111: {Interview} Learning More About Tapping with Jackie McDonald

Have you ever wondered about the benefits of regulating your nervous system? This is a topic I have been actively working on and wanting to learn more about. And as fate may have it, I met Jackie at a personal development event, and l truly love the work that she is doing through tapping.


In this conversation, Jackie shares her journey with tapping, a somatic therapy technique that combines Eastern acupuncture and Western psychology. She discusses how tapping has transformed her life, helped her regulate her nervous system, and allowed her to manifest her desires. Jackie emphasizes the importance of emotional healing and offers insights into how tapping can be used for various issues, including anxiety, health, and personal growth. 

takeaways

• Tapping is a blend of Eastern acupuncture and Western psychology.
• It helps reset the nervous system and can alleviate anxiety quickly.
• Jackie's journey with tapping began after experiencing trauma as a young mother.
• Regulating the nervous system is crucial for personal and professional success.
• Tapping can be used to manifest desires and improve overall well-being.
• Storytelling and authenticity are key in building a community around tapping.
• Tapping can address a wide range of issues, including chronic illness and emotional blockages.
• The subconscious mind plays a significant role in emotional healing through tapping.

You can learn more about Jackie HERE and connect with her on IG @thejackiemcdonald 

Transcript

Caroline Pennington (00:01.213)
Welcome, Jackie.

Jackie (00:02.862)
Hi, my gosh, I'm so excited for this conversation and to share tapping with your audience. Thanks so much for having me.

Caroline Pennington (00:10.345)
You are so welcome and how we met is so interesting. So Jackie and I met in real life for the very first time at a professional networking event, personal development event called Powerhouse Women in Arizona. So when you were telling me about what you do and the work that you did, I had heard about it, but I didn't really know a lot about it. And I came home, I told my husband about it he was like, yeah, I know all about that. And I'm like, what, you know what's happening? And he didn't even tell me about

So.

Jackie (00:41.418)
Wow, that's so cool that he knew about it.

Caroline Pennington (00:44.297)
I wanna hear your story. Tell me about where you are now and how did you get there?

Jackie (00:48.098)
Amazing. Yeah. So I love that we met literally by sitting down at a lunch table. I just happened to pick the table that you were sitting at, said hello. And I teach a modality. So it's a somatic form of therapy called emotional freedom techniques. And it's also known as tapping because you're tapping on acupuncture points on the face and body while processing your emotions.

It's like a blend of Eastern acupuncture and Western psychology. It gives you the same side effects that meditation will, except you're allowed to talk, which is really nice for women like me who are verbal processors. And by the end of a tapping session or tapping around, you'll feel a massive weight lift off your shoulders. You'll feel usually yourself take a deep breath or yawn. Someone might even cry. And what it's doing is resetting your nervous system. And it's famous for being extremely fast.

So lots of, I train a lot of therapists and counselors. I also just train like normal people, moms, coaches. And the biggest thing that we hear is holy moly, tapping works fast.

Caroline Pennington (01:54.677)
So if someone's listening to this podcast and tapping is a new concept to them, where do you start?

Jackie (02:02.06)
Yeah. So I always say that tapping is better experience than explained. It sounds very weird. will lie. When I first heard of it, I was like, you want me to tap on my face and talk about my feelings? Like, have you completely lost your mind? But I promise you within your first few minutes of tapping, you're going to see the magic of what it's all about. So where I recommend beginning is just coming and having your first experience with me. can

check out YouTube, you can come to my free trainings, whatever, and pick a topic that is causing you stress right now. So tapping is very well known for helping people with anxiety. So if you are a stressed or anxious person or you're going through something stressful or causing anxiety, you'll see the tapping help people go from like a 10 of anxiety to a zero within 20 minutes or less.

Caroline Pennington (02:55.573)
So I wanna hear your personal story. Like how did you get into tapping? I mean, you have tapping school, you're the CEO, the founder, you had this whole movement going on on the internet. And I wanna hear your story though. Like what brought you to tapping?

Jackie (03:08.974)
Yeah, I always say tapping found me at my worst and brought me to my best. So I had my daughter at the age of 19 and right after I had her, we had a lot of trauma happen at that time. So I was 19 years old. We had five people close to us within friends and family pass away within six months. And it at the time put my body into a state of fight, fight, freeze. And

my body responded with these really weird symptoms that the doctors didn't have answers for. I went to all these doctors, did all the scans, all the tests, and they were just like, you know what? I think you're just a tired new mom and you'll get over it. And that's when I started to seek out alternative healing options. And that's when tapping came into my life because it I always say found me at my worst, brought me to my best. And it was like my last resort. Like I have nothing to lose but to try this. And I did.

my first round of tapping and realize, whoa, I am holding on to so much grief in my body, so much fear and uncertainty that it's blocking my body from healing, especially as a new mother. And so I started tapping. I had my first session with a woman who was actually from Australia, but she came to North America to train in it. And after that first session, I immediately started feeling better and took my training. My daughter was a year old, did a nine month long training.

And my mentor at the time was like, you're really good at this. Like I want to give you free business coaching for a year. So she gave me free business coaching for a year. And then I started to tap on Facebook live, live on Facebook. My very first session ever was like, let's tap on anxiety. Probably looked like I was having an anxiety attack on that video because it was a big deal to go live on Facebook to begin with, but then to do something unconventional like tap. But I got all these messages from these women that were like, holy smokes, like

this really works, like my anxiety went down, I feel so much better, I feel so much lighter, what is this? And then the next stage to my business was I won a spot to speak on stage at an event and the women in the audience were all like female entrepreneurs. And so I tapped with a group, which is a really powerful experience because one of the statements that we say repetitively is I love and accept myself anyway.

Jackie (05:26.678)
And so hearing 300 women repeat that to themselves and seeing the room change before my eyes, all the women in the group, in the room that had Facebook groups started to invite me into their group. They're like, whatever you did in that group, can you come do at that event? Can you come do in my group? And so that's how my business started to launch online. And I started to tap in Facebook groups for free. And eventually tapping school was born because people are like, can you teach us how to do this? And yeah, that's where I am today.

Caroline Pennington (05:55.485)
that story and you must have made a huge impact on that business coach because business coaches typically are not free so hats off to you for that. So why is regulating your nervous system so important?

Jackie (06:03.512)
No. Thank you.

Jackie (06:13.102)
Well, I mean, most people know this by now, but we are living in a very overstimulated society. And if you're a woman in business or if you're a mother and your nervous system isn't regulated, then you're not going to be performing at the capacity or the degree that you can. And my core philosophy in tapping school is that we have to release in order to receive. So if you want to hit your next income level, if you want to manifest the love of your life, you have to heal the parts of you that don't feel safe having it.

and you have to let go of the sensations in your body. So we do a lot of work with the body and tapping. And if you're like, yeah, I want to speak on stage, but you feel like intense anxiety in your chest, we work with things like that to help women regulate their nervous system so that they can rise, so that they can step into what I call your wildly wealthy woman, the version of yourself that is making bank, having fun, making an impact in the world.

Caroline Pennington (07:09.589)
Okay, speaking of all those things you just said, I follow you on Instagram and I love watching everything that you and your daughter do together and the life that you've created for the two of you. And so tell me how tapping has helped you create that lifestyle.

Jackie (07:24.65)
my gosh, I would not be where I am today without tapping. And I've really used tapping and my online brand to share stories. So I've just brought people along for the ride and going from like a single mom to buying my first home in my twenties, which was pretty unheard of as like a single mom, but doing that. then leaving my daughter's dad after we were together almost eight years.

I left him and then I was like, went on this journey to like find my person, right? Like to manifest my, my king. And I showed everyone how I did it. I tapped on the parts of me that were scared of opening up my heart and the fears around getting hurt and the belief that they, did he really exist? And so people have watched me over the years have that happen. And now I am with him and we have this beautiful home together and life together and anything I've ever wanted, whether that's a client, a, you know,

calling in my king, a speaking spot on stage. One year I did tapping for trips. I got five trips in a year all paid for to Mexico, Hawaii. It was so cool. I went to Mexico three times that year, paid from someone else. And so that's my approach with tapping. Traditionally, it is a trauma-informed technique that people use for things like PTSD. So there's a whole...

documentary called The Tapping Solution that shows you how tapping has helped people like survivors from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, people like veterans. And I knew that it was obviously powerful for that, but my philosophy of tapping was like, can we use it to like manifest the things that we want? And so that's what I teach people to do.

Caroline Pennington (09:08.661)
Okay, wow, you're sharing a lot that I did not even know about you. And so the fact that you were able to tap and create an online brand and business and you took your followers or your community along the way with you, I mean, how did you figure that out? Like, what did that look like?

Jackie (09:26.286)
Yeah, I really utilized storytelling. I storytelling and authenticity. Like people watch me raise my daughter and become a single mom and go through the moments of like, I don't know how this is going to work out. Like there was moments where I was like, I know, I'm to pay my mortgage this month. And then I actually, that's when the 21 days of tapping was born. So it's one of my most popular programs in 2018. I was, I was newly single mom and I was like,

I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I'm going to commit to my own tapping practice for 21 days. I remember I had like $70 left in my bank account. I was like, we're going to figure this out. And so was like, I'm going to tap for 21 days. I put out a post on Facebook. was like, I'm going to tap for 21 days. Does anyone want to join me? It's $21. And 180 people signed up. And I was like, whoa. OK.

I'm like, I don't know this is gonna work, but we'll just see what happens. And I was like, everyone pick something you wanna manifest. And everybody did. And it was like story after story after story started coming in. People were like, I just manifested my dream job. And then another one was like, I just left my toxic relationship and then the next day reconnected with an old friend. And today those two people are married with a baby. I'm like, what? So I really utilized storytelling and being authentic.

Like this is what I'm struggling with today and this is how I'm using my modality to help me through it.

Caroline Pennington (10:49.951)
So to those who are listening to this podcast, when should you and how often should you be tapping? I mean, we've talked about some extreme examples of people coming back from PTSD of war and Sandy Hook victims is tapping for the average human and should you be tapping every day or just when you're in stressful situations? Like what does that look like?

Jackie (11:14.678)
Yeah, so you can use it as much as you want. I recommend if you're starting out, do a challenge with me. Like I'm doing a 10 day challenge. Come and do 10 days. How I design the challenges are an affirmation a day in a different area of your life. So like we do health, we do a lot of tapping on health, we do a lot of tapping on money. We do an affirmation a day on these different life topics. And you'll start to understand first of all, how it works. You're going to see like, the anxiety in my chest went away or like, I had this inspired idea come in.

Or oftentimes people have memories pop up. And if you are going for something bigger than you have before, that's when I recommend tapping with a practitioner every week for at least six weeks. Because what that will do is heal any parts of you or any past memories. Because that's something that can happen when you tap. You're like, I don't know why, but for some reason, this memory is coming up from when I was like eight years old.

All I can see is like the jacket my mom was wearing. I don't know why. And that's the subconscious brain throwing forward a nugget of gold, what I call a nugget of gold, a piece of information that's showing you there is something here. There's something that's happened in the past. I believe that the past unlocks your future that is preventing you from having what you want now. And so yeah, my recommendations start with a 10 day or 21 day challenge. And then if you want to go deeper, work with a practitioner weekly for like six weeks at least.

And then my high level clients, we work together for the year. So I work with them within my mastermind where we tap on money every month. We do a lot of work around visibility. It's a huge topic of people come to tap with me on. And then they have like private sessions every single month with me because new level, new devil, like you start to get what you want and then new things pop up. So that's my recommendation for your tapping journey.

Caroline Pennington (13:03.797)
Okay, you just touched on this a little bit and I want to have you elaborate on it more. You touched on tapping about money, tapping on health. What are some other topics that you have clients or that you've seen people tap on and get results?

Jackie (13:19.736)
my gosh, everything weight loss is a really big one. In tapping school, what I do is I train the overall tapping method and then I encourage my clients. I have a sales school tapping for a sales school for healers where I encourage them to pick a niche. so tapping for weight loss is one that I've seen unexpectedly in tapping school happen a lot. And even one woman last year, she was like, I injured my foot. Like she was on a weight loss journey. She's like, I injured my foot and I was afraid that I was going to like gain weight because I couldn't exercise. And she's like,

I ended up maintaining and losing the weight. And she's like, the only thing I've been doing is tapping. So that's an unexpected thing. I've worked with a lot of, at the beginning of my tapping journey, people with chronic illness and in particular people with cancer. And I had one client when she first started coming to me, she couldn't get out of bed, she couldn't walk. And she had breast cancer. And a lot of the work we did was around...

where in her body the cancer was, which was her chest, when that started, which was nine years prior when her dad had passed away, and the grief and the unspoken things that were kept in her body that were never released. And six weeks later, she was running on a treadmill. And her husband emailed me and was like, I don't know what you did, but you gave me my wife back. So tapping will blow you away. It blows the tapping school students away every day because you can tap on anything.

I've tapped with moms that are like, kid's having a hard time right now and I don't know what to do. And then as soon as the mom is regulated, the kid starts to feel better and they start tapping with their kids. So you can literally try it on anything. The founder of tapping, his philosophy was try it on anything. And he wanted tapping to be what like Advil is to the world. He's like, I want everyone to know it and everyone to reach for it when they're in times of stress.

Caroline Pennington (15:11.093)
Wow, that's some amazing stories. I mean, I'm with you. If we just bottle our emotions up or don't deal with these subconscious thoughts or times of turmoil that we've dealt with in our life, maybe that was in our childhood, maybe that's in adulthood, how can working through those emotions really heal our bodies?

Jackie (15:32.354)
Well, in my experience with tapping, your body's always trying to talk to you and it talks to you through symptoms. So if you have constipation, for example, I know it's a weird example, but a lot of women have it. Your body is trying to tell you that there is something to look at here. But how, like we've never been taught like, okay, body, like what do you need from me? And the minute you start tapping, especially in my style of tapping,

we're able to give that part of you a voice. it could, it's usually, it could probably be like, I am not ready to let go of something or something feels stuck in my life. And as soon as you start saying that, like there's this part of me that feels really stuck. I'm not ready to let this go. I want to move past this, but there's a part of me that just can't right now. And that's okay. I love and accept myself anyway. And when I'm ready, I can move through this. When I'm ready, I'll let it go. And the body is the subconscious brain. So the minute you give the subconscious brain a voice and it feels heard, the resistance releases.

and that intensity or that tightness all of a sudden relaxes, because it's like, thank you, you finally hear me. The reason you were having a sensation there or a migraine is because the body wants to be heard and the body is always connected to a deeper part of self in the subconscious.

Caroline Pennington (16:42.909)
Tell us more about your 10 day challenge. How can people sign up? How can they find you? How can they work with you? I want to hear all the things.

Jackie (16:50.126)
Yeah, so I, as I mentioned before, have always loved running tapping challenges. I used to do a 21 day challenge. This year I'm doing a 10 day challenge all around the theme of having a make it happen mindset. I was raised in a very unconventional family. I was raised with entrepreneurs and my dad always taught me to believe that you can make anything you want happen. And so I'm gonna teach you how to make anything you want happen using the power of tapping. It's a $33 challenge.

It's 10 days. It's a tapping session a day, which is about 20 minutes each. They're all recorded. So if you can't make it live, you can watch the replay. And I just invite you to come experience it. Like I said, it's better experience than explain. So come experience the power of it and report your results to me. I'll show you how it works. It's a very simple process. And once you know how to use it, like I say, it's literally at your fingertips. You can start using this anyplace, any time when you're feeling stressed or overwhelmed or doubt creep in, it will move those emotions fast.

Caroline Pennington (17:50.037)
I love that. So everyone go sign up for Jackie's program and find her on Instagram, find her online. You will love the work that she's doing. Thank you so much for being here.

Jackie (17:58.552)
Thank you so much. We'll see you soon.