Need A Quick Stress Reliever? Use Nick Ortner’s 3-Minute Tapping Technique

In this episode of MarieTV, we do have some adult language. So if you do have little ones around, grab your headphones now.

Marie Forleo: Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and welcome to another episode of The Marie Forleo Podcast and MarieTV, the place to be to create a business and life you love. So let me give you a little context for today’s episode. A couple of years back, back in 2013, Josh and I were here in Los Angeles and unfortunately we got hit in a pretty bad car accident.

Marie Forleo: Someone ran a stop sign, we got t-boned, our car actually got pushed underneath another car, and thank goodness we were able to walk away from that accident. We were banged up, we were bruised, the car was completely totaled. But I will tell you, on an emotional level, I was not okay. My nervous system was fried. I found myself really afraid to get back into the car. I didn’t think I’d be able to get on my bike again. Even walking around the neighborhood for a bit of time was a struggle.

Marie Forleo: Enter a friend of mine, his name is Nick Ortner, and he happens to be an expert in a healing modality called EFT, the Emotional Freedom Technique, also known as tapping. We, right now, are in the midst of a global pandemic. And when I’m recording this, it’s early April, things are really difficult, they’re about to get more difficult, and one of the things I’m hearing, not only from people on my team, friends and family members, but also folks in our audience is a really challenging experience right now in terms of dealing with multiple levels of fear, panic, anxiety, and stress.

Marie Forleo: So in the interview you’re about to see, we’re going to walk through a tool that I think that everyone should add to their toolkit, especially at a time like this. We’re going to do a demonstration; we’re going to talk about exactly what it is. And I just think that it’s something that can serve you and can serve people that you know.

Marie Forleo: It’s completely free, it’s completely natural, and it’s very, very effective. There’s some science behind it as well. So I really hope that you not only listen and watch this episode, but do the practice, and share it with people you love. Enjoy.

Marie Forleo: Nick, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.

Nick Ortner: Hi, Marie. I mean, last time we were together. It was also on Skype yet. I’m not far outside of New York. So like next time we got to get in studio together.

Marie Forleo: Yes, we will. Yes, we will, which speaks to the context of why we were so excited to do this together today. Obviously we are in the midst of an unprecedented health crisis.

Marie Forleo: I’ve been talking to so many members of my team on a daily basis. We’ve got thousands of thousands of B-Schoolers right now and just talking with colleagues and, you know, understandably, folks are scared, they’re stressed. There’s panic and anxiety that are coming up. And I always am looking for different ways that I can share tools that can help. And you’ve been doing what’s known as EFT––we’re going to talk about what that is for years now––and I also just wanted to take a moment to thank you for what you do, because back in 2013 which is when we recorded another interview.

Marie Forleo: You know Josh and I had been hit in a car accident, someone ran a stop sign and my nervous system was just off the chain, and tapping and you, you really helped me because I was extremely afraid to get behind the wheel again.

Marie Forleo: Having trouble riding my bike. It was just, I could feel everything was off and I know so many people live with different levels of stress and anxiety on a normal basis. So you layer on a global pandemic, and my goodness, right.

Marie Forleo: So we’re going to walk through that. And the other reason I wanted to have you on, you know, you know, I’ve been friends for a while and I just love how committed you and your team are to being of service, you know, you’re a CEO, you’re a business person.

Marie Forleo: We’re going to talk a little bit later about how the tools that we’re going to walk through today how you have them available for six months on your app for anyone who’s in the healthcare profession. Yep. We’ll get into that later. And then also some incredible free tools for all of us at a time like this. So we’re going to get into that a little bit later.

Marie Forleo: And before we get into a full tapping session and a tutorial. Can you take us back to the foundation and really tell us for anyone watching or listening right now who is unfamiliar with EFT or tapping. Just how do we define it? What is it?

Nick Ortner: Yeah, absolutely. So you have to use emotional freedom techniques. We call it tapping as a general term because we are physically tapping on endpoints of meridians. I’ve been skipping my face and all my Facebook lives because people wash their hands. So don’t touch your face if you haven’t washed your hands. There’s all these points in our body that are points of conductivity and what the latest research shows is that when we tap on these endpoints of meridians while focusing on the stress, the anxiety, the overwhelm, the trauma, and the thing that is running through our minds, the overwhelm nervous system. We send a calming signal to the amygdala in the brain and a lot of your listeners and viewers will know the amygdala is that fight, flight, or freeze response center.

Nick Ortner: It’s a part of us that when something happens when you were in that car accident that amygdala fired and it fired for good reason to keep you safe to react to fight to flee. The challenge is when the car accident’s over and the amygdala keep firing. And that our brain gets trained for good reason. Because we’ve been trained for tens and hundreds of thousands of years to look out for that tiger. To look out for the bear in the woods. You know, I joke that affirmations and positive thinking all of our ancestors were probably really negative. Looking for what’s wrong at all times, right, trying to stay alive, like the paranoid ones lived. You know the guy meditating on the hills saying positive affirmations. He got eaten by the tiger right, not 100% but you get the point. We have this negativity bias, we have this part of us that is trying to keep us safe at all times what the tapping does as we acknowledge these fears that we go through that accident. The stress, the trauma, the anxiety. We send that calming signal to the amygdala.

Nick Ortner: The latest research is coming in fast and furious on it. I just saw a study that crossed my desk that showed… it was actually a replication study, which is great. Replication study, for those of you that don’t know is, hey, someone did a study. Let’s see if we can do it again because a lot of really big things that you read about. They go to do a replication study and they can’t make that.

Marie Forleo: Yeah, okay.

Nick Ortner: Right, it’s a problem in science. Like, how do we get this result and aren’t able to replicate it. So in this study, there’s three groups. The first one did group tapping for an hour. So we’ll have a little experience together, we’ll tap together as a group. So they did tapping for an hour.

Nick Ortner: The second group did psycho-education so they talked about stress and anxiety and overwhelm. They learned about the body and all positive stuff. The third group read magazines for an hour. Okay. And they did salivary cortisol. So you spit in a little tube. You see the cortisol, the stress hormone, that is flowing through our bodies right now for some people right now as they’re listening. This is sky high through the roof.

Nick Ortner: Other people it’s down lower. Where they did it before and after the tapping group showed a 43% decrease in cortisol in one hour.  Stunning drop in numbers. The psycho-education group showed a 19% decrease. And what I love about that. It shows that because, you know, tapping isn’t competition. It’s not like oh do tapping instead of cognitive behavioral therapy.

Nick Ortner: It’s the best cognitive behavioral therapists out there bring tapping into their practice at the appropriate moment because they know that when we bring our bodies, then we can affect that much more change, so 43% versus 19%, right, and then my favorite is the magazine group up 2%. So, though just sitting there probably you get bored. You’re waiting. Maybe you see something stressful in a magazine.

Nick Ortner: Right now what I think about that 2% group right now is I think about people on Facebook. I think about people reading the news. If it was 2% reading magazines. What is our cortisol doing all day long. And look, we know that we’re trying to keep our immune system strong and take a vitamin C and vitamin D and our zinc and whatever, you know, we’re told to do. And yet we’re downloading all the stressful information. I understand that we’re looking out, we’re looking for fear. We’re trying to stay safe.

Marie Forleo: And we’re looking for facts, right.

Nick Ortner: Got some facts. Exactly. We got to be informed, so it’s like okay, be informed. Yeah, get the facts. But then there’s a point when you’re just jacking up your cortisol, you’re going into fear mode. And then when we talk later about entrepreneurship and business.

Nick Ortner: You cannot be an entrepreneur in fear mode, you can’t run a business and fear mode, you can do it. Smart mode but not fear mode.

Marie Forleo: Yep. I love this. So, okay. So for folks listening right even if they hear the term EFT emotional freedom technique or they hear something like tapping and they’re seeing you doing this if you’re watching this on YouTube for those people that might think it’s like skeptical or woo-woo.

Marie Forleo: Can you take us back to when you discovered this because it’s not like Nick, you just read a book and you’re like, oh, I’m all bought in and let me just make this my business and career.

Nick Ortner: I wake up every morning thinking it’s woo-woo, you know. Every morning, I wake up skeptical and every testimonial that I get from someone I go, really? It’s still, you know, someone writes, oh I had 30 years of back pain that went away yesterday. Like, come on, you know, it’s like too good to be true stuff.

Marie Forleo: Yes, but.

Nick Ortner: Yeah, so I tried it for myself in 2003. I started using it with friends and family. The running joke at the time was don’t say anything is wrong around Nick because he’s just going to make you tap on it. It was like oh yeah, you have a headache? Great, let’s do it. It was just like, I was so into it.

Marie Forleo: Did you… were you just on a personal development journey. Like, what made you seek this out, or what was happening in your own life that that’s…?

Nick Ortner: I was on a personal. Yeah, I was on a personal development journey. I believe that my first introduction to it was with Tony Robbins and Tony’s a big fan of tapping. It was at a leadership conference in San Diego. He wasn’t there for the whole event, he came to do an hour; he just demonstrated the tapping and then I took that demonstration and, you know, went and researched from there. But that’s that’s a wonderful full circle because you know he’s a mutual friend and he’s a big supporter of tapping and all the humanitarian work we’re doing around it. So it’s like if I really think back, I mean, I can see him on stage, demonstrating it. I think that was my first little…. Okay, there’s something here. He’d been doing it for years already. And then I just started using it with friends and family.

Nick Ortner: And in 2007 decided to make a documentary film about tapping with my little sister, Jessica and one of my best friends, Nicholas. He went on to make other films and other docu series. And, you know, with no credit cards. Well, with only credit cards and credit lines, no money.

Nick Ortner: We bought $40,000 worth of camera equipment we set out around the country interviewing experts like Jack Canfield and Cheryl Richardson and Bob Proctor and a bunch of doctors and therapists who are already using tapping. And then we took ten people from around the world together for a four day event. And that’s the film that we released a year later, really a budget film. And edited ourselves, put together ourselves scraped by ourselves. And it’s been the last, you know, 13, 12 years now just spreading that message, day after day.

Marie Forleo: Yeah. So, from your experience. So for anyone listening now who this is their first introduction. To… if we’re feeling, feeling fearful if we’re feeling stressed or any level of anxiety or panic, from your experience. This is just, it’s a tool for our toolkit that can support us right in reducing that.

Nick Ortner: It’s a tool for toolkit. It’s a fantastic complement to meditation. If you’re not good at meditating, or you struggle meditating. This is step one. I’ve heard from so many people go… All right, I mean just think, especially in this day and age and everything that’s happening, you sit down to try to close your eyes, take some deep breaths and it’s just like pandemic, coronavirus, my business, all these thoughts running. Which it makes sense that they’re running again, your body’s trying to keep you safe. You’re trying to get the facts. To orient yourself in this world. What am I going to do, so many decisions.

Nick Ortner: When we tap it allows the body to calm down. I mean, think about that 43% decrease in cortisol. That is a physiological marker showing very clearly something happened here because we are feeling the feelings we are sending that calming signal to the amygdala and then we’re letting it go, and that’s why you can do that and then go meditate, I got a text from a nurse the other day. She’s a nurse at Yale. She’s a, she’s a local friend of ours and has done tapping along the way and she sends me a text. Her husband has coronavirus. Was sick with it for like two weeks. She’s got two young daughters. She’s still working. She’s taking care of the kids, taking care of the husband, being a nurse… Just wow. Madness. And she woke up at two in the morning, having a panic attack like 2am middle of a panic attack. She pulled up the app. We have a “stop a panic attack meditation” there. It’s free.

Nick Ortner: And she did that three times through and then went back to sleep. So it’s in those moments when we are just beyond overwhelmed, when our nervous system like what you were saying your nervous system was fried. Yeah, we’ve got to bring in these physical components. And it’s not just me saying it. Not only is the research coming in. But psychiatrists, psychologists, medical doctors. I was just texting with a pediatrician from Columbia University who uses it with her people, like people are realizing that we have to bring in this physical component to therapy to talking about things. Yes.

Marie Forleo: And that’s why we’re going to do it. And, you know, for now I want to actually, let’s do it. Can you walk us through very specifically the tapping points and then let’s do an actual demo for someone like, oh my goodness, I want this. Let’s do it right now.

Nick Ortner: Let’s do it. And, you know, I’ve been doing a lot with the breath and the lungs and constricted breathing, because there’s a lot of anxiety there. So what’s great about tapping is, we can focus on the emotion, but we can also have the physical component to it. Great.

Nick Ortner: I’m game. Alright, so if you if it’s safe to do so you’re not driving in the car, just close your eyes and take a gentle breath in and let it go.

Nick Ortner: We’re going to do another one. And I want you to notice just how full your breath is so is it full and going down deep into your belly, relaxed and open, or is it tight and constricted and up high in your chest? So go ahead and breathe in and just notice.

Nick Ortner: And as you tune into that breath just tune into all the anxiety that you might be feeling. How much anxiety is in your breath? How much stress are you feeling right now? And give it a number on a scale of zero to ten. So on the stress, the anxiety, the overwhelm about everything that’s happening. Just give it a number.

Marie Forleo: And this number will be between one and ten, yes?

Nick Ortner: Zero to ten. Zero to ten, so pick whatever number and then we’ll generally open our eyes and do some tapping, so lead you through, Marie. Will you be my echo?

Marie Forleo: Oh, of course. And does it matter what side we’re going on?

Nick Ortner: Whatever feels comfortable for you. You can do eyes open or closed. If you know the points and you like to go deeper, then close them.

Nick Ortner: And then I’m going to do the face points for this demonstration, if you’re out and about and you pulled over to tap with us and you haven’t washed your hands, just skip it. The process works great skipping points.

Marie Forleo: Awesome to yeah not to interrupt you, but for the folks listening on the podcast. Will you talk us through just in case they can’t see the visual?

Nick Ortner: You got it. So we’re starting to tap on the side of the hand. It’s called the karate chop point. It’s below the pinky on the outside of the hand. So you’re taking four fingers of one hand and tapping gently whatever hand feels comfortable.

Marie Forleo: And should you switch hands? By the way, I’m going to be the annoying person asking all the questions. I know that my audience is gonna be like, what, what do we do, and how am I doing it wrong?

Nick Ortner: You don’t need to switch hands, whatever feels comfortable for you. Great.

Nick Ortner: So we’re tapping gently. We’re tuning into that breath and repeat after me: even though I feel so much anxiety.

Marie Forleo: Even though I feel so much anxiety.

Nick Ortner: About everything that’s going on.

Marie Forleo: About everything that’s going on.

Nick Ortner: I choose to relax and feel safe now.

Marie Forleo: I choose to relax and feel safe now.

Nick Ortner: And we’re still on the side of the hand tapping gently. Even though this feels so overwhelming.

Marie Forleo: Even though this feels so overwhelming.

Nick Ortner: I choose to relax and feel safe now.

Marie Forleo: I choose to relax and feel safe now.

Nick Ortner: And one more time, still tapping on the side of the hand. Even though I’m holding so much stress in my body.

Marie Forleo: Even though I’m holding so much stress in my body.

Nick Ortner: It’s safe to let it go now.

Marie Forleo: It’s safe to let it go now.

Nick Ortner: I’m going to tap through the points. The first point is the eyebrow inside of the eyebrow right where the hair ends and it meets the nose, you can use two fingers of one hand, the other hand, or both hands. The meridians run down both sides of the body. And you’re just tapping gently and tuning in to that stress and anxiety. All we’re doing in this moment is we’re actually looking to fire that amygdala because we want to counteract it with that calming signal.

Nick Ortner: So just tapping gently and breathing gently. Now we’ll move to the side of the eye. It’s not at the temple, a little further in, right on the bone. Again, one side or both sides. Don’t worry about getting it perfect. Take a moment to think about just how overwhelmed you are.

Nick Ortner: There is so much going on and that’s okay.

Marie Forleo: There’s so much going on and that’s okay.

Nick Ortner: Under the eye right on the bone.

Nick Ortner: It’s safe to feel this anxiety.

Marie Forleo: It’s safe to feel this anxiety.

Nick Ortner: Under the nose. And it’s safe to begin to let it go.

Marie Forleo: And it’s safe to begin to let it go. I hope everyone listening to the podcast right now comes and watches the visual, just had to say.

Nick Ortner: Under the mouth, you’re going to go above the chin below the lips, that little crease in there. We’re tapping the two fingers tapping gently. It’s safe to feel this anxiety.

Marie Forleo: It’s safe to feel this anxiety.

Nick Ortner: For the collarbone point, feel for the two little bones of the collarbone. Just go about an inch right below. You can tap with all ten fingers of both hands.

Nick Ortner: It’s safe to feel this anxiety.

Marie Forleo: It’s safe to feel the anxiety.

Nick Ortner: Underneath the arm, three inches underneath the armpit, either side of the body, right on the bra line for women. It’s safe to feel all the stress.

Marie Forleo: It’s safe to feel all the stress.

Nick Ortner: Move back to the top of the head. And it’s safe to let it go.

Marie Forleo: And it’s safe to let it go.

Nick Ortner: Moving back to the eyebrow. It’s safe to breathe deeply.

Marie Forleo: It’s safe to breathe deeply.

Nick Ortner: Side of the eye. I acknowledge all my stress.

Marie Forleo: I acknowledge all my stress.

Nick Ortner: Under the eye. And I begin to feel safe in my body.

Marie Forleo: And I begin to feel safe in my body.

Nick Ortner: Under the nose. The more I relax.

Marie Forleo: The more I relax.

Nick Ortner: Under the mouth. The more my body heals.

Marie Forleo: The more my body heals.

Nick Ortner: Collarbone. The more I relax.

Marie Forleo: The more I relax.

Nick Ortner: Under the arm. The more my body heals.

Marie Forleo: The more my body heals.

Nick Ortner: Top of the head. Letting go now.

Marie Forleo: Letting go now.

Nick Ortner: And you can gently stop tapping and take a breath in.

Nick Ortner: And let it go.

Nick Ortner: So that was two very quick rounds and now we tune back in. So we say first, the breath. So go ahead and just take a breath. I know you know I tapped earlier this morning, but I’ve had a busy day and even in that two rounds. I felt my breath deep and that down into my stomach.

Nick Ortner: To just tune into that and then also notice that anxiety, the stress, the overwhelm. It was a ten or nine or an eight. What’s the new number? What came up? And the tapping process is continuing to do that. So we did two rounds for demonstration.

Nick Ortner: A lot of the meditations on our app are anywhere between eight and twelve minutes to go a little bit deeper. And then what happens with the tapping process, also, too, is that we start doing it and we think we’re worried about one thing, but all sudden we realized, oh, you know what, it’s really this thing that I’m worried about. So it’s almost like self-therapy we’re like it lets our unconscious mind give us the truth about what we’re feeling, what’s happening, and helps us to let go.

Marie Forleo: One of the things I love about this, too, and why I was so excited to have another conversation with you, especially right now is this is a tool that anyone can use at any time. It’s free.

Marie Forleo: It is your own body. You can do it anywhere you find yourself. I’m curious about the meridian points. Yes. So, um, where, like, how do we know that these things exist?

Nick Ortner: Yeah, so there’s actually now they have these little machines, devices that measure electricity throughout the body. And you can put it up to these different points and shows that they conduct more electricity. So we’re getting more of that, you know, hard science behind it.

Nick Ortner: The reality is our bodies are very electrical. We don’t think about our bodies as electrical because I feel like we’re very conditioned to the biological, right, like I take a drink of something and then it’s digested and there’s like a very biological process when we take medicine. It is a pill. Right.

Nick Ortner: Yep. Supplements are a pill. So everything is very biological but our bodies fully electric right our brain is nothing but electricity, right? Like our nerve signals are electrical signals. So that’s what we’re tapping into we’re tapping into that system of electrical signals.

Marie Forleo: I want to also ask more about the scripts. So, you know, when I was talking with folks on Team Forleo about us doing this interview today. One of the people on my team, she said, I noticed that there’s often a script like you know, like, “I completely love and accept myself. Like, even though I’m feeling X, Y, or Z, I completely love and accept myself.” Can you talk to us a little bit about the power of language and how speaking things out loud, like is speaking it out loud necessary, from your experience?

Nick Ortner: Yeah, it’s not necessary. I like I’ll do a lot of tapping myself in my mind. It can certainly have a power, right, because sometimes when we just say something. I mean, I’ve tapped with people and they’ve said, you know, even though, whatever. “I love and accept myself.” And just the second they speak those words they burst into tears. The second they speak the words “I am enough” they burst into tears. So there’s certainly a power in the vocalizing of that language. A lot of people struggle, especially in our community with the whole, “why are we looking at the negative?” Right, so it’s…

Marie Forleo: I did, by the way. I want to raise my hand to that because I was like, it’s not making… it wasn’t making sense. So, yeah. Please keep going.

Nick Ortner: Yeah, so I have the best answer in the world for that and it comes from our dear departed friend Louise Hay. So, Louise Hay is the queen of affirmations and she’s been doing nothing but positive thinking for decades, bringing us Hay House and all her work and I got to sit down with her a couple years ago, and we were, we had been doing some tapping together. And I said, Louise, like why are we tapping on the negative like you’re doing you’re tapping on the negative. Why are you doing this? And she looked at me sweetly. I can see so clearly, she had her shoes off, her feet on the couch. You know, like, super doing her thing at the age of 80 or whatever it was, and she says, “Honey, if you want to clean a house, you have to see the dirt.”

Marie Forleo: Oh…

Nick Ortner: And I was like.

Marie Forleo: Louise Hay coming in strong.

Nick Ortner: Coming in strong. I didn’t even prep her with that question.

Nick Ortner: No crap. It was just like it was, we’re going. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re saying, yeah, I’m anxious. I’m angry. I’m sad. I’m fearful of public speaking. I am traumatized from that car accident. This is the truth of how I feel. Yeah, and the power in that is this is the truth of how I feel.

Nick Ortner: I acknowledge it and when I do it with the tapping, I can let it go. You know, if we… if you had come to me after your car accident and I had said to you, “Oh, I got a great idea. So just, let’s just do some affirmations.”

Nick Ortner: What I am saying is, right, yes, your brain would have said, no, I’m not safe.

Marie Forleo: That’s bullshit. I’m not bullshitting.

Nick Ortner: You know, and that’s what happens with a lot of our affirmations. I am a millionaire. I’m this, I’m that, so with the tapping it’s let’s allow that part that says, “that’s bullshit.” Let’s give a voice to that and say, no, I don’t feel safe.

Nick Ortner: I don’t feel happy. Yeah.

Marie Forleo: I want to ask you this because I remember this was one… Because, again, I have Jersey Marie and my head. She is very saucy. She’s very picante. She can be very skeptical at times. And I love, by the way, I really love the scripts that we did today, so thank you so much for that. And I know we’re going to talk more about the app in a few minutes. I was saying to my team. I was like, you know, there have been times in the past, not with you, but when like I was first being introduced to tapping where I was like, even though I’m feeling, let’s say, you know, completely anxious or completely overwhelmed, I completely love and accept myself that last bit. I was like, that’s some bullshit, because I do not completely love and accept myself in this moment.

Marie Forleo: And so I was I’m so happy to hear you say that. So my question is, and I think I know the answer. But again, I’m playing the role of audience member who they’re having… They’re so excited about a possible new tool for their toolkit and they want to understand everything they can.

Marie Forleo: So they can use it to their benefit. You know, if they come across a meditation that has, I love, I completely love and accept myself and to them that feels like BS in that moment, could we say I’m willing to love and accept myself?

Nick Ortner: 100%. 100% and most… You know, it’s interesting. I’ve made a transition, the last couple years. I do believe that phrase is super important, but I’ve seen so many people struggle with it. Yeah, that I’ll do more of you’ll find more in the app of like, “even though I’m faced with this I choose to relax. Now I choose to allow myself to relax.” I might, you know… so yes.

Marie Forleo: That language phrases…

Nick Ortner: Branch phrases. Exactly, yeah.

Marie Forleo: I love that. Um, so this was another question from the team.

Marie Forleo: Is there any way to help us remember to tap. So let’s say this is a completely new modality for people and they’re like, goodness, and I know this kind of comes around habit formation. And of course, having the app would help. But anything that you’ve noticed for yourself, doing this for decades now, what can we do to help ourselves remember to tap.

Nick Ortner: Yeah, I mean… it’s… the app has a reminder setting.

Marie Forleo: Yes.

Nick Ortner: It’s to send it to 2:11 for me for some reason. I set it that way when I was playing with it. You know I have done more tapping with my own app in the last year than I did in the five years before. And that is a testament to what we’ve done there because I don’t like… I’ll never watch this video again. Right? I have no interest in seeing myself again, seeing myself on stage, listening to a podcast… I’m just like, just not interested, you know? With the app, I will pull it up. I’m okay with my voice for some reason. You know how you hear your own voice, you’re like no, no, no.

Marie Forleo: Don’t want to hear it. It’s totally weird.

Nick Ortner: It’s a great mic. It sounds good. It’s got music behind it. I’m okay with it or my sister or my brother, who are all in the app, and it just helps guide me through it. Because part of the problem… Here’s the other thing that happens and what’s happening. You’ll remember to tap. You’ll learn the process. You’ll do it on your own. You’ll do it for like two minutes, you’ll feel a little bit better because two minutes will calm you down. And then you’re just like in the middle of your day. So you get back to it, right? So good. You did it for two minutes, you feel a little better.

Nick Ortner: But when you have the eight to twelve minutes, or even the five minutes on some of the shorter ones, that it’s like forcing you like I’m going to finish this. Yeah, I’m going to do zero to ten and mark it in the app in the beginning. I’m going to do this process. I’m going to mark it at the end, you’re going to have that data for yourself. That’s always helpful. It’s super helpful, right? And like, hey, we just passed 1.7 million completed sessions on the app.

Marie Forleo: Congratulations.

Nick Ortner: Thank you. Thank you. We have zero to ten data points on every single one. So, you know, I can tell you the anxiety session, which has somewhere around 250,000 plays has a 45% decrease in anxiety in ten minutes. Now that’s 250,000 people… like if we did a study that big, it’d be easy that you just don’t get data like that 250,000 people who said this was my anxiety when I started and this is what it is now. And here’s the difference change.

Marie Forleo: So cool. I love that. Um, so any misconceptions or mistakes that you’ve discovered when people are getting into this and again using it as a tool for themselves or others that we should just be aware of?

Nick Ortner: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, putting it into the energy, woo-woo with some alternative practice. I think that is a mistake because I don’t think that’s where it fits. If we have physiological data that shows a 43% reduction in cortisol, we sort of need to ignore how strange it is that we’re tapping on ourselves when we’ve never done it growing up. I mean if someone told me that if I did this with my arm and my cortisol went down 43% I do this with my arm.

Marie Forleo: By the way, you guys, whoever’s listening, he’s doing.

Nick Ortner: Oh, sorry.

Marie Forleo: Wax on, wax off for the podcast. Mr. Miyagi. If Mr. Miyagi’s moves reduce our cortisol by 43%, we have to look at that. If we find psychologist, psychiatrist… I have a, I have a text from a Columbia University pediatrician. She’s a director of a bunch of centers in New York, she actually had coronavirus and she sent me a text. She said, “I haven’t been able to take a deep breath and three weeks, three weeks I’m taking a deep breath. I’ve been coughing like crazy. I just did one of your tapping and I took the first deep breath and three weeks.” So not a cure for anything not it doesn’t you know supplement, it doesn’t supplant medical care, you go see your doctor. You do what you have to do. But as a complimentary practice, and especially in this time when half of us can’t breathe because we’re anxious, right, like so imagine taking the coronavirus or pneumonia or the flu or whatever anyone’s dealing with right now and piling in all this stress about what it could be. What if I have to go to a hospital, what can happen there?

Nick Ortner: That stress is going to overload the immune system. So if I see if there’s a Columbia University pediatrician using this in her practice, listen to her, don’t listen to me. I’m just a guy, like I’m a guy who’s passionate about it, who’s been sharing it, who’s, you know, has this happen. Listen to the Columbia University Professor. Listen to Duke University, the hospital that’s going to start a pilot study with surgery, pre- and post-surgery pain and outcomes with tapping. So the science and research is coming in hard and fast. And I think that’s where we’ve got to put our focus.

Marie Forleo: All right, let’s get weird. What has been the strangest place or reason that you’ve ever tapped. Strangest reason that you personally have ever tapped and don’t hold back from me now because I’ll know because you’re my friend. I want the real real.

Nick Ortner: Yeah, yeah well. I know I’m thinking… This isn’t strange, but I’m thinking of our dear best the Kris Carr. I took her up a water tower when she was afraid of heights, as Brian was shaking the water tower, you know, and we did tapping on her fear of heights, but fear of heights is kind of common.

Nick Ortner: Probably the strangest tapping experience I’ve had where it was like, oh boy. I was in Australia. And I was speaking for Hay House, I was sharing the stage with Wayne Dyer. We were like on a tour together all these events and amazing two weeks and I forget if I was in Sydney or Melbourne. At that time, Melbourne, or however they say it, you know, and we do all this tapping. I have like an hour and a half. And I say, okay, you know, I got five minutes left and I ask if anyone has any questions. And someone in the audience she says, my friend right here, she hasn’t spoken in three months. Her doctors don’t know what’s going on. She’s mute. She can’t speak. Can you tap with her? And I’m like, you’re kidding, like, I mean I got five minutes left. I mean, we went over it obviously, but she hasn’t spoken in three months. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. Like okay, let’s come up on stage. So we started tapping she couldn’t speak and say what was going on. So I just went with my intuition. And I said, even though it’s hard to speak, even though, whatever it was, coming forward, I don’t have a voice. She did the tapping, did a couple of rounds, and then she like croaks out a couple words and the whole audience… I mean, it was so surreal that it was like… is this a plant, you know? Because it was just like, what is happening?

Nick Ortner: We tapped. We do a couple more rounds and she spoke like it’s like something unlocked within her. I don’t know what, there’s actually a video of this so you know that you can watch it. You can see it happen for yourself, all the natural unfolding of it. But to me, that was an example of like, well, let’s just try it on whatever, you know.

Marie Forleo: Okay, another question. Does your family, who, your family’s amazing, I know. Do they ever, is it ever like, you know, “Nick, you’re frickin stressed out, dude. Like, you need to tap. Like, I think you need to sit down, sit your ass down and tap right now.” You know, do they ever come and throw it at you?

Nick Ortner: They don’t. I’m pretty careful with my wife, not to throw it at her, you know, she’s done more tapping with the app. You know, I walked in the other night, and she was listening to my sister, who was her best friend growing up. So that’s a whole, like thing there. No, they’re usually pretty good at not throwing it at me. And, look, I get stressed, I get… I mean, most of my stress is, honestly, is around just like this deep desire to go faster and like reach more people. Like I get… I know you’re the same way. We’re entrepreneurs. It’s just like, I get uncomfortable when things aren’t going a mile a minute in terms of the spread of tapping. Right? It’s just like, oh, I see this, I see that, I want this to happen. I want this app to be in the hands of, you know, ten million people. What do we do, how do we go faster? So that’s where my stress comes from. But I’ve done so much work and you, you know, you can ask my siblings and my wife is probably the best, right? Like, she’ll tell you that I’m very even-keeled, that I feel like I’ve done a lot of work and that works to just feel grounded and present. And I’m on mission. So that helps everything and yeah.

Marie Forleo: That’s awesome.

Nick Ortner: Me more. Give me more. Yeah.

Marie Forleo: So, okay, well, I want to talk about now, shift gears a little bit and talk about what y’all are doing for healthcare workers and first responders and giving them six free months access to the app. And I’m going to read, actually, some stories that I was able to get from you because I want people to hear this, because this is so important, you know, last night I was watching the news.

Marie Forleo: Getting my daily dose of the facts and getting my updates. I’m in LA right now as we are reporting this unless people know I’m a New Yorker and I am happy to say I am watching Cuomo’s daily briefings. Like, that’s my daily show, really appreciating him right now. I’m appreciating his transparency, the level of honesty and also the level of leadership and hope. I think it’s real great. But last night as I was finishing up watching the news, I was crying because of the healthcare workers and hearing what is happening right now and knowing at the moment that we are recording this it’s April 2, we’re going to publish this in a few days, and just understanding from my interpretation of the facts that things are going to get a lot more challenging on every level. So I want to read a few things for you guys right now.

Marie Forleo: Courtney who works at Yale said, “Hey, I have to thank you. I had a panic attack last night at 2am. I’ve never had one like that before it was bad. I felt like I couldn’t breathe and was shaking and my teeth were chattering. A lot of my friends keep reaching out in complete debilitating anxiety and I think I’m an empath and take it all on…” Which, by the way, Nick, I have a lot of empaths in our audience and a lot of empaths on my team. Anyway, “I listened to your panic attack tap on the app. And I immediately calmed down, like immediately.” I’m going to keep reading. So everyone just be patient with me.

Marie Forleo: Allison, who’s a respiratory therapist said “thank you so much for offering your free app for healthcare professionals such as myself. With the current coronavirus outbreak and having to work in close contact with possibly infected individuals, many stressors arise. I have found EFT to be an essential tool in managing anxiety and stress.”

Marie Forleo: And then I do want to share what the professor from Columbia Medical University. She said, “after the tapping session I did today for the first time in three weeks, I can take a deep breath, without coughing and the fear, anxiety, and sadness constricting my chest. It decreased from a six out of ten down to a two out of ten in less than fifteen minutes. There’s nothing that has been as effective in reducing my physical and psycho-emotional discomfort and stress as tapping.”

Marie Forleo: So for everyone listening right now. I wanted you to hear that. This is from healthcare professionals who have added this tool to their toolkit.

Marie Forleo: So, Nick, whether someone’s watching or listening right now if they are a first responder, they or someone in the medical community, or they have someone in their family who’s in the medical community, how exactly can they go about getting the six free months access to the tapping app? Where exactly do they go and what do they do?

Nick Ortner: Really easy, just go to thetappingsolution app.com, thetappingsolutionapp.com/responder. So thetappingsolutionapp.com/responder. I think there’s a link to it as well from both the main tapping solution site, excuse me, and the app site and they just fill out a form. Say, where they work. Say what they’re up to and six free months. I think we just crossed 3000 nurses and doctors and amazing people. I get choked up reading this list because there’s 3000 people and we asked what they do, so they share the things they do. And boy, are there a lot of people out there just helping other people. Yeah, you know, just like every day they wake up and just help.

Marie Forleo: Yes. And that’s why I’ve that’s, again, another reason I really wanted to do this interview right now. I wanted to support you and do everything I possibly can besides staying home and keeping myself safe and having everyone else I know trying and doing our best to keep us strong. What else can we do? I don’t have masks. I don’t have access to equipment, but I’m saying, okay, thinking to myself, how can we support our first responders? Because they need us right now and we need them so badly.

Marie Forleo: And I also want to share, too, I feel like you guys also have a whole coronavirus stress and anxiety collection that is also free for everyone. Right now, can you tell us a little bit about that. I think you have tapping for kids of different age groups, right? Tell me.

Nick Ortner: Yeah, so we’ve been rolling out, you know, the first one we did right away was just coronavirus anxiety. So that’s free and we’ve since added release-constricted breathing, which is just about opening up that breath. I’m hearing that people are using that in hospitals. So it’s like let’s just relax some of that breathing. We have releasing anxiety around being stuck at home. So it’s like some specific stuff there. My sister just recorded pregnant during a pandemic because for pregnant women struggling in so many ways. So much. I mean, whether to go to the hospital. Can’t go with her husband, can’t do this, can’t do that.

Nick Ortner: We have from stress to productivity. So in a world where we’re all working from home. The amount of calls I’ve been on where the… when I’ve heard the person go “Honey. Honey, just one minute. I’m on a call. I’m on a call.” So that’s being said 30 million times a day as we’re trying to work and there’s kids running around the house. So from stress or productivity tapping to just get focused. Take the time that you have and make the most of it.

Nick Ortner: We have releasing diagnosis stress for people who have been diagnosed with coronavirus. Stressed about uncertainty, feel safe and secure, releasing shock from fear, and worry to peace, sleep support, quiet my racing mind… that’s been a big one. Feel safe and grounded in your body… We now have 21 that are free, just in that collection. Off a panic attack. So there’s plenty for everyone offering.

Marie Forleo: And can you tell us again for anyone just there. They’ve got a lot in their mind. Exactly where would they go if they want to access the coronavirus stress and anxiety collection?

Nick Ortner: So just go to the go to the App Store, go to your Android store, Google Play. And just search tapping, The Tapping Solution. And you’ll see it pop right up. Download it for free.

Marie Forleo: Awesome, Nick. This was so great. Is there anything that you wanted to mention that I didn’t get to right now.

Nick Ortner: No, you got to the hard-hitting questions and the skepticism. And we talked about the nurses and first responders, that also includes cops and firemen.

Marie Forleo: My gosh. And I feel like, you know what, this is just my boat, I’m just going to say it. I am looking for different ways that I can do safe things for our delivery workers and the truck drivers and the folks that are helping to keep our society run. Restocking, you know, grocery stores and putting their lives on the line every single day to make sure that all of us have food and stuff. So anything that we can do. Nick, thank you and your team. I know you guys will continue to keep going. I love you so dearly. Thank you for being such a force for good in this world and making time for us today, and please pass along my love to Brenna and June and Jessica and Alex, your whole family. I love you guys.

Nick Ortner: Thank you. Love you too. Thanks everyone.

Marie Forleo: So for you guys listening right now. We would love to hear what you think of this, we’d love you to give tapping a try and tell us what you think of it.

Marie Forleo: As always the best conversations happen over at MarieForleo.com so head on over there and leave a comment now. Or you can hit me up on social I am most active on Instagram @MarieForleo. We would love to hear from you. And until next time, stay on your game and keep going for your dreams because the world still needs that very special gift that only you have. We love you and thank you so much.

Marie Forleo: Hey, you having trouble bringing your dreams to life? Well, guess what. The problem isn’t you. It’s not that you’re not hardworking or intelligent or deserving. It’s that you haven’t yet installed the one key belief that will change it all: Everything is Figureoutable. It’s my new book and you can order it now at everythingisfigureoutable.com.