Tapping for Perimenopause: How to Stop Anxious Thoughts, Break Self-Sabotage, and Rewire Your Nervous System with Jessica Ortner

The anxiety hits at 3am. The spiraling thoughts won't stop. You know logically that everything is fine, but your body won't believe it. And the more you try to think your way out of it, the worse it gets. Jessica Ortner is a bestselling author, co-creator of The Tapping Solution app, and one of the world's leading experts on EFT tapping — a technique that combines ancient acupressure with modern psychology to send a direct safety signal to your nervous system. And in this conversation with Dr. Mindy, she unpacks exactly why perimenopause and menopause create a perfect storm of nervous system dysregulation, and how tapping can interrupt the cycle in minutes — no therapist, no appointment, no special equipment required. Dr. Mindy's fasting tapping meditations are available in The Tapping Solution app. And Jessica's new book — The Tapping Solution — is available wherever books are sold. For more resources related to today's episode, visit the podcast episode page: https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep337 https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep336 Connect with Dr. Mindy: Join Reset Academy https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/reset-academy?utm_source=libsyn&utm_medium=podcast&utm_term=&utm_content=loc-description&utm_campaign=reset-academy Watch the episodes on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DrMindyPelz?sub_confirmation=1 Follow Dr. Mindy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dr.mindypelz/ Subscribe to Dr. Mindy's newsletter for tools and research on fasting, hormones, and metabolic health https://www.drmindypelz.com/ Connect with Jessica Ortner YouTube: @TheTappingSolutionChannel Instagram: @thetappingsolution Instagram: @jessicaortner Jessica's new book, Rewired https://a.co/d/0bgxKGly The Tapping Solution App https://thetappingsolution.onelink.me/vJOa/ttshomepage Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your diet, fasting routine, or lifestyle.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mindy Pelz?

  Let's talk about cod liver oil for a second. And I know what you're thinking, cod liver oil? Really? Dr. Mindy, that sounds like something my grandmother took. But hang with me here for a moment, because this is one of those old school remedies that modern science keeps proving right. Cod liver oil is one of nature's most concentrated sources of omega-3 fatty acids. Also, it's high in vitamin A and vitamin D, all in a form your body can actually recognize and use. This is such a powerful combination that is profoundly anti-inflammatory. It's protective to your brain, it supports your hormones, and it does something I care

• 0:45Mindy Pelz?

  really deeply about, which is it starts to repair and nourish your gut lining at a deep cellular level. This is something I personally take every single day, and one of the things that I have noticed the most is what it's done for my skin. I recommend it to women who are navigating hormonal shifts, dealing with chronic inflammation, or simply trusting to protect their long-term health. So Standard Process is the company I deeply align with and trust. It's a whole-food-based, clean company, and it has held the standard of quality for decades, and I expect only the best from Standard Process.

• 1:29Mindy Pelz?

  They are definitely one of the top supplement companies in the world. So if you want to try it, check it out. You can learn more and get some for yourself at drmindypels.standarprocess.com. That's drmindypels.standarprocess.com. Enjoy.

• 1:53Mindy Pelz?

  On this episode of the Resetter Podcast, I am bringing you back, once again, Jessica Ortner. Now, if you're not familiar with the Ortners, they've been around for a while. They are a brother-sister team who have been teaching the world the power of a technique called tapping. And they are back to show the science behind why this really simple tool of tapping can be so profound for everyday occurrences that many of us have, like depression, and anxiety, and insomnia. And they have a new book out called Rewire,

• 2:34Mindy Pelz?

  which is all based off of current science, showing that the simple technique of tapping can instantly change our mental state. It's really, really profound. And you'll start to see, in many of my podcasts, that I am bringing you many experts that are all pointing their fingers at one problem. And if there's one problem that I think the Ortners are pointing their fingers at, is a new understanding in mental health, that in order to bring your body and your mind into a state of peace, and into a state of calm, and into a state

• 3:15Mindy Pelz?

  of happiness, we have to have the body and the brain connecting and syncing up together. So I'm sure you've all heard of the book, The Body Keeps the Score. It is still a wildly popular book, and it is still setting trends in mental health. I have an upcoming episode with a man who has been studying The Body Keeps the Score that I'll be bringing to you shortly. But what's really interesting about the mental health world is we're starting to see it's more impactful, listen to that, more impactful, to heal your traumas in the body first. And then you'll start to see that the mind changes.

• 3:58Mindy Pelz?

  Very different than what we used to think. We used to think you fix the trauma and the problems in the mind and the body will respond. And what we're seeing now is actually it's in reverse. You start in the body and then it changes in the mind. And what Jessica is offering us all here in this interview is a simple, free technique that we can all use to change the emotional state of the body in an instant, in the matter of minutes. And so in this episode, you're going to hear us talk about things that are very pertinent

• 4:37Mindy Pelz?

  to women, especially women going through menopause, and how we can use this really interesting free technique to help us sleep better, to help us move through anxious moments, to help us keep our focus. The opportunities are endless here. So I'm really excited to bring you Jessica. She's, you'll, you'll see, she's just an expert at delivering this message in a way we can all digest it. And I'm really excited about the lens in which I interviewed her from, which is through, how do we help women over 40 who are either going through the turbulence of menopause or are on the other side of menopause and are perhaps doing some of the techniques I

• 5:22Mindy Pelz?

  talked about in Age Like a Girl, where actually they're learning to shed old identities and bring forth new parts of themselves. This is, the conversation's deep. The tool and the technique she's going to teach you is, is life-changing and profound and science-backed. And stay all the way through the end because she'll guide you through a tapping session that is unique specifically to women. And it's, it's really cool. This is a really fun interview and a tool that I don't think we should look away from. So Jessica Ortner and Rewired is her new book, and I hope you get a lot of, out of this and that this technique becomes part of your healing toolbox. Enjoy.

• 6:08Mindy Pelz?

  You know, when I saw your new book, there was something that really hit me, and specifically when it comes to perimenopausal women. And it's this real deep understanding that I'm starting to see bubble up in the culture around nervous system regulation. And what I'm seeing is a lot of women are going into perimenopause already dysregulated, and the wheels come off the bus. Once their hormones start to go down, the nervous system is dysregulated, and the frickin' anxiety is like, goes through the roof. And in your new book, you really offer up

• 6:51Mindy Pelz?

  a new way to look at nervous system regulation. So can we start this conversation from, how would we know if our nervous system is regulated? And if it's not regulated, how do we frickin' regulate it? So we don't kill anybody?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  That's how we're gonna frickin' regulate it is exactly what we're gonna cover today. And by the end of our time together, everyone's gonna have a tool that they can use immediately. But what I think is helpful to start with, because this nervous system word is being thrown out everywhere. So let's take a step back and talk about like, what are we talking about, the nervous system? So your nervous system is this network of cells that communicate through electrical and chemical signals. So this includes your brain, your spinal cord, and all the nerves in your body. Your nervous system does not care about reaching goals or how much you got done today.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Your nervous system cares about one thing, which is safety, that you are safe. And when you are experiencing anxiety, it's because your nervous system is not feeling safe. It's perceiving danger in the world. This, the reason it's important to understand this is... I find that when we really get it, we begin to see that we're not broken. There's nothing wrong with us. Our body is working the way it's meant to, to protect us. And so our job is not to, you know, fix ourselves or to tell ourselves like, oh, just get over it. You shouldn't be feeling this way. It's to understand there's something in me that does not feel safe.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  And this anxiety is actually coming up because it has the very best intention, which is to fix the problem. And that's what we do. We start to spiral. How do I fix this? What do I do? Do I have to do more? Do I have to be more? We start comparing ourselves and our mind starts to go into these mental loops because all we're searching for is some security and some safety. And so a lot of times we are coming very dysregulated. We're going into perimenopause. That's contributing to the anxiety. And now it's like, it's our bucket was already full before. Now it's spilling over.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Not only is it spilling over, but we are judging ourselves and thinking, what is wrong with me? Which piles more pressure of this idea that I should not feel this way. And there comes a voice of criticism, of pressure, of you should know better by now. And so what we're really going to do today is find a direct way to communicate with your nervous system so you can begin to down-regulate so that your body gets a signal of safety. And when you feel safe, that's when we're creative. We're innovative. We problem solve. We can figure things out. Many of us, we're dealing with hormonal changes. We want to do things.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  It's hard to navigate this world when the anxiety is hijacking our brain. And what we'll do today is learn how to stop that. Take our power back through the body and allowing our body to know that it's safe.

• 10:16Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, so I so resonate with everything you just said, and I know people who women who are going through perimenopause are like, yeah, you just nailed it. I think you have a confluence of two things coming together. You have this dysregulated nervous system and our neurochemical system is changing. The neurochemicals that I look at it like a buffer, where you could take something stressful in and you had enough estrogen, you had enough progesterone, you had enough dopamine, serotonin, all the beautiful neurochemicals to let you sort of filter that

• 10:55Mindy Pelz?

  information out. And so you may have not even seen that you were dysregulated going into perimenopause. And now, everything feels like a major event. So, help us understand, other than anxiety, how would we know our nervous system is dysregulated so that we can at least identify that as maybe being separate from this neurochemical experience that our body is going through?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it shows up as symptoms. Oftentimes, it's the spiraling thoughts, grabbing onto a thought and having those thought loops and not being able to break through. There is a physical reaction. You begin to feel the pressure in your chest, or a tightness in your stomach. Oftentimes, our body speaks to us. So, we'll start to have pains that we didn't have before. Because now with the nervous system not regulated, what we tend to do is we clench, right? So when we're feeling stress and anxiety, and the body is going into that fight or flight response, it begins to clench. And all of a sudden, we wake up and now that neck really hurts. We're realizing we're waking up more mornings

• 12:10Speaker 01

  with our neck hurting. So really, it's about the way that we're feeling within our body, and our body speaks to us through these symptoms.

• 12:20Mindy Pelz?

  Yep. You know, I just interviewed Dr. Frank Anderson a couple of weeks on my podcast, and he studied- Under Bessel van der Kolk and he's all about the body gives you signals. And I think this taps into your work so beautifully because one of the things I've learned in my own menopause journey is that sometimes when the anxiety shows up, my brain wants to make sense of it like, oh, you're anxious because of the situation that you've got to do tomorrow or the unresolved situation that's going on in your life. But what I think the new trend in mental health is and what we're starting to see

• 13:02Mindy Pelz?

  is that the brain is often is often controlled by the signals of the body, that there's some memory in the body of where it wasn't safe. I'm curious if and then it informs the brain. I'm really curious in your research of everything you've done with nervous system regulation and tapping and and your tool being this thing that goes into the body. Like, is it a body issue? Do we start by dealing with nervous system dysregulation in the body first before we go to the brain?

• 13:37Speaker 01

  It's a two way highway. So it depends on where what you can reach first. Sometimes we have anxiety and we don't quite know why, right? So maybe we we start to feel anxious in our body and we start to try to grab reasons why we're anxious. Have you ever felt like that?

• 13:54Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Not feeling good.

• 13:55Mindy Pelz?

  Explain it to myself.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  And then you're you try to explain it, but it starts with the body.

• 14:00Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Other times you're totally fine and you have a thought and the moment you have that thought, you suddenly feel it in your body. It's triggered by that thought. So you have to look at your nervous system as this two way highway, right? It goes both ways. So we have to figure out where is the easiest place to enter? What is real? One of the best, you know, I just turned forty on this journey as well. And one of the best things that I remind myself, especially in those moments when you when you feel something and you're going, this feels, we know, this feels horrible. This feels bigger than it really is.

• 14:35Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, yeah.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  I say to myself, as I'm tapping, which I'll share you, share this technique soon, but I don't have to believe everything I think. I don't have to believe everything I think. Just because the thought is there, doesn't mean the thought is true. When we're not feeling good hormonally, we will then grab on to thoughts and we'll start saying things to ourselves. I'm not far enough along. Nobody likes me. You know, we go into these stories that start with the body and other times it's the other way around. So, we want to start with what's real for us, whether we're really in tune with how we're physically feeling, or there is this thought or this worry, that's what, it's what's keeping us up at night.

• 15:20Mindy Pelz?

  Right. And so, should you engage the thought? Because my brain, especially if it's two in the morning, is like, well, let me fix the thought and then I can go back to bed. Is that helping us at all?

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. We have all been there and it usually never is fixed because we're thinking about something in the future that we can't control, or something in the past that we can't change. When we are having that anxious moment, it's very rarely a present moment experience. There's nothing wrong in that moment in our bed when we can't sleep. It's the projection of the future and it's looking at the past that creates that anxiety. So, what I teach is this technique called tapping. You tap on these acupressure points on your body. Now, these are, as you tap on these points, there's these mechanoreceptors. So, they're specific points that have a lot of nerve endings, okay? And they also, many

• 16:14Speaker 01

  of the points follow the vagal nerve. It's the body and everyone's going to learn how to do this by the end of our time together. What you're doing when you're tapping on these nerve endings, is it sends this calming signal to your brain. So, what's happening is you're having a thought that's creating anxiety. You think the thought, and as you stimulate these acupressure points, these nerve endings, it's now sending this calming signal to your brain. Now, for those who are watching in video, Sometimes we find when people are overwhelmed, they go like this. They grab the bridge of their nose. They put their hand on their chest. They put their hands on the side. We intuitively know

• 16:58Speaker 01

  that we have these points that help calm us, that we go to when we're stressed. What we're finding is that this intuition, there is science behind this. When we tap, we send that calming signal. And what the research shows, there's been multiple research studies that shows that when you begin to think of a negative thought, if you're feeling stressed and you begin to tap on these acupressure points, you actually lower cortisol level. Now, every podcast I listen to, whether it's a brain expert or a heart expert or a metabolism expert, every time they're listing the things to do to feel better, reducing stress is always there.

• 17:42Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Everywhere.

• 17:43Mindy Pelz?

  By the way, I actually saw something recently that the number one health problem in the world is, is, is, is mental health.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Yes, I believe it. I believe it. And it impacts all of it. It impacts our body. It impacts our symptoms. And so that's why, you know, we have tapping meditations on back pain, on headaches, because there is a component, a nervous system component, when we have that stress. And we, when we're, when our nervous system is not regulated, we have that extra tension in our body that then begins to manifest, or it makes something we already have worse. And you, every doctor will say, oh, your symptoms got worse? Have you been going through something stressful? So we know that stress and cortisol is a huge component.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Now, this has been shown through research to reduce cortisol, the average is forty-two percent. The study that they did in twenty twenty, it was Bond University in Australia. They compared it with people who were just reading, like psychoeducation. So kind of just, this is how to reframe the thought. This is how to look at stress differently. And they compared it and the, those who are reading. That information, their cortisol went down. It went down by nine, nineteen percent. So it does help to reframe things and read things and but the tapping group went down by four, an average of forty-three percent. Okay. And then there was another control group, which was doing nothing, which was just reading magazines.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  And funny enough, it actually went up by three percent, which, you know, says something about

• 19:19Mindy Pelz?

  So we should, should we not go to our phone and scroll Instagram?

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:23Mindy Pelz?

  When we have those thoughts.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  I think that's a perfect example of, of why we shouldn't do that. And, and showing that this is going to reduce that cortisol. Now, what does that mean for us really? So we have these biomarkers. We see it reduces cortisol. But what happens is really interesting, Mindy, because I've spoken to so many people who say that when their anxiety goes down, now they can start to look at things and they can follow through. They can handle the change. They can ask better questions of their doctor. They can look at hormones and figure out what to do. We live in a world of options and sometimes it feels like, well, first of all, when we're stressed, sometimes there's no options and we feel stressed.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Sometimes we're stressed because we feel like there's so many options and we're not sure what to do. When you begin to tap on your stress, there is this quietness that happens. This stillness, this calmness that happens. And suddenly your brain is online again. When we're feeling that stress, the part of our brain, the amygdala, that's what's firing off because it wants to keep us safe. We get the email and our brain acts like we have to fight or flee. And so suddenly the prefrontal cortex, which is all about problem solving, ideas, creativity, it's offline. And so when we're able to stimulate these points, now we can look at perimenopause

• 20:52Speaker 01

  and go, well, what do I, what do I need?

• 20:55Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  What can I do different? And suddenly the solutions just feel so much easier because we don't have the tension and the anxious thoughts getting in our way.

• 21:04Mindy Pelz?

  So let me run a scenario that I've heard so many women say, and I've experienced myself, is that the, the issue with perimenopause is these thoughts sneak up. Okay, I have something I've got to say that I really think a lot of women need to hear. If you've ever followed a health program and it didn't work, check this out. This is not your fault. I promise you. Let me explain. Most fitness programs, most fasting protocols, most dietary advice, it was researched on men. It was designed for men and then handed to women with a shrug. And I hear you go, hope this works for you.

• 21:47Mindy Pelz?

  But here's the thing, you operate on a 28 day hormonal cycle. The foods you eat, the length of your fasts, even the intensity of your workouts, all of it needs to be timed to where you are in that cycle to actually get a result. This is the science I teach inside my Reset Academy. This is the science that I have researched for over a decade. And inside my Academy, every month I walk you through it in a very practicable and actionable and way, and it's actually built for your body, for a feminine body. So it's gonna work. I promise you. I see it over and over again.

• 22:29Mindy Pelz?

  So no more guessing, no more following advice that was never designed for you. This is a moment to get back into relationship with this beautiful body that you are so blessed to live in. So if you're ready to finally understand this incredible body of yours and work with it instead of constantly fighting against it, come find me over in the Reset Academy. It's resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. That's resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. I'll see you there.

• 23:06Mindy Pelz?

  On you. And then when they attack you, there is an over exaggerated response. So the other day, I have a friend who's 43 called me and she's like, I'm feeling so much shame right now. And she goes, I have no idea where the shame is coming from, but I'm feeling this overwhelming sense of guilt and shame. And it's then eventually turned into dread, which eventually turned into anxiety. And she couldn't figure out the origin of what started that whole long thought process. What I'm hearing you say is that perhaps in that moment, figuring out where it came from, isn't necessarily the quickest way to

• 23:51Mindy Pelz?

  make it go away. That you could turn to a tool like tapping to sort of break the cycle of that spiraling thought, because spiraling thoughts is so, that that is a perimenopausal thing to the T. If this happens, then that's going to happen. If that's going to happen, that's going to happen. And, and it is really challenging to know what to do in the moment to stop that vicious cycle from happening. So is that where you could literally, I could have told her, hey, go in the other room and start tapping to break that OCD cycle?

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Yes, because you need an interrupt in that moment. You need an interrupt. We can't think our way out of overthinking. Right? We can't think our way out of overthinking. We have to use the body. And so this gives us the ability to calm our body. Now, once her body is calm, once there is some distance, right? So what she's doing is she's thinking about how she's feeling, but now she's sending this calming signal. So as her body begins to feel more calm, not only is she feeling better, but she can begin to reflect. And maybe she starts to realize, oh, this is where this is from. This is something, I

• 25:11Speaker 01

  had a moment when I was in middle school, and let me tell you, Mindy's, I know. Now where you think perimenopause, menopause, are we still talking about elementary school? Yes, some of us have carried things for a very long time. And in perimenopause and menopause, it's like the body is saying enough. I'm tired of carrying this and it's the blessing of it because things come up to heal. If they don't come up, they are running us unconsciously. And suddenly life feels harder, it feels unfair, we we feel left out. We start to create in our lives the patterns that we need to heal. And that becomes very magnified in perimenopause. It's like we can't hide anymore. It's like this, it is time to reclaim our power.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  It's time to stop playing these games. I have held this anxiety for so long. I've been high functioning as much as I can with this anxiety enough. I can't do this anymore. And sometimes we need to hit that point of of rock bottom to build that new foundation to go. I'm not going to run this pattern anymore. So for your friend, it's gonna, the step one is to just tap to regulate her nervous system. Yeah, to stop. Those thoughts, yeah, just to stop. And then, you know, in our book, we explore these stories where maybe you realize. Wow, the reason this is triggering me is because it reminded me of this thing that my mom used to do. And it just drove me crazy.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  And so what you can do with tapping is you can actually think about a memory that's triggering you and begin to tap. And what happens is something called memory reconsolidation. We used to think that our memories were solid rock. You know, something happened, it's here. What we're realizing is that memories are more fluid than we believed. We revisit memories. And when we revisit them and we look at them, it's like opening a file. And so when we open the file, we can either, most of the time, we just save it with the same anxiety. We open that file and even though it happened in second grade, all of a sudden, we feel that same anxiety of getting, you know, spelling that word wrong in the spelling bee.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  We feel that anxiety and then we like close that file and we move on and we just try to be productive with our lives. And then that's still there. And so you always have this pressure of, don't speak up, don't try, because you might feel that again. And you don't want to feel that again. What you can do with tapping is when you think about a memory, it's like you're opening the file. But now what you're doing is you're sending a safety signal to your nervous system. So you have the thought in the memory, but now instead of that, that anxiety, you're, it's basically this message of safe, you're safe, you're safe. And when you can re-save that memory, and I hear it again and again, people say, you know, I don't love what happened.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  It was painful, but it doesn't hurt anymore. I don't feel like I'm suffering anymore. And I think that's one of the reasons when I started my journey, I was so surprised how many young veterans were coming to tapping. Because they were telling us that there, when you're experiencing PTSD, you can't talk your way out of it. You're having a very physical experience. So there's, there's one, one story, the first story that I heard, um, we get so many emails, but this one really stuck with me. There was a man who, he came back from Iraq, and he walked into a Walmart, and he was standing in the Walmart, and all of a sudden, he got triggered. And he decided in that moment, okay, I'm gonna

• 28:49Speaker 01

  tap. I remember the tapping. So he's just there tapping. He's being triggered. He can't tell you exactly what. It's a physical experience of just being there and being triggered. He starts to send this calming signal, and he just feels like he begins to catch his breath. He can breathe again. He can orient, he can see that he's in Walmart. He's safe. And another man in uniform comes, passes him and puts his hand on the shoulder and says, keep tapping, brother, it works, and walks out. And this, and this man, these were the early days, he wrote us this email. And he told us what a difference it made. And we even have, I have this, there's another woman, Samantha Sonnet, who, um, she's just

• 29:31Speaker 01

  retired, but she was the head of biochemical terrorism in New York City. She would train Uh, police officers and agents and biochemical weapons on what to do for an emergency. And she was also a veteran and she was in the NYPD before she took that role. She sat with a therapist who said, tell me everything that's everything traumatic that's happened to you. And she thought, there's no, there's no way one day in New York City as an NYPD. I mean, that's enough for a lifetime and she was in, you know, she was in service for years. And so when she found tapping, she said, it was the one thing that could regulate her system that she didn't have to think of everything.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  And I share those examples. I know we're talking about perimenopause, but we have moments in our lives where we suddenly feel triggered. And we don't know why it's late at night. We're standing in our closet and it's like, we can't catch our breath.

• 30:26Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  And we're just thinking, what is this?

• 30:29Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  This is the interrupt that you need to give your body that safety signal. And then you can better navigate and decide how to best support yourself.

• 30:40Mindy Pelz?

  So it's so interesting. I wish we had had this conversation about 10 years ago. Because one of the things that I found about my perimenopausal journey was that when the anxiety came up, that my go-to was go to therapy, talk to a friend, verbally process it. And that to me over time felt like banging my head against a wall. And then I started having more stressful events compound on more stressful events until I couldn't get those thoughts to even settle so that I can feel comfortable in my skin.

• 31:22Mindy Pelz?

  And this is when I got really intrigued that the body was storing all these memories. And what I think happens when you go into perimenopause is the neuro, I call it the neurochemical armor comes down. And your body's like, oh, this situation that's going on right now, that also happened when you were five. And don't you remember? Remember how that turned out? And so you have this whole history. It's like to me, perimenopause is like, here you go. Here's all the trauma you've been living with in your whole life. And it's our decision in that moment to decide if we're going, how we're going to handle it.

• 32:07Mindy Pelz?

  And I just want to say that one of the things that has been really concerning me in the zeitgeist is the messaging that people are getting is you have anxiety because you didn't get the right patch or the right OB. And what you're offering, what my experience of perimenopause is a tool to say, okay, we need to stop the thought and we need to understand how it's linked to something in the past and we can change that. And what's so fascinating about what you just said, and correct me if I'm wrong, is we can do that all on our own, in the privacy of our own house.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  And that's what we're finding. A lot of the research around tapping, it started with practitioners and therapists, and there are many therapists who incorporate tapping. And if you're a therapist, this is such a great tool to just learn to use with what you're already doing. So there is definitely a place for therapy. The challenge, you know, when it comes to therapy and it comes to meditation is that, you know, you don't have your therapist at 12:30 when you wake up or 3 o'clock in the morning when you wake up in anxiety. Meditating is great for resilience, but it's not possible when you're standing in your closet with that panic in your chest. It's just hard to catch your breath. This is something that you're able to do on your own.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  And the first studies were with practitioners and working with a practitioner is amazing. But what we've discovered with my brothers, I mean, this has been amazing. We created this tapping solution app, which guides you through tapping meditations. Yes, you're in it too, which we'll talk about in a minute. But so when you tap, before you tap, you check in and you ask yourself, zero to 10, how anxious am I feeling? And the reason this has always been part of the practice is that you do a few rounds and you'll notice, oh, I went from a 10 to an eight. Okay, let me keep going. And it helps you track your own progress. Now, what we didn't realize was that this is also a data point. Because now we can see the results people are getting, just the overall statistics.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  We've had thirty-two million tapping meditations played. Eighteen million of those have been, have the data points of the zero to ten scale. Eighteen million. I don't think there's another mental health app in the world that has such a big database. And what we're seeing, for example, I have a tapping meditation to release anxiety. Very basic, helping you release anxiety. The average decrease is forty-one percent and it's a nine-minute audio. And so we're seeing that people can just, you know, press play or they can open the book to one of the tapping meditations and follow along. And that, that is giving them the results.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  And then the more comfortable you get with the process, you know, maybe you start with the book or you start with a tapping meditation. Then there'll be a moment when you get rear-ended or you're about to go start a meeting. You have those moments where like, maybe you can't press play or you can't open a book. You now have this tool, so even in that moment, you can begin to regulate by tapping. Because within tapping, and I'd love to kind of walk everyone through it and have an experience. But you're using words to acknowledge how you're feeling. The only reason you're using words is so that you're not thinking about the dishwasher. So you're focusing on the actual thing that you're sending, you know, you're, you're focusing on the stimuli

• 35:38Speaker 01

  and sending this calming response to be able to change your association with that. And so what we're doing here is you're, when you're in that moment of, of high stress, you can come back to this anytime you want. Just start tapping.

• 35:53Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Again, I wish I, I had really fully understood that when I was in my perimenopause experience. Because I think you also, what I'm really hoping my audience is understanding is that it, it's, we need to go to the body to resolve it. And you're just going to these points in the, you know, within your face, these acupuncture and, and your, your collarbones and as you. Walk us through it. People will understand. But you're but you're you're going in through the thought in a different way, which is is really where the cutting edge research is now showing. I'm when I sat with Frank Anderson, he's like, we don't that he's a Harvard trained psychiatrist

• 36:38Mindy Pelz?

  with years of trauma work. And he's like, going head to head therapy does not work. And I think what's really fascinating by what you're saying is you're offering a tool for, okay, the thought is appearing. Now go to the body to solve it. Go to the body to move it. And we've we, you know, people will go do body work, but it's not like everybody can just go, oh, I got to call the massage therapist. I I found walking is nice because that right foot, left foot, but a lot of times you can't stop everything and go walk. But I want people to understand this is cutting edge. What we know is you have to go to the body to resolve it.

• 37:24Mindy Pelz?

  So I really just want to point that out. So people don't lose that. Because so many people are like, I'm gonna call a friend. And sometimes calling the friend makes it worse.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  You know what you can do, Mindy, is call the friend, but tap while you're telling them the story. Allow yourself a moment, because there is something. This is what your nervous system wants. It doesn't want to be ignored. It wants to be seen. And so you have to say, I see you, even though you have that thought, and even though you logically know it's not true, everyone doesn't hate you, your life isn't worth, you know, we can go to dark places when hormonally, you know, we all

• 38:03Mindy Pelz?

  For sure.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Know that for sure. When we have those thoughts, we can't just go, oh, don't think that. Oh, that's not true. It feels true in our body. So part of tapping is honoring that. And you actually start by acknowledging. So you can talk on your friend and say, I just feel like, I'm working so hard and nothing is working. And you're allowing the tension, the stress to be there. But you're sending the signal. And what you'll begin to find is that as you tap, you just, you might start talking slower. You might be able to hear advice differently. It has a place to land now. You can begin to look at things differently. You can go, maybe I don't need to believe everything I think.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  There is an openness, but it actually starts with giving yourself that moment to be like, this sucks. This is how I, this is how I feel and honoring that as you tap.

• 38:58Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Okay. So before we go to a tapping example and, and leading people through it, um, I want to bring up another thing that I see in my world a lot. And, um, and you talk about this in your book, is this idea of self sabotage. And I see a lot of women say, okay, I'm going to do a 17 hour fast. And they get 13 hours in and they're like, whoo, four more hours? I don't think I can do that. And so all of a sudden they go and eat something. And they didn't make their full journey to the 17 hour fast. They ate something and then they think it's their fault. I don't have the willpower. I don't have discipline. I've never been able to do that.

• 39:39Mindy Pelz?

  And they go into this sort of self deprecating, self, self pity party and, and, and this happens all the time where this sort of self sabotage behavior shows up for the best intending human and they can't get over these hurdles. So how would we use tapping in that moment where maybe you're 16 hours into a fast? And you're like, I really want to go 24 hours today, but I'm struggling. Can we use tapping in that moment?

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Yes, we absolutely can use tapping in the moment. And I think it's helpful to begin to recognize old patterns to see how we can break them. So usually what happens is we decide we want to make a change. And maybe it comes from a place of pain. Like I don't feel great. I want to change. And that's okay. It's okay to not feel good and go from this, I'm moving forward. But many of us, what we do, and, and I have to bring this up because I see it so often is a lot of us grew up in a diet culture, right? And this idea of like, let me just, if I could just diet, do something. And, and so now it's evolved and we're like, well, it's fasting, but we're having that same relationship, which is you suddenly feel pain and you say to yourself,

• 40:54Speaker 01

  I'm sick of this. I'm gonna change. I'm gonna do it. And so it it cha- it we start to uh make movement through pressure and criticism. Like, there's something wrong with me. I have to change. And the tricky thing is, for a short time, the pressure works. Because we'll stay on something for a little while. But then it becomes so hard, because it's through pressure. And not a desire to support ourselves. It's through what we're doing is we're trying to hate ourselves happy. We're trying to criticize ourselves thin. We're trying to shame ourselves to change. And when that pressure begins to build and we're having a hard time with those emotions.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Suddenly, we're like, I need food. I need, because food is that way to suddenly feel good. To take a break. You know what? Maybe I shouldn't do the seven. Maybe it's just too much for me. I just I just need a break. And so it's really. Self sabotage is like this misguided self-love. There's a part of you that doesn't feel safe to continue with the fast. Because you think it's too hard. It's too much pressure. I can't do this. And you've already put so much pressure on yourself that you break. And then what happens? You start the cycle again. Oh, this time? No, this time I mean it. And then the same thing happens, because the pressure can only take us so far. We it's I what I love what you do with fasting is you talk about the intentions.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  We need to be very intentional and be moved forward from a place of being pulled instead of being pushed. So. How do we do that? We first have to address the pressure that we're putting our on ourselves. Because the pressure doesn't work. We think it works, because it helped us lose two pounds once. Right, yeah. Gain it again and lose it again. And so we think, well, we have to, but it doesn't. It starts this self sabotage. The second thing we have to do is to look at this with a lens of compassion. If we suddenly realize we're not broken. It wasn't our something inside of us that was trying to sabotage ourselves. It was a part of us that just wants to be safe.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  And so my job is to give my body that signal of safety. When I want that food, when I want to break the fast, hey, you're safe. You're safe. You're safe. And through the safety, we can continue. We have the resources. But through the pressure and the stress, we forget what we know, and we just want to grab something as quickly as we can. Because it just feels too much. And so. The thing about fasting too is it makes us look at our relationship with food. Oh, yeah. And you know, how we're associating and if food is the only way that you find pleasure, if food is the only way at the end of the day, you just have a break. Well, of course, when someone takes that away, you start to feel even more anxious

• 43:42Speaker 01

  because they took away that one comfort that you have. So we need to find that comfort within ourselves. We need to nourish and and support ourselves so that we don't have to default to that. So I want to share a quick study because there was actually, there's actually research around this. So there was a group, this study was done on women, which I love because as you know, a lot of studies are not done on women. Yes. This was a study done on women. And these women, all of them in the study were considered to be overweight, a high BMI, and they all suffered with food cravings. So this isn't someone who just suffered with food cravings, but you know, was fine. These are people who really, they want to lose weight. Their doctor is telling them to lose weight, but their cravings are too hard

• 44:27Speaker 01

  that they don't feel like they have control. And so in this study, this was also at Bond University. They put them first in an MRI machine before they tapped. And they showed them the photos of their biggest cravings. If you have a craving for salt or sweet, you start to even thinking about it. Like, think about it now, think about your craving. Oh, yeah. You almost can like salivate. It's like very, very easy. So here they are, it's just showing them photos of their cravings. And you see in the MRI scan, the parts of their brains lighting up, right? So they're, they have this, their brain is firing off, which is saying, I want this food. They have this stimuli, I want this food. They did tapping for four weeks.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Not only were the women saying, wow, I feel so much calmer, I have less anxiety. I don't crave this food, like I don't have this craving. Not only did they report themselves that their cravings went down, but when they put them back in the MRI machine and showed them the images, you see the difference in their brain. Suddenly those parts aren't lighting up. Their association with that food had transformed. So we know that this works. So when it comes to self sabotage, I think one of the best things to do is to start with what you talk about, which is like the pre fast, the getting centered and getting ready, really setting your intentions. Not starting a fast from a place of anxiety, from a place of my life is a mess.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  I just have to push through this.

• 45:56Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  And that's why I called you and I said, you know, Dr. Mindy, can you create tapping meditations for fasting to address these challenges? And so you created great tapping meditations in our apps for pre-fast, for those for during fast, when you have physical symptoms.

• 46:14Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  So this is my advice. Not only is that a great resource, but just the tapping itself, the moment you feel that craving, that doubt, that anxiety, that's starting to run the show, begin to tap on these acupressure points. Acknowledge how you feel.

• 46:31Mindy Pelz?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  I can't do this. I never follow through. I'm just not good at this. It's easier for everybody else. It's always been hard for me. What's the story? Cause there's usually a story that you're telling yourself right before you reach the food. It either starts there or it's a physical feeling you're feeling. Maybe it's not a story, but all of a sudden your, your body feels like I just need, I need to reach for that. I just need to reach for something. So allowing yourself to be aware of that feeling and tapping sends that contradictory, you know, your, your, your body is saying, I'm not safe. I need food. You're sending the signal, you're safe, you're safe, you're safe. You're giving yourself the reassurance to keep going. And it really, what I find what people say all the time is it like takes the edge off.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Like sometimes just by taking the edge off, you're able to, to, to stay with it.

• 47:21Mindy Pelz?

  Okay. Let me ask you a personal question. And this one is a really important one, which is when was the last time you had your vitamin D checked? And I'm saying this because in all my years of working with women, low vitamin D is one of the most consistent findings I see and one of the most consistently missed. And vitamin D matters for so many aspects of your health.

• 47:48Mindy Pelz?

  We're talking about a deficiency that can show up as hormonal imbalance, mood struggles, poor sleep, immune issues, even stubborn weight that won't bud, no matter what you do. But here's the part that most people don't know. Taking an isolated D3 supplement isn't enough. This isn't like just running down to the local store and grabbing some D3. Your body actually needs D3 to be combined with very specific cofactors to actually absorb and utilize vitamin D the way nature intended it. And most supplements on the market don't include these cofactors. That's why I personally love Cataplex D from Standard Process.

• 48:32Mindy Pelz?

  It's a whole food supplement. It's vitamin D complex, not just an isolated nutrient. There's an incredible difference between checking a box and actually moving the needle on your health. And this one really moves the needle. In fact, in my clinic, we used to test vitamin D. And we could see with a product like Cataplex D, we could see on lab work, the vitamin D levels in people go up. So you can learn more and you can get yourself some vitamin D. You can test out Cataplex D at drmindypels.standarpprocess.com. Enjoy.

• 49:16Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, I think it's so interesting because like one of the things fasting did for me is it helped me see that I had equated food with mother's love. Because I had a mom where every time you had a bad day, you got a meal and you got a hug and mom sat with you and chatted with you. And one of the things that I realized when I first started fasting is, you know, I'll never forget the first 24 hour fast. I was like about, you know, three o'clock in the afternoon. I needed to make it till seven and I was like, not only was I hungry, but I felt unloved. I was like, it brought up all these emotions, which was beautiful.

• 49:57Mindy Pelz?

  Because at least I was able to link that together and I teach people this like what emotions show up is showing you this this dysfunctional relationship you have with food or with your body. And so what I hear you say in this moment is that's where you can break that vicious cycle of spiraling negative thoughts in that moment by tapping. And then would you say, let's say, I don't have time to do a long tap. I can't go to the app. I'm looking at the refrigerator and I just want to eat. I'm feeling unloved. I'm very uncomfortable in my body, which is a

• 50:36Mindy Pelz?

  really common experience for new fasters. Can I just stop right there and just start doing my tapping?

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:44Mindy Pelz?

  And that will break that moment.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yes, it will break that moment. And when you tap a few rounds until you feel your body start to soften a bit, you feel kind of your shoulders drop, you'll you'll notice a difference. And then you can begin to ask yourself, what do I need to remember? What do I need to hear? Why am I doing this? And then something might come up of like, you are loved. You are enough. Sometimes it comes naturally than others, but notice those thoughts, because what happens is when we begin to weed, we can plant the seeds. So if we if you know, if we want to just go positive too fast, what tends to happen is like we just have this reaction of like, no, that's not true. But when we honor how we feel, then we can begin to say like, what do I need to hear?

• 51:29Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  The other thing about food is that, I mean, you say it so beautifully, so many of us have turned to food as a way to regulate ourselves.

• 51:37Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  We feel anxious and we eat and suddenly it's like the because what happens is your blood, you know, you're you're feeling anxious, you're in the fight or flight mode, you eat a lot of food. Now, all the excess blood, it has to go to your digestion now. So now you feel like that heaviness after you eat, which is actually really helpful. It's grounding. You eat a lot of food and you're like, you know, you notice people eat a lot and they just lean back in their chair. It's a grounding feeling. If you feel so dysregulated in your life, food sometimes becomes the only thing that helps ground you. And I would notice, I had this journey with myself with overeating, with with being part of the diet culture, with body dysmorphia, with gaining weight and with losing weight.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  And I noticed that if I had to leave the house and I was nervous, it was like, I just wanted to open the pantry and just eat as much as I could. And I could tell when I finally like, got back into my body. Yeah. It's like when I finally had enough stuff that I just, boom, I'm back in my body. And it was this pattern. And so suddenly you start take taking away food and you're now left with that feeling. But I think it's such a beautiful experience because now in perimenopause, like, we're done with those patterns. We're done with feeling like the only way we can feel love is food. What it makes you look at this in such a new way, where you can't hide from it. And and what I find is there's this, and I I've said this

• 53:02Speaker 01

  word again and again, but I, I hear it again and again, a self compassion. Suddenly you can look at little Mindy and be like, of course you were turning to food. Like, you just wanted to be loved. Everyone wants to be loved. That's okay. So how can I make you feel loved without the food? How can I make you feel love without something external? And we start to see ourselves as like, not broken, but needing to reassure ourselves and just feel safe. Every time we feel off, it's because we just need safety and reassurance. And too often, we try to look for that reassurance and safety outside of ourselves. We start to overthink, we start to to want it, the validation from someone else. And what this

• 53:42Speaker 01

  is inviting us to do is to give that little girl inside of us, the validation, the love they need now, that it's not external, it's a reclaiming, it's reclaiming your power. And that's what perimenopause does. I mean, I think it's tough. But we are tough.

• 54:02Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  And oftentimes it's tough because it was tough before, you know? Like, we just are, we were very high-functioning anxious people.

• 54:11Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  And now this is saying, let's evolve beyond that. And this is the invitation. And I have, I have moments too. I'm on my own journey, just started using some hormone therapy and, and I've done the fasting. And I've had those nights where you feel anxious and I just remind myself, I am not my, I don't have to believe everything I think. And like, let me come home. Let me, let me come home. Let me give the reassurance I need. Let me come back to myself.

• 54:38Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. You know, you are spot on about the people use food to regulate. That is a big thing that just, the way you said that just really clicked in my head. And the challenge is then when I teach fasting, we're, we're removing the thing that they regulated. And all of a sudden, I'm like, this is the most incredibly beautiful marriage of two principles that could have ever been created. And it led me to the thought that, do you know that right now with all the weight loss drugs, they're finding that people who are on the weight loss drugs actually have a higher level of depression and anxiety because they, the tool they use to regulate themselves

• 55:22Mindy Pelz?

  is, they don't even have hunger, but they have no other resource for being able to regulate themselves because they used food to regulate themselves. So they can't use that because they're not even hungry. So the depression and the anxiety and some of the people with, with, on these weight loss drugs is going through the roof because the, so I don't know if you guys have done one on your tapping app for people on the weight loss drugs, but that would be really interesting.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, just anxiety, I mean, just using the app, just bringing, just finding a tool outside of, because the anxiety isn't even about the weight loss drug. It's about whatever story they're having in their mind.

• 56:07Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  They, they now don't have something. I mean, for many years when I lived in New York City, I would work with women with breast cancer. It was this wonderful charity that gave free resources to women going through breast cancer and many of them on chemo. And so many of them would tell me that they were struggling with insomnia. And then, you know, you read like insomnia is a symptom of cancer, but then when I would ask them, I'd go, well, did you have the insomnia before the cancer? And they'd go, no. And so you go, well, that's not the cancer that's giving you insomnia. It's the thought of cancer. It's the, it's the diagnosis. So how do we address how that feels?

• 56:45Speaker 01

  The of knowing this and being able to, so you know, it's not the weight loss drug that's creating the anxiety.

• 56:54Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  It's not having any other way to regulate it. And so being able to then go, okay, let's just focus on the, the feelings. What is true for you in this moment where you feel like you don't have another way to, to regulate? And so any of the tapping meditations, and I mean, so many times I have found people go, I really, you know, I, I worked, I was doing your work on a relationship. You know, I'm struggling with my husband. I've been tapping and I lost weight. And they're like, how did that? Is it, I'm like, listen, you're not getting a lot of cardio from the tapping. It's just when you're doing the tapping, you're making better choices. You're not regulating through food.

• 57:35Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. I think that, I think where it all comes together and what's like clicking for me. Um, because I have been spending a lot of time trying to understand how I personally regulate myself. And I have found some really cool things like I now live in Santa Cruz, California, and I can get into the ocean or I can get into the forest and I can let nature regulate me. Um, and I started to see as I used other tools to regulate me, how I used people to regulate me. I used food to regulate me. I used work to regulate me, that I would put myself in environments unconsciously knowing or wanting or desiring regulation.

• 58:20Mindy Pelz?

  And when you take those environments away, you feel a little like naked. And you don't really know, like they're all addictions. They're all these things that we do over and over again, hoping we'll feel better. And what you're like, Offering me today is a deeper understanding that those are dead end streets. And that we do need a new toolbox and what a frickin cool, simple, easy toolbox that you're providing that is science based. So, so thank you for that. And can you walk us through how we do this? So people understand because yeah, again, this is why I love learning and talking is because I just went to a whole nother level of understanding

• 59:04Mindy Pelz?

  of regulation through what you were saying. So thank you for that.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Of course. Yes, I would. Oh, I'm so excited just thinking about all the new people who are gonna learn how to tap.

• 59:13Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  This is something you can use forever. You could use this with your kids. You can use it in a bathroom stall before a meeting. I mean, I just absolutely love it. So I'm gonna walk you through the nine points and then I'll give you, we can have an experience together. So the first point is the side of the hand and it doesn't matter what side of the body you tap on. Then the next point, so I'm using, you know, a few fingers and it's just like a, a nice tap tap. Not so much it hurts, but it's, it's a solid. It's a good tap.

• 59:44Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Then we have the eyebrow point. A lot of times people tap on the middle of their forehead. The point is actually where the hair of your eyebrow begins. It's, you notice we talked about when people are stressed, they tend to grab this part.

• 59:56Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, so interesting.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Bridge of your nose. And then the next point is the side of the eye and it's where the bone lies right on the, so it's not like back in your template, it's right on the bone.

• 1:00:08Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Then you have underneath your eye on the bone.

• 1:00:13Mindy Pelz?

  What do you do if you have glasses on?

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Underneath, yeah, it's a little tricky with glasses. You have underneath the nose between your upper lip and your nose. Underneath your mouth. Then you have your collarbone point. If you feel your collarbone, it's down an inch on either side.

• 1:00:29Mindy Pelz?

  Underneath both.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's underneath your collarbone about an inch between the bones. You can also use your whole hand and tap on your chest. Then you have a hand width from your armpit. It's, it tends to be where your bra strap lies for women. For some women, this is a hard point to reach. You can skip it. You can cross your hand over or you could even use the same hand to tap. And then the last point is the very top of the head. So those are the nine points and you have these, you have different acupressure points, these nerve endings all over your body, but these are nine of the most powerful ones and they're very easy to access and they're easy to remember. So once, the more you do tapping,

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  you'll be easily able to remember the points so that in those moments you can begin doing the tapping. When you're following along with one of my tapping meditations, whether it's in the book or it's in the app, we always start with acknowledging how we're feeling. As we talked before, we want to allow ourselves to, to be where we are, to see how we're feeling. And so this is where we're really combining this ancient acupressure with this modern psychology of understanding that it's through visibility and validation of our feelings that we begin to let them go. It's the great irony. We always thought like, ah, you know, we were taught as kids, like, just get over it, push through it, like, don't feel that way. And it's actually the opposite.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Emotion, energy in motion, we need to allow ourselves to feel and allow that energy to move. So with that, let's just do like a very quick experience so people can do this.

• 1:02:11Mindy Pelz?

  Can I ask you, wait, before you do that, can I ask you a question? Just because so for anybody, any of the doubters out there, because honestly, the first time I learned about tapping, I was like, this is crazy. And so I had to go look up those points and under, why those nine points?

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  So you have, so I'll explain a little bit about the history. Tapping started with a man called Dr. Roger Callahan, who was a therapist. He was working with a woman named Mary who had this unbelievable water phobia. He had worked with her traditionally for years and nothing budged, terrified of sinks, showers, swimming pools and oceans. I couldn't even look at them, full panic. And she kept telling him, I feel it in my stomach. I feel it in my stomach. It starts in my stomach. He was studying kinesiology. And so he thought, well, let me combine what I know as a therapist with what I'm learning kinesiologist, which is the stomach meridian. So he had her tap on the stomach meridian while they talked about the experience and she was able to go through her, she was able to.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Really have a breakthrough. Now, Dr. Roger Callahan was kind of mapping out depending on what challenge you had, you would tap on different points. Then one of his students came along called Dr. Gary Craig, who saw that these nine points were easily accessible, easy to remember, and were getting people results. So this is a very long way to answer that question as simply to say that these are nine points that are easy to remember and accessible, and they found to be, it works, and that's how it stuck. There are other points, like there's a nine gamut point on the side of your hand between your pinky and your ring finger. That's also a great point to use. But here for ease for the practice, it's easy to remember these nine points.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  So what we're gonna do is, just if you're watching this, let's just take a second. And if you're on a walk, it's okay. People, I have always seen people tapping, but you can tap discreetly. But just think about, what are you holding today? Have you been feeling like some pressure, some tension, some stress? And notice how it shows up in your body. Maybe your shoulders feel a little tight, or you're feeling something in your stomach. All we're doing here is we're checking in on the anxiety and the pressure that we're feeling. And I'd like you to give it a number from zero to 10.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  So 10 is like high anxiety, high pressure. Zero is you're feeling calm. This number is just for you. There's no perfect way, but what feels right? What number are you on when you check in with how you're feeling? And then we're gonna begin by tapping on the side of the hand. And what I'd like you to do is to repeat after me, just simply in your mind. Okay, so repeating after me, even though I'm feeling this tension,

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  I acknowledge how I feel.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  And I give my body permission to relax.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Tapping on your eyebrow point, all of this tension.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  Side of the eye, all of this pressure.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Under the eye, I shouldn't be feeling this way.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Under the nose, I shouldn't still be struggling.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Under the mouth, all of these judgments.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Collarbone, I've been so hard on myself.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  Under the arm, I begin to recognize these patterns.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Top of the head, all this pressure I put on myself.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  Eyebrow, part of me believes.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Side of the eye, that without this pressure, nothing changes.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  Under the eye, but I'm so tired.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Under the nose, I acknowledge how tired I am.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  Under the mouth, and I'm open to feeling more ease.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  Collarbone, right now and right here.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  I am safe.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  Under the arm, I don't need to figure it all out.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  Top of the head, I am allowed to rest.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  We're gonna do one more round on the eyebrow point. Giving my body permission to relax.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  Side of the eye, I am safe.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Under the eye, even with all of these feelings.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Under the nose, I am safe.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  Under the mouth, I don't need to believe everything I think.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Collarbone, I simply give myself the reassurance I need.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  Under the arm, I am finding my way.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Top of the head, I am safe.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  Now take a deep breath in and exhale.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Just give yourself a moment. Put your hands over your heart. I don't do this in all the sessions, but I know your, your women are special. And as you put your hands on your heart, I just want you to ask yourself, what do I need to remember? What do I need to remember? Maybe it's, don't be so hard on yourself. You're further along than you realize. You are figuring it out.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  You are enough.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  You are safe.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  What is your body longing to hear?

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  And take another deep breath in.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  And if you've had your eyes closed, you can open them and just check in with how you feel. Notice that we talked about the tension and the anxiety and notice if the numbers dropped, if your body feels a little different. That was a very, three rounds, a very quick experience, but how was that for you, Mindy?

• 1:11:03Mindy Pelz?

  I got, I got sleepy. Is that like, I was like, I'm like, starting to think I might do this at night for sleep.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  It's great for sleep. Yes. Because we're so like high energy and then suddenly it's like we're giving our body permission to, to rest, to rest. That's really what it is.

• 1:11:23Mindy Pelz?

  So now I know my audience and they're probably thinking, well, I'm not going to be able to say the right thing. Like, does it matter what you say? Can you just say what comes to your mind?

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Yes, you can say what comes to your mind. Feel, notice what works. If it's not working, don't do it. We can usually tell. There's usually a relief when we just let ourselves, like I said before, talk to your friend, but just be tapping. We can also say things like, we, if we, if we can say to ourselves, I am safe, I am safe. If that starts to feel good, keep doing that. The only reason we don't start with the positive is sometimes not honoring, trying to bypass how you feel. It just doesn't feel true and we can tell because we will reject it. We won't feel good. But you know, for example, this weekend, I have a book launch. I have a

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  four-year-old. I invited some, her new little best friend, four-year-old, I invited her parents and the whole family over and I was, have you ever rage cleaned, you know, before someone's coming and you're just like, God, put everything away, put the pajamas away. And I was like, thinking about the book launch and I just, I, I got like caught up. I found myself just in this like rage cleaning. I have so much to do. Oh my gosh. And as, you know, I only needed one hand. So as I was, I, I caught myself and I just started to tap. It's okay. It's safe to be here. This is now. It's okay. It's safe to be here. This is now. Because what I did was I left. I

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  wasn't getting ready to host. I was working on a book launch, but I can't work on a book launch. So I'm just thinking about it. And so sometimes what the tapping does, it, it really brings us to that present moment and it invites us to come back to our body. So it can be as simple as just saying like, I am safe. I am here. I'm okay. But you have to make sure you can say that when you, when you feel like there isn't something else bigger that needs acknowledgement. Sometimes you just catch yourself in a spiral and you can kind of comfort yourself that way.

• 1:13:30Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And you can go to your app. This is why your app is so amazing.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  This is where, because you know what would happen is people would, you know, I would meet people and they'd be like, oh, I read a book about tapping or I did this tapping was, oh my God, I had the biggest breakthrough. It was amazing. And I'd be like, amazing. When was that? And they'd go, two years ago. And I was like, you didn't tap synth? And they're like, no, I kinda forgot. I forgot how to do it. I forgot. And so that is what, hearing that over and over again, we were like, we need to find a way that's very easy for people to just press play. And I use it every night. There's this section, it's called the core five, five different nervous system states. It's, you know, release, ignite, soften, calm, and center. And so I kind of choose like what I feel like I need.

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  And I just press play every night and it's been so helpful.

• 1:14:22Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, I'm gonna go, starting to use it. I'm gonna use it going to sleep because I have a whole ritual around going to sleep to try to get my nervous system to tell it like, hey, we're winding down now. And I, I'm gonna add this in. So it's just beautiful. It's like each time I talk to you, I'm sure people do this. They're like, oh yeah, that tapping thing. What, what happened? Why did I stop that? So, but, but talk real quick about your new book because I want everybody to hear it. For starters, it's beautiful. And as a book lover, I like a beautiful book. I know, it's so gorgeous. Like it's so gorgeous. I, it's prettier than my books and I like my books. I think they're pretty.

• 1:15:01Mindy Pelz?

  Um, but you can, you, to me, it's like a manual that you can go to and you can just dive into a section. So why a book now and what's unique about this one compared to your app or the other books you've written?

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  We, I, this is the first time I co-authored with my, both my brothers. And the reason we did this is because the understanding of how the nervous system works, the science and research, how to really get the best results. It's all evolved so much. And so we were like, if there was just one book someone needed to really understand tapping, what is that one book? And that is the book that we, that we wrote. And we recommend you can read it cover to cover. And, you know, we had a lot of test readers and what we kept hearing was, oh, I did that chapter on financial stress and I didn't think it would really resonate. And oh my gosh, I had this big aha moment. So a lot of times just like exploring and looking at things and tapping is so powerful.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  But it is also the kind of book that your girlfriend is struggling and you're like, oh, wait a second, there's a chapter on that. So you can open it and when you get the book. You also get all of the audios. So every chapter ends with a tapping meditation that you can follow along. But if, you know, sometimes, I don't know if you've ever had like someone describe a meditation in a book. I'm like, I can't do that. Like I can't read it.

• 1:16:23Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  So everything that's in the book, you can read and tap. But if you also are like me and like the audio experience, you also get access to all of the tapping meditations from within the book.

• 1:16:36Mindy Pelz?

  And that's amazing. And so you could, you could also get the audiobook. Or like I would, I always say, sometimes it's good to get both.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. The audiobook is great, too. And it's, my brother is reading it, and I'm doing all the tapping meditations.

• 1:16:50Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, amazing, amazing. Well, I just, I'm so excited about this because I have a personally, personally, I have a different experience with menopause being post-menopausal now. I have a different experience with trauma after going through a whole hell of a lot of trauma in the last couple of years. And I have literally come back to where my focus needs to be is in nervous system regulation of my body. Like, I have boiled it down to all the things I tried to change in my mind need to now come through my body. And I think that's the core of what you're teaching.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  If you are always looking for something to fix, you'll always find something broken. So if you always stay in your mind, you'll always be stuck in those loops.

• 1:17:44Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  You're exactly right. It's the body that can help us really let go and feel free.

• 1:17:50Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, it's so beautiful. So where do people find your book and find you?

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  All the places, Amazon, where book, you know, all the bookstores. And I know we've, I'm sending a bunch of links. So if people want to do your tapping meditations, I'm going to link to those below as well. And yeah, everywhere books are sold. And I appreciate it. I'm proud of this one. I appreciate anyone who buys it. I just want to say thank you so much. It means so much. And the feedback we're getting already is, is wonderful, even from the, the pre-readers. It's, you know what it's like. It's like a baby, right? It's like your baby going out.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  You're just like, oh, okay, I'm so happy you have it. And it just feels a piece of our heart on pages. So I hope you'll enjoy it.

• 1:18:35Mindy Pelz?

  And I just think, you know, people need to know that tapping has stood the test of time. Like you guys have been at teaching this for so many years. And I think anything that stands the test of time is worth diving into and understanding. So, um, thank you so much, Jessica. I just really loved this conversation and I hope everybody goes and grabs your book. So appreciate you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.