Photo by Cynthia Larsen

Therapeutic Voodoo Makes Another Leap for Mankind

By Ed Goldman

If you get stressed out from time to time—which is to say, if you would categorize yourself as among those Ayn Rand called We, The Living—there’s a newish, quasi-holistic therapy you can tap into. And I just gave it away. It’s tapping.

You don’t have to marry a guy named Jake to become a Tapper. The process merely involves your having an index finger or two. If you lack those “pointer” fingers, however, other digits can fill the bill. But since this therapy involves tapping your head and other body parts with a small degree of gusto, I’d consult with a doctor first if you’re Captain Hook or Dr. No.

According to an installment of the regular “Well” feature of the New York Times—a feature whose name conveys healthfulness, not depth—finger tapping can have self-soothing properties. Growing up, at least chronologically, I always believed tapping your finger to your forehead when people said something bizarre, uninformed or downright dumb meant you doubted their mental capacity. Twirling that same finger ‘round and ‘round then pointing it at those people meant there was no doubt whatsoever.

Even the “Well” writer, Christina Caron, apparently had some concerns. “It looks a little goofy,” she observes, calling tapping a “self-help method…which involves using the fingertips to perform acupressure while countering negative emotions with breathing exercises and positive affirmations (which have) elicited eye rolls from some mental health professionals.”

While the image of mental health professionals rolling their eyes is disappointing—we have children who’ll do that for free whenever we start a sentence with the words, “Here’s an idea”—the list of what needs to be done simultaneously seems demanding. I mean, if I’m concentrating, laser-like, on my finger tapping, why must I accompany it with “breathing exercises and positive affirmations”? Isn’t that a lot to keep in mind? Put another way, isn’t that stressful?

I also need to ask about those “positive affirmations.” What other kinds of affirmations are there? You could try to confuse yourself in front of a mirror by using a double-negative (“I am not not a good person”) but as any schoolchild knows—or at least did when language was part of elementary schools’ curricula—two negatives make a positive.

“Tapping,” the Times writer explains, “which falls under the umbrella of energy psychology, originated from a technique called Thought Field Therapy developed by the psychologist Roger Callahan in the 1980s.” In treating a patient who had “a severe phobia of water”—which is what the canned tuna brand, Chicken of the Sea means—Callahan had her “tap firmly under her eye, an area he knew to be associated with the ‘stomach meridian’ in traditional Chinese medicine.”

Callahan said that two minutes after the patient started tapping, her fear of water had vanished. Well, of course it had. If she was a vigorous tapper, she’d knocked herself unconscious. This is why the U.S. Army asks recruits during basic training if they’re karate experts. If they are, they’re told they needn’t salute as often as their fellow grunts.

Want to become a tapping coach? Wanna-be practitioners of the technique “now pay hundreds of dollars to take…tapping courses or pursue an official certification.”

Friends, my ship has come in! For just a few hundred dollars, you can now take one of my classes in stress relief: 

-Intro to Eye-Rolling; 

-Finger-Drumming 101; 

-Developing Nervous Tics (and Knowing When to Deploy Them); 

-Remedial Throat-Clearing in Awkward Conversations;