Have you tried tapping?

A few hours ago I sat over my strong black coffee in my dimly lit office, I took a big sip, opened up my emails and stared at them with the vacant eyes of a milk cow.

I took another big glug of my black coffee in a futile attempt to get a couple of neurons firing.

But it was no use.

Maybe what I needed was a few minutes of procrastination, maybe that would help get me in the mood to do some work. I reached for my phone and scrolled through several glazed-eyed millennials flouncing around with the self-assurance of Beyoncé… Surprisingly enough that didn’t help.

I heaved myself back to my emails and while scrolling down I noticed an email with the subject line ‘This simple mediation will change your life’ usually that sort of email would be sent packing but I was desperate so it got the click it came for. Apparently, Nick, a rosy-cheeked wide-eyed American man, with impossible teeth, wants to set me a challenge, and the challenge he wants to set me is to undertake ‘Tapping Meditation’

for 8 days in a row. The reason this spiked my interest was because of a chap I know called Tom.

I often try to strangle Tom at Jiu-Jitsu but he'd sadly disappeared for a few weeks with a shoulder injury.

When Tom came back he told me he fixed it, but not with the excessive mobility stretches, medication, acupuncture or money he spent but with a couple of free 15-minute youtube video on something called  ‘Tapping’.

He went on to explain how all he had to do in order to fix his shoulder was tap parts of his head while giving himself positive affirmations and after a couple of sessions the shoulder pain had totally disappeared.

Here’s the thing, I may not be a huge believer in holistic interventions but I am a huge believer in mind over matter because there is solid science behind it that comes in the shape of placebos. These are treatments and medicines that work simply because the patient believes them to work beforehand.

Placebos can be up to 50% as effective as pain-reducing drugs which goes to show how powerful the human mind can be when tricked.

I didn’t have long to test out Toms's spurious sounding miracle shoulder cure claims as a few days later, as luck would have it, my wife Hannah picked up a horrible shoulder injury at the gym and could now be my ginnypig.

I told her to try out this tapping thing, She did and like magic, it went away… for a while anyway.

So back to my email.

I decided to download the app that this Nick bloke was advertising. I opened it up and noticed they had one called ‘Tapping to help with procrastination’. Well, what a perfect time to try it for myself to see if it actually works. The app told me to tap parts of my head and repeat certain affirmations and visualisations.

After only a few minutes something happened, I felt different somehow but not in a way I could easily articulate but it was as if I was realigned as if certain blockages within me were cleared.

As soon as it was over I leapt up off my desk, opened all my windows so the light and fresh air streamed in, slammed on some tasty tunes and forensically cleaned my office.

I then sat down and burnt through my emails like they were beers at number 10 during a national lockdown, I tied up a ton of loose ends with a ribbon and then sat down to write this absolute masterpiece.

Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I felt this motivated and productive and I put that all down to the few minutes of tapping bits of my face and saying some nice stuff to myself.

I know it's probably all psychosomatic, but as long as it works then who cares what it is. 

Anyway, the app is called The Tapping Solution in case you fancy trying it out for yourself. 

Please let me know how you get on.

Much love, 

Stef.