Program Overview
Finding the Right Words
An Interactive Program for Tapping Practitioners
Finding the Right Words provides a framework for what a practitioner says during acupoint tapping — the phrases offered to the client, moment by moment, as the tapping proceeds. It comes in two parts: a free Field Guide that maps the framework and a Practice Program that builds the skill, $69 once for lifetime access. This page is about the Practice Program.
The program's strengths, evidence base, and what it doesn't claim.
The figures below come from the program and the framework it is built upon.
The short version
Three separate lines of research — a coding of videotaped sessions, a computational analysis of guided tapping videos, and the process literature from conventional therapy — arrived at the same three directions. Whatever the practitioner offers next attunes, explores, or leads, and sometimes accomplishes two in a single tapping instruction. Once the direction is sensed, and it must be sensed afresh at each tapping point, seven wording variations are available to carry it — 21 in all (3 x 7). The Field Guide maps all of this. The Practice Program cultivates the ability to choose a direction and wording that fit the moment as the client awaits the next tapping phrase.
Strengths
Nine claims, with backing for each:
Tapping training programs teach protocols and how to think about the treatment. What to say at each tapping point is typically modeled by instructor examples and basic principles, but proficiency is largely left to be developed in the day-to-day of a caseload. While this program is by no means a replacement for strong foundational training, most clinicians never, in an entire career, get the systematic practice on wording that the program offers.
Therapist language during tapping has not previously been organized into such a systematic framework, as the source paper documents.The framework on which the program is built comes out of a decade-long project which included a survey of experienced practitioners, a statement-by-statement coding of therapist language in recorded sessions, and a computational analysis of guided tapping videos.
Source: Feinstein, D., & Rajah, S. (2026). Finding the right words: A process-informed framework for therapist language in acupoint tapping psychotherapy. Frontiers in Psychology, 17:1800386. Open access.The learner meets clinical choice points in simulated sessions and makes on-the-spot decisions about how to move the session forward in the next moment. Only then do the feedback and reasoning appear.
144 clinical choice points in three tiers of increasing difficulty.Every option is explained, not just the correct one — and the wrong options are the errors clinicians actually make. Reaching for the positive too early. Reinforcing a client's self-dismissal and mistaking it for attunement. Leading before the groundwork has been established. A learner who chooses wrongly and reads why has learned the more useful lesson.
528 options across the program, each with its own reasoning.The Field Guide can be read in less than an hour. The three Tiers can be completed in about an hour each. But their value isn't measured in hours. They remain useful long after the initial learning, providing a practical reference whenever you want to sharpen your clinical judgment before a challenging case or refresh your instincts after time away.
About four hours to complete. Years of continued use.The 144 scenarios provide balanced coverage across the framework. All 21 language variations are practiced repeatedly, each appearing in three to nine different clinical situations. The three directions are evenly represented: 50 scenarios focus on Attuning, 48 on Exploring, and 46 on Leading. This allows learners to encounter each wording type often enough, and in enough varied contexts, to recognize when it may fit a new clinical moment.
Learners develop fluency across the framework's full range of possibilities.The 144 scenarios draw on 138 distinct presenting issues and include the client's SUD level, what has already unfolded in the session, shifts in breathing, posture, facial expression, and tone, and moments when the body is telling a different story from the words. They range from low arousal to overwhelm, from stalled progress to rapid movement, and from opening sessions to closure. They also include situations in which the most skillful use of language is to stop talking and simply tap.
Because the moments are recognizable, learners practice the same judgment calls they will be making in actual sessions.Each correct response is identified as one of the 21 language variations, showing learners not only what fits that clinical moment, but why. They are not memorizing 144 isolated answers. They are building a mental map of recurring patterns they can apply to clinical moments the program cannot possibly present.
Naming the language variation folds each scenario into a pattern the learner can recognize and use again.The Field Guide is complete, free, and shareable, and it is not an excerpt with the useful parts withheld. It can be passed to a community without recommending a purchase, and a practitioner can take real value from it without ever accessing the paid program.
27 friendly pages, drawn from the academic paper. Free to share.Scope
See for yourself
Nine scenarios, drawn from the 144 and with the full reasoning behind every option, are available as a free preview. About fifteen minutes, and it will tell you more than this page can.
Already know you want it? Go to the Practice Program. Or stay in touch with David — a few emails a year, new resources, classes, or papers.