Today’s passage, “Tapping away stress.” Dr. Roger Callahan, a clinical therapist and fellow with the American Academy of Psychotherapists Treating Addictions, in the 1980s had a client named, Mary, who had severe phobia of water.  He went through traditional therapeutic processes with her, to visualize a swimming pool, to expose her to small amounts of actual water and etcetera. 

Mary was in his office one day complaining of how her stomach would turn or she would feel bouts of nervous butterflies in her belly whenever she saw water. Dr. Callahan had been reading about the Chinese Meredian theory, which said the stomach meredian was located beneath the eye. He had an idea... He asked Mary to think of the water, while tapping beneath her eye to activate the stomach meridean.  As she looked at the picture of the swimming pool, she began tapping under her eye and almost immediately she said that her fear had evaporated, the phobia of water was gone.

The meridian system is a concept in traditional Chinese medicine. Meridians are thought of as pathways through which life-energy, what is qi, flows.  Although, there is little scientific evidence supportive of the claim, millions have reported the benefits from acupuncture, acupressure and reflexology, which also use the body’s energetic meridian points to ease or cure all sorts of ailments, including stress and depression.

So, in tapping the face, inside the wrist, the arms and other points may alleviate stress because the message of safety it sends to the amygdala.
 
 So what is the amygdala? The amygdala is the part of your brain that interprets your environment if it senses or perceives danger, it sends a distress signal triggering perhaps a trauma response. A great way to explain this to children is to use the upstairs/downstairs metaphor.

The amygdala is part of our downstairs brain.  We can literally be trapped ‘downstairs’ in a battle of fight or flight because the amygdala is in control downstairs. The downstairs brain is seen as more primitive.  Our upstairs brain contains the cerebral cortex and its various parts, including the middle prefrontal cortex located behind the forehead. So how does tapping take us from the downstairs ‘fear’ mode to upstairs prefrontal cortex ‘safe and secure’ mode? What a great visualization that is to ascend a staircase to safety…

 Well think of it this way. If someone robbed you at gunpoint and kickstarted your fight or flight response, would you be able to suddenly start tapping the cheeks or the forehead of your face? So when for someone with PTST, post traumatic stress disorder, tapping sends calming messages from the upstairs to the downstairs brain to say, hold up a second, you’re ok.  

If you combine tapping with re-processing of trauma by victualing what happened as you tap yourself and speak statements of safety, the idea is the trauma alleviates and the healing begins.

 If you’d like to learn more about self-healing through tapping, I am including a link to the practitioner I admire as expert in the field, Nick Ortner in the details section episode.

Remember the adage, “Check your feet”. If you are in a state of PTST, your body is shutting down, you’re having a panic attack, a memory, a phobia, “Check your feet” is a reminder to look down at your feet in order to breathe. Because by looking at your feet, welcome in the presence of awareness that you are not in that place. You’re a survivor. And, you survived that experience for a reason.

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