Simon Currigan: 0:44

EFT tapping could be the solution that you need to help your pupils learn to handle their emotions and stress in a way that leaves them feeling calm, grounded and ready to learn. Find out more in this essentials episode of School Behaviour Secrets. Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My co host is Emma Shackleton. And we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and of course, students when classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're going to share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural Special Needs whole school strategy and more all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential. Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world. So you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Hi there, Simon Currigan here and welcome to our latest essentials episode of School Behaviour Secrets, where we share with you some key strategies from an earlier episode that you can use to have an immediate impact on the students that you work with and introduce you to a world where every classroom has a canvas of possibilities than every student's journey is a masterpiece waiting to unfold. Oh yeah, you know, not to over-egg it. Before we go any further, I would like to remind you that if you enjoy listening today, please remember to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss another episode. We begin this podcast towards the beginning of an interview that I had with Deborah Miller. Deborah is an internationally recognized author on the subject of EFT tapping has a PhD in cell and molecular biology and is an EFT expert and trainer. I started by asking her the most basic question, Debra, what is EFT tapping? So let's start with the basics. Can you tell us what EFT tapping is to start with?

Deborah Miller: 2:44

It is a tapping technique where you're using two or three fingers, and you're tapping on specific Meridian endpoints. And even though it looks funny, which actually works very well with kids, okay, because it makes it very playful, you are stimulating these Meridian endpoints and you are actually I'm going to be a science geek here. And when you're tapping on these endpoints, you're communicating with the amygdala, and the amygdala's the alert center. It's the one that is always looking is there danger somewhere out in the world that then stimulates a message that goes to your hypothalamus to produce stress hormones. So you fight flight or freeze. So when we're doing this tapping, what it's doing is it's connecting with that Alert Center and saying, calm down, it's okay, we're still here. And then that center shuts down and sends a different message to create more of the relaxation and regenerative hormones, which are the serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin, which we want, because we want to go into the repair system. So what we can do then is just by simply tapping on these points, we can reduce stress hormones in your body. So why would that be beneficial? Now, let's get our immune system strong. Let's reduce the stress, let's reduce the fear, let's reduce the anger that people are feeling as they are living in this time of uncertainty. And so what we want to do is create a centered balanced inner being so that we can then act appropriately with others. So for teachers with your children, right, and I find working with children with cancer, one of the most important things for me was not knowing the technique, it was modeling that technique. And modeling. It also meant that before I went in, I use the techniques so that I was calm, and I was centered. And I would go in as a being of love. You know, I wanted to radiate love and represent a loving person and accepting that child in whatever state they were in, whether they were crying, whether they were angry, whether they were hurt, whether they were being really sick, because I was working with children with cancer. So then by doing that, you're creating a situation that actually, again, in the quantum physics area, what you're doing is when you balance your system, our heart has a resonance field of magnetic field that can be up to like three meters wide or more. And so what you're doing is in, you're creating a field of balance, of field of love, and what happens when you go into a field that's very peaceful. You start calming, just like when the field is angry, you get really triggered and you can respond in an angry way. So these are just simple things that we can do by using these techniques is get yourself centered using a technique like tapping. And then what happens is you're rippling out in effect that will help those that are around you, whether it's your partner, whether it's your children, whether it's your co workers or anyone out in the street.

Simon Currigan: 5:51

So Deborah, can you sort of walk us through if listeners wanted to use this technique, precisely what it looks like how they would implement it.

Deborah Miller: 5:59

The technique is really very simple, we use two or three fingers of one hand, you can use either hand, it's very flexible. And we usually start with tapping one hand on the side of the opposite hand between the knuckle of the little finger and the wrist. So it's on the side of the hand, and you're just doing gentle little taps, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, we're not hitting hard, we're just a gentle tap. The next point, we're tapping in the middle of the top of the head, then you can use one or two hands, and you tap at the beginning of the eyebrow, which is you know, the eyebrow closest to the nose, then we're going to tap on the temples on the side of the eye, then we're going to tap underneath the eye, you know, right on the top of the bone, we're going to tap underneath the nose, underneath the lips, kind of like where the little goatee would be on a guy, then we're going to tap on what we call the collarbone point. But really, what you're going to do is you're going to feel your collarbone, you're going to feel that big bone, and then the pointy part and you're gonna go out and down, there's a little indentation underneath your collarbone. That's the point. And then we tap underneath the arm. So you're going about five to seven centimeters underneath your armpit and tapping on this side. And I also like there's one that's on your rib point, you know, so for a woman, it's where the bra goes across the rib, right, a couple centimeters below the nipple for a man. And then I also like using the risk points. So you're tapping on the point where it bends your wrist, and you're all of them, you're just doing a little tap, tap, tap tap.

Simon Currigan: 7:31

I've tried this technique. And I was surprised it was almost meditative in a way. Do we know anything about how the tapping redirects the amygdala and help us reduce those sensations.

Deborah Miller: 7:44

They've been doing more and more research on it. So there's clinical double blind studies on it. And what they're showing is it's that reducing cortisol like 30 to 45%. And cortisol is a hormone that causes inflammation in your body. And we know that inflammation is one of the causes of many illnesses, long term illnesses, chronic illnesses, it's reducing anxiety about 40%, what it's doing is literally reducing the stress hormones of adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol in your body. So then when you're not in the stress response, then you can move into the regenerative response, which has the hormones of oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine. And we want our body to produce more of those, because then it's rejuvenating yourself. Right, then you're in repair mode. So you're either in one or the other. So let's do some tapping, and allow it to actually move it. The exact mechanism hasn't really been determined yet. But we have the idea that it's communicating with the amygdala, which is your Alert Center. So when your Alert Center says it's safe, you go out of stress hormones, and you go into regenerative.

Simon Currigan: 8:48

And of course, for all of the kids we work with, they spend so much of their lives in stress that they only think in the short term, they're only thinking about my survival in the moment. But if you can reduce those stress chemicals, then you can start to think more rationally about what's better for you and your life and your family and survival in the classroom. If you'd like to know more about what an EFT session might look like, and how you could run this with the kids in your school to help keep them regulated, then pop back to the original episode. That's number 42. And if you're short on time, skip forward to about 14 minutes into the podcast. I'll put a link at the bottom of the episode description so you can click right through. If you found today's episode helpful. Do please take a moment to rate and review us It takes just 30 seconds. And when you do it tells the algorithm to recommend School Behaviour Secrets to other listeners, then that helps us grow the podcast and reach other teachers, school leaders and parents. It really does make a difference and really helps us grow. Thanks for listening and I look forward to seeing you next time for another educational adventure. Yeah I want there on school behinds