My guest on today’s Empowering Neurologist is Nick Ortner, a New York Times bestselling author and CEO of The Tapping Solution, a platform that has helped bring Emotional Freedom Techniques, EFT tapping, into the mainstream conversation around emotional health and nervous system regulation.
For more than a decade, Nick has been at the forefront of translating what many once considered a fringe practice into something increasingly grounded in neuroscience and everyday application. His work focuses on a simple but provocative idea: that many of the patterns that define our emotional lives — anxiety, overwhelm, fear, even aspects of physical discomfort — are not fixed, but are learned responses that can be changed.
In his new book Rewired, he makes the case that these patterns are what he calls “reactive loops,” automatic responses driven by the nervous system, and that by engaging the body directly through tapping on specific acupressure points, we may be able to interrupt and reprogram those loops.
This is a bold claim. Because if it’s true, it suggests that many of the struggles people feel stuck in, chronic stress, emotional reactivity, even trauma patterns, may be more malleable than we’ve been led to believe. But it also raises important questions about mechanism, evidence, and where this fits within the broader landscape of neuroscience and clinical care.
So today, we’re going to explore both the promise and the reality of tapping, what it is, how it works, and whether it truly has the potential to help people rewire their brains and reclaim a greater sense of control over their lives.
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Nick Ortner is a New York Times bestselling author and the CEO of The Tapping Solution, a pioneering company at the forefront of emotional health and nervous-system science. For more than a decade, he has worked to bring EFT Tapping from the margins into mainstream psychology, medicine, and personal transformation. Under his leadership, The Tapping Solution App has become the world’s most widely used EFT platform, serving millions of people in reducing stress, building resilience, and transforming their emotional lives.
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