go?

Here’s a quick three-minute tapping technique to get you started: Nick Ortner’s Tapping Technique to Calm Anxiety & Stress in 3 Minutes

Happy tapping! 😊 

[1] Awakenings Institute (2025) "Emofree," Gary Craig, and EFT (the Emotional Freedom Techniques) - Learn EFT

[2] Tapping Association (2025) The Science and Evidence Behind Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)