What is Tapping - And Why You Should Do It Before Any Big Test or Performance (And If You Have Trouble Sleeping!)

Tapping is a 30-second process you should do anytime you feel like you’re carrying more stress than is good for you.

Can you think of any stress you might even be carrying now - some worry, or fear, or overwhelm - that you’d like to get rid of? We’ll do it now! Tapping WORKS!

So notice that feeling you’d like to release, and check in where it is on a scale of 0-10, 10 being the strongest. Ok, keep that number in mind.

A student of mine needed this before her April ACT. She’d been doing amazingly well in practice, but scored well below that level on the actual test. It turned out that with the heavy workload of Junior Spring swimming around her mind that morning, she couldn’t focus on her ACT.

Had she known tapping, though, she would’ve been able to immediately release all of that stress and be present to focus on her test.

Since then, I’ve made sure to teach tapping to all of my students, and a couple weeks later one of them reported to me that it worked brilliantly before her AP exam. Another uses it before bed to help her fall asleep.

So here’s how to tap:

First, know that tapping is based on Eastern Medicine and its awareness of energy meridians and pressure points in the body. By lightly tapping on these pressure points with our pointer and middle fingers, we calm the amygdala, the fear center in our brains, and feel noticeably lighter and more present immediately after doing so!

So take your pointer and middle fingers, and do a two-finger tap on your forehead, just above the eyebrow. This’ll be the first of six or seven points on the body that you’ll tap.

You can use one hand or both hands to tap - it doesn’t matter. And to give you a rough sense of pace, you might tap at a pace of, say, 3 taps per second.

As you tap that first point above your brow, acknowledge the feeling you’re carrying and would like to release, and also where you feel it in your body. Say to yourself (out loud or in your head), “I acknowledge this feeling of fear, which I feel behind my eyes and in my belly.”

Next, tap the point a couple centimeters to the side of your eyes, almost at your temple. The first point we tapped was about acknowledging the feeling; each subsequent point will simply be about letting the feeling go.

“I am letting this feeling go,” you can say to yourself as you tap this point just to the side of your eyes.

Whatever you say as you let the feeling go doesn’t really matter. You can make up the phrases - so long as they’re about letting the feeling go.

We’ll tap the point a couple centimeters under our eyes, next. “It feels GOOD to let this feeling go,” you could say to yourself.

Next the point just between our upper lip and our nose: “I can feel this feeling leaving me.”

Next the point between our lower lip and our chin: “This feeling is leaving me, and I love it.”

Next tap along the back of your neck, either side of the spine: “I am letting this feeling go.”

Next tap the tip of your collar bone, just off the center of your chest: “This feeling is leaving me, and I’m feeling lighter already.”

Lastly, tap the underside of your hand, just below the pinky (the side of your hand that runs up into and then becomes your pinky): “I’m grateful that this feeling is leaving me.”

Now, take a deep breath, and on the exhale, say in your mind’s voice to yourself the word “peace.”

(By the way: whatever you say as you tap each point doesn’t matter that much. Just know that the first spot is about acknowledging the feeling, and each subsequent spot you say something about letting it go. You can make it up. Have fun with it. Also - you don’t have to memorize all the tapping points. Different people tap different points, but as long as they’re pressure points and you’re hitting some of them, you’ll feel immediately better).

Now check in: how do you feel? Do you feel lighter? 0-10, how strong is that stressful feeling you felt before?

If you’re like anyone I’ve ever done this with before, the emotion is noticeably less. Usually people go from like a 7 to a 3 on the first round, and if you’d like to get it down to a 2, 1, or 0, just do another round of tapping or two.

It only takes 30 seconds.

A vital life tool - that you can use for anything, SATs and ACTs included.