The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss & Body Confidence Read Online Free PDF

body. They run up and down both sides of the body, and each meridian is linked to a separate organ—stomach, gallbladder, kidney, and so on. You can access the energy in each meridian through its “endpoint,” a specific location on the body’s surface.
    These “meridian endpoints” are where acupuncture needles are inserted and also where we tap to balance or increase the energy flow within a specific meridian. They’re also places we often touch unconsciously during moments of stress—for example, our forehead, chin, and collarbone—perhaps as a way to calm ourselves down.
    When he experienced success in using tapping with patients, Dr. Callahan continued his study of meridian points, focusing on merging traditional psychotherapy with tapping. Over time he developed a set of “algorithms,” or tapping sequences, to address different issues. For instance, he created one tapping sequence to treat fear and a separate sequence to treat anger. He eventually began teaching his tapping sequences to students.
    One of his students, a man named Gary Craig, began experimenting with tapping and discovered that it was the tapping itself rather than the specific sequences that was so effective. To simplify the process, Gary created a single tapping sequence, which has since become the basis of what he later called EFT, or Emotional Freedom Techniques. Many different approaches to tapping are based on Gary Craig’s EFT model. Tapping and meridian tapping are the generic names used.
    The EFT sequence Gary pioneered includes all of the major meridian endpoints and can be used for all issues. The EFT sequence, which we’ll explore in detail in Chapter 2 , begins with the side of the hand, then moves to the inner eyebrow, the outer eyebrow, underneath the eye, under the nose, the chin, the collarbone, the side of the rib cage, and finally, the top of the head.
    During the same period of time when Craig was simplifying his tapping sequence, Dr. Patricia Carrington, a psychologist and then faculty member at the Department of Psychology at Princeton University, was independently using a single algorithm method and seeing great results in her clients. She created the Choices Method, which we’ll explore shortly.
    As Gary Craig’s and Dr. Carrington’s work began to spread, their results caught the attention of psychologists and researchers who have since given us a far better understanding of how tapping helps retrain your brain.

Retraining Your Brain
    To understand why tapping works so well—not just for anxiety, fear, and trauma but also for losing weight—it’s important to understand the limbic response .
    The limbic system is the part of our brain that contains that feisty amygdala that initiates the fight-or-flight response when it senses danger. This same process can take place when we experience stress around food. For instance, when you experience a craving for chocolate, you may be in the throes of a limbic response. If your brain has been trained to respond to stress by inhaling a box of chocolate chip cookies, that’s probably what you’ll do after a long day at the office.
    Because tapping quickly halts the fight-or-flight response and lowers your cortisol levels, you’re able to change how your brain reacts to stress and chocolate chip cookies. Instead of being made to feel like you must devour every last one of those cookies, you can stop and figure out whether cookies are really the best way to unwind.
    If you have intense food cravings, the idea of being able to pause and determine whether you really want or need to eat the food you’re craving may sound impossible. As someone who used to inhale a box of six organic cereal bars in one sitting (a favorite during one of my “healthy eating” phases), I completely understand why you feel that way. In those moments when you feel like you’ll die if you don’t eat that food, you’re at the mercy of a limbic response that’s been ingrained in your brain,