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While addressing the root causes of your sleep issues requires investigating the imbalances in your body, there's a powerful technique that can help you sleep better tonight while you work on those deeper solutions. This simple method has helped thousands (including myself) calm their racing minds and nervous systems in just minutes.


In today's episode, you'll discover how tapping (or EFT) can be an effective tool in your sleep detective toolkit. You'll learn how this technique helps lower cortisol and calm your system when you're trying to fall asleep or lying awake at 3AM with racing thoughts. 


By the end of our conversation, you'll have two complete tapping sequences you can use tonight to complement your work addressing the underlying physical imbalances. 


Plus, you'll understand why this mind-body approach works alongside the functional testing I always emphasize as the foundation for truly solving sleep issues permanently.


Julie Schiffman, MSW, is an internationally recognized Expert EFT Practitioner. For more than 30 years, she has counseled thousands of clients, helping them to achieve emotional and physical well-being through this transformative healing modality. Her life-changing YouTube videos have been viewed more than 4 million times. Julie is the creator of Tap Into Life Membership program, the Pain-Less Program and Tap Into Sleep Mode Program helping thousands of people reclaim their lives.


​​Julie’s links:

https://www.julieschiffman.com/

https://www.instagram.com/julieschiffman_tapintolife/

https://www.youtube.com/julieschiffman


00:00 Introduction to Sleep Issues and Tapping

01:31 Meet the Expert: Julie Schiffman

03:15 Understanding Tapping: What and How

07:03 Julie Schiffman's Journey with Tapping

13:28 The Science Behind Tapping and Sleep

20:56 Practical Tips for Better Sleep

22:11 Using Tapping to Overcome Sleep Resistance

22:44 Preparing for a Tapping Session

23:09 Guided Tapping for Relaxation

29:54 Addressing Anxiety About Sleep

36:06 Exploring Tapping Programs and Resources

39:15 Conclusion and Final Thoughts


Episode Transcript


Martha Lewis:

While addressing the root causes of your sleep issues requires investigating the imbalances in your body. There's a powerful technique that can help you sleep better tonight while you work on those deeper solutions. This simple method has helped thousands, including myself, calm their racing minds and nervous system in just minutes. In today's episode, you'll discover how tapping or EFT can be an effective tool In your sleep Detective toolkit, you'll learn how this technique helps lower cortisol and calm your nervous system when you're trying to fall asleep or lying awake at 3:00 AM with racing thoughts. By the end of our conversation, you'll have two complete tapping sequences you can use tonight to compliment your work addressing the underlying physical imbalances. Plus, you'll understand why this body mind approach works alongside the functional testing that always emphasize is the foundation for truly solving sleep issues permanently. You're listening to the Sleep Detective Podcast where you will learn why you can't sleep and how to fix it naturally.


I'm Martha Lewis. I've been a functional health and life coach for the past five years, and I've helped over 200 clients find and fix the root causes of their health issues so they can consistently sleep seven to nine hours without drugs by also helping calm the nervous system with techniques such as tapping. Today I have Julie Schiffman on the podcast to lead us through an explanation of tapping and two different tapping exercises. Julie is a therapist and certified EFT practitioner who has helped thousands overcome sleep issues through tapping techniques over her 25 year career. After overcoming her own debilitating panic attacks and insomnia through energy work, Julie trained extensively with Dr. Joe Mercola and developed her tap into sleep mode program, which addresses the emotional components of sleep struggles that conventional approaches often miss. Today I am so excited to welcome Julie Schiffman to the podcast to tell us all about tapping or EFT and how it can help with sleep. So thanks so much for being here, Julie.


Julie Schiffman:

Oh, I'm so happy to be here today. We're talking about such an important topic and I'm thrilled to share what I know about it.


Martha Lewis:

Yay. Yeah, I'm really excited and appreciative and I was just telling you that I have personally used tapping as well, especially for sleep, and I even used it last night. My mind started spinning about everything that I have to do today. And so I got out of bed and I came out and did a little bit of tapping and I just like to just speak everything out and then say I'm letting it go. And then I went back to bed and went to sleep. So


Julie Schiffman:

Amazing.


Martha Lewis:

So I know that this can help so many people


Julie Schiffman:

And it can really be that easy and we'll talk about more of it and how it works and everything, but it really can be that easy instead of being up for three hours during the night. Right. I've been there too. Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah.


Martha Lewis:

So yeah, first of all, can you briefly explain just what tapping is to someone who hasn't heard of this before?


Julie Schiffman:

Of course. So I love to share about tapping. I've been doing it for over 25 years. It's getting more and more widely known now, but tapping is an amazing stress management tool that literally anyone can use at any time. It is simple, it's effective, and it is a very quick and easy way to ease pain, ease emotions that might be creating any sort of challenge regardless of what it is. It doesn't just work for sleep, it works for just about everything you could imagine. So tapping is a combination of ancient Chinese acupressure and modern psychology that works to physically alter your brain, your energy system, and your body all at once. So it's like a win-win win, and it can consist of tapping, literally tapping, and so it looks like this. It's just very gentle tapping. And what we're doing is we're tapping on particular meridian points while talking through a pain, a problem, an emotion, inability to sleep.


And this process can help not only physical symptoms. If you have a headache, you've got back ache, you've got brain fog, whatever it is, but it also has emotions with anxiety. If you're feeling really angry, if you're feeling really sad or dealing with grief, it works for that as well. And when we're feeling stress, some of the stuff that we're talking about here, and this is important for what we're talking about today, our cortisol levels shoot up. We know this is something that is, it's a fact. And when our cortisol is high, it is hard in the moment to be, it sort of hijacks our brain. It hijacks our nervous system, the amygdala, and it makes it hard to think. It makes it hard to make decisions. Our nervous system can become dysregulated very quickly, and not only that, but then our immune system becomes strained.


We're more likely to become sick or have inflammation. And overall this just puts stress and strain on our health and wellbeing. So when we're feeling triggered in some way cortisol shoots up, we can start ruminating. We get into fight or flight, we get into freeze response, and we have a hard time balancing out. We have a hard time balancing out our thoughts. We have a hard time balancing out our body. And of course this can make it difficult to sleep. And so when we tap, what we're doing is research has shown that tapping can bring the cortisol levels down, it can regulate our nervous system, we can relax, we can be in the moment, we can make more sound decisions and feel safe in our body and allow ourselves to feel grounded and feel rooted. So we feel like we're anchored and back in our body instead of wherever else our mind may be. So tapping research has shown that tapping can reduce stress, it can reduce anxiety, cortisol levels, it can regulate your nervous system, can help you to sleep. It can help with really just about anything that's going on in your life that's creating stress for you.


Martha Lewis:

Yes, I totally agree. And I talk a lot about cortisol because that's a lot of times the reason why people can't sleep. I talk a lot about the nervous system because different imbalances in the body can actually make the body kind of stuck in fight or flight or that sympathetic stress state. So yeah, and I love even how you said we can make better decisions because we can't make good decisions when we are in fight or flight.


Julie Schiffman:

Totally.


Martha Lewis:

Our mind isn't thinking rationally. And so tapping to help calm those emotions and be able to think clearly and make a more rational decision, I think is so important. And of course, helping us relax before bed. So yeah, so I love all of that. So great. How did you get into this? What's your story?


Julie Schiffman:

I love to tell my story because I think it can help so many other people. As you know, I know you have your own story. So I'm a therapist and I am really passionate about helping others to heal on their journey, whatever that is, mental, emotional, physical, whatever that might be. So I went to school to be a therapist. Actually, I got my master's degree in social work and I was working with teenagers in a school system in a high school, and I loved it, but this was my mid twenties and I started getting panic attacks, really hardcore, debilitating panic attacks. I'd be in a session with a student and I'm trying to help them with depression and anxiety, and I'm like, oh my God, I just wanted to jump out of my skin. And so I went to therapy, which was helpful. I started doing talk therapy.


I had recently lost my dad and I hadn't really dealt with that. And so it sort of helped me to work through a lot of that. But I was still getting these panic attacks and I wasn't sleeping, which we know is detrimental. I just could not get a good night's sleep. I was panicking, I was ruminating. I couldn't help myself to save my life basically. And so I saw actually a good friend of mine who was doing energy work at the time, he was like, come and see me. And he was a chiropractor, and at the time he was doing chiropractic, but he was also getting into energy medicine. And I was like, that sounds sort of woo woo. I am not sure about that. He was like, trust me, come and see me. I'm like, okay. So I went in to see him and he did energy work.


It wasn't tapping, it was other things, and he's amazing at what he does, and within a few minutes it was like boom. It was just gone. I mean, it went hardcore to the roots of whatever I was dealing with at the time. And I was like, oh my God. I was like, this is something that was so healing and so freeing. Suddenly I was really feeling at peace and I was feeling better in my body. I was sleeping a baby and I was like, I have to learn about this. I have to do this. I feel like this is my calling. This is revolutionary, and I know that I am meant to help others with this. Cognitive therapy is great, and I mean I really did love what I was doing, but it can also retraumatize people at times when you're talking about traumas or even memories.


It doesn't have to be trauma, but memories. And sometimes it can put you into a state of retraumatization and jack up the nervous system again. And then I would leave therapy and I'd be like, that was helpful to talk about, but I'm still sort of, I can't figure out a way to get calm. So fast forward a few years later, I left my job at the high school I was working at, and I began working for Dr. Joe Mercola, who at the time had the largest natural healthcare website in the world. This was years ago. This was in the late 1990s if you're familiar with him. And he was working with people, he's a doctor and he was working with people on looking for the roots of what was going on, but he said, the one thing most doctors are missing is that they're not getting to the emotional component of what's going on with illness.


And he was like, this is what I want you to do. So he sent me to train EFT, emotional freedom technique is another term for tapping. And he sent me to all the trainings, God bless him, and I learned it. I got certified in it and I started using it with his patients. And over and over we were just seeing like boom, boom, boom. People were just getting better and better and better. And I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. It was just astounding to me. So at this point, I've worked with thousands of people and I've seen so many amazing and brave people who have been challenged with so much on their journey, and whether it's with sleep or chronic illness or depression, anxiety, whatever it is, menopause so many things that go hand in hand with each other when you're struggling on a mental emotional level or physical level.


And so I've been using tapping ever since. I created a program called Tap to Sleep mode, which we could talk about more, but that's helping people to tap on just about anything you can think of related to sleep and physical issues that might be getting in the way. The healing that happens is just incredible. I mean, it's beautiful and I'm so just grateful to be able to do this work and share it with anyone and everyone who will listen. So again, I'm so grateful to you for bringing me here to share it with people who might've never heard about it before.


Martha Lewis:

Yes. Well, thank you so much for sharing. And it's funny because I've had the same realization that Dr. Cola did of at least half of my clients. If there is this emotional component and nervous system component, then everything we do for the physical imbalances isn't enough if there's this other side of it going on. So that's something that I've realized too, and it's one of the first things I address with my clients who need this is like, okay, we need to figure out your nervous system. We need to help you deal with past stress and trauma. And yes, and tapping is such a simple way to do it. So I love to hear all the success that you've seen from helping people in this way. It's really awesome.


Julie Schiffman:

It really is. I mean, I just feel so blessed that where it used to feel frustrating to just have clients come in and talk about the same things over and over again where I might've been able to give them strategies and tools to work through things. Again, there's definitely a place for cognitive therapy. I'm not bashing it in any way, nor am I bashing the medical system or anything like that. But when you combine them both, when you combine looking at the mental emotional, the energy in your body and what's going on physically, it's just all connected. There's no other way to look at it. It's not just the physical or just the emotional. It's like everything is together, it's structural, it's biochemical, it's emotional. Those are the three things that we're always looking at and when we tap or other sorts of energy work also, you're really getting into the roots and scooping it out and just being able to thrive.


Martha Lewis:

Yes, and I totally agree. I love that. I definitely believe we've got to look at both the body and the mind at the same time if we ignore either one of those. Yeah, it's really hard to get better.


Julie Schiffman:

It really is. I totally agree.


Martha Lewis:

Yeah. Awesome. So I know we talked about tapping helps lower cortisol, it helps with sleep. Is there anything else you want to add about how tapping specifically helps with sleep?


Julie Schiffman:

So there's been a lot of research that has proven again and again that tapping helps to calm the nervous system. So we're just going to talk about this for a little bit, right? Because when the nervous system is jacked up, you can do whatever you want to try to override it and say, it's okay, I'm calm, I'm calm, I'm calm, now I'm calm. We could try to overthink it and be like, it's fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. But you can't really override it. Your subconscious is always trying to protect you. That's its job is to protect us. And so we say thank you for that. That means that it is doing its job when there are parts of us that get all revved up and our nervous system is off the rails or whatever. And so tapping can really help to put the body back into a parasympathetic state, which can obviously help to induce relaxation and help us to sleep.


And so when we have higher levels of cortisol, which I'm sure you talk about all the time, this can keep us awake at night. All of you who wake up, it's 3:00 AM part of the 3:00 AM club. I have been there again, especially people going through menopause or anything else. It doesn't have to be just women. It happens to men too. The cortisol levels rise and it can be harder to, for some people, not only to fall asleep, some people have that state of hypervigilance even before trying to wind down, but sometimes when you get into bed, maybe you would fall asleep right away and then that three, four o'clock hits and you're like eyes wide open and you're staring at the ceiling or staring at the clock. Though tapping can break the cycle of the racing thoughts. It can break the cycle of rumination, which is what you did last night.


You got up, you tapped, and then you were like, okay, ready to go. And that often happens in the middle of the night. How often do you wake up in the middle of the night and you have these thoughts that are completely irrational and they're completely different than the thoughts that you have during the day. Then you wake up and you're like, wow, I was really off in this place of doom and the world is ending and all of that. And so tapping again can really help to get your nervous system back online. And you might be up worrying about your job, your kids, your finances or anything else, and your thoughts are just racing. And so tapping can help you to allow those thoughts to run its course.


Sometimes if I wake up in the middle of the night, and what I've even told my clients to do is get out of bed, which is what you did get out of bed and your thoughts, they're going to run out of themselves eventually. You can keep on the worry track for a while. And I even suggest doing a brain dump, which is like to sit down with a pen and paper, literally not on your phone or your iPad, but the research has shown that actually having a pen in your hand and writing it down can be enough to get that energy from your brain literally out. And so it's like you sort of let it run its course. And so you write all the things you're worried about, all the things you're stressing about, and you can go back and tap on those things if you want to.


You can go back and even tap and read your notes and go through it that way. And it can just help to get to a place of, okay, I don't really need to worry about that right now. I don't need to worry about that anymore. I can save my to-do list for tomorrow. Anything I didn't finish today, I can do another time. I certainly am not getting it done at three in the morning I think. Right? So sitting and thinking about it doesn't help, but consciously we might know that, but there's that engine in the back that protector part of us is like, don't go to sleep. You've got to stay awake. You've got to stay aware. You've got to remember all the things you have to do. And so tapping really, when you're physically tapping on these points, you are moving energy. People are probably like, well, I don't understand.


Why am I tapping? What is that actually doing? And it's like acupuncture without needles. If you're familiar with that. Every tap is like boom, boom, boom. It's just sending that energy and sending that message to that part of your brain that's like, okay, this is okay. This is safe. I am safe. My body is safe. And it can really get you back into that state of common relaxation. And the other thing tapping can do is we all have beliefs about ourselves. We get into this state of narrative that we have. And so if you think of yourself as, I'm just a bad sleeper or insomniacs run in my family, nobody sleeps well in my family, or I'm just like my mother and she never slept well either or I'm in menopause, and so I'm not supposed to get a good night's sleep. In fact, I was just at a doctor who tests my hormones and whatever, and we were talking about sleep, and I was saying sometimes I am up at three in the morning.


And he was like, well, if you're getting five or six hours of sleep, consider yourself lucky. And I was like, no, I'm not going to buy into that. I am not going to buy into that. And so tapping can really help to shift the beliefs that we have around it because it really gets into the portal of what those thoughts are, of what the narratives are, and why is this showing up for you? Lack of sleep doesn't show up just because there is something else that you can take a look at. Like I said, there's a portal and you can shift the beliefs that you have about whether it's sleep, whether it's about anxiety, whether it's about your weight, and whether it's about your success in your life. Tapping works really well to do all of that, so letting you know that you have the power to make these changes.


That is in a nutshell, what I want to say about this is that tapping really helps to hand over the power to you so that you don't feel like you're sort of a sitting duck in this, well, I'm just a bad sleeper. There's nothing I can do. And anyone listening to this and follows you obviously knows that they're here because they want to make a change. And so they must think that this is somewhat doable and possible. And so that's what we're trying to do here is to help people who come from a place of being a horrible sleeper or someone who is just, it's just inevitable. They can't own their power with that. We really want to ship that so people can feel like I know exactly what I need to do.


Martha Lewis:

Yes, awesome. And definitely something I work on with my clients too right away is the mindset part, but you're so right that we can't tell ourselves go from, I'm a bad sleeper to I'm a great sleeper. I'm going to sleep great tonight when that isn't believable. And so it's like, what should we find that's more neutral? But I know that tapping can help really get that into the subconscious and help, like you're saying, kind of rewire, re-identify yourself so that yeah, you don't have to be a bad sleeper for life. Just because your mom has insomnia doesn't mean that you're destined to have insomnia. Just because your menopause perimenopause doesn't mean that you have to live with poor sleep for 10 years or more. I mean, yeah,


Julie Schiffman:

Exactly. Exactly. And the other thing I want to add about that is there's a lot of times people don't want to, they have resistance to going to sleep. This is an important piece I just want to mention in here, is that sometimes people have resistance and they may say, no, I don't have resistance around that, but I want you to take a look at, and again, this is probably something that you talk about too, but look at your nighttime routine before you go to bed. Are you someone who you're like, oh, finally the kids are asleep, or My partner is finally asleep. I finally have me time. I finally have alone time, and so this is the time I'm going to use for me, which is fine. We all need alone time. Don't get me wrong. We all need time to ourselves. But if you find that that is leading you to not going to bed until one or two in the morning, and then you wake up and you're like, oh, I knew I, I should have gone to bed earlier.


Tonight's going to be different. And you're like, but then tonight comes and you're like, no. Then you start streaming all your shows or all of a sudden you start doing laundry or just start puttering around and putting things away and all that stuff. We want to bring you back to really being proactive and creating success for yourself with sleep. And so tapping, the reason why I'm mentioning this is that tapping can also help with that, right? If you feel resistant around going to sleep around anything we're talking about here, you can also tap to shift that narrative too, which is even though I'm feeling this resistance, I'm open to just going with the flow and taking care of myself. I'm remembering my goals. I'm remembering that getting a good night's sleep is important and setting yourself up for success with sleep, right?


Martha Lewis:

Yes. Okay, awesome. So I want to get into some tapping sequences, but is there anything else you want to add before we do that?


Julie Schiffman:

No. Okay, perfect. Now, depending on the time people are listening to this, they might be listening to this in the morning when you're not really going to sleep, but it might be something that you can save so that you can go back to it before you go to bed at night, right? Exactly. Yes. So let's do a round of tapping for just relaxing the body before bed. Perfect. So we're going to go through the tapping points. I'm going to have you repeat after me and we'll tap along and you can tap with one hand. You can tap with two hands, one the other or both. So as I go through, I usually tend to tap with one hand, but if you feel like you want to tap with two hands, it works just as well either way. People always ask that question. So I'm going to talk you through the tapping the first round, and then I'm just going to go through it without labeling the points. Someone can just watch or listen and we can go from there. Okay, perfect.


Martha Lewis:

Yeah.


Julie Schiffman:

So take a big deep breath in and release it. And when you're ready, we're going to start on the side of the hand. It's just between the pinky bone and the wrist bone. And we're going to do just a gentle tap, tap, tap. Yep. Just gentle. Yes. I wanted to let people know sometimes people are like that. Then it's just very gentle and soft. So repeating after me, even though it's hard for me to wind down,


Martha Lewis:

Even though it's hard for me to wind down,


Julie Schiffman:

I may feel restless before bed.


Martha Lewis:

I may feel restless before bed


Julie Schiffman:

Or anxious.


Martha Lewis:

We're anxious. I honor and accept myself and my body and I'm open to relaxing Now, even though it may be hard for me to relax and I might be worried about sleep tonight, it's hard for me to sleep. I'm setting myself up for success, feeling calmer and more relaxed now.


Julie Schiffman:

And we're going to tap through the point. So we're going to start on the top and center of the head. I'm relaxing my body. Now it's time to sleep, and we're going to move to the inner eyebrow. Just right at the point of the eyebrow there,


Martha Lewis:

I'm relaxing my mind. Now it's time to sleep


Julie Schiffman:

And moving on the side of your eye, just on the side of the bone there,


Martha Lewis:

I'm relaxing my mind and body.


Julie Schiffman:

And we're going to move to under the eye


Martha Lewis:

All of my systems, organs and glands,


Julie Schiffman:

And under your nose,


Martha Lewis:

My cells and my muscles,


Julie Schiffman:

And on your chin, my nervous system, and on the collarbone, which is just sort of under the bone here. If you're doing hands, you could do like that or one hand like that. I'm destressing now. The next point is under the arm, just a few inches down from the armpit, I'm unwinding back to the top of the head. I'm creating a


Martha Lewis:

Safe space to relax and feel safe. I'm headed off to bed. It's time for me to unwind. I'm getting ready to sleep. I've been up all day and my mind might be racing my thoughts, everything I didn't finish today, all the things I have to do tomorrow. So many worries swirling in my mind. So many worries swirling in my mind. It can be hard to let go and relax, but I'm letting go now because my body is craving a good night's sleep. I am safe to sleep.


Julie Schiffman:

I'm releasing all the stress and tension from my body, turning down the production of cortisol in my body


Martha Lewis:

And helping my body get the sleep. It craves releasing all the tension. My head is feeling lighter, my eyes are softer.


Julie Schiffman:

I'm relaxing.


Martha Lewis:

I'm releasing the tension in my face. My jaw is feeling settled and relaxed. I'm breathing easy and the knots in my body are just melting away.


Julie Schiffman:

My shoulders feel loose,


Martha Lewis:

My arms feel weightless. I'm opening my chest and my heart and breathing warmth and relaxation in my abdomen. I I'm safe to rest now.


Julie Schiffman:

I'm at ease in my body.


Martha Lewis:

I'm supported in my body


Julie Schiffman:

Relaxing. Everything


Martha Lewis:

Tranquility is washing over me. I'm breathing at my own pace, feeling drowsy all the day. Stress is washing away. My worries are dissolving, and I have permission to relax and go to sleep. I have permission to unwind. My nervous system is relaxing. I welcome stillness in


Julie Schiffman:

My body.


Martha Lewis:

I welcome quiet in my body, breathing. I'm feeling supported in my bed.


Julie Schiffman:

I'm letting go


Martha Lewis:

When I'm ready to drift off to sleep


Julie Schiffman:

And tip the inside of your wrist together like this. Take a big deep breath in and say peace, good, and breathe out. Just take a second and just see how that feels. Again, that's probably not something you're going to do in the mid-afternoon or in the morning unless you have time and you need to take a nap. But that's something that you can do before bed to really help your body to unwind, to relax your nervous system and get back into a state of calm.


Martha Lewis:

Yes, it's nine 30 in the morning here, but I'm ready to go take a nap. Yeah, it's funny, whenever I'm doing this at night too, I'll start yawning almost immediately. So


Julie Schiffman:

It's crazy how quickly it takes effect and yawning just to let people know. Yawning is a really good, I mean, you notice you're yawning when you're tired and ready to go to bed. But yawning while you're tapping is a really good indication that energy is shifting. Energy is shifting in your body, energy is shifting in your mind. So yawning, sighing, even maybe tearing up a little bit crying would all be normal things to happen as you're tapping. Yep,


Martha Lewis:

Excuse me. Awesome. And I can see using this in the middle of the night as well. I think it can work at bedtime or


Julie Schiffman:

In the middle of the night, definitely. The other thing I want to say is if some people might find tapping stimulating in the middle of the night, so you can actually just close your eyes and imagine yourself tapping on these points, or even just pick one point and just rub it or put your hand there. And the act of doing that will still activate that calming sensation. So if you feel like sitting there, some people will be like, well, I don't want to disturb my partner next to me by tapping and shaking the bed. You can hold the points like this and you can breathe. That can be very calming. You can just imagine yourself tapping. Any of that will work. Awesome. Yeah, that's good to


Martha Lewis:

Know. I find it helps me to usually get out of bed though when just shit things. Same with I can't meditate in bed very well. It helps me to change my environment, but, but I see how that could be something you could just stay in bed and see if you can fall asleep easily just from doing that.


Julie Schiffman:

Absolutely. And getting out of bed is, I mean, it is a good thing to do also because you're changing, right? You're just sort of changing your environment and then you can always come back to bed. Yeah.


Martha Lewis:

Yeah,


Julie Schiffman:

Good point.


Martha Lewis:

Yeah, but it's hard because a lot of times we're just hoping we'll be able to go back to sleep. And so I definitely think it's worth giving that a try before maybe getting out of bed and see if it helps. So that's great. And then we also talked about doing one maybe more for in the middle of the night, but also you even mentioned the doom and gloom thoughts that tend to happen. And I think for people with insomnia and sleep issues, it's like, I'm never going to figure this out. I have to live with this forever. I'm not going to be able to function tomorrow. I get a lot of that. This is going to ruin my entire next day. And so I'm hoping we could do something for those kinds of


Julie Schiffman:

Thoughts that might help. So there's a couple different ways to do that, right? There's a few different things, but basically what you're talking about is that a lot of it is the anxiety about the anxiety,


Martha Lewis:

Right?


Julie Schiffman:

I mean, that's such a big piece of it I think, is that you have anxiety about being anxious and all you want to do is calm down and settle down and you're like, but I have all these thoughts, but I am this fear that I'm not going to sleep or I need to figure this out tonight. So let's do a round of tapping on that. Anybody, once again, take a big deep breath then and tapping on the side of the hand again,


Martha Lewis:

Even though I have anxiety about my anxiety, I honor and accept myself anyway. Even though I feel anxious when I go to sleep, I may worry that I can't sleep. I worry about all the things I have to worry about.


Julie Schiffman:

I'm open to relaxing and changing this story. I'm saved to relax and go to sleep, and we're going to tap through the points,


Martha Lewis:

This anxiety about my anxiety. I'm anxious because I'm anxious. What if I can't sleep? What if I wake up in the middle of the night worrying? Here we go again. It's another night. I dread the night. I'm just going to be up again in a few hours. And it is so painful for me to lie awake, just worrying about all the things that I can't control, especially in the middle of the night. I just can't relax knowing that I'll be waking up soon, that this anxiety is making it worse for me and I'm open to changing the narrative because this is a useless pattern for me. This is a useless pattern for me, and it has useless effects on me. This isn't a shame or blame me, I'm just trying to understand it. I do see that it's useless, but I like to be prepared and worrying helps me to prepare.


It may make sense for me to be anxious. I have to worry. But what if there's another way? What if there's another to do this? I just didn't know how before. I forgive myself and these old, old patterns, and I even forgive others who may have taught me these old habits, parents who are worriers or who wanted me to worry so that they didn't have to. We're all doing our best here, and I am reprogramming myself to prepare for sleep, to be proactive instead of reactive. I have permission to do it differently tonight, and I'm showing up for myself in a whole new way. I'm done worrying for the night. I have permission to start again if I'd like to tomorrow, but now I can get into my pajamas, brush my teeth, and set myself up for a good night's sleep. I'm signaling to my body that I'm getting ready to sleep, and I'm programming the subconscious part of me to know that feeling calmer and more relaxed is also a signal that it's time to sleep. The only way out of this is through it, and right now I'm coming out on the other side from the time I go to bed to the time I wake up,


Julie Schiffman:

I'm open to being a good sleeper.


Martha Lewis:

I'm open to being a good sleeper, a sound sleeper. I didn't know it was a choice to be easy, but it can be easy. My body is calm and relaxed. There's nothing more to worry about tonight. I choose rest, peace, and sleep.


Julie Schiffman:

Tap your wrist and say peace. Peace. Take a big deep breath in and let it go. And again, you just see how that feels. Hopefully it puts you into a state of feeling calmer and more relaxed. If you notice that jacks something up for you, some thoughts you can always go through and tap on those as well.


Martha Lewis:

Right. Awesome.


Julie Schiffman:

Yeah.


Martha Lewis:

Okay. Well, thank you for that.


Julie Schiffman:

You're welcome.


Martha Lewis:

It's good stuff. It's so good, right?


Julie Schiffman:

Yeah,


Martha Lewis:

So simple. And that just took a few minutes for each of those. So


Julie Schiffman:

Yes, and you can cut it down. You can make it shorter. Sometimes I do it a little bit longer just so you can sort of see the depths that you can go into. I mean, you could definitely go deeper. These are very general sort of tapping rounds that we went through so that it can suit everybody, but if you are somebody who knows that it's inherited, everyone, your mother, your grandmother, your great-grandmother, everyone was a bad slipper. You always have people who are sort of tell those stories, but just because that happened, you can disrupt that pattern. And so those are things that you can tap on as well.


Martha Lewis:

Yeah, and I talk about how different imbalances in the body, like trouble with liver detox and


Julie Schiffman:

Gut


Martha Lewis:

Health and all those things can also be passed down. And so again, those things are fixable. So just because some of us, when our bodies get all balanced, we tend to have sleep issues. Other people's health imbalances manifest in other ways, so it doesn't mean that you have to live with this.


Julie Schiffman:

Exactly.


Martha Lewis:

So letting go of that narrative on an emotional nervous system level is also really important too.


Julie Schiffman:

Absolutely, and what I love about what you're saying is that it's giving the power back to you. Whoever's listening, you're taking your power back again. It doesn't have to happen to you just because you're having these things. As you said, maybe there's something with detoxing could be a liver thing, it could be inflammation somewhere in your body, whatever it is. It doesn't mean that it's giving the power over to the individual who's dealing with this, and so it's not like, oh, well my doctor says that I have to do it this way, or I have to do it this way, or I have to take this. Listen, there's nothing wrong with taking medication if you need it, but sometimes there are alternative ways that can really get so deep in there that you're not just putting the bandaid on it, that you're really getting to what's at the root of it so that you can just be done with the struggle of it.


Martha Lewis:

Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Well, tell us about your program and how you help people specifically.


Julie Schiffman:

So I do have a program. I did run the program live, I'll probably be running it again at some point right now. People could purchase the program. It's called tap into Sleep mode. It is six modules and every, so it's like each module is an hour and each one has four tapping rounds of all different types of things that might be keeping you up at night. All the things that, it's not just looking at just relaxing your body, it's looking at looks at circadian rhythms and balancing out circadian rhythms. It's looking at the beliefs that you have about sleep, all sorts of things. So it's six modules. There is one live call in there, I think, and so yeah, people can go to my website, they can purchase that over there. And I have a YouTube channel, hundreds of videos demonstrating, tapping for all sorts of things, not just sleep. In fact, I do have some on sleep, but it's mostly around anxiety, regulate your nervous system, addressing all sorts of different pain and challenges in the body, just about anything you can think of. I have a video for that, so go over there. You can subscribe. It's Julie Schiffman on YouTube, and I come out with new videos every week over there and people can find me on Instagram, Facebook, all those fun places.


Martha Lewis:

Yes, I think I found you on Instagram searching.


Julie Schiffman:

Okay, great. So perfect. So people can follow me over there. Julie Schiffman, tap into life.


Martha Lewis:

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, so if anyone wants to dive deeper, I definitely recommend Julie's program. And do you work with people one-on-one as well?


Julie Schiffman:

I do, yes. I also work with people. The majority of the work I do on all sorts of things, and I do tapping. Obviously as you see here. I do other energy work as well. But yeah, we address all sorts of, again, not just sleep, we look at everything going on that might be challenging in the body, might be challenging mentally, emotionally, and so yeah, we do one-on-one work too, which is amazing work. Amazing.


Martha Lewis:

Yes, definitely love it. Probably everyone could use that.


Julie Schiffman:

So everyone could use tapping, and what I love about it is that you can do it on your own. I mean, let's just say that, right? There's a lot of things you can't do on your own. If you need an adjustment, you need to go see your chiropractor. If you need acupuncture, you need to go see an acupuncturist and all those things are amazing and wonderful. Tapping is really something, depending on what it is you're working on. If you're dealing with trauma, I don't suggest always doing tapping on your own, reach out for help on that, but this is something that you can do in a pinch. It can take five minutes, 10 minutes. As you can see, we just did it right here, and it can take just minutes for you to feel calmer and more settled in your body. So that's why I am such an advocate and so passionate about it because it's a way that you can really help yourself take your power back with feeling better.


Martha Lewis:

Yes. Awesome. Well, so I will link to all of Julie's info in the show notes so everyone can find that there. Thank you so much for being on today. It was super helpful. I learned a lot too, even though I already knew a little about tapping, so I'm to use it even more.


Julie Schiffman:

Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.


Martha Lewis:

I hope you found this conversation with Julie about tapping as eyeopening as I did. As you've heard, addressing the mind component of sleep issues is powerful, but truly solving insomnia requires a comprehensive approach that investigates both your body and your mind. That's exactly what makes my Complete Sleep Solution program different. I don't just address sleep anxiety or racing thoughts. I also use functional lab tests plus assessments to uncover all of the hidden physical imbalances, keeping you awake, like hormone disruptions, gut pathogens, or mineral deficiencies that conventional doctors miss.


Then we combine that with powerful mindset work to create a truly holistic solution that transforms your sleep permanently. If you're ready for this body mind approach to finally sleep seven or more hours, consistently book a consultation today at the link in the show notes. We'll discuss your unique sleep challenges and create a roadmap to restore your sleep naturally. Your body is designed to sleep well. Let's discover why it isn't and fix it at the root. Thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you next week.

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