“It needs to come from a place of love.”
Have you ever experienced anxiety or fear?
There may have been moments in your life where you have been completely debilitated by anxiety and fear. They might have kept you from having relationships, jobs, and opportunities. They don’t care if you’re busy or not. They might even strike when you least expect them.
Today, we’ll talk about a practical, simple tool to immediately dissolve anxiety and fear. You might compare this tool to acupressure but without the needles.
It’s called tapping.
Love, let’s welcome Nick Ortner. Nick is a best-selling author on the power of tapping to heal people’s lives. He has taken Instagram by storm with his tapping goals videos that show ways to deal with fear and anxiety. He has also provided so many of our frontliners free access to a tapping app he and his team developed. He has done so much to help the community during the COVID-19 health crisis.
Today, Nick and I will talk about his journey to discovering tapping. He’ll also discuss how tapping can help maintain calm in oneself during the isolation of the pandemic. Lastly, he provides other tips that can synergize the mind and body to start to tap into our own healing. This interview with Nick will definitely remind us that we can be a force for good in the world.
Who Is Nick Ortner?
Nick Ortner is CEO of The Tapping Solution, LLC, a company with a mission to bring into the mainstream a simple, effective, natural healing method known as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) or “Tapping.” Tapping is a healing modality that combines ancient Chinese acupressure and modern psychology. Nick’s goal is to empower people to create healthy, abundant, and stress-free lives through his books, films, CDs, online events, and speaking engagements attended by participants from all over the world.
He is also the New York Times bestselling author of The Tapping Solution: A Revolutionary System for Stress-Free Living, and The Tapping Solution for Pain Relief: A Step-by-Step Guide to Reducing and Eliminating Chronic Pain. Before that, Nick created and produced the breakthrough documentary film The Tapping Solution, which follows ten people who used tapping to overcome significant challenges, including chronic back pain, fibromyalgia, insomnia, devastating grief, and more. Nick’s books and film document accurate and extraordinary results that have inspired tens of thousands to follow suit by successfully applying tapping to their lives.
Nick has been a fantastic teacher to me. I truly feel blessed that he’s sharing his expertise on how we can handle all of these emotions and cultivate inner peace at any time.
Discovering Tapping
Have you had that experience where you attend a conference or a seminar, only to learn something new about yourself? That’s what happened to Nick when he attended a Tony Robbins leadership conference.
“I first saw tapping demonstrated right around 2003. I was at a Tony Robbins event, and there was a leadership conference out in San Diego. He did a talk and then demonstrated tapping to everyone. He had been a fan of energy medicine and somatic tools for a while. I was intrigued by it.” – Nick Ortner
Tapping as an Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) focuses on the mind-body connection. It’s believed to be an alternative treatment for the pain, negative emotions and beliefs that hold us back from achieving our goals. This is probably what intrigued Nick, he started researching about it online. He even bought a couple of books on it and started using them. From there, he explored it more, and his life started changing.
“I was just blown away by this process. I suggested tapping to friends whose shoulders have been hurting from football practice to my stressed and anxious sister. They all said that tapping made them feel better afterward. … Everywhere I turned, I would try the technique, and it worked for people.” – Nick Ortner
Since there was not much opportunity to inspire other people with what he discovered, Nick decided to make a film about it.
“I was right around the time the movie The Secret came out, which took the world by storm. I knew that a couple of the people in the movie actually used tapping — there were big fans of EFT. So we set out and interviewed people like Jack Canfield and Cheryl Richardson. Then we filmed ten participants from around the country who had back pain, fibromyalgia, traumatic war memories, trouble sleeping, [and] overwhelming grief who’d never heard of tapping before, brought them together for a couple of days, and film[ed] that experience.” – Nick Ortner
From there, a tapping summit followed, and finally, a bestselling book. That step was what really helped catapult the power of tapping out to the public. Even today, Nick and his team have been thinking of more ways to bring the tool to the public.
Many of us want help getting control of our anxiety and fear and will first try medication or therapy. While those are helpful, they might not always be the answer. Some people don’t like the idea of taking medication for their problems or find that it’s difficult to afford regular sessions with a therapist. While no method is perfect, tapping might be an effective alternative solution to help people reduce their anxiety and panic attacks.
I have personally used tapping to reduce my anxiety with success. I felt so much better once the feelings went away. Since I have seen firsthand how effective it can be to reduce your anxiety and even break habits or fears completely, it’s one of my favorite tools that I want to share with you. If it did wonders for Nick and me, why not for you, too?
The Benefits of Tapping
The COVID-19 crisis has driven many people to seek solutions on how they can calm their anxiety and fear. Some of us have felt immense isolation, grief, and helplessness. Indeed, many want an alternative way to keep calm and improve their emotional and mental well-being in the face of this emergency.
I believe that tapping may be the solution that some of us may have been looking for. I love tapping, and I usually use it whenever I feel a little more anxious than usual. I use it in moments when some things hit me too hard or I go down a rabbit hole of emotion. I let myself just do the tapping, then I feel so much better after.
As a tapping expert, Nick shares a replication study showing how beneficial tapping can be in lowering cortisol, the stress hormone.
“The study had three groups — one did an hour of tapping, the second group did psycho-education, and the third group, the control group, read magazines for an hour. … All subjects under the three groups did salivary cortisol tests before and after. … It soon was found out that the tapping group had a massive drop of 43% salivary cortisol in an hour. The psycho-education group had a 19% decrease. On the other hand, in the magazine group, their cortisol went up 2% in an hour.” – Nick Ortner
Salivary cortisol is a biological marker that can be used to assess cortisol in humans by testing their saliva during periods of increased stress and anxiety. . From the study conducted, it seems to prove that tapping can be an effective technique of emotional self-management and coping with stress.
Amidst this pandemic, we can find sources of stress and anxiety around us — lack of job security, deaths of our loved ones, and feelings of isolation among many others. However, it’s within our consciousness to strive for health and wellness. Our journey may not always be easy because there are challenges along the way. But as Nick suggests, a simple tool, such as tapping, may help us fight those fears and keep us strong. He emphasizes,
“Let’s all deal with our stress and anxiety because from that place, we can best serve the world.” – Nick Ortner
Why not add in some good, solid tapping to your current strategies to help you with your stress and anxiety? Who knows, it might be the one tool you’ve been looking for to finally help you.
The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts
Nick is genuinely passionate about tapping. He acknowledges that despite its simplicity, its effects at driving away anxiety and fears can’t be underestimated. However, he also recognizes that the real key to keeping calm in the face of a situation is to synergize tapping with other wellness strategies.
“Get checked out by a doctor, and go through the traditional things that you need to. If you don’t have a good answer or it’s not working, do the tapping alongside it. Use it as a self-care tool and complementary to the things that you’re already doing because to me, it’s really those synergies that are going to make it.” – Nick Ortner
This belief is the reason why Nick also encourages us to observe the following practices:
#1: Put your focus on a place of solution, not fear.
I asked Nick how he handles all the negative news and conspiracy theories on the current pandemic. Aside from tapping, he stresses that being mindful and staying positive is essential.
“I make a conscious effort on where to focus my attention. … If I read and take all this negative news into my soul, I’m going to go into fear mode, and I’m not going to have the energy to help people.” – Nick Ortner
It sounds easy enough, but many know how tricky focusing on the positive can be sometimes because of the negative things people continue to say, especially on social media. But negativity breeds more negativity. If we want to be around positive people who are also trying to make a difference, we need to try to stay positive and surround ourselves with those who do the same.
#2: Get some inspiration.
Getting inspired or getting excited about something is a great way to get out of fear and anxiety. Nick says that he does this by reading books and listening to his favorite podcasts.
“Besides tapping, one thing I can point to in the last 20 years that has changed my life the most — it’s what I put in my ears. It’s just the info that comes in the podcasts, the audiobooks, the meditations you put in. It’s just inevitable. Eventually, your life is going to change.” – Nick Ortner
Just like what we put in our bodies, what we put in our minds and ears also counts. They can keep us motivated and inspired to be a better person.
#3: Meditate and stay active.
I love meditation. It is an essential part of my life. I practice it every day to be more in the moment and handle what challenges come my way. Nick shared his own experience on this:
“Meditating is a part of my practice. Sometimes I’ll combine both. So you can say, ‘I want to meditate for 10 minutes or 20 minutes,’ but first, we’re going to tap, settle the mind and then meditate. And people have found that really useful — to just combine the two practices. … Soccer also allows me to run around and feel young and have fun.” – Nick Ortner
Meditation helps us work toward overcoming anxiety and fears. It’s never too late to start exercising either.
#4: Always start from within.
Lastly, Nick reminds us that the only person we have complete control of is ourselves.
“It astounds me the times when people have said, “Oh, my husband’s driving me crazy. How do I get them to tap?” And I say, ‘Don’t get him to tap. You do the work and watch what happens.’ And all of a sudden, they say, ‘He’s not tapping, but he’s different.’” – Nick Ortner
Tapping, meditating, staying active, and reading more about wellness are all actions focused on solutions. When actions stem from wanting to find answers to problems, it means they arise out of love. When we focus on love and wanting to be our best for others, then we’ve discovered the best way to overcome our fears and anxiety.
Get Loved Up with Nick Ortner
I am amazed by the powerful message that Nick has been able to share with lots of people. He is not shy about sharing his knowledge because he wants to help as many people as possible. Listen here to know more about how tapping has transformed his life and how it can change yours, too.
As Nick’s biggest fan, I’d love for you to check out his website and get in touch with him on Instagram. You can even download the app so we can experience its benefits together.
If you would like to stay updated with our conversation and learn how we can help make your life better through tapping, feel free to tag us, @nickortner & @koyawebb. Additionally, if today’s chat has inspired any lessons for living a happier life — and making sure anxiety doesn’t take over again — you might want to check and be a part of our Get Loved Up University.
I feel grateful for all the beautiful insights that Nick has shared. He is an inspiration because he is passionate about what he does and committed to sharing them with everyone around him.
I had so much fun talking with you again, love. Let’s do this again soon. Have a good day ahead of you.
- How Nick relieves his own stress through tapping (2:54)
- How Nick figures out the best next step in his life (10:12)
- How Nick sorts through things in the news to preserve his energy (19:40)
- How meditating factors into Nick’s practice (29:10)
- How the individual’s effort is important to changing the world (31:51)
- How to manage what is going on at home right now (35:08)
- How the world is moving through the mindfulness space and where it’s headed (43:41)
Links mentioned in this episode
- The Tapping Solution App
- Freakonomics podcast
- Ben Greenfield podcast
- Exponential Wisdom podcast – Peter Diamandis
- Tim Ferriss Podcast
- Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- Nick Ortner’s book The Tapping Solution
- Order Koya’s book Let Your Fears Make You Fierce
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