Anxiety can get in the way of patients achieving their health goals—especially when a practitioner recommends significant lifestyle and nutrition changes. Patients may feel suffocated by the new regimen and then make changes for a while but revert back—or they may not make them at all. The Emotional Freedom Technique, also known as tapping, can help patients ease anxiety and better achieve their health goals. It can also help with the subjective experience of pain or be used in service of a specific health goal, like overcoming weight loss resistance. In this podcast, Dr. Fitzgerald talks to Jessica Ortner, author of The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss & Body Confidence, about how tapping could help patients in a functional-medicine clinic setting. And, together, they walk step-by-step through a round of tapping so listeners can hear how it’s done (and follow along).
In this podcast, you’ll hear:
- How Jessica discovered tapping
- How she’s used tapping to overcome the painful personal trauma
- How she’s helped others meet their goals through tapping
- How to tap
- How to help guide someone through tapping
- When tapping might be appropriate (and when it’s not)
- How tapping could be used in a functional-medicine clinic setting
- How tapping can be useful in weight loss resistance
- How to use tapping to promote sleep
JESSICA ORTNER is the NY Times bestselling author of “The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss and Body Confidence” and producer of The Tapping Solution, the breakthrough documentary film on EFT tapping. She has led more than 5,000 women through her revolutionary Weight Loss and Body Confidence online program, and she is also the host of The Tapping World Summit, an annual online event that has attracted more than 1,000,000 attendees from around the world. Her new book, The Tapping Solution to Create Lasting Change comes out September 4th, 2018.
Links:
- Jessica’s Website / Books / Resources
- Visual Chart (See Post Bottom) / Instructions used for Tapping Points
- TODAY Show Clip
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Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Hi everybody, welcome to New Frontiers in Functional Medicine, where we are interviewing the best minds in functional medicine and today is no exception, we are going to be talking about all things tapping with one of the premiere tappers, if you will, in the world, Jessica Ortner, who actually happens to live in my town.
Let me tell you a little bit about Jessica. She is a New York Times Best-Selling Author of the Tapping Solution for Weight Loss and Body Confidence. She’s the producer of the “Tapping Solution,” the break-through documentary film on EFT tapping. She’s led more than five thousand women through her revolutionary weight loss and body confidence online program and she’s the host of the Tapping World Summit, an annual online event that has attracted more than a million attendees from around the world. Her new book, The Tapping Solution to Create Lasting Change, is coming out this September.
Jessica, welcome to New Frontiers.
Jessica Ortner: Thank you so much, I’m such a fan, so it’s amazing to be on here sharing what I love.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I know, I know it’s just terrific that you’re around the corner. I was just honored to have you pop into my office a few months ago and for us to get a chance to connect. Your work is so important, and, clinicians, if you are not familiar with tapping this is a really important tool. We’re going to be talking about some clinical applications that you can bring in with your patients and use in your practice in real-time or give them some tools to take home so we’re going to get to that in a second.
But Jessica, I want to know first of all what is tapping, how you found tapping and I want to know a little bit about your journey to using tapping and sort of becoming this ‘Tap Master.’
Jessica Ortner: Right. So I always say this joke, it’s pretty corny but it’s not tap dancing. Just for anyone who is curious, this isn’t a workout class. What we’re doing is we’re actually tapping on acupressure points to relieve stress.
And so what you do is…when we have an anxiety or a fear, or say we’re working with a client and we suddenly tell them that they need to make a lifestyle change. Well, when we give them that advice, sometimes they can’t just take it because there’s all these emotions around it. Emotions of overwhelm, of fear, of well what does that mean about the way that I can live or … and so when we have these fears and this anxiety we don’t just experience it in our head, we feel it in our whole body. So we tend to have pressure in our chest, or tightness in our stomach, sometimes it can manifest even like a literal pain in the neck …
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yes.
Jessica Ortner: Which is why we have sayings like “Oh, she’s such a pain in the neck.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Right, or a nervous stomach and …
Jessica Ortner: Yeah, exactly.
And so, what we’re really doing here is as we’re addressing these feelings we’re bringing in the body, which is where we’re feeling these emotions, and so with tapping you actually focus on what is bothering you. So it’s the opposite of just jumping into positive thinking. You’re really honoring the experience your body is having and as you’re talking about the experience you begin to stimulate these acupressure points by just using two or three fingers to tap on these nine different points and what that does is it sends this calming signal to the brain so you get to the point where you can have that same thought but you don’t feel the physical intensity and when we have a thought but the body feels calm then it’s easier to think more positively, to look at it in a new light.
But in the moment when we’re really feeling stress and we just feel it in our whole body if someone gives you that positive quote or affirmation it doesn’t land because we’re having a real physical reaction to that thought. And so tapping helps calm the nervous system and allows your mind to know that it’s safe to relax.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: That’s really lovely. How did you come across it?
Jessica Ortner: So when I came across it I thought someone was playing a joke on me because it is very funny to tap on these points. And it was about 11 years ago I was sick with a really bad cold, I remember just being in bed and my eyes were so watery that I could barely see the TV. And my brother came and in and he said “Hey, I learned this thing on the internet,” which is like never a good thing to start off with.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Right.
Jessica Ortner: Like you’re just like “Well I don’t know.” And he’s like “You just, let’s just talk about how sick you’re feeling, lets just talk about it and tap on these points.”
And so, I was very resistant I did not believe it would make a difference. Part of me was looking at him like “Are you playing a joke on me? Because you are my older brother,” and he has a history of that.
I started to tap on these acupressure points just while saying “I feel so sick, I’m so frustrated I’ve been sick for so long,” and all of the sudden when I gave a voice to how sick I was feeling I was really able to calm down enough that … It’s almost like this other knowledge came up and I looked at my brother and I said, “I don’t want to get better.”
And he’s like, “What do you mean you don’t want to get better?” And I just said to him I was in a place in my life where I felt like I was working really hard and not getting anywhere and I just needed a break.
Now the cold was very real, I didn’t sit down and decide, “Oh I’m going to get a cold this week.” I had the symptoms; I had the snots; I had the coughing. But I realized that when we’re under a lot of stress and we’re not feeling fulfilled in our life… we know, I mean this is scientifically proven, that when we are under a lot of stress it lowers our immune system.
And so when I said to him, “I don’t want to get better,” then I spent some time tapping on why I didn’t want to get better. Because …
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: So …
Jessica Ortner: Yeah.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Were you tapping and did that bring that awareness to the surface so you’re sitting there tapping, you’re talking about illness and then while you’re tapping you had the awareness, “I don’t want to get better. I’m entirely unfulfilled.”
Jessica Ortner: Yes.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Wow. Interesting.
Jessica Ortner: It just popped up, and a lot of times when working with a tapping practitioner or someone who uses tapping after a few rounds of tapping they ask you, or if you’re working with someone you can say, “What’s the down-side of getting better?”
And if you ask someone that question before they tap, they’re usually like, “No there’s nothing. I just really don’t want to deal with this.”
But when you get to a place where you feel a little bit more calm in your body it’s like you can have a more honest conversation and when I was … and I wasn’t asked that question but it came up and because I had that intimacy with my brother just because he’s a good friend I was able to say … I kind of confessed.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah.
Jessica Ortner: And again, I didn’t know this before I said it.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yes, right. I hear that.
Jessica Ortner: And once I started to tap on how I felt emotionally I really just got such a shift in my body and I remember taking a deep breath and feeling calm and he’s … my brother’s looking at me with these wide eyes and I’m like “What?” And he’s like, “You just took a deep breath.” And I’m like “Yeah.” He’s like, “You couldn’t breath through your nose before. Like you’re breathing is so much better.”
And in 24 hours I was back at it. I felt great and it … that was the first time that I really made that connection of, “Wow, our emotions really impact our health.”
We hear about it, there’s books about it, but I think sometimes you have to have a personal experience to go, “Wow, this is real.” And so that was my first experience and then, like anything, you go on with life and you just forget those things. I did it once and just kept living my life and then I went through a really tough breakup and I was like, “What is that tapping thing again?” And I didn’t remember all nine points, I remembered seven and I just used the seven points late at night when I couldn’t sleep and then I felt my whole body relax, and then after that I was like, “What?”
We started doing research, my brother and I, Nick Ortner, and that’s when we decided … we saw so many people, there are so many case studies in not only the United States but all over the World.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Well, let me just back up and say he’s a New York Times Bestseller too, I mean clearly you guys were deeply, deeply, deeply moved because it changed the trajectory of both of your lives. So you really started to study it and pay attention to it and use it and … so pick it up from there?
Jessica Ortner: Exactly so with this new fascination with this technique and seeing that there was a such a community of people who used it all over the world, and there were a lot of case studies and people were documenting it. But I think when you read something online it’s different than seeing it. Then seeing a video of the before and after and that’s when we put money on credit cards. I moved back in with my parents and worked from the basement and we created this film “The Tapping Solution,” and then from there it’s just grown and we’ve been kind of the modern voice to this technique that had already been around for quite a while.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah, I remember being introduced to it briefly by one of my professors in medical school, and it feels good for me to circle back to it and I’m really excited to learn about how we can incorporate it into our clinical practice because I think we can use it, especially in functional medicine where we have a relatively long office visit.
We might be able to do a little bit live in session or you’re going to give us some downloads that people can use and give to their patients to take home.
Does it … So when you were in bed tapping after that really difficult breakup… does it take hours? How long are you tapping before your body sort of relaxed into or started to move through the pain?
Jessica Ortner: It takes minutes to feel better. It really does and what I think is so incredible about it is that you can lead someone through tapping but then you’re not going home with your clients, so when you’re tapping with someone you’re also teaching them a tool that they can do by themselves whenever they feel like they’re triggered again and something comes up.
In the documentary we worked with people that had a variety of different challenges both emotional and physical. And I think one of the most incredible things … and I think the reason tapping has spread so quickly around the world is because of the results around pain relief.
I remember when we were looking to find people to be in the film and we had sent emails out and we had all these applications and this woman Patricia applied to be in the film because she wanted support with her back and she had a boating accident. It was a blind date, it was a first date she was in this boat with this guy he was trying to impress her, he was speeding. Another boat crossed their path, he did a really sharp turn, she went flying into the air and landed back into the boat and damaged her spinal cord.
She had to have emergency surgery and when you look at her back, when you look at x-rays you see all of the rods. Like, it’s very clear that this is a very physical challenge. And so when we worked with her … and this is kind of going back to the answering your question of “How long does it take?” When we worked with her it wasn’t just working with her once around stress relief, which is powerful enough on its own. But we really went through the experience of how one day can change your life.
And she came from a military family in which independence was very important to them and all of a sudden she needed support using the bathroom and she needed support from her family in a way that she felt really uncomfortable getting.
So, what we did is we didn’t actually talk much about her back. We talked and we tapped, she tapped through her journey and her experience and it’s unbelievable because at the end of the film she says, after a week of doing some tapping everyday, she said that she felt like before she showed up she was like the Duracell Bunny with this battery pack on her back. She really felt the rods and her whole life was dictated, like her back was dictating everything.
So she wanted to go to the movie theater, she had to think about what kind of seats they had and what kind of seating she needed, and she said after the week it was like a little battery. Now she’s able to do yoga, we followed up with her six months later she was doing yoga, she was hiking, she was doing things that she could have never done before.
So what’s happening here is… I don’t think you tap and suddenly your body heals. What I think happens is that when we have a traumatic experience we’re holding on to that stress all of the time and it’s weighing on our body. And when we can really feel calm and relax our body can do what it’s designed to do, which is heal and recover.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: That’s a really lovely and very powerful story. I have Nick’s book “Tapping Solution for Pain Relief,” so folks if you’re interested in the show notes we’ll have links for the downloads and a list of their books and just all the ways that you can access them or direct your patients to access them.
Jessica Ortner: And I’ll mention quickly, if I can, this tapping for pain relief was recently featured on the Today Show.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Oh.
Jessica Ortner: So there’s great clip about that as well.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Oh good, okay good.
So just about Patricia, you taught her the points and then she took over and did it herself? So she kind of walked herself through that? Is that how you worked together?
Jessica Ortner: So in this case, during the documentary, we did have practitioners that worked with her the entire time. So there was definitely more hand-holding in that case.
When you’re dealing with events that are a bit more traumatic it’s very helpful to be guided by someone else. And I find this in my own life, like I tap all the time on my own and then if something bigger happens I do reach out for support.
But what’s so amazing about tapping on your own is that anytime you just feel triggered, or you feel like something came up in that moment, you can begin to calm your body.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yep. That makes a lot of sense and the support of another person really witnessing and letting you sort of let go and surrender to the process makes sense.
Jessica when we pull this show notes together, maybe give me information on, if clinicians wanted to refer people, where would we find a tapping expert.
Alright I want to talk about a little bit about research. If you can throw out a couple of pieces of work that are happening in this world and then I want you to actually teach us how to tap.
Jessica Ortner: Yes, absolutely. Eleven years ago when I learned tapping and then we started creating the documentary film, there wasn’t really much research out there. And so if you watch the film, which came out I think in 2007, we talk about it as the energy system.
And we’re clearing blocks in the energy system, which is the same way people explain acupuncture. The challenge with that is research-wise we … some people argue that we don’t have enough proof that there is an energy system.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Right.
Jessica Ortner: Even though acupuncture has been around for thousands of years and so many people have amazing results… but what’s been really fascinating in the last few years is a few things.
One: Harvard began to do studies where they would stimulate acupressure points and notice the impact it had on the brain, and notice that it would calm the amygdala brain and that’s where we have the fight-or-flight response.
Now this study was done with acupuncture and with tapping we’re stimulating these points in a different way, but once that study came out it was like, “Oh, here we’re seeing the way acupuncture points actually impact the brain.”
And then when it comes to the research around tapping the real leaders in the field are two men, Dr. Dawson Church and Dr. David Feinstein. Dawson Church did a wonderful study where he measured cortisol level. And as many of you know, cortisol is the stress hormone, so we have an over-production when we’re feeling really anxious and stressed.
He did a test where it was a talk therapy and then also people using EFT tapping and he found that people who are doing the talk therapy didn’t have a change in their cortisol but people who were tapping the average was 24 percent and it decreased in cortisol and it went even as high as 50 percent.
And so, now that we’re kind of growing and we have these lead practitioners we’re doing a lot more studies measuring cortisol and also beginning to scan the brain. And that’s one of the side projects that we love is that we’ve been working with the community to raise more money and more funding. Because before we thought “You know what, it doesn’t matter. All these people have results, this is enough.”
But it’s helped so many veterans and this is what changed our minds. We have a huge veteran population and because of the research we were able to do, now tapping is in a lot of VA hospitals and we’re really working to get more research to get into more of those institutions to help support others.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: That’s beautiful. I love it. And it’s interesting to, there’s some emerging research in other recently recognized, the interstitium as sort of a “new organ” and that’s suspected to the way that the acupuncture works, via the interstitium so it’d be interesting to see eventually whether tapping is influencing that newly recognized organ as well. It’s just incredible.
Jessica Ortner: It’s exciting.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah.
Jessica Ortner: Every year there’s a new study around this. It really is, like in the last ten years, it’s really been amazing to see this field evolve.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah, and well my hat’s off to you girl for getting in there and doing the… participating in the science.
I’ve got a little research study going on myself and it’s a lot of work to do it right.
Jessica Ortner: And it’s expensive. People are like “Why isn’t there more research?”
It’s because I’m not a pharmaceutical company.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yup. It is, it’s really expensive, it’s incredibly time-consuming generating your proposal for IRB and all of that, it’s a really big deal.
Jessica Ortner: Yeah.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I honor you in doing that work.
Jessica Ortner: Thank you.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Alright, teach us how to tap.
Jessica Ortner: Yes, absolutely. Okay so the very first step if you’re working with a client is to notice their… what’s called “the most pressing issue.”
So sometimes we’re working with a client and maybe we can see that something is going on below the surface. But one of the best things to do is to start where they are. So if you have someone say to you, “I just feel this anxiety in my chest,” or “this pressure in my stomach,” or “I just feel angry that all of sudden I have to make all these lifestyle changes.”
You want to start with whatever they say is coming up the strongest. Once you have that, whether it’s anger or a body sensation, you start off by saying the set-up statement.
The set-up statement really sets you up for the process. If someone’s really upset sometimes you can go right to the tapping without the set-up statement, but I do feel like it’s such a great compliment. What the set-up statement is is you say how you feel so even though I’m really frustrated, or even though I feel this pressure in my stomach, I accept how I feel.
In traditional EFT tapping, in the beginning, they would say, “I love and accept myself,” or “I accept how I feel.” Now, sometimes working with people telling them to say, “I love and accept themselves,” is way out there. But the reason you want an affirmation of acceptance is that often when we’re angry and frustrated we’re also angry and frustrated for feeling angry and frustrated.
You know what I mean? It’s like we have so much judgment …
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yes.
Jessica Ortner: Around how we feel and that we should be over it now, that by starting … by just saying “Even though I feel this way, I’m okay.” Or “Even though I feel this way, I accept how I feel.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: And do you have to actually believe it or can you just?
Jessica Ortner: No.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Okay.
Jessica Ortner: That’s the great thing about tapping is that I’ve just seen so many people go in incredibly skeptical and that’s the thing if you feel like your client is not open to saying that, you can simply say “I’m okay.”
And that’s it. Again it’s … I think this is just the set-up statement is a compliment to the rest of the tapping, so you tend to start on the karate-chop point and you say the set-up statement three times and then tap on the rest of the points while you give a voice to how you feel.
So, let me just talk you through where the points are. I can also send you a chart so people can see it online.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yes.
Jessica Ortner: But, the first point … so you’re going to use two fingers … actually, I’m sorry, the set-up statement I forget to mention is you say the set-up statement as you tap on the side of the hand, so that’s right underneath the pinky.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Folks, you can actually pause us, go to the show notes and grab the chart.
Jessica Ortner: Yes.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: So you can participate with us in real time.
Jessica Ortner: And then the next one is the eyebrow point. And it’s really where the hair of your eyebrow begins on the bone, and then you’re going to follow the bone until you’re on the side of the eye. So it’s not so far back it’s your temple, you’re still feeling the bone. And then again you follow the bone until you’re directly underneath eye.
The next point is underneath the nose, so it’s between the upper lip and nose.
Then the next point is the under mouth point, some people call it the chin point. It’s directly under lips it’s like the crease between your lip and your chin.
The next point is the collarbone point. I like to use my whole hand and if you tap on your chest you’ll stimulate it. If you want to be more specific, if you feel the u-shaped bone. Which you probably would know the word for that, I should figure out the word for this u-shaped bone underneath your throat but maybe the top of your collarbone.
But if you just feel the bone and you go down an inch and over an inch to either direction left or right, you’ll feel that point, tends to be sensitive.
The next point is underneath the arm and it’s about a hand-width under your armpit. For women it tends to be where your bra strap lies. I worked with women who are very overweight who struggle with this point. Tapping is so forgiving that you’re not going to ruin it if you miss a point.
So underneath the arm and on top of the head is the last point. And so those are the nine points and if you’d like we can actually do a few rounds just so people can get a feel.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yes. Absolutely. And again folks grab the chart. I’m attempting to follow as you’re walking us through and I’m kind of doing a mediocre job here. So let me focus and go ahead.
Jessica Ortner: And I’ll let you know where the points are.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Okay.
Jessica Ortner: I’m going to repeat a phrase and you just simply repeat after me and everyone that’s listening do the same if you can repeat after me out loud without other people thinking you’re crazy, do so. If you have to say it in your mind, that’s fine too.
So lets just focus on tension we might feel in our bodies. So just kind of take a deep breath notice if you have any tension any in your stomach, in your chest, in your shoulders, in your head. Notice that tension and we like to give things a number from zero to ten. The reason we like to use a scale is because often times you can go from a ten to an eight and it’s great to know you’re making progress.
The other reason is I’ve worked with people who were like a ten at angry and then they’re like, “Oh I wasn’t really that angry.” And you’re like, “Well you were, because you were red,” but by measuring it they can kind of remember the shift that they had.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Absolutely. Yep.
Jessica Ortner: Measure that and we’re simply going to tap … and this is going to be very, very general it’s best to be specific but this is just to kind of give you a feel for it.
So tapping on the side of the hand repeat after me, “Even though I’m carrying this tension in my body” …
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Even though I’m carrying this tension in my body …
Jessica Ortner: I accept myself and how I feel.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I accept myself and how I feel.
Jessica Ortner: Even though I’m carrying this tension in my body.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Even though I’m carrying this tension in my body.
Jessica Ortner: I honor how I feel.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I honor how I feel.
Jessica Ortner: And last line still tapping on the karate-chop point, even though I have all this tension in my body …
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Even though I have all this tension in my body …
Jessica Ortner: I accept myself and how I feel.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I accept myself and how I feel.
Jessica Ortner: Now we’re going to tap and we want to give ourselves the opportunity to really bring up that tension to give a voice to it. So tapping on the eyebrow point, just say “All this tension in my body.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: All this tension in my body.
Jessica Ortner: Side of the eye, I have a lot on my plate.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I have a lot on my plate.
Jessica Ortner: Under the eye, “I have a lot of responsibilities.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I have a lot of responsibilities.
Jessica Ortner: Under the nose, “And I feel this heavy weight.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: And I feel this heavy weight.
Jessica Ortner: Chin, “In my body.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: In my body.
Jessica Ortner: Collarbone, “This tension in my body.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: This tension in my body.
Jessica Ortner: Under the arm, “This stress in my body.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: This stress in my body.
Jessica Ortner: Top of the head, “I acknowledge how I feel.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I acknowledge how I feel.
Jessica Ortner: Eyebrow, “All this tension in my body.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: All this tension in my body.
Jessica Ortner: Side of the eye, “That’s weighing me down.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: That’s weighing me down.
Jessica Ortner: Under the eye, “It’s safe to acknowledge it.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: It’s safe to acknowledge it.
Jessica Ortner: And to give my body permission.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: To give my body permission.
Jessica Ortner: Chin, “To relax.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: To relax.
Jessica Ortner: Collarbone, “This tension in my body.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: This tension in my body.
Jessica Ortner: Under the arm, “I honor how I feel.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I honor how I feel.
Jessica Ortner: Top of the head, “And I allow myself to relax.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: And I allow myself to relax.
Jessica Ortner: Okay, take a deep breath in.
Okay, so, just notice again that was three rounds. I tend to do 15 minutes of tapping when working with someone. And what I love to do is kind of break down how you figure out what to say when you’re working with someone. I think that would be helpful, what do you think?
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah, you know … let me transition back a little bit.
Jessica Ortner: Yeah.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: And when I’m doing podcasts and you know I’m … it’s a pretty cerebral journey.
Jessica Ortner: Totally.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: This is the first time I’ve climbed into my body and just the fact that I was able to do it while paying attention to our next questions and the time and it’s … that’s really neat.
Jessica Ortner: Yeah.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: That’s pretty neat.
Jessica Ortner: Thank you.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah.
Jessica Ortner: Thanks.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah.
Jessica Ortner: And so, what you want to do in the beginning is let your client or yourself honor how you feel, and so it’s about giving a voice to it and a lot of times when it comes to physical pain or how we’re feeling there tends to be a story.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Right.
Jessica Ortner: And so, you can chat with someone and say they have a pain in their neck, you can say, “Who’s the pain in your neck?”
If you have kind of tension in your stomach, you can say, “When did the tension start?”
And that gives you extra information to talk about while you tap. As you begin you don’t want to jump into the positive, you really … the tapping, the breakthroughs I have seen is when people really just go into the story of how they’re feeling and tap, focusing on that.
And once they start to feel better, so say on zero to ten the intensity is going down, or sometimes you’re tapping with someone and you can see it in their face that they’re relaxing. You can see their body relax, then you can begin to move towards something more positive. You can say things like “I allow my body to relax, even though I feel this way. I give myself permission to relax.”
And you can move to more positive things if you move to the positive too early it doesn’t land, it doesn’t feel right. So that’s way it’s important to just give yourself time to talk about the experience.
I want to mention, because we talked about it before the call and I didn’t know if I was going to talk about it, but I want to mention it …
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Okay.
Jessica Ortner: I think you know about I’m talking about.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah. I do.
Jessica Ortner: A few months ago I had a really painful miscarriage, which lead to a procedure which didn’t go well. I also had a horrible reaction to the opioid that they gave me, which I didn’t even know that they were giving me an opioid.
And I had to do the procedure again. And I … at the time, you’re dealing with two things. There’s grief, and grief is something we have to go through, you know no one can tap away grief but we also have to recognize when something like this happens. When you lose a loved one, or when we go through something like that, there’s also the trauma aspect.
Things that we remember that trigger us. And so for me I noticed that when I would go back to this office to do an ultrasound, kind of do a checkup, my hands would shake.
And it was really the first time that I was like “Wow, this is … I almost forgot,” because I’d been tapping for so long this is what trauma feels like. Even though I am an adult and I am smart and I know that I’m going just for an ultrasound and nothing bad is going to happen, my body is saying “This place isn’t safe.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Right.
Jessica Ortner: And me trying to talk myself out of it isn’t helping because I’m having a real physical reaction to being in this place. Because this was something that was … it felt so large for me in the moment I reached out to a friend who does tapping and I said, “Hey can you guide me through this?”
All we did was… from the moment I remember walking in for that first procedure I told the story, I talked about how I felt, I talked about what happened. I talked about the pain that I felt. As I had this conversation, I began to stimulate these acupressure points and what happened was I could get to the point where I could tell the story without feeling shaken, without feeling triggered.
It doesn’t change the story to a happy story, but it means that past story isn’t dictating my present moment. Because the truth is I have to go back there. That’s still my doctor’s office. For years, I would work with … I would volunteer with women who had breast cancer and most of the tapping we did wasn’t even about the cancer, it was about experiences that they had in the doctors’ offices. It was about being told of the diagnosis or it was about feeling ignored like they only had five minutes.
And that’s what they wanted to focus on, not the cancer. That’s powerful because those things we carry with us and then every time we walk into that office we feel scared, we feel that tension, we feel stress.
Simply if you don’t know what to say or how to tap with someone by allowing them to tell the story … which sometimes people just want to tell their story anyway, they just want to be heard … but if your patient is in a place where they feel safe and they want to talk to you about their past experience, just having them tap on the points while they have the conversation with you is going to help lower that anxiety so they can tell the story and not feel like that story is enslaving them, is impacting them in the moment emotionally.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: So in the first office visit for functional medicine is, you know, is long. And for some people it’s a very emotional journey just as you described in your volunteer work with breast cancer patients. Chances are they’ve been to many, many doctors and they haven’t gotten good outcome and we’re the end of the road and they’ve been suffering for a long time.
And as that story unfolds it can be powerfully emotional. In fact sometimes it takes more than one session because they just need to go through it and they need to be heard and I totally respect that and alter the structure of what I usually do to give them the space to go through it.
If I hear you right, you’re saying that if that patient was open and I had my little chart handy I might suggest that we try tapping while she’s saying the story, or he’s telling the story. Is that what you?
Jessica Ortner: Yes. Exactly.
And if they’re able to tap on the points and tell the story that’s ideal and sometimes when they’re really in that moment and … some people can kind of pick up tapping quicker than others and some people just have trouble with the motor skills of last-minute figuring out the points to tap. If that makes sense?
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I think that’s actually me as I was with you. Since we did it three times I think I got a little bit more efficient.
Jessica Ortner: But then you get it, so what’s great is teaching it to them and then once they learn and they do it a few times on their own they can go and they can go onto the story.
If they are in the story and they’re emotionally upset and you know that you can’t say, “Pause, let me teach you this tapping thing,” if it doesn’t feel appropriate, simply having them tap on the acupressure, the collarbone point. Simply saying “Listen this is a really calming acupressure point, as you tell the story I just want to help you stimulate the point it’s going to help your body relax and you’re going to be able to share your story in a way that feels better.”
Just tapping on any of these acupressure points is going to be helpful and then, if they’re able to do the full tapping, that’s ideal.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I just wanted to put out so the audience … if anybody is using tapping in practice, if you can just comment and tell us what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, and if anybody decides to gutfully, courageously venture into this with some of their patients, I would really love to hear about it. I really wish that you post and talk to us about your experience. I know some people are probably are not going to be called to do it, but I can see the utility just in my years of practice and these kind of stories that unfold in the more intimate and attentive world of functional medicine.
Jessica Ortner: Yes, for sure.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Okay, so I had a couple of thoughts. You just outlined a really beautiful tool that I appreciate. One of the things… when you and I were dialoguing about doing this podcast months ago… I thought about is there’s this white-coat “hypertension.”
People come into the office, you take their blood pressure and it’s really high. They’ve had a stressful day they’ve rushed in and then blood pressure can spike when you’re with a physician. Now I’m a pretty laid-back doctor, I don’t know if I engender a lot of white-coat hypertension, but it can … I definitely see hypertension.
I’m wondering Jessica, if somebody came in with spiked blood pressure would it be appropriate to do some sort of tapping for a little while and then test again?
Jessica Ortner: Yes. I would love that. Just I know that it would be incredibly helpful, and it’s so great because I know that it will help lower their blood pressure and I think seeing it is different.
The thing about feeling better is it is different than pain relief. It’s a tricky thing. You know when you have pain, and you know when you don’t have pain, and that’s why I think tapping spreads so much because people go, “Oh I don’t have pain.”
But when someone says, “Oh I’m less stressed.” It’s harder to measure …
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: It is.
Jessica Ortner: And to reflect back and go, “Oh yeah, that made a big difference.” Because we just experience it differently than a physical pain. So I also think the idea of showing them how their blood pressure, I think having that evidence would just be so encouraging.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah, and obviously this wouldn’t replace in somebody whose got chronic hypertension, it wouldn’t replace medical treatment but it’s for the stress-response reducing… that and seeing numbers drop. I have in my practice taken baseline blood pressures and after we move through a session, I’ll retake it. Maybe I’ll give them a little Hawthorne or I’ll give them something in office and then we’ll retake it and it can drop. Sometimes it doesn’t, but this just seemed like it might be a interesting in-office adjunct tool.
Jessica Ortner: Right, especially if you know they’re coming in really stressed.
If they’re pretty relaxed then I can’t imagine seeing a big drop. But yeah, if you sense that they’re really coming in with a lot of stress and tension then it’s a great thing to do. Even if you don’t see a big shift in blood pressure as long as they feel better they’re going to be happy right?
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah. And that does track with blood pressure, I mean we see it.
I want to ask you, how would I do this … so you know that I’m a new mom and probably some of the folks listening know that I’ve just adopted a beautiful baby girl.
Jessica Ortner: Congratulations.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
So that means my sleep is disrupted. And what I do in evening feeding, middle of the night feeding she’s been sleeping like a trooper but she still needs a middle of the night feeding. I have a really hard time going back to sleep.
So how could I use tapping for that?
Jessica Ortner: Okay, so when it comes to sleep there are a few things that you want to experiment with. A lot of times when you know you’re going to sleep, you already are telling yourself a story of “I’m not going to be able to fall asleep. I can’t believe this is happening again.”
If you have a history of struggling with sleep, we tend to tell a story and we feel stressed, I remember working with someone … this is actually one of the women that I was volunteering with that had breast cancer. In those who have cancer insomnia is very common, but insomnia is only common after the diagnosis. So you know it’s not the cancer, it’s the diagnosis that’s keeping them up at night.
Because she had this history of struggling the moment the sun would start going down she would feel anxious. Like the anxiety would start because she would think, “Here we go again. It’s going to be another horrible night’s sleep.”
And so with her, what I did was I just focused on that story of, “Here we go again.” Even though this always happens, I honor how I feel and I give myself permission to relax and just tapping on the story of the struggle and so that was really helpful to do before nighttime.
And then when it comes to in the moment, you have to experiment with sleep in particular because some people find it really helpful but some people find tapping on the points to stimulate them too much. What they do instead, what I’ve heard people do is they start to stimulate the point just by simply putting pressure on the point so just using your finger and putting pressure on the eyebrow point instead of actually doing the tapping motion.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Okay.
Jessica Ortner: And giving yourself, and telling the story of whatever tension is coming up of why you can’t sleep or that struggle. So in the moment, it’s a bit more experimenting to see which works best for you, and then to also notice if earlier in the day if you have any stories about your sleep or any stress around, like, “I hate nighttime because I know it’s when I always suffer.”
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Interesting. Okay.
Jessica Ortner: And what we’re going do, it’ll probably come out next October so it’s a few months away, but we’re working on an app right now because what we’d love to do, my brother and I, is have tapping meditations for sleep and for just different challenges that people can just put on their phone and be led through it.
You don’t need to be guided through tapping if you know how to do it, you can do it yourself but I have found even personally that when you’re struggling you’re not your most resourceful self.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah.
Jessica Ortner: So sometimes we’re like, “Oh, I feel sick, why am I not doing all these things that I know are good for me?”
Well it’s because when you’re feeling sick and stressed. It’s like you don’t think clearly, you’re not resourceful, you’re not creative. So having someone guide you can be really helpful.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense.
Alright so you’ve given us some good tools to try on ourselves to work with our patients and I want to talk about your first book, the “Tapping Solution for Weight Loss and Body Confidence,” looking at the relationship with food and self-worth. You did, as I read in your bio, you’ve done lots and lots and lots of work in this area.
Now, nutrition is a big, big, big piece of functional medicine. We work with the nutrition component with all of our patients. Can you talk about that relationship a little bit? Food, stress, emotion?
Jessica Ortner: Absolutely. My work with using tapping on this topic started because I was personally struggling.
I was on my first diet when I was 15 and I would diet and then I would binge eat, and I would diet and I just had this yo-yo diet. And even when I was really healthy, even though when I would follow a really strict plan it either would not last and I’d sabotage myself or I’d do it and I didn’t feel like I was losing the weight that I was meant to lose.
I had so many emotions around this, and eventually got to the point where I had known tapping for a while at this point, but out of desperation I was like, “I have to try it, it’s something different.” And as I started researching I realized a few things.
When you are under a lot of stress, even stress around losing weight, stress around your body. Stress creates an over-production of cortisol as we talked about before which is directly related to belly fat. So here you are, stressing about your food and about what to eat but that very stress almost is working against you. It’s creating this kind of cocktail to make it very difficult for you to lose weight, this hormonal cocktail.
That was my first “uh-huh,” but I began to really look at my own self-worth and my own beliefs about myself and how it impacted the way that I ate, and I realized that it’s very easy to take care of something that you value. We all know that one person who loves their car, and it’s always clean and they’re always cleaning it and you’re like, “It’s not even dirty,” and they’re cleaning it because they love their car.
Well they love … they clean it, they take care of it because it’s something that they really value. It’s hard to take of care of something that you don’t value and I did not value myself or my body.
My body was my enemy. Every time I would do anything, whether it was going to a nutritionist or even doing things that were good for me it came from a place of, “I hate my body. I feel like my body is betraying me. I feel like I was born unlucky in this body and I just want to fix it.” And going into anything with that energy makes every step exhausting.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Right.
Jessica Ortner: Because you feel like even when you’re doing something healthy, you feel like you’re torturing yourself. It feels wrong because it’s forcing you to focus on something that you hate, which is your body.
I really began to look at … instead of focusing so much on food, which I was so good at. I did like the raw food and then I did Paleo, I would just jump from one thing to another. I gave myself a break and I said, “I’m only going to look at the relationship with myself and how it feels like to take care of myself, and beliefs I have about myself.”
And I lost 30 pounds, but you know the weight didn’t even matter because I felt good before I lost the weight.
Then I started to work with different women and I created this course and my book “The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss and Body Confidence,” it really just goes through different emotional struggles we have. So even exercise… I can’t tell you how many women I’ve worked with who remember being 14 years old in gym class and being laughed at, and being humiliated and so now every time the doctor tells them, “You have to work out, you have to walk,” they’re just reminded … they just feel like that 14-year-old girl who was made fun of and who never was enough.
My interest is, yes we need the tools and resources but let’s kind of look at the resistance that we have and what comes up when we’re invited to work out more, to eat more because a lot of times there’s a lot of emotions and beliefs there.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: That’s a lovely … we do have, it is a lot of weight-loss resistance and I … there’s no doubt in my mind that this is a piece of it, and a big piece of it for some.
Jessica Ortner: Yeah, and let me mention one thing too because I think it comes up a lot with people who need to eat better, is when you don’t feel like you have a lot of joy in your life the only way that you feel like you can have pleasure and joy is through that chocolate or through that cake or through those chips.
Now you have someone tell you, you can’t have that anymore and you feel empty, you feel depressed, you feel like you have no way to feel happy because so often food is the only way that we allow ourselves to feel pleasure because we have all these rules around our worthiness to feel good.
My objective is to share … and I do talk with women specifically but men too that they can change the way they eat and still feel joy.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yes.
Jessica Ortner: I think that’s what they have to realize is that a lifestyle change doesn’t mean prison.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yes.
Jessica Ortner: I think that’s what comes up, that’s the hesitation.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yes.
I can see this would expand, and I know we have to end, I’ve just really enjoyed picking your brain and actually doing the little example. I’m going to try it 3:00 A.M., I’m going to actually … you should send the download to me now so I can. I’ll take it home and I’ll report back to you.
Jessica Ortner: I love it, and yes mention that because we have some great downloads and resources.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yes, send me whatever you want anchored on the show notes and we’ll make it available to everybody.
So we were obviously prescribing some pretty heavy-duty therapeutic nutrition plans with people and that can bring up a lot of this anxiety and a lot of these thoughts that you’re talking about so I could see this being a tool for that journey as well.
And these intense therapeutic plans are temporary they’re early on in the treatment but they can be significantly anxiety provoking for some.
Jessica Ortner: Yes, for sure.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Well, my dear it was really lovely to reconnect with you and do this podcast, which we’ve been talking about for months and months. So I’m thrilled to have you back and I can’t wait to see you again in person and congratulations on the book and all of your really good, powerful work.
Jessica Ortner: Thank you, neighbor, I so appreciate being here. This is great.
Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: And that wraps up another amazing conversation with a great mind in functional medicine. I am so glad that you could join me. None of this would be possible, through the years, without our generous, wonderful sponsors, including Integrative Therapeutics, Metagenics, and Biotics. These are companies that I trust, and I use with my patients, every single day. Visit them at IntegativePro.com, BioticsResearch.com, and Metagenics.com. Please tell them that I sent you and thank them for making New Frontiers in Functional Medicine possible.
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