FAQ’s
Common Questions About EFT/Tapping
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Tapping, or the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), is an easy-to-learn technique individuals can use to reduce stress and overwhelm, heal trauma, process challenging life transitions, manage burnout, overcome phobias, change habits, and so much more. It’s also an effective tool for groups and teams to navigate and process stressors in their work environments and improve collaboration, interpersonal relationships, and their lives outside of the organization. The technique involves acupressure (aka tapping) on different parts of the face and chest (also called meridians). Tapping on these meridians with this technique is proven to result in significant changes in the brain and nervous system. With it, people can rewire their brains to be calmer and less reactive when exposed to stressful situations or environments.
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Tapping, or the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), is a science- and evidence-based technique that helps individuals change how their brain reacts to and manages stress, anxiety and overwhelm.Tapping works by way of tapping (also called acupressure) on different parts of the face and chest (also called meridians, similar as those used for acupuncture) and verbalizing statements about stressors in such a way that reduces cortisol levels and sends calming signals to the stress center of the brain: the hippocampus and the amygdala. These areas of the brain perform the functions of detecting threats (hippocampus) and activating our response to threats (amygdala). With tapping, people can influence communication between these areas of the brain, letting their amygdala know they’re safe and dialing down the potential intensity of their reaction. The technique also activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which also contributes to a sense of calm, restfulness and safety.
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Specialized EFT/Tapping techniques can be used to heal trauma by helping individuals process traumatic events in a way that ensures a safe experience. Using these techniques, the individual can work through a traumatic memory and change how their nervous system processes and remembers it. This helps reduce the likelihood of re-activating the trauma, and it reduces the trauma’s emotional impact on the person. It is best to do such work under the guidance and care of a trained trapping practitioner, rather than on one’s own or with pre-recorded guided tapping sequences, as it can be a re-traumatizing experience if it isn’t done carefully.
Tapping can also be used to self-regulate and co-regulate the nervous system when triggered, process other intense emotions, and stay in the body when too activated to tap on specific emotions. It’s also a great technique for trauma practitioners to perform for their own self care.
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Yes, the EFT/tapping technique can be used to reduce stress, anxiety and overwhelm. That’s because it involves tapping on specific points on the face and chest, similar to the points used in acupuncture, which sends calming signals to the stress center of the brain and decreases cortisol levels. This, combined with verbalizing your feelings and thoughts about what you’re experiencing, helps the stress center better manage the moment, reacting less intensely because you’re telling it you’re safe. You can use it to navigate specific stressors, and it’s a technique you can practice regularly or as-needed. The benefits also go beyond the moment, as this practice helps you rewire your brain and how it responds to stressors.
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Tapping can absolutely help with burnout and moral injury, much in the same way it helps with stress reduction. Tapping on the same meridians used in acupuncture and verbalizing your feelings can lead to profound shifts in how your brain perceives and processes your feelings of burnout and moral injury – immediately. The technique can be used to heal trauma related to moral injury, navigate feelings in the moment, and to improve how you process and respond to burnout-related feelings in the future.
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You can learn the EFT/tapping technique by following the instructions and guidance of a trained practitioner, either through online tapping courses and programs, virtual sessions or in-person sessions. You can learn on your own, with a group, or with others in your organization through your health and wellness program or a team-building initiative.
With Dr. Jill Wener, there are several options for learning tapping as an individual or with an organization.
Individuals can:
-Learn from the comfort of your home and become a self-sufficient tapper with online tapping courses.
-Join Jill’s monthly tapping membership, The Wellness Tap, to have a wealth of tapping resources at your fingertips.
-Learn to use and teach a basic – but impactful – level of tapping to others in your life, such as patients, coworkers, family members and more, through the ‘Train the Trainer’ tapping program.
-Work directly with Jill in 1:1 tapping sessions to navigate personal concerns, such as major life changes, trauma and PTSD, anxiety and overwhelm, and more.
-Attend one of Jill’s free group sessions (keep an eye on her calendar for upcoming dates!).
Organizations can:
-Acquire a group subscription to Jill’s monthly tapping membership, The Wellness Tap, which would give your team unlimited access to a robust library of tapping resources.
-Invite Jill to lead a ‘Train the Trainer’ tapping program with your organization, or sponsor an employee to attend one of her public programs.
-Invite Jill to host an in-person or online tapping workshop for your organization, during which she’ll teach attendees how to tap.
-Invite Jill to host a group tapping session with your team, during which Jill will lead the group in therapeutic tapping sequences.
For group rates and options, please contact us.
Learn more about ways to learn tapping with Jill.
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You can learn to formally teach students, colleagues, patients, family members, and others the basics of tapping with a trained instructor. For her ‘Train the Trainer’ tapping program, Dr. Jill provides a basic level of training (not for certification) that includes learning tapping basics, trauma-informed tapping, how to tap for yourself, and how to help others learn to tap. The program includes hands-on, practical tapping experience.
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EFT/Tapping has many benefits for individuals and teams or groups. Individuals can use the practice to:
-Manage and relieve stress and burnout
-Improve anxiety and overwhelm
-Process trauma, PTSD, and moral injury
-Improve mental focus
-Reduce addictive behaviors
-Improve acute and chronic physical pain
-Overcome phobias
-Improve relationships
-Make major life decisions
-Navigate life transitions such as divorce, grief, and major illnessAnd that’s not even scratching the surface of what you can achieve with tapping.
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Choosing between tapping and meditation depends on your own preferences and circumstances. These methods each have their own unique benefits and are approached in different ways. For guidance on this decision, Jill put together a video describing each practice, how they’re used, what you’ll get from each, and how they can be used together – so you can select which is right for you.
Watch the video about how to choose between tapping and meditation.
“I didn't know what to expect with Tapping and it was, without a doubt, life changing. As a skeptical closed-off person it was surprising to learn so much about myself with such an easy technique! Jill is a true expert, and her authentic passion for helping people shines through. Tapping has made a significant impact on my life and I will be forever grateful for the clarity it has given me.”
-Dr. Leslie K., Emergency Medicine
Common Questions About Meditation
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Meditation is a practice that allows you to sit quietly, in a state of deep, restful relaxation, allowing your brain and body to recharge and refresh.
Many people think that their minds are too busy to meditate, that they aren’t able to sit still long enough to meditate, or that meditation just doesn’t work for them. With Dr. Jill, you will learn a simpler approach than what you may think when you think of meditation. The REST Technique™ doesn’t follow meditation stereotypes. Instead of calming your thoughts and forcing your body to sit in an uncomfortable position, this meditation technique encourages your mind to wander; having thoughts in meditation are a sign that you’re doing it right! Plus, you will always sit comfortably when you practice The REST Technique™!
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The REST Technique™ is drastically different from the traditional mindfulness and app-based meditation techniques you may be familiar with. The REST Technique™ is meditation that’s easy to do, and doesn’t require that you focus or clear your mind. It’s a more accessible, realistic approach to the practice. And it comes with incredible, life-changing benefits.
Compared to traditional methods, The REST Technique does NOT require:
X Clearing the mind of thoughts
X Guided visualization by leader
X Using an app
X Holding a pose
X Maintaining a certain (often uncomfortable) body posture
X Focusing on the breath
X Resisting sleep
Rather, for this meditation practice, we always sit comfortably, with our back supported.
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Meditation with The REST Technique™ works by releasing serotonin and endorphins into our brains, and activating the parasympathetic nervous system. This puts us in a more restorative state of restful alertness that’s even more restful than sleep.
With The REST Technique™, meditation doesn’t involve sitting still and clearing your mind. Instead, it’s a more effortless, comfortable technique that can fit into even the busiest schedules.
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You can learn to meditate by following the instruction of a trained practitioner, either through online meditation courses and programs, in-person retreats, private virtual sessions or private in-person sessions. You can learn on your own, with a group or at a retreat, or with others in your organization through your health and wellness program or a team-building initiative.
With Dr. Jill Wener, there are several options for learning to meditate as an individual or with an organization.
Individuals can:
-Learn to meditate online by accessing Jill’s course that’s designed for everyone, The REST Technique: Simple, Effective Meditation for the Busy Mind.
-Take Jill’s CME-accredited meditation course designed just for healthcare professionals, Meditation for Healthcare Heroes: A Guide to the REST Technique.
-Attend Jill’s Women in Healthcare Meditation Retreat – designed specifically for women healthcare professionals.
-Learn to meditate with Jill via private meditation instruction, available either in-person or virtually.
Organizations can:
-Access Jill’s meditation course that’s designed for everyone, The REST Technique: Simple, Effective Meditation for the Busy Mind, at a group rate.
-Access Jill’s CME-accredited meditation course designed for healthcare professionals and teams, Meditation for Healthcare Heroes, at a group rate.
-Invite Jill to lead a meditation retreat for your organization, or sponsor an employee to attend Jill’s Women in Healthcare Meditation Retreat.
For group rates and options, please contact us.
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Meditation has innumerable benefits, particularly when you practice the techniques Jill teaches and advocates for. Meditation can help improve individuals’ mental, physical and emotional health, including (but not limited to!) experiences with:
-Stress
-Anxiety
-Depression
-Insomnia
-Reactivity
-Pain
-Concentration
-Sleep
-Relationships
-Chronic health conditions
-Cardiovascular disease
-Substance abuse issues and other addictive behaviorsMeditation can also help individuals improve in multiple areas of their lives, from their immune system to their academics, accuracy and speed of decision making, intelligence and creativity, intuition, and so much more.
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Yes, meditation can absolutely help with burnout! Is it the only answer? No. Are there different causes of burnout for different people? Yes. Is the system still broken? Yes. That said, the REST Technique™ most definitely can help prevent or manage burnout and increase resilience. The practice is so restful, and helps to repair and heal so much damage done from stress over your lifetime, that it stockpiles what is called Adaptation Energy. Adaptation Energy is your bank account of patience, and if you have enough of it, you can handle anything that life throws at you. This concept blew Jill’s mind, and was her ‘aha’ moment when she learned to meditate.
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Absolutely! Meditation can help with fatigue and lack of sleep. By practicing the meditation technique taught in Jill’s online and live courses, you can easily (yes, even you!) access a physiologically-distinct meditative state that is even more restful than sleep. Because it maximizes parasympathetic function (the ‘rest and digest’ function of our body), it gives your body a break from the sleep-disrupting fight-or-flight stress chemicals such as cortisol, norepinephrine and adrenaline, and it bathes your body in restorative chemicals such as serotonin, dopamine, DHEA-S, and endogenous opioids. The meditations themselves are extremely restful and restorative, and you may also find yourself sleeping more restfully as well.
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Meditation will work for people with busy minds. Everyone’s mind is busy! Why? Because that’s what the mind does: it has thoughts, just like the heart beats. You are very special and unique, but your mind’s constant thinking is NOT unique. You can absolutely meditate; you just haven’t tried the right technique yet!
Learn how the REST Technique has worked for people like you.
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You can definitely meditate if you can’t clear your mind of thoughts. In fact, no one can clear their mind of thoughts, because it’s not possible! Most forms of meditation you may have been exposed to, particularly mindfulness, requires focus and concentration, with a preference towards a certain focus (your breath, a mantra, your body, or compassion). Mindfulness is powerful, but it goes against the grain of our mind’s natural tendency toward thoughts. With the REST Technique™, we actually want our minds to wander. It feels so good because we are finally able to stop fighting what our minds do naturally.
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That’s just the stress talking! You can find the time to meditate, no matter how busy you are. Everyone thinks they are too busy to meditate, but in actuality, we all have the time to meditate. How much time do you spend on social media each day, or surfing the web, or stressing about how busy you are? How many times do you hit snooze each morning? The time is always there if you make it a priority.
The meditation technique you’ll learn from Jill’s online and live courses also makes you more efficient, so that you’re able to get more done in less time. The time you invest in your twice-daily meditations is returned to you, and then some, with less time staring bleary-eyed at your computer, hitting the wall with writing memos, or spending precious time in meetings where no one is clear-headed or creative enough to solve any problems.
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You can find the time to meditate using Jill’s techniques, even if you have small kids or a hectic family schedule. Everyone has the time, no matter how busy they think they are. There are special techniques for new parents (and people who work 24+ hour shifts), which allow them to better fit the meditation into smaller pockets of time. In addition, part of the course instruction is detailed information on how to fit meditation into your daily routine, including how to set boundaries with kids, pets, and other people in your life. Meditation is not selfish; by taking the time to make yourself a happier, less reactive version of yourself, you are setting an extremely positive example for your children.
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Yes, we do offer CME credit for our meditation courses! Meditation for Doctors and Healthcare Heroes: A Guide to The REST Technique™ has been accredited for 6.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. CE credits are also available for nurses, NP’s, PT’s, OT’s, Dieticians, Psychologists, Pharmacists, and Social Workers.
“I came for a spa vacation and CME, and I really ended up feeling that I’m here for meditation and hoping it will add to my life. I was surprised that I could sit still long enough to meditate. I think it will make me more patient, creative, and compassionate (and less anxious). I think it will make me a better mom, wife, and dog owner too!”
-Dr. Mita Gupta, Family Medicine
Common Questions About Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression
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Anti-racism is opposition to racism, in the form of policies, practice, allyship and action. People of all identities can be anti-racists.
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You can learn about anti-racism and how to practice anti-racism through online courses, virtual training and coaching, in-person training and more. You can learn as an individual or with a group, such as with your team members at your organization.
Dr. Jill Wener and Dr. Maiysha Clairborne provide a range of training, coaching and consulting options for individuals and groups through their company, Conscious Anti-Racism. Their programs are beneficial for people of all racial and ethnic identities.
Individuals can:
-Take Dr. Jill and Dr. Maiyahs’s CME-accredited online health equity course for healthcare professionals, Conscious Anti-Racism: Tools for Self-Discovery, Accountability, and Meaningful Change in Healthcare.
-Take Dr. Jill and Dr. Maiysha’s online anti-racism course (not specific to healthcare), Conscious Anti-Racism: Tools for Self-Discovery, Accountability, and Meaningful Change.
-Work one-on-one with Jill to learn about systemic racism, bias and privilege, and navigate your personal anti-racism and anti-oppression journey with Conscious Allyship Coaching.
Organizations can:
-Access Dr. Jill and Dr. Maiysha’s online Conscious Anti-Racism course for people in professions outside of healthcare at tiered institutional and group rates.
-Gain access to the CME-accredited Conscious Anti-Racism course for healthcare professionals at tiered institutional and group rates.
-Invite Jill and Dr. Maiysha for a live in-person or virtual training, with options for a 1-hour introductory training, a 4-hour Conscious Anti-Racism half-day training, and a 12-hour signature ‘Insight to Action’ training.
-Request Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Consulting services, for which Dr. Jill and Dr. Maiysha will provide comprehensive coaching and training involving four essential competencies: personal, interpersonal, systemic, and culture.
-Request a facilitated book club with Dr. Jill and Dr. Maiysha’s book, Conscious Anti-Racism: Tools for Self-Discovery, Accountability and Meaningful Change.
For group rates and options, please contact us.
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We welcome people of all races to take our courses and trainings.
Our programs will help white allies be better informed and better prepared to challenge their own privilege, racism, and implicit bias. In the United States, privilege can arise just from being part of the white majority. This privilege overrides class, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status or gender. Being aware of this helps us understand why systemic racism continues.
However, our courses are not only for white people. The techniques covered in our courses can help everyone to process the difficult emotions and experiences related to racism, and they can be used for self-care and true healing.
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Anti-racism training in the workplace provides people of all identities with the tools and understanding necessary to not only acknowledge and address racism in their environments and themselves, but also to become confident in confronting bias, recognizing privilege, and taking meaningful action (in the least harmful ways possible). In a workplace environment, this will translate to real growth within your organization. It will help you and your employees to:
-Confront their own biases and privilege.
-Develop a foundation of respectful and inclusive communication.
-Create and maintain safe interpersonal interactions.
-Develop and maintain a culture of inclusivity and belonging.
-Feel empowered to truly recognize and address the ways racism shows up in the workplace, and elsewhere.
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Racial bias has a significant, documented impact in the public health sector. It influences how patients and physicians interact, their relationships, how decisions about treatment are made, and real patient outcomes. When healthcare professionals receive health equity training, they gain the knowledge and tools necessary to make impactful change and confront systemic biases that otherwise foster unhealthy healthcare environments and result in inequitable treatment. As a result, they, their patients, and their colleagues can make great strides toward health equity.
For example, after 215 (>50%) of the staff at an inpatient child psychiatry unit took the Conscious Anti-Racism online course, they experienced a decrease in restraints of Black patients from 43% to 18%.
In another example, 100% of the staff and 60% of the board at the Pittsburgh Business Group on Health participated in the Conscious Anti-Racism training and immediately began to make significant moves toward greater health equity. They implemented equity-alignment into board requirements, launched a non-profit focused on health inequity, and developed an equity pledge for their professional community that currently has over 150 pledges and over 500 visits to the pledge site.
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Dismantling systemic racism requires that people don’t just pursue knowledge and information about racism, but that they learn and acquire tools to manage the anxiety, fear, and discomfort that comes with truly confronting racism and oppression – internally and externally – as well as the tools to take meaningful action, without doing harm. When you pursue anti-racism and allyship coaching through Conscious Anti-Racism, you’ll gain this knowledge and these practical tools, as well as the skills to participate meaningfully in the fight for racial justice.
“When I see someone and notice that I am forming opinions (positive or negative), I now question those opinions sooner (& more fully) and try to understand where they are coming from. What has led me to assign these feelings or assumptions to this person or people? Not just in situations involving BIPOC, but really in just about every situation.”
-Board Member, Pittsburgh Business Group On Health
Other Common Questions
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Many of us were taught to suppress emotions and feelings that are deemed ‘negative,’ but we are all actually capable of and should have the whole range of human emotions – including anger, guilt, shame, and sadness. Suppressing these feelings doesn’t make them go away. Instead, they become our shadow, and they can have a significant effect on our health, behavior, relationships, and more. This is known as ‘toxic positivity,’ and it involves bypassing our emotions – and reality – and ultimately doing harm to ourselves and possibly others. Instead, allowing ourselves to feel our feelings, honor them, sit with them, and navigate them helps us make real progress toward our aspirations for ourselves.
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A trauma-informed practitioner will have specific training and qualifications that help them create safe spaces for people who have experienced trauma. They will approach every situation, person, and group with trauma in mind, and they will be on the lookout for indications that individuals are feeling activated or uncomfortable. They will be detailed and explicit about how processes will work, explain potential side effects or feelings that may arise, and empower individuals to choose how and whether they proceed with any one action, thought, or feeling. They will frequently check in to make sure individuals feel safe and comfortable, and they are trained in helping people to de-intensify if they do become activated during their practice or education.
Curious about trauma-informed work? Learn more in Jill’s video: 3 Ways to Be Trauma Informed While Leading Tapping