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Speaker 2: I also suffer from claustrophobia. The idea of going into
Speaker 2: a cave or even thinking about, you know, getting stuck
Speaker 2: in a cave causes me great mental distress. I mean,
Speaker 2: does this mean I can do this at home on
Speaker 2: my own or doesn't need to be done under the
Speaker 2: supervision of a psychologist because he or she are sort
Speaker 2: of at the same time I'm tapping, they're kind of
Speaker 2: probing and asking me to think about certain things and
Speaker 2: directing me. Is that essential, very good question.
Speaker 3: It is both a self help technique and a technique
Speaker 3: that really helps the clinician be more effective. So as
Speaker 3: a self help technique, there is a fairly simple protocol
Speaker 3: that you can use, and it works on a remarkable
Speaker 3: number of things. And I can't tell you whether the
Speaker 3: self help version would be enough for you, but it
Speaker 3: would almost certainly decrease the amount of anxiety that you
Speaker 3: have when you think about or actually go into something
Speaker 3: like a cave. And sometimes there's something deeper that comes
Speaker 3: up that really does require extra assistance, such as the
Speaker 3: woman who went back to her memory of being in
Speaker 3: trapped in that appliance box and just screaming. If the
Speaker 3: therapist wasn't able to really help her to process that,
Speaker 3: it might just have been another re traumatization. So there's
Speaker 3: the one has to pace oneself. But there's a lot
Speaker 3: that you can do. In fact, the book that you're mentioning,
Speaker 3: we had test drivers who were not familiar with energy psychology,
Speaker 3: as well as experts and energy psychology test drive all
Speaker 3: the exercises in the book to be sure that it
Speaker 3: can be used on a self help basis, because Donna Eden,
Speaker 3: my wife, and I co authors have had many experiences
Speaker 3: of people getting a great deal of help when we
Speaker 3: are instructing them, but going through a book or an app.
Speaker 3: There are also apps. It does not have a therapist there,
Speaker 3: and each of the people that did the book as
Speaker 3: test drivers found that it was very helpful and that
Speaker 3: there were instructions in the book of where to go
Speaker 3: if you were starting to get overwhelmed. So if, for instance,
Speaker 3: the woman that I spoke of, we're doing this on
Speaker 3: her own and we're following the instructions in the book,
Speaker 3: when she started to get overwhelmed, she would shift from
Speaker 3: the situation to using some energy healing techniques that immediately
Speaker 3: calm the body so that she could have gotten centered
Speaker 3: again and then returned to the work. So there's a
Speaker 3: great deal that can be done on a self help basis.
Speaker 3: The way that we structured the book is that each
Speaker 3: chapter that like, for instance, there's a chapter that deals
Speaker 3: with depression, it starts off dealing with sadness, the kinds
Speaker 3: of feelings that everybody has as they go through their life,
Speaker 3: and showing how to use this not to make sadness
Speaker 3: go away necessarily, but to really get the lessons that
Speaker 3: the sadness is trying to teach you, to find out
Speaker 3: what that sadness is telling you about your life and
Speaker 3: what you need to process that perhaps you haven't processed yet.
Speaker 3: But as it goes in from sadness to depression, that's
Speaker 3: where we tell the reader that if you're having extreme depression,
Speaker 3: chronic depression, depression that goes back to childhood for instance,
Speaker 3: you really need to work along with the therapist as
Speaker 3: you use these techniques. So the second half of the
Speaker 3: chapter teaches the person how to work within therapy, and
Speaker 3: it also teaches therapists how to apply this technique applied
Speaker 3: tapping to the best practices psychology has to offer for
Speaker 3: working with depression. Same thing with the chapter on anxiety.
Speaker 3: It starts out with basic fears and then goes all
Speaker 3: the way up through panic up to PTSD. Chapter on
Speaker 3: addiction starts out with working with habits and then goes
Speaker 3: up to peak to working with addictions. So it's so,
Speaker 3: it's so the answer, Richard is really both that there's
Speaker 3: a great deal you can do on a self help basis,
Speaker 3: but there is a point where it really is advisable
Speaker 3: to be working with somebody that is skilled.
Speaker 2: Okay, so tapping is you mentioned you know that the
Speaker 2: patient in the beginning you mentioned with claustrophobia was instructed
Speaker 2: to tap on certain acupuncture points. Are there specific acupuncture
Speaker 2: points that you tap on for each, let's say, mental issue,
Speaker 2: whether it's is there an a pressure point for depression,
Speaker 2: another one for claustrophobia, another one for addiction.
Speaker 3: Very good question. Originally there was there were different protocols
Speaker 3: that the founder of this approach used for different conditions.
Speaker 3: In the nineteen eighties, one of his students, who is
Speaker 3: an engineer as well as a hypnotist, said, you know,
Speaker 3: this can be simplified, and he came up with one approach.
Speaker 3: It's all one size fits all way of doing it.
Speaker 3: So he chose a series of points. We use twelve
Speaker 3: points in the book Don and I, but usually they're
Speaker 3: between eight and fourteen points that are used that are
Speaker 3: used for every condition. So in theory, what you're doing
Speaker 3: is you're getting the whole energy system moving in a
Speaker 3: way that is healing that helps to overcome the problem.
Speaker 3: And so there really are two different theories for why
Speaker 3: this works. One is outside of science and one is
Speaker 3: within science. The one that's outside of science is based
Speaker 3: on acupuncture and the acupuncture meridians, and that you are
Speaker 3: balancing the bodies the energy systems, that trauma is caught
Speaker 3: in the energy system and you're really addressing it that way.
Speaker 3: The approach that I talk about much more has to
Speaker 3: do with nature. The electrical nature of acupuncture points. That
Speaker 3: there is a difference between an acupuncture point and an
Speaker 3: adjacent point. Electrochemically, acupuncture point induct electricity much more than
Speaker 3: other points. So that's the first thing that it needs
Speaker 3: to be interested. The second thing is that tapping on
Speaker 3: an acupuncture point generates an electrical signal, and that is
Speaker 3: a well known process that doesn't come from energy psychologists
Speaker 3: from physics and biology that there are certain cells that
Speaker 3: when pressure is applied to them, it opens up ion
Speaker 3: channels that wind up aiding a electrical signal that goes
Speaker 3: to the nervous system and that also appears to go
Speaker 3: to the body's connective tissue, and from the connective tissue
Speaker 3: has a lot of collagen, which is a semiconductor, which
Speaker 3: means that when that signal hits the connective tissue, it
Speaker 3: can move very fast, almost speed of light, fast to
Speaker 3: wherever it is needed and where is it needed. What
Speaker 3: happens is that whatever the person is thinking about, whatever
Speaker 3: part of the brain is active when they're thinking about
Speaker 3: their problem or their condition or their goal, that becomes
Speaker 3: like a magnet that attracts the signal to that part
Speaker 3: of the brain. So you are tapping on this point,
Speaker 3: for instance, on your hand, and you are thinking of
Speaker 3: going into a cave. When you think about going into
Speaker 3: a cave, it activates your amignala, the threat activation part
Speaker 3: of the brain that tracks that signals from tapping on
Speaker 3: your hand goes really connective tissue to the brain and
Speaker 3: it gives the instruction to calm to deactivate the amgalo
Speaker 3: from the threat response.
Speaker 2: Is there any scientific are there studies like could you
Speaker 2: see this on a brain scan or I don't know,
Speaker 2: some sort of imaging device while you're tapping, you can
Speaker 2: see the brain centers that are activated.
Speaker 3: Right. All this is fairly preliminary, but there are some
Speaker 3: studies that really do show it. For instance, there is
Speaker 3: an FMRII study, which is a very sophisticated imaging tool
Speaker 3: that shows where blood is flowing in the brain, which
Speaker 3: means that where the blood is flowing is where it
Speaker 3: is going to parts of the brain that are active.
Speaker 3: That once they did a study of pain and a
Speaker 3: study of food cravings. In a study of food cravings,
Speaker 3: what they did was very clever because you can't cap
Speaker 3: while someone's in an fMRI machine. So what they did
Speaker 3: was they you can flash images. So they there's a
Speaker 3: group of people of obese people who were in a
Speaker 3: program to use weights. Before they entered the program, they
Speaker 3: went to the fMRI and images of junk food were
Speaker 3: flashed in front of their eyes, and the FMR showed
Speaker 3: what parts of their brain light up when they see
Speaker 3: these junk foods, and the parts of the brain that
Speaker 3: light lit up had to do with craving, had to
Speaker 3: do with reinforcement, had to do with desire. Then they
Speaker 3: went through twelve tapping sessions group tapping sessions actually, which
Speaker 3: were all oriented towards losing weight towards craving, And at
Speaker 3: the end of the twelve they got back into the
Speaker 3: machine and the FMRII showed that even though they saw
Speaker 3: the exact same images of junk food, those parts of
Speaker 3: the brain that had to do with craving did not
Speaker 3: lie up, so the blood did not flow there. So
Speaker 3: there was a shift that in those twelve sessions from
Speaker 3: being very vulnerable to the craving for those foods to
Speaker 3: being not vulnerable at all. This corresponded with weight loss
Speaker 3: and corresponded with subjective reports of feeling of experience being
Speaker 3: less craving. So what you had there is that the
Speaker 3: tapping had sent signals to the parts of the brain
Speaker 3: that we're activated when they would think of the jump
Speaker 3: fruit and that, and then it reduced the activity in
Speaker 3: those parts of the brain.
Speaker 2: That's remarkable. What about what about an addiction, whether there's
Speaker 2: a strong there's a like a physiological dependency, like I
Speaker 2: don't know, an opioid addiction. Would this tapping technique work
Speaker 2: with that type of an addiction.
Speaker 3: Yes, the addictions are tough. Serious addictions require a multi
Speaker 3: modal approach, but tapping can really help. There are clinics
Speaker 3: now that we're in patient clinics where tapping is the
Speaker 3: major therapy that it's used very few, but they're starting
Speaker 3: to take roots. So, but you don't throw away all
Speaker 3: the other things that you utilize intriguing addiction you but
Speaker 3: what the tapping does is, like with the food cravings,
Speaker 3: it will decrease the amount of of pulls that the
Speaker 3: object of choice, whether it's a drug or pornography or
Speaker 3: whatever it is, it will decrease the chemical pull towards
Speaker 3: that so that other you know, addictions have changed the
Speaker 3: person's life. So you're you're really having to work with
Speaker 3: all the ways that their relationships may may be in trouble.
Speaker 3: All that is part of the package in working with
Speaker 3: somebody with an addiction. You often want peer support twelve
Speaker 3: twelve step groups or whatever kinds of group peer support
Speaker 3: is most effective for that particular kind of addition. So
Speaker 3: so it's not like an easy you just tap the
Speaker 3: addiction away. No, it's not like that at all, but
Speaker 3: it can really be a very strong component of a
Speaker 3: full program for working with addictions.
Speaker 2: You began our discussion talking about how I guess one
Speaker 2: of the directors at the Johns Hopkins Medical Center sent
Speaker 2: you to California to search out different modalities. When you
Speaker 2: came back with him and you told him about tapping
Speaker 2: and explained how it worked, what was his.
Speaker 3: Response, Well, it was actually ten years before I'd ever
Speaker 3: heard of tapping, so I had looked at all. So
Speaker 3: it had prepared me to really be skeptical about tapping,
Speaker 3: because I had been skeptical of all these other therapies.
Speaker 3: As it turned out. He was the chairman of the
Speaker 3: Department of Psychiatry, Joel Elkie's, and a wonderful man, and
Speaker 3: I kept in touch with him over the years because
Speaker 3: he really helped my career in tremendous ways. And so
Speaker 3: when I started to get into energy psychology and I
Speaker 3: wrote my first book on it, he was very skeptical
Speaker 3: at first, and I actually helped him. You know, he
Speaker 3: was elderly at this point and everybody was using computers
Speaker 3: and he found that very frightening, and I helped him
Speaker 3: get over his fear of using computers, and that really
Speaker 3: won him over so that he actually, with the full,
Speaker 3: you know, full authority of his incredible, you know position,
Speaker 3: he endorsed the book. He gave it a very strong endorsement,
Speaker 3: and so that was So that's the kind of roundabout
Speaker 3: answer to your question. He didn't that study when I
Speaker 3: was in my late twenties, did not food tapping that
Speaker 3: I came back, There was a full circle back to
Speaker 3: the person that commissioned to study.
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