Acutap the stress away
Photo by Sai Sampath
The counseling department in Bradley Hall is offering a new wellness class this year called Acutapping, which uses pressure points around the body to promote physical and emotional healing. Being the girl who once started bawling during a restorative yoga class, I was a little apprehensive to embark on what was sure to be another close encounter with my own body. However, as acutapping does not strictly fall into the category of “exercise,” I decided to venture into this new territory of therapy with the promise of one less stress-induced wrinkle.
A calming melody of flutes floated through the air of the counseling department as Chene Walz, a SCAD counselor who has a certification in Emotional Freedom Techniques, welcomed our group of four with a wide smile. She led us downstairs to a conference room where we circled up in rolling chairs. I braced myself.
One of my main concerns when it comes to anything involving feelings is, well, feeling too much. While Walz encouraged sharing and asked everyone in the group if they were dealing with anything particularly stressful in their lives at the moment, she didn’t force anything. It was a relaxed, no-pressure situation.
Walz typically begins her sessions with an explanation of the acutapping practice. She explained that it can be looked at through two different “lenses.”
First there’s the Eastern view, which is that our bodies are bioelectric. This means that when somebody is emotionally or physically not well, there is a disruption in the body’s energy system. According to this belief, acutapping is meant to target specific points in order to balance out the energies in our systems.
The Western view is focused primarily around the hippocampus, the part of the brain that lights up when a person experiences anxiety. According to some recent studies, acutapping can ease anxieties to the point where the hippocampus is not longer triggered by targeted distressing thoughts.
After she explained the reasoning behind acutapping, Walz asked if anyone in the group was experiencing anything particularly stressful to them at the moment. One of the four of us attending volunteered with their stressor, and Walz proceeded to ask further questions about his issue. When she seemed to get a grasp of what exactly he was dealing with, we began to tap.
Walz explained what each of the eight pressure points were and where to find them. Our “taps” were gentle and rhythmic. While we were tapping, Walz had us repeat various phrases out loud relating to the problems of the person who had volunteered to share what was stressing them out. Though the first sentence or two felt a little awkward, eventually we fell into a steady rhythm with Walz pausing every once in a while to touch base with the volunteer about how he was feeling.
At the beginning of the session, Walz had our volunteer give a rating to the intensity of his stressor. We compared it to the rating he gave it at the end. Though it did not totally fade away, his stress had decreased.
The nature of acutapping is that the more you do it, the more effective it is. With each session, the connections between the mental, emotional and physical stress triggers are meant to decrease. Walz explained that acutapping is often used in individual therapy sessions to help a patient desensitize their reactions to certain triggers.
Acutapping was an unthreatening and interesting experience I would do again. Like many self-benefiting activities in life, you get out of it only as much as you are willing to put in. Next time I plan on being a little less journalistic and embrace more of the holistic.
