Do you feel the stress of the holidays? It’s “a little weird”, but typing helps – and it’s easy to do on your own.

Almost two decades ago, a colleague in the counseling field spoke about a technique he said would help reduce stress. As a young scholar and only a few years into my clinical career as a psychologist, I wanted to learn approaches that would help relieve stress. However, he added these words: “But it’s a little weird.”

Those words kept me from exploring further for another year and I still had no idea what this stress relief technique was. Fast forward and the same colleague was helping me in a community support group for women with eating problems. During the session, a young woman had a panic attack. My colleague took her outside to calm down.

They returned in a few minutes and the young woman was indeed calm and collected! I was very surprised. After the session, my colleague said, “I showed him the stress relief technique I was talking about.

I started to learn all about the approach known as Emotional Release Techniques (EFT) and I researched its use in clinical trials for many years now. It is commonly called “tapping” because the technique stimulates acupressure points on the face and body with a gentle two-finger tapping process. I have been using tapping myself for over 15 years.

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What is the proof of the tapping?

The evidence for this simple approach to stress reduction has grown exponentially. To research now shows that tapping is beneficial for food cravings, depression, anxiety, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

What’s even more interesting is that tapping affects the biochemistry of the body like immunity and blood pressure. Just an hour of tapping decreases the stress hormone cortisol by 43 percent.

Even better, follow-up studies show the benefits of tapping last over time, even up to two years later.

It is suggested the tapping affects the stress center in the brain (the amygdala) and the memory center (the hippocampus). The two play one role in the decision-making process when someone decides if something is a threat.

To research has now looked at elementary school children who have used tapping in schools and found it helped them focus and focus. I was very interested in anything that would help my kids in school and taught them how to type too.

So how can you get started?

Usually the tapping is done when you have a feeling you would like to cut back. If you’re feeling stressed out, now might be a great time to start typing. There are five stages:

Step 1. Rate your stress level out of 10, where 10 is the highest level and zero would represent complete calm. You can guess this number because it’s just one way to gauge your feeling.

2nd step. We encourage people to express their feelings out loud in order to engage with them and pay attention to how you are feeling. As a rule of thumb, you would say, “Even though I am feeling really stressed out right now because of ______, I accept that this is how I feel. “

It is important to be specific about why you are feeling stressed and to think about it as you go through the tapping process. As you say this statement out loud, tap the point on the side of the hand as shown below. Saying your problem out loud will not make it stronger; you are actually being honest with yourself right now and acknowledging how you are feeling.

Step 3. Tap with two fingers on the eight acupuncture points shown below and just say the feeling (not the whole sentence). For example, you can say “feeling stressed” while thinking about what is stressing you at that time.

Step 4. When you are done tapping on the last acupuncture point (top of your head), pause and breathe. Reassess your stress level after this one round.

Step 5. If your rating out of 10 is still high, keep typing as many turns as you want until the number of turns is lower or you notice a change. If you had to think of other feelings while tapping, you can change the words. For example, you might start to tap into feeling stressed out about a work task, but after a few laps you notice that you really feel overwhelmed and wish you had support. You can change the words to reflect this and say “I feel overwhelmed” instead.

the underlying mechanism is that tapping at these acupuncture points sends on or off signals to areas of the brain that have been awakened by the sentences. Tapping generates these electrical signals via the principle of “mechanosensory transduction“.

As a brief intervention that can be self-applied, the tapping is now supported through more than 100 randomized clinical trials (the most accepted form of research). It appears to be very effective and rapid compared to conventional treatments.

So while it might sound a bit strange, typing is equivalent or comparable to reference approaches such as Cognitive behavior therapy (TCC). It’s worth a try the next time you’re feeling stressed out!

Peta Stapleton is Associate Professor of Psychology at Bond University. This piece first appeared on The conversation.