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You move your body everyday, but maybe not enough. If you sit at a desk at school or work all day long, your muscles can become stiff and anxious thoughts can accumulate inside your body and brain. There is a simple solution to refresh your energy and relieve anxiety, and it’s called body tapping.
Body tapping is an easy tool that helps you release tension and negative emotions such as stress, anxiety and even fear. This technique has been used to help many find a natural way to bring back the body’s energy to its state of optimal balance.
What is Body Tapping?
Body tapping is a simple technique that consists of tapping with your palms or fingertips on specific meridian points and channels throughout the body. Imagine that your body and brain are like a dusty carpet that hasn’t been cleaned in a while. When you tap and dust it, you can see all the particles of dirt that were stuck leaving the carpet. Your body and brain work the same way. When you don’t move a lot all the daily stress, anxious thoughts, and negative energy can accumulate inside and make you feel heavy, tired, and weak. Tapping can help release this by increasing circulation to your body and make you feel refreshed and recharged.
One of the best parts of body tapping is that these exercises could be done anywhere. They could be done standing up, sitting down, in an office or at home. By tapping just a few minutes a day you could begin to feel a shift in your attitude and energy.
The Benefits of Body Tapping
Have you felt like your body goes numb when you’re doing the same thing all day? It’s common for us to feel fatigued or even zombie-like. Tapping is another way to restore balance and release stagnant energy by waking up your body and stimulating blood circulation to give you the energy to finish your day.
Body tapping is also great for relieving stress and anxiety. Did you know the thoughts and feelings you have manifest in your physical reality every day? If you are stressed or have a wandering mind, that can affect your physical well-being and your negative emotions can disrupt the energy that flows in your body. If negativity keeps accumulating in your body, you can begin to feel physically sick, and body tapping helps to dust away the stress from your mind.
5 Minute Routine for Body Tapping:
This routine could be changed and made personal to your needs, but the overall goal is to relieve stress and refresh your energy. During this routine you should focus on how you feel and what it is that you want to release from your body—like anxiety and stress. Make sure you follow this sequence as it correlates to the correct Yin/Yang meridian flow of the body.
Step 1: Find a comfortable posture. You can do Body Tapping sitting down but standing will help increase blood flow throughout the entire body. If standing, stand with your feet parallel to the ground. Bend your knees slightly (about 15 degrees) and start lightly bouncing your body from the knees. Take this time to relax your shoulders, neck and head to get energy flowing. Do this for about 30 seconds.
Step 2: Start by tapping on your lower abdomen (core). The core is the center of your body, so tapping this area first acts as a warm up to ground your energy. With open palms, tap the same spot next to your navel in a rhythmic fashion. Breathe naturally. Do this 50-100 times, while maintaining the bounce in your knees.
Step 3: Tap your chest. With open palms, tap your chest focusing on your lungs, heart, and shoulders.
Step 4: Tap your arms. Bring your left arm up first with the palm facing up. Keep bouncing from the knees and begin by tapping your shoulder. Continue tapping down from your shoulder to your left palm. Now face the palm down and tap up the arm to your shoulder. Now turn the same arm so that your thumb is facing up and tap down. Now tap the outside of your pinky going up to the armpits. Repeat this sequence for the right arm.
Step 5: Tap your legs. Start by tapping your lower back with both hands opened into palms. Tap down the backside of your legs all the way to your ankles. Now tap the top of your foot and tap up your leg to the thighs. Now tap the outside of your hips and down to your ankles. Next, tap the inside or your ankles and up to your thighs and groin.
Step 4: Check in with yourself. Once you finish, return back to tapping your core 20 times. Feel your body and its sensations. Do you notice any tingling? Warmth? Magnetism? Saliva in your mouth? Some questions to ask yourself at this point are: Does my body feel lighter? Where do I feel pain, if any?
*NOTE: It’s possible to feel heavier after tapping than when you started. This is a normal process that some people feel as they release fatigue and heaviness from the body. Feel free to repeat the steps again until you feel refreshed and satisfied.
Watch this video to see a demonstration of this exercise and to follow a 10-minute detailed routine for whole-body tapping:
Try body tapping for yourself anytime you’re in a stressful situation or during work when you’ve been sitting at your desk all day and see how you feel after this easy exercise.
For more self improvement tips for the brain, visit Brain Education TV’s YouTube channel.
You've read Body Tapping for Anxiety and Stress Relief, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you've enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.