Tapping: Surprising Science Behind Healing Claims (and how to do it) | Jessica Ortner

Your body already knows you’re stressed before your brain finishes the thought. That tightness in your chest before a hard conversation. The way your stomach drops before you walk into a room full of people. Logic doesn’t reach it. Telling yourself you’re fine doesn’t touch it. What if you could send a direct signal to your nervous system that you’re safe, and actually change the chemistry?

Jessica Ortner is a New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of The Tapping Solution, a movement that has brought EFT Tapping to millions worldwide, fueling hundreds of published studies, a massively downloaded app with tens of millions of sessions completed, and work that now extends to veterans, schools, and communities in crisis.

In this conversation, you’ll explore:

What tapping is, where it came from, and how it works. Why positive thinking and reframing often fail, and what the nervous system actually needs to release stress The cortisol study that shows a serious reduction in stress hormones from a single session, and what that means for your daily life How tapping physically rewires the brain’s response to food cravings, trauma, and intrusive thoughts, with fMRI data to back it Why your body can hold chronic pain in ways that have nothing to do with the original injury, and tapping might help How to use tapping covertly before a difficult conversation, a big presentation, or a social situation when anxiety tends to take over

You don’t have to believe this works for it to work. You just have to try it.

You can find Jessica at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript

Next week, next week we’re sitting down with Leisa Peterson to talk about why the quiet question “am I actually behind with money?” never goes away, no matter how many articles you’ve read or podcasts you’ve listened to — and what it actually takes to resolve it at the level it lives. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes.

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Episode Transcript:

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] So tapping the goofy looking self healing technique that you can do in minutes. It has been embraced by millions as a counter to everything from stress, fear, and anxiety to chronic pain and recovery. We got curious. What is it? How does tapping actually work? Is there science behind it and how do you actually do it? That’s where we’re going in today’s episode. In this conversation, you’ll discover why positive self-talk can actually backfire and why your body tenses when it’s not ready to believe what you’re hearing. We’ll talk about the growing body of science behind tapping as a way to kind of rapidly reset your nervous system, your body, and your brain. We’ll talk about what tapping is and what it isn’t. We’ll explore the neuroscience of memory reconsolidation and how targeting the body can change the way traumatic memories are stored. And we’ll talk about how to actually do this thing called tapping as our guest expert guides me and you in real time through a live tapping session and invite you to follow along. And that guide is New York Times best selling author of rewired and other books and co-founder of the Tapping Solution, Jessica Ortner. So excited to share this conversation with you. I’m Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. And we’ll jump right in after this short break.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:20] Somebody who’s joining us, maybe somebody has heard of this thing called tapping. Maybe they’ve heard it spoken, but they really have no idea what it is. It’s kind of been bouncing around wellness circles, health care circles, um, a bunch of other circles. Um, and they’re curious about it, but they really have no idea what we’re talking about. So let’s set the stage a little bit here. Tapping what is it and what isn’t it.

Jessica Ortner: [00:01:46] Yeah, it’s called tapping because we are stimulating acupressure points that are on our body by tapping on them with our fingers. So we focus on nine points. And these are points that we tap on because they’re in spots that have a high concentration of nerve endings. They’re acupressure points. And so as you tap on those points, we have mechanoreceptors, which basically send an electrical signal creating a signal of safety to your brain. One of the things that we’re realizing is that stress doesn’t live in the brain. It lives in your nervous system, and your nervous system does consist of your brain, but it also consists of your spinal cords and your nerve endings. And so when you begin to tap on this, it sends this signal of safety while you’re focusing on something that’s stressing you out. So it’s the opposite of trying to think positive or think to a different thought. You’re actually allowing yourself to notice what’s bothering you and send the safety signal.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:48] So, I mean, I’m glad that you brought positive thinking into it because tapping I’ve seen often falls into the domain of Wu, of metaphysical, of, well, this looks really kind of goofy and weird. Um, how could it possibly be doing anything at all? And we’ll drop into the science a lot more because I know there is a growing body of science, but when you talk about literally just tapping on different parts of your body, I still want to wrap my head around how this works. Um, mechanical receptors, it sounds like we have receptors sort of like in the skin or underneath the skin that somehow tie into our nervous system.

Jessica Ortner: [00:03:33] Yes. So if you ever noticed, when people are very stressed, they tend to maybe put their hand on their chest or

Jonathan Fields: [00:03:40] Yea, I do that.

Jessica Ortner: [00:03:40] They hold. Yeah. Right. They hold like the bridge of their nose, their eyebrow point underneath the eye. These are acupressure points. So I think intuitively, we know that they’re points that help us have a sense of comfort. This started I’ll talk about how it started, because I think that answers the question of like, well, how? Like, how have we figured out that you tap on these points? There is a man called doctor Roger Callahan who is a therapist. He did a CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, which is really kind of the standard practice. And he had a woman, her name was Mary, and she had a horrible water phobia. And as much as she tried, he worked with her trying to reframe it, to try to think differently, to take a different perspective. When she was around water, she would physically panic. It would start with her body and she would always say, it starts in my stomach. I just I look at water and I just feel it in my stomach. And then I go into a panic attack. And he had been working with her for about two years. At the same time, he was studying these acupressure points. And, and he made the connection that underneath the eye is the stomach meridian. And he goes, well, her distress is happening in the stomach. And my words and my regular talk therapy, it’s not connecting to that part. She’s not shifting. And so what he did was he combined what he was doing. But instead of just talking to her, he had her tap underneath the eye. And when she was able to stimulate that acupressure point and to think about the water and have her regular conversation with him, her whole body began to relax.

Jessica Ortner: [00:05:16] And he worked out of his house and had a swimming pool, which she never went that way. She always came through the front door. She was able to go outside and look at that swimming pool. Then the next day, they met at the ocean to go. Let’s. This is the big test. The ocean. She was able to walk on the beach for the first time in 20 years. That set off this this fascination from this therapist going, well, if this can happen, what else is possible? So he began to work with work with his clients, using stimulating these acupressure points while doing his talk therapy. He’s expanded that. It was called thought field therapy. And then a gentleman came in called Gary Craig, who was a student of his. He was a Stanford engineer. And he thought, this is this is incredible. But the only people who are learning this are therapists. So what if we find a way to make it more accessible, where instead of having to map out where the stress is, what it connects to, we focus on nine points that are coming up again and again. He focused on those nine points and people started getting breakthroughs and they started getting breakthroughs by themselves by by learning this and tapping on it. And so he created that. And then we came along to start to share this with more people. And it’s really evolved since then with the tapping meditations that we’ve created and happy to talk about the data in the research we have. But that’s really how it started, almost curiosity and by accident.

Jonathan Fields: [00:06:45] Yeah, I mean, that’s wild that, you know, one person has a patient with something that is like fairly intractable. Um, and phobias are often known as being really difficult to treat. Um, and that a physical, bringing something physical into a more traditional CBT or talk therapy type of format would make such a huge change. But at the same time, it resonates with this notion that so much of what we experience is embodied. It doesn’t just exist in our minds. Um, and how do we actually access that in a way that gives us some sort of release or shift?

Jessica Ortner: [00:07:19] Yeah. And this is, this answers that question because I grew up reading self-help books, really believe it. And I, and I believe in it. I believe in the power of positive thinking. But I had such horrible anxiety as a kid that no amount of positive thinking was really touching the physical anxiety. So I could tell myself it was okay, but physically I didn’t feel that. It’s almost like if you have someone who’s scared of flying, you can tell them, listen, statistically, you’re more in danger of getting into a car, and you can give them all the facts and all of the data, and they will still go into a panic attack thinking about going on an airplane because it’s a nervous system response. Somewhere in our past, there was a trigger in our body that made us believe this is dangerous. And so whenever that trigger appears, whether it’s fear of flying, fear of public speaking, being in a relationship, your body starts to tighten up. It starts to tense, sometimes without us logically realizing it or, or understanding why we’re just having a physical reaction. What I think is very helpful to understand is that your nervous system does not care if you reach your goals, or if you’re spiritually evolved. Your nervous system cares about survival. And so if it believes something is unsafe, whether that thing is a healthy relationship, following your dreams speaking up, you will have a physical response. It’s like misguided self-love. Your body goes, this is not safe. We have to find a way to create a message directly to the body saying you are safe. And when your nervous system feels safe, now we can reach our goals. Now we can expand. But at, you know, at our core, we are animals looking to survive. And when we have a reaction of stress, it’s a survival instinct. And tapping is that direct communication to your body to say you’re safe. You can you can calm down, you can relax. It’s safe to take the next step.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:31] Mhm. So when you first hear about this thing called tapping, are you like, this is, um, this sounds amazing. I’m open to it. Or were you hesitant?

Jessica Ortner: [00:09:42] I was so hesitant. So it started because my brother Nick heard Tony Robbins mention it. Tony Robbins, he was at a Tony Robbins event. He starts exploring it. He has incredible results. I’m going through a really dark chapter in my life. I’m really struggling. I was sick with a cold and I had been sick for about two weeks. It was one of those colds that just was not going away. And he came over and he goes, hey, I heard you’re sick. I have this new thing. You want to try it? We’re going to tap on your face. And I was like, no. And he’s like, come on, just try it. And there was a moment I remember that I’m like tapping on the top of my head. And I look at him and I go, Nick, if this is a joke, I’m going to murder you. Because I am the youngest of two older brothers, and I have a history of them playing practical jokes. He goes, no, no, no, no, just please stick with it. But to say I was skeptical is like like I was incredibly skeptical. I was on borderline thinking that he was pranking me. And so but I’m tapping and I start to feel my body settle and I start to feel my mind quieting. And I get this, this thought. And I just look at my brother and I go, I don’t want to get better. And he goes, what do you what do you mean you don’t want to get better? And I go, I’ve never thought of this before, but if I’m not working or trying, I feel like I’m drowning in guilt. And so the only way to take a break is to be sick. And it wasn’t that I went out looking for a virus to get me sick.

Jessica Ortner: [00:11:22] But your body listens. And if you believe that the only way to take a break is to be sick, you will create that in your life as a way of trying to take care of yourself. And so I shifted my tapping from focusing on how physically sick I felt to talking about how emotionally lost I felt. And as I was able to say kind of those. Those secrets, the burden I was holding. I felt this this release, and it was almost like, if you’ve been carrying a really heavy backpack for a long time and you take it off, you almost realize like you didn’t, you forgot what it felt like to not carry a backpack. You’re almost like a little bit like, whoa, that that was crazy. And I had this great breakthrough. And then I’ll be honest with you, Jonathan, I just went on with my life because that’s what we do. Sometimes we find something, we feel good, we feel better, and then we just like, forget and we just go on. And it was months later that I was going through a breakup. I was in my early 20s. I had just moved back in with my parents, and I didn’t want them to hear me crying. And I was thinking like, okay, how do I stop sobbing? And I was like, what is oh, what’s that thing that Nick taught me? Okay. I think it’s the eyebrow and the side of the eye. I definitely didn’t get all the points, but I did it. And again, I felt this peace, this comfort. And that’s when I went to my brother and we started chatting and we go, we should make a documentary film about this. And that’s really what started this journey for us.

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:57] I think you and I probably met shortly after that too. What was it like 20 years ago at this point?

Jessica Ortner: [00:13:03] Yeah, I think it was 20. We started the film came out about 20 years ago. So it was yeah, a little after that.

Jonathan Fields: [00:13:12] How do you go from saying, okay, Nick discovers this at an event. He brings it home to you. Um, you try it once. You’re like, wow, this made a difference. Kind of forget about it for months and then try it again. Like this is interesting, um, to feeling like you, you know, this modality, you understand it on a level which lets you then turn around and say like, here’s how it, here’s how to do it, here’s how it works.

Jessica Ortner: [00:13:36] Mhm. Oh, it took years because we were always, we started behind the camera. And then the next thing that really changed our lives is we decided to do an online summit, which nowadays, you know, there’s a million of them. People see them all the time. But we started it 18 years ago when it didn’t exist, it didn’t exist that you could go online and learn something to the point that you couldn’t record online at that time, that first tapping World Summit that we did, we had 50,000 people show up. It changed our lives. We had no idea it would be so big, but there was such a hunger. I think one reason there was such a hunger is that people experienced it for themselves, and they wanted to figure out. They wanted to learn more. They wanted to learn how they could teach it. They wanted to be able to share it with their family. And so it really spread there. But it was a long time. It was many years before we decided we’re we’re good at this. We have learned so much through the process of creating these summits and the documentary.

Jonathan Fields: [00:14:38] Yeah, I mean, I remember seeing that documentary and, um, and you basically took, um, a small number of people with all these different ailments and things that they were really. And then basically there was this intensive, um, couple of days of tapping and teaching them how to do this and having them do it like repeatedly. And the outcomes in, in a really short period of time were kind of astonishing. But I remember seeing that I’m like, on the one hand, I was blown away. I was like, wow, like if, if this is real, it’s pretty incredible. But the if was always there for me, you know, I was kind of like, like how, like how I mean, all these things that, that, that we deal with on a daily basis, from stress to loss to physical ailments to, um, mental health, uh, you know, like these are things that billions and billions of dollars have been spent trying to figure out how to improve even in the slightest bit. And you’re introducing this modality that seems to make huge potential changes in a ridiculously short period of time. So and I know that there have been a lot of doubters along the way and a lot of skeptics, and probably rightfully so, you know, because there’s a lot of stuff that a lot of people get sold in the interim in, in the last 15, 20 years. Um, this has gone from a lot of claims and a lot of people doing it and a metric ton of anecdotal evidence to more science. So take me into what’s been going on in terms of the science behind this at this point.

Jessica Ortner: [00:16:13] Yeah. Yes. And to your point, when we made the documentary, we didn’t have the language to explain how it worked. We didn’t have the research around cortisol. We didn’t have the brain scan studies. So we were coming into it talking about the energetic system. That’s all the only language that we knew. And it wasn’t until later that many people, it’s almost like it got too big to ignore. And so a lot of people in different universities started to it started to pique their interest. So far, there has been 300 published studies around the effectiveness of tapping. That includes foreign studies as well. There’s countries all over the world that are also studying it. 120 of those are peer reviewed, and then 50 of them are randomized trials. So that’s really the gold standard. The the study that I think really took things to a new level that really piqued the interest of the scientific community was one done in Bond University by a woman named Doctor Peter Stapleton. And she did a replica study, which means this study had already been done in the past. It was studying cortisol levels, but the one that was done in the past was by someone outside of a university who was passionate about tapping. Well, she’s in a university. She decides, let’s let’s replicate this study. And so they had three groups of people. They had one group who was doing tapping.

Jessica Ortner: [00:17:39] They had a second group that was doing Psychoeducation, which means you’re learning about how to think differently, how to reframe a problem. And then they had a third control group, which was just relaxing. And what they were testing was their cortisol. Cortisol is often known as the stress hormone. We all need cortisol to help us wake up in the morning. But what tends to happen is we have an overproduction of cortisol due to stress. And when you talk to any experts in the field of brain health, digestion, immune health, really across the board, doctors will say, you want to feel better, you’ve got to lower cortisol. You have to lower your stress. In this study, they found out, they found out that the decrease of cortisol was 43% from one session. The control group, which was the talk therapy, it did go down. It went down by 19%. And then the talk, the sorry, the relaxed group, it actually went up by 2%. And they think it’s because they told them they’re not allowed to look at their cell phones because they were trying to control it. And I think that created anxiety for, for people who are dependent. But let’s talk about this 43% decrease in cortisol. So not only are people saying, I feel better, I feel less stressed, but there’s biomarkers showing that cortisol levels are going down.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:05] Was this from one one session or like a series of sessions over time?

Jessica Ortner: [00:19:11] This was with one session.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:13] Got it. So if a single session can make a fairly immediate change, I guess the curiosity becomes what if this becomes a practice? Like what if this is just a part of your life that, um, you do on a daily or on a, on a regular basis?

Jessica Ortner: [00:19:27] Yeah. Well that’s, that’s exactly it. And, um, and I do think it’s good to have a distinction between the tapping that we do that your wife enjoys from our tapping meditations. And then also there are therapists or people trained in tapping who work one on one. So for example, the studies that I think are the most incredible, but almost I’m almost disappointed by how good they are because I feel like it creates skepticism or the studies around PTSD. But the studies have been so great that the VA has now approved tapping to be used by therapists. So if you are a veteran, there’s many therapists that are incorporating tapping. And what they’re realizing is that when you have a traumatic experience and you’re reliving it, your body is going into that fight or flight. So if you’re now with a therapist, instead of just talking about it and reliving it in your body, if you start to stimulate the points, you’re creating this new sensory of safety. And it’s called memory reconsolidation, because when you have a memory, you’ll start to have that stress response because it’s saved with that response. When you think about a memory, what neuroscientists are realizing is you really unlock it. You can think about something in your past, and the same emotions will come up that you experience in that moment, even if it happened 25 years ago. And then when you stop thinking about it and you move on, it saves the same way. But if you think of a memory and you open that file and now instead of reliving the trauma, you’re now using your body to send that signal of safety. What happens is that memory saves differently.

Jessica Ortner: [00:21:12] What happens stays the same, but it’s not triggering your body in the same way. And so that’s what we’re seeing when therapists are working with those who have PTSD. Then we have the tapping meditation, where my brothers and I saw these incredible results, and we thought, this is incredible. And we still have the same problem. It’s dependent on someone else. And when it’s 3:00 in the morning, you’re not going to call your therapist and it’s 3:00 in the morning and you’re panicking. It’s hard to meditate. So we created these tapping meditations, which will lead you for 10 to 15 minutes to acknowledge how you’re feeling, to send that signal of safety before moving to, to feeling better to a different state using the tapping. So we have tapping with therapists, and then we have tapping meditations. What’s extraordinary about the tapping meditations is that within our app, the tapping solution app, we measure 0 to 10. How do you feel so we don’t celebrate? Oh, you’ve been here for three days. Like most apps do, they just celebrate that you came back? We’re like, is your anxiety better? Let’s see the scale. We’ve had 35 million tapping meditations completed. 18 million of those have data sets, which means people actively put in a before and an after exactly from the 0 to 10 scale. So we have 18 million data points. There is no app in the mental health world that has that kind of documentation. And because of that now, certain universities like Yale and Harvard Medical School are turning their heads going. Can we look at that data? And that’s created a lot of great relationships and more research that’s now in process.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:58] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So which makes me want to know, what is that data showing you like the before and after data.

Jessica Ortner: [00:23:08] Yeah. It’s incredible. So for example, we have a tapping meditation called Releasing Anxiety. And it is a nine minute tapping meditation. And after a million plays, it had a 41% reduction in anxiety. So 41% average decrease in anxiety in nine minutes. And that’s, that’s a million data points. So it’s not like 50 people or 25 people. It’s after a million sessions.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:37] Yeah. And I mean, um, it sounds stunning. Important to note also, and like you were just talking, there’s a wide range of evidence that you can look at like the, the gold standard, you know, like often university placebo, double blind, controlled and, and then there’s the, the data that you just shared, which is it doesn’t have those, but what you have is, is big data, a massive, massive data set where you look at that. Um, it’s interesting also because one of the questions often with any kind of experiment is causation versus correlation, you know, like, is it just that this is happening at the same time? Or are there other things, you know, are they correlated with each other or is one thing actually causing the other? I mean, it’s interesting because if you have data that shows somebody starts in this state, you know, like a certain heightened anxiety, they do a nine minute intervention. And then there’s a 41% reduction after that intervention, you’ve got a million data points that show it. You know, that starts to argue more towards causation, which is a a hard thing often to show.

Jessica Ortner: [00:24:42] Mhm. Yeah. What’s interesting too about the tapping is that you’re not using positive thinking. You’re actually starting by focusing on the negative. So you would assume that if you’re just focusing on how bad you feel that you would feel worse, right? But what you’re doing is you’re retraining your body to say, even though I have this thought, I’m safe. And so if you have a thought, but your body feels safe, well, you can think a negative thought, but it doesn’t mean you believe it because of your body. And that’s why sometimes, you know, if someone says to you, you’re enough, you’re worthy, you’re wonderful, your body can tense up and you can go, oh no, I don’t believe that’s uncomfortable to hear. I don’t believe that to be true. And you take that physical reaction as evidence that you are not enough, because that would feel more comfortable. It must be true. But when you tap on those feelings on that resistance and you allow your body to feel safe, then you’re able to really let those things land. It’s almost like weeding before you plant. So we’re not just, you know, thinking positive or saying it’s going to work. We’re allowing people to go to their darker places to tap and to send that calming signal.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:58] Yeah. Which brings up another curiosity of mine. Um, it sounds like what you’re also implying is that you do not have to believe that this works for it to work. Is that accurate?

Jessica Ortner: [00:26:09] Yes, it’s very accurate. And we see it a lot from we’ll get emails from people going, my wife made me do this and I did not want to do this. And I’ve had a breakthrough. And I know from myself of tapping and being incredibly skeptical. So you don’t have to believe it works. You just have to give it a try and it works differently for different people. We’ll also be real. Some people are like, oh yeah, I feel a little bit better. And other people will go, oh my gosh, that was incredible. So we all react to it a little bit different. But I have seen the biggest skeptics just come out so surprised.

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:45] Because we hear that inflammation is so connected to so many different things. Um, are you aware of any, any research on tapping and inflammatory states?

Jessica Ortner: [00:26:54] There’s been research around. It was a small study, but showing gene expression after tapping and found that certain genes that correlated to inflammation were turned down after tapping. What I find so fascinating is how many people come and they focus on tapping for back pain or knee pain or headaches. And when I first started doing this, I was very skeptical about that. Like I understood the emotional component that you can feel less angry or feel less stressed, but for your back pain to go down. That didn’t make sense to me when I started to the point that when we were making the documentary, we were we wanted people from all different walks of life. And there was this one woman named Patricia who came to us and she showed us her X-ray. Her back just looked like you could see the iron rod, and she damaged her spinal cord, had to have emergency surgery. And she was so grateful that she could still use her legs. But the pain followed her everywhere and her life began to be dictated by this pain. So my brother goes, she seems great. Let’s use her. I go, absolutely not. This isn’t an emotional problem. He goes, Jess, I really think that we’re underestimating the emotional aspect of a trauma like this when it comes to recovery. And what was so fascinating is as she started to work with tapping practitioners and talking about her pain, what came up wasn’t the incident. What came up was that she comes from a military family where independence is so important, and after that injury, she needed to have her mom and dad help her use the bathroom, help her shower.

Jessica Ortner: [00:28:39] Suddenly, her life began to shrink and there was a lot of emotions around what that meant about her value as a person to need help from other people. And she started tapping on the emotional aspects. And she described her pain going down. And by the end of the event, the pain was down to a one or a two. She we followed up six months later to see if it stuck and she said, I go to the movies and I don’t have to ask what kind of seats there are. Like, there’s so much that I can do. That really surprised me to see that result and to see it stick. And I think we’re beginning to figure out why that that why that is happening. This cortisol study explains a lot because lowering cortisol lowers inflammation. Lowering your stress allows your body to do what it’s meant to do, which is heal and recover. So it’s not that the tapping is miraculous and it’s causing you to heal is that it’s lowering the stress, the anxiety, the pressure, so that your body can do what it was designed to do. Tapping is all about safety. It’s sending that safety signal. It’s having a stressful thought that’s creating a panic response, and now interrupting that by stimulating these acupressure points and sending that safety signal. So it really is that that makes complete sense. And I think that contributes to why we’re seeing these results.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:04] Yeah. Have you seen or are you aware of research, you know, MRI, fMRI studies that show any changes in the brain due to tapping?

Jessica Ortner: [00:30:13] Yes. There was a great fMRI study. This was also again done at Bond University in Australia. So Doctor Peter Stapleton before she decided to start doing research on tapping. She specialized in eating disorders on the spectrum. So those who struggle with obesity and those who struggle with anorexia. And in this study, she took 50 women who all qualified as being considered obese. They each had horrible food cravings. They wanted to change. They wanted to make a change. They couldn’t. It’s a craving is very physical. And so what she did is she put them in an fMRI machine, and she started showing them images of the foods that they were craving. So the the ice cream, the potato chips, the fries, and you see their brain lighting up. You see just the image of the craving will magnify the craving. It’s the same reason that we have commercials where you see the burger at McDonald’s dropping, you know, into the patty. Visually, we can create cravings by just seeing those foods. And so you see their brains and she has these images of them lighting up from this craving. Then they went off. They did tapping. It was it was for eight weeks, I think it was four weeks. So they did multiple sessions and the women were saying, wow, I feel so much more in control. I feel so much more relaxed around food. They brought them back in the fMRI machine, and you can see the difference as they started to see those exact same images. Their brains were not lighting up in the same way, and they were also reporting that they felt more in control. So that also shows that tapping can change your relationship to a stimuli. In this case, it was food for someone else. It might be getting over a breakup and their ex-boyfriend, or it could be something else that’s stressing us out. We can imagine that thing and begin to tap to calm our body. And now our brain, our brain reacts differently to that stimuli. Um.

Jonathan Fields: [00:32:20] I mean, that makes it makes a lot of intuitively it makes sense. It’s interesting to hear that there is, um, that there’s some science and some data around that as well. Um, in a moment, I’m going to ask you to sort of like walk me through the steps of this. And if you’re up for it to even guide me through sort of like a micro session, but you just brought up some interesting use cases and that’s making me curious. What are some of the most common applications? Um, stress and anxiety you shared, um, cravings you just mentioned, which I would not have guessed. Um, what are the other things that you see coming up where you see this being genuinely effective on a regular basis?

Jessica Ortner: [00:33:05] Yeah. I’ll say I’ll add quickly because this came up this week. We were reviewing all of our data and surprisingly, our best results are with cravings, which is, wow, surprising to me, huh? Um, so cravings, the other really big one is intrusive thoughts. So we have certain tapping meditations that are called help me stop thinking about what I did, help me stop thinking about what I said, those thought loops that happen at night, that is a really big one. And we have pain relief categories. Looking at your back pain or your knee pain or or the headaches, and I will. The other thing that surprised me is when we were working on our latest book, I. We emailed the list because we get such incredible stories all the time and we thought, let’s just ask, let’s. Any other great stories that we might want to put in this book? What surprised me was the the hundreds of messages of people dealing with grief using, tapping, saying that when they were going through the darkest moments of losing someone when no words could comfort them, that tapping was the thing that helped them take a deep breath and come back into their body. So that’s been my biggest surprise that that’s been such a big part of how tapping has been shared and how it’s used.

Jonathan Fields: [00:34:26] Yeah. I mean, I wonder what the mechanism is. I mean, I guess because of course, a part of just profound loss and grief is going to be stress and maybe anxiety, depending on the circumstances. Um, but so much of, of what else goes on that experience. If you talk to enough people or you’ve experienced it yourself is it’s almost indescribable. You know, um, the mechanism of grief is, is really complex also. And it affects literally every system in your body. I wonder what’s going on there. Do you have have a take?

Jessica Ortner: [00:34:57] I have a theory. I think our mortality is so is impossible for us to mentally comprehend. Suddenly someone disappearing from our lives that was so big and not knowing where are they? Why? It’s. It’s being stuck in your head with such sadness and unanswered questions, and there’s no amount of words that can answer those questions. And so you spiral within your own thoughts, wondering what if it was different? Where are they now? What does this mean? And tapping is a way to comfort yourself in a way that words can’t by bringing you back to your body. And when you’re more relaxed and more comforted, I hear people say, I had a thought or an idea, or I felt them. So I felt a sense of comfort from them. So my theory is that our minds cannot really comprehend grief, and there’s no amount of talking that can settle us the way doing something physical can.

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:08] I’m curious also about, um, social anxiety. That is something that so many people experience on a regular basis. And for many people it it really intrudes in their life. It keeps them from it keeps them from going out and being with, with potential friends, with chosen family, from exploring job opportunities, from, um, so many of the parts of life that, that are, are genuinely good. Um, have you seen, have you seen data or outcomes? Um, in the context of social anxiety where tapping is effective or useful?

Jessica Ortner: [00:36:47] Yeah, absolutely. And the reason that social anxiety exists is it comes back to a survival mechanism. Our nervous system for a moment believes that we are in danger. So someone might think, well, what does that mean? I’m not really in danger hanging out with these people. Well, our ancestors, we survive by being part of a tribe. So if you were rejected, then you were likely not going to survive. So acceptance and wanting to be accepted is part of our survival of wanting to be, you know, wanting to live. Now our world has changed drastically. We’re not in a small tribe. We’re in the internet. We’re meeting new people. It’s expanded, but that primal part of us sees that and goes, mhm. Danger, danger. Something wrong could happen. So what you have to do with the tapping is going back to safety, is send that safety signal to say, I am safe to meet these people, to talk for things safe when things don’t go well, safe when things do go well because there’s no crystal ball, that’s going to give you certainty that a social engagement is going to be okay. But if you feel strong within yourself and you feel safe, you’re willing to take that risk knowing that your life really isn’t in danger. So your body doesn’t have to react with such intensity.

Jonathan Fields: [00:38:07] Okay, so this brings up another question immediately in my mind. Let’s say you’re in a social situation or you’re like, you’re, you know, it’s a 15 minute walk or a ten minute walk, you know, to a friend’s house or you’re on a subway, like going to a dinner party. And you would love for you. You would love to feel good at that party. You’re kind of surrounded by people, though, and you want to do this whole tapping thing. Um, is there any kind of covert way to do this?

Jessica Ortner: [00:38:36] Well, I’ll start by saying do it at home first because you can be prevented. You could be preventative before the stress really hits. If you are scared of social engagement, if you’re scared of speaking in public, if you’re scared of flying, you can feel stressed alone in your bed at 10:00 thinking about it. You don’t actually have to be there to be triggered by it. So use the ability for us to imagine things so vividly that we. We stress ourselves out to your advantage by thinking about the situation and tapping. Just thinking about maybe worst case, feeling awkward, doing some tapping. As you start to relax, you can start to say more positive things like, uh, I’m centered and calm. I speak clearly, this doesn’t really matter. This is not a big deal. I am safe, whatever feels like it lands for you, but you have to first do the tapping on the fear and where you are before you move to something positive. Because you need to train your brain that you’re safe. Even if you think that could happen, you’re safe. And then you could move to something more empowering.

Jonathan Fields: [00:39:47] Do you have to say the statements out loud or can you think them?

Jessica Ortner: [00:39:52] You can think them. But also when you’re saying something, it’s just a more active state to help you focus on how you’re really feeling. But you can say it in your own mind, or you can say it out loud. I think it’s about figuring out what feels the easiest, because if you’re saying it out loud and you’re uncomfortable, you think.

Jonathan Fields: [00:40:09] I may be adding.

Jessica Ortner: [00:40:10] Stress? Yeah. Don’t do it. Say it in your own mind. Um, and to answer your question of doing it before a party, you can just tap on the collarbone point. You can even press and hold to stimulate the point too, if you don’t want to do the tapping, but you don’t have to do the nine points. I’m going to teach everyone the nine points. And what I love about this is that when you have these points, you have it for the rest of your life. You know where they are. So you get rear ended and you’re suddenly in a panic. You’re not going to do a tapping meditation, but when you’re talking to the cop explaining what happened, you could really gently be tapping on your collarbone. Point to just comfort yourself and to get those words out.

Jonathan Fields: [00:40:51] So it’s sort of like if you have the ability to do all nine, that’s optimal. But if you don’t, for some reason, you’ll still get some benefit even with a narrower number of, of locations.

Jessica Ortner: [00:41:05] Exactly.

Jonathan Fields: [00:41:06] Okay, um, let’s do this because I’m sure people like if you’re still with us and I hope you are, um, then you’re probably curious, like, what is like, really? What is this? So, um, maybe walk me through just like an overview and then let’s, let’s do a little mini session together so people can really understand what this is. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

Jessica Ortner: [00:41:31] I’ll show you where the nine points are and I’ll describe them well. So for those who are listening on a, you know, just simply listening, if you’re on a walk right now and you hear me talk about this, just tap, tap along with me. So the first point is on the side of the hand and it’s underneath your pinky on the fleshy part. Okay? It does not matter what side of the body you tap on. Okay, so the meridian lines go down both sides. So it’s underneath the pinky. This is where we start. The next point is the eyebrow point, and it’s where the hair of your eyebrow begins. Okay, perfect. Now follow the hair of your eyebrow until you find yourself on the side of the eye, right on the bone. Perfect. Then we have underneath the eye on the bone.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:17] And we’re really just taking. Is it like the first two fingers?

Jessica Ortner: [00:42:19] Two fingers, and it’s just a firm tap. It should not hurt, but you should feel it like kind of tapping, tapping on a table underneath the nose, between the upper lip and the nose, underneath the mouth, the crease between the chin and the bottom lip. Your collarbone point. If you feel your collarbone point, it’s down an inch on either side. Perfect. Then you have. And if you’re really not sure about the collarbone point, I tell people, just use your whole hand and you can tap on your chest and you’re going to hit it. The next point is underneath your arm and it’s a hand width from your armpit. For women, it tends to be where your bra strap lies. And then the last part point is on the crown of your head. So when we’re tapping and we’re going to give everybody an experience so they can really see what this is like. You start on the side of the hand. That’s called the setup statement. It sets you up for the process. Then you rotate through these eight points. And and as I said before, in the future, if you don’t remember these points like I did the second time I did tapping when I was trying not to cry so loud, I only knew half of them and I still felt the result. So the best thing to do is like, when in doubt, just try and just tap. So with that, Jonathan, should we have an experience?

Jonathan Fields: [00:43:42] Yeah, let’s do it.

Jessica Ortner: [00:43:43] Okay.

Jonathan Fields: [00:43:43] I’m curious.

Jessica Ortner: [00:43:44] So we’re going to keep this short. So I hope we we move the needle a little bit. But just to let you guys know, we’re not going to be doing this for ten minutes. My intention is for everyone to have a bit of an experience.

Jonathan Fields: [00:43:57] So and for everyone joining us, by the way, like join in.

Jessica Ortner: [00:44:01] Join in.

Jonathan Fields: [00:44:01] Yes. I mean, obviously, if you’re like, if you’re not driving or operating heavy machinery.

Jessica Ortner: [00:44:06] Perfect. So let’s take a moment and just check in with how we’re feeling. And we’re going to focus on something general. So it fits the most amount of people. But think about any stress or tension you’re feeling, your to do list, the responsibilities you have. And when you think about everything that you have going on in your life and you notice that stress, just ask yourself, how strong is that stress from 0 to 10, ten being incredibly strong, zero feeling at ease. There’s no perfect number. This is just for you. Just give your stress a number. Perfect. So we’re going to start tapping on the side of the hand. And you can repeat out loud, or you can just repeat within your own mind. So on the side of the hand, even though I’m feeling all of the stress. It’s safe for my body to relax. One more time on the side of the hand. Even though I have so much going on. And I’m being pulled in so many directions. I acknowledge how I feel. We’re going to tap on the eyebrow point. We are going to give a voice to this feeling. So simply repeat all of this pressure. Side of the eye. All of this responsibility. Under the eye. Being pulled in so many directions. Under the nose, I acknowledge what I’m going through. Under the mouth. I recognize this stress. Collarbone. All of this pressure. Under the arm. All of these responsibilities. Top of the head. I’ve been so hard on myself. Eyebrow. Part of me believes. Side of the eye that I need this stress. Under the eye. That it’s just part of life. Under the nose. But what if that wasn’t true? Under the mouth. What if it’s safe to relax? Collarbone. Even before everything is done. Under the arm. It’s safe for my body and my mind to take a break. Top of the head, I am safe. And I am finding my way. All right. Take a deep breath in. And exhale. So for many of you, congratulations. You’ve experienced your first two tapping rounds. And Jonathan, a very quick experience. But how did that feel for you?

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:35] Um, it felt easeful um calming. The eye is interesting. I noticed in sort of like the second round through before you, you said I am safe. You started with a question like what if basically like, what if I was safe? Like, so like almost giving your my brain a chance to like instead of immediately rejecting and saying, but I’m not. Um, it was like it planted the question. I’d be like, well, what if, um, it just kind of, I felt this sense of like, it opened me a little bit to the possibility before I then made the statement that says I am safe. Was that intentional?

Jessica Ortner: [00:49:17] It is. It’s intentional because when we say things like, maybe, maybe it’s okay to relax, or what if it’s okay to relax? It’s an easy way. We don’t want to like force feed ourselves relaxation. We want ourselves to be able to land there naturally. This is why this is such it’s a beautiful combination of these ancient Chinese acupressure points and modern psychology of realizing that it’s within the accepting and the questioning that we begin to move towards relief.

Jonathan Fields: [00:49:47] Yeah. Um, no. Really cool. So a couple of questions just to, to follow up on this. Um, if I, if this was an actual, if I was like at home and I was, you know, like kind of stressing about something or feeling something or trying to or maybe I was preparing for a talk and I was nervous. Um, how long would I actually, how long would an actual full session be?

Jessica Ortner: [00:50:10] That’s like the million dollar question that I always get asked that I wish I had an answer, but everybody is so different. So with when we do tapping meditations, we do 15 minutes because or under 15 minutes because we feel like for most people, that’s an easy thing to say yes to. A lot of times they’re five minutes because some tapping is better than no tapping. If you’re doing it by yourself, I would say giving yourself 10 to 15 minutes and taking breaks, like being able to start and go, I am enraged with this person. I am going to tap and I’m going to pretend I’m speaking to a friend and I’m going to tell them why they wronged me all. Or literally call your friend. You’re already going to tell them the story, but tap on these points while you’re talking about it. I do this with my kids all the time. They’ll come to me crying over something that happened, and I’ll be like, okay, you can tell me everything that happened, but is it okay if I tap while you tell me? And they go, yeah. And I start to tap. And they said, then they did this and I told them not to. And I could see like, as they are talking about it, they’re one acknowledging how they feel and they’re sending a calming signal saying that they’re safe. And so I see their whole body begin to relax as they tell me the story. So it really is about knowing the points. Allow yourself to to be upset, to simply talk about it and then only move towards the maybe statements or how you want to feel if it feels true, if you’re rejecting it, if you’re saying I am enough and your whole body is going, no, you’re moving too fast to the positive, or you can experience, you know, a tapping meditation and be led through it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:51:47] Mhm. Yeah. It’s funny as you’re describing that also, people often ask me about meditation and, um, and I, and I’m a huge advocate of meditation. It’s been a big part of my life for many, many, many years. And I almost always invite people if they’ve never done it before, rather than just sort of like trying to sit quietly and do the thing themselves. Um, find just a couple of guided versions, you know, find voices that you like, find just approaches and durations that just kind of work for you and let yourself be guided. So in the beginning days, especially until you start to really feel comfortable and you have the language yourself, and then slowly experiment with moving out and just doing it completely on your own. Um, would you take a similar approach?

Jessica Ortner: [00:52:33] I wish I said exactly that answer. I’m going to steal that for my next podcast. That’s exactly it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:52:39] Awesome. And for those listening, I’ve just mentioned it very early in our conversation, but, um, they have created an app with a, how many meditations hour sessions are on there now?

Jessica Ortner: [00:52:50] I think we’re at 700, right?

Jonathan Fields: [00:52:52] So there’s, I mean, this is a great place to start. It’s a fantastic resource. Um, and I guess one final curiosity here too. You’ve been doing this for closing in on two decades now. Started as a total skeptic, didn’t expect this in your life, experienced it and something. And you said, this has to be a part of what I’m doing. Not only you, but like your family, your siblings. Um, why does this matter so much to you?

Jessica Ortner: [00:53:22] Um, that’s such a beautiful question. I feel really deeply. I think the people who are attracted to this kind of work are people who feel deeply. And I know what it feels like to not feel at home in your body, to feel lost. And tapping gave me control again. It helped me begin to question the voices in my head that were saying that I was not good enough, or that I wasn’t going to amount to anything. And it’s so important to me to share because so often we are living a lie. We are believing that we’re not good enough and we’re collecting evidence to prove ourselves right. And the moment we let go of the stress and we connect with that silent part within, we start to doubt those negative thoughts and realize that we’re so much more powerful than we ever expected, and that creates that ripple effect. So I think my I’m a very long way to answer this, but I’ll, I will try to condense it by saying, when you feel deeply and you felt such pain, when you feel relief, you can’t help but to want to share it with everybody.

Jonathan Fields: [00:54:37] Mhm. It feels a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up.

Jessica Ortner: [00:54:49] To live a good life is to care about the people who love you and only care for their opinions. To live a good life is to not be dictated by the world around you, but to have a core group of people that you love and that love you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:55:05] Mhm. Thank you. So let’s talk about some of the big AHAs and actionable takeaways from this convo. One thing that I’m really kind of noodling on is something that Jessica said early on, almost as a throwaway, but it stayed with me. Your nervous system does not care if you reach your goals. It cares about survival. And when we understand that a lot of things that kind of click into place, why logic doesn’t touch the physical anxiety, why you’re enough can make your body tense instead of relax, and why you can know something is safe and still feel panicked. Three things from this conversation that I also want you to carry with you the quote weeding before planting idea. You cannot skip over the hard feeling to get to the relief. You have to let the body acknowledge what it’s actually holding first. That’s what the setup statement does in tapping. And it’s it’s why it it works. You know, when positive affirmations alone don’t. The second is memory reconsolidation. It turns out when you open a memory and your body sends a safety signal. At the same time, the memory. It just saves down differently. That has applications not just for tapping, but for how you approach any hard thing from your past. And then that 43%, number one session, measurable cortisol reduction, peer reviewed study that Jessica shared.

Jonathan Fields: [00:56:28] That’s not just a claim that sounds like a science backed biomarker to me. I’ll be exploring that in more depth myself. Notice this week where your body is ahead of your thinking, where you tense before you’ve decided to. That gap is where this work lives. And hey, before you leave next week, we’re sitting down with an old friend, Leisa Peterson, to talk about why the quiet question am I actually behind with money? What is enough? Never goes away. No matter how many articles you read or podcasts you’ve listened to, and what it actually takes to resolve it at the level that it lives. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss that or any other upcoming episodes. And do me a quick favor, share this with just one person. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Troy Young. Kris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven’t already, please go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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