If you don’t already know this about me, I really love learning about the science behind things – especially Tapping.
It is so inspiring to see scientific evidence back up the practices I do in my daily life and the things I believe in. I think research findings can help us all to remember why we do what we do; it reinvigorates us to stay committed when we get that verification that it really does work and makes a difference!
So on that note, I wanted to share a study with you today that was published a few years back – one that gave some pretty amazing insights into the effectiveness of EFT Tapping.
This 2019 study was published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine and included over 200 participants. Each of the participants went through a 4-day EFT Tapping training workshop led by certified EFT instructors.[1]
The researchers measured things like anxiety, depression, pain, and happiness, along with physiological markers like blood pressure and cortisol levels, both before and after the training to see if there were any differences to be observed.[1]
In the study, the researchers gathered data on scores for happiness, anxiety, depression, PTSD symptoms, pain, and cravings both before and after the workshop for all the participants.
The results of this part of the study were pretty amazing.
After the EFT Tapping training, anxiety decreased by 40%, depression decreased by 35%, PTSD symptoms decreased by 43%, pain decreased by 57%, cravings decreased by 74%, and happiness increased by 31%.[1]
Those are some impressive numbers, aren’t they? I sure thought so!
Can you imagine if your anxiety could go down by 40% after just a 4-day workshop? Could you imagine if your cravings could go down by 74%? What would it feel like if your pain decreased by almost 60%? And what would it feel like to be 30% happier?
Remember – those positive changes occurred after a simple workshop where people learned how to do EFT Tapping over the course of only a few days.
The cool thing is that we’ve seen similar benefits from Tapping in our own data from users of The Tapping Solution App. For example, after 260,000 plays of our “Releasing Anxiety” Tapping meditation, the average reported reduction in anxiety was 41%. And that is after just a 9-minute guided Tapping meditation!
It’s so encouraging to see the scientific research verifying the effectiveness of Tapping for things like anxiety, depression, and psychological health – helping the world to know and trust that Tapping really does work and can help us improve our mental wellbeing.
But the exciting results of this study weren’t just limited to improvements in psychological health. The researchers also found that after participants did Tapping, they showed improvements in several different physiological markers of health as well.
Here’s the extra-cool part of this study:
A subset of the participants in the study were subjected to additional testing. For 31 of the participants, the researchers also measured physiological indicators of health before and after the workshop.
These measures included:
The results of this part of the study were equally as astounding as the first.
The researchers found that compared to before the workshop, cortisol levels were 37% lower after the workshop. Resting heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure were 6-8% lower. The salivary immunoglobulin A test showed a 110% increase, suggesting boosted immune function. Finally, the researchers also saw positive trends with heart rate variability and heart coherence.[1]
So overall, the results showed that the central nervous system, the cardiovascular system, the endocrine system, and the immune system all benefited from Tapping. That is some pretty groundbreaking data with a lot of potential implications!
By now, there are over 100 different studies on the effectiveness of Tapping (you can learn more about some of them here).
But aside from some earlier groundbreaking studies demonstrating the benefits of Tapping on cortisol levels and a handful of others looking at things like gene expression, this is one of very few studies so far that actually explores how Tapping affects the body and our inner physiology.[2-4] Now we know that Tapping can have positive effects on things like blood pressure, heart rate, and immune markers as well!
These findings are quite exciting, as they provide even more evidence that Tapping really works. They support what so many of us already know to be true: that Tapping can absolutely change not just how we feel mentally and emotionally, but the physical state of our bodies, too.
And to think, there is so much more to be done in the field of Tapping research! There are likely countless benefits to Tapping that we don’t even know about yet and haven’t even thought to study.
Personally, I’m so excited by the findings of this study, and the many others that continue to be published on the science behind Tapping. Each one just gives me more reason to Tap, and to share Tapping with as many people as I can.
So as always, I hope that you take care and keep Tapping!
Until next time,
Nick Ortner
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