Can EFT tapping help reduce stress and anxiety?

EFT tapping claims to help relieve stress and anxiety. So what is it exactly and does it work? Sinead Corcoran takes a tapping session to find out.

I'll be honest, I've always been cynical of the woo-woo. I guzzle anti-anxiety medications like they're going out of fashion and trust doctors and psychiatrists with my life – but I've never dabbled in alternative therapies, until now.

Emotional Freedom Techniques or "tapping" is just that. You tippy-tap away on your body parts while chanting that "yes you may have anxiety but you love and accept yourself anyway".

You can probably see why I'd be cynical. Until I tried it that is.

After just a few minutes of tapping on my forehead, cheeks and collarbones while chanting away, my anxiety went from being a "big, red, level five blob across my chest", (I had to describe it) to "smallish, blue, level two, little spots of anx".

You're probably wondering who invented this bizarre technique. Energy Tapping was first introduced over 30 years ago by Dr Roger Callahan, with a modality he called Thought Field Therapy.

American engineering graduate Gary Craig then modified the technique to be more user-friendly and called his modality Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). And move over TED talks, because authors and motivational speakers Nick and Jessica Ortner then taught the technique to millions of people through their movies and the Tapping World Summit. A world summit of tippy tappers!

Barbe Starke, certified and registered advanced EFT practitioner at Empower You in Auckland assured me it's not as hippie as it sounds.
"By tapping on specific meridian endpoints, we clear blocked energy in the meridian tunnels and send calming signals to the brain - releasing the stress response or fight and flight response," she says.
"This in turn has the effect of bringing us back into presence, clearing brain fog, promoting clarity of thinking, sharper focus and better decision-making and allowing our physical body the opportunity to come back into equilibrium."

But you don't have to take Starke's word for it, there's legit science behind it. Studies by the Harvard Medical School revealed that tapping can drastically reduce or eliminate stress in the amygdala, the brain's emotional centre.

Dr Dawson Church, one of the world's experts on energy psychology also conducted a study where the cortisol levels were measured in participants after one hour of tapping. The results showed a reduction of 24 - 50 per cent in cortisol levels—compared to the control group who experienced a nearly insignificant reduction.

If you want to try EFT tapping, you can perform your own sequences (give YouTube a hoon) or you can work with a practitioner.

If you're a therapy-goer like me, you'll know that any sort of emotional work can leave you feeling really drained and wiped out. Starke recommends that post the tapping session, you should chill out and let your mind rest. And your fingertips! They did a great job.
"It is a good idea if you can have some downtime after a session to allow for memory reconsolidation and therefore long-term results," she says.

Starke also says you should take a load off by listening to some healing sounds, or even have a nap – and you don't have to tell me twice to hit the hay.

So despite my original cynicism of drumming my fingertips on my head as a means to alleviate my chronic anxiety, consider me a tapping convert. And now if you see me in the street looking like a one-woman band, you'll know what I'm doing.