Tapping: A Technique to Help Relieve Stress, Trauma, and More Postpartum

Every pregnancy and every pregnant person is different. Some worry themselves sick about all of the potential complications. Others believe there’s no use fretting over things they can’t control. Some births are uncomplicated and beautiful, others messy and scarring. 

Let’s take my mother for example.

She had eleven children before having me. Yep, I was lucky number twelve. So lucky in fact, that she went on to have a thirteenth! 

Even though she and her body weren’t strangers to childbirth, my entry into this world would make any modern day OB/GYN’s hair stand on end. 

My mother was forty four years old when she called her doctor to let him know her water broke. He was on his way to the airport for a ten day golf trip and told her delivery would have to wait until he got back so he prescribed medication to stop labor.

You read that right. Her water had already broken and I was rattling around in my mom’s womb for ten days with no water. I told you a modern day doctor would be horrified.

No matter your approach to pregnancy and childbirth, things don’t always go smoothly or as planned. Which can leave the mother feeling a huge range of emotions. And these emotions are felt by and affect the baby in and out of utero. Positive and negative. 

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “happy wife, happy life”, but I say, “happy mama, little drama.” 

For those “expecting and anxious” or “postpartum and struggling,” acknowledging and moving towards your emotions and emotional experiences is not only beneficial for your well being, but for that of your baby. And we all want happy, content, calm babies, right? As a mother of three myself, I know this to be true.  

So, how can we do that?

Tapping, also known as EFT which stands for  Emotional Freedom Technique, is a 2000+ year old, Chinese acupressure technique. I am happy to say that this powerful, accessible, and effective tool is making a resurgence. 

EFT is rooted in the principle that our bodies store our traumas. They are stored in a section of our brain called the Amygdala. We can access this tiny area of our brains through the meridian system, or energetic highways, of our bodies.When we calm the Amygdala, we signal that it is safe for our body and all of its system to relax too. We are and feel safe.  

Here’s how it works. 

Our bodies have meridian spots that act as trigger points. 

Similar to reflexology, where different points relate to different organs, these meridian spots relate to different emotions. 

For example, the inside of your wrists is where anxiety is stored energetically. So tapping on these points signals the Amygdala to calm, anxiety to calm, and you feel more grounded. 

There’s more.

Tapping also includes verbalizing what you’re anxious about and being open to any additional emotions that surface. These verbalizations are done in rounds while tapping on different meridian points. With each round we encourage the Amgydala to settle and calm. 

The practitioner will lead the client through the verbiage to diminish and/or eliminate any negative emotions. The combination of physical stimulation of the Amygdala through the meridians paired with the brain stimulation of speaking changes the neural pathways in your brain.  

One begins with the ‘elephant in the room,’ so to speak, addressing whatever or whomever produced your issue. For example, “Even though I had a horrible experience giving birth, I accept how I feel and love myself”, vocalizing these emotions in tandem with the tapping points. 

You then dive deeper, letting the feelings be felt before they subside or go away completely. And then you begin to allow yourself to program for a positive experience. 

Whether you are pregnant and programming for a seamless delivery or would like to release the trauma from an eventful birth and program for a graceful parenting experience going forward, EFT can help.

The best part is that with all the concerns about not putting anything in our bodies that could harm your child, EFT is a totally non-invasive game-changer. And EFT/Tapping can be used for pretty much any and every malady you can think of. People have been cured of phobias, body pain, weight/body issues, all without pills or potions. 

When we hold on to resentments, anger, guilt, shame and don’t truly love ourselves, those negative emotions will fester and manifest physically, eventually creating some form of “dis-ease.”

As Louise Hay, the famous author and metaphysician says in her 1984 book, You can Heal Your Life,  “We ‘create’ every so-called ‘illness’ in our bodies – our goal is to clear away blocks that keep one from robust health and having the life they want.” 

In her book, Hay has about 40 pages of maladies, their emotional “origin” and a correlating affirmation to go with it. Think: bodily fatigue, anxiety, cysts, allergies, depression, and more.

To love ourselves in our current state requires a huge amount of self-awareness and determination as well the ability to surrender to the Universe with confidence that all is in Divine Right Timing! 

The more we can love ourselves the more we can pour out to our own children, extended family, friends, our community, and the world. Yes, cliche but it’s just the plain truth. 

And if you were raised in an environment that was less than loving it’s important to work on yourself to break those patterns, so you then break the cyclical family behavior. 

Ultimately, if you’re looking to start a brood of your own, make sure you have enough love to go around, most importantly enough love for yourself. 

Love yourself enough to get the tools you deserve to create a postpartum life free of any feelings that are not serving you. 

You deserve it.