Published 2012-03-07T10:40:00Z”/>

Taylor Letofsky

After being fired from her job as a waitress for serving alcohol to a minor, Lydia Olson was in shock.

She was fined $1,000 and given 32 hours of community service.

The next week, she wandered into the Chico Peace and Justice Center downtown, where a woman told her about tapping, a Chinese stress-relief treatment she could use to help veterans with post-traumatic stress.

After her stressful week, the treatment helped Olson immensely, and she fell in love with the tapping, she said. Since then, she has opened Energy Healing, a business established to help students, community members and war veterans with stress.

By tapping on specific acupressure points, Olson stimulates the specific energy nodes in the body, which increases the flow of life force, according to Olson’s website, findingdivinity.com. This is paired with breathing and speech therapy, which remove energy disruptions to balance the body’s energy system.

Tapping is about using healing to rewire the body and mind to give people a different perspective on themselves and the universe, according to Olson’s website.

The first tapping treatment is free for veterans, Olson said. If a client comes in with a specific issue, they would have a conversation on the different things they were facing and go from there.

Not everyone is willing to spill their every secret, so Olson generalizes those sessions with very little attention paid to uncomfortable topics, she said.

Rebecca Pennington, a liberal studies graduate student, knew Olson personally before trying energy tapping, she said. Pennington wasn’t sure what to expect but was surprised by what she ended up accomplishing.

“The session is not far from a massage, and I was very surprised about the issues that came out and how it helped me emotionally,” Pennington said.

Tapping focuses on word exercise sequences aimed to locate negative emotions and work through them, Olson said. It’s different from talk therapy, because a client can just briefly cue the problem in their brain rather than retell it.

Group sessions are also available, Olson said. Group members write down their own topics and are guided through answering questions.

“I try and use as much words from the members as I can, because obviously, they know themselves much better than I would know them,” Olson said.

Sandi Montero, a third degree master of Reiki, a Japanese relaxation method, and mentor of Olson’s, encourages Olson to continue helping others.

“Healing is a gift,” Montero said.

Olson has been amazed by the power of tapping, she said.

After undergoing tapping, the sick feeling Olson had in her stomach dissipated and she felt much better, according to her website.

Olson moved on to create her own major and focused on creating a safe place to share her new experience, she said. She plans to stay in Chico for the next year, gaining more experience, finding people who want to be healed and finding those who want to learn and join her.

A new goal for Olson is helping veterans, she said.

“It can be difficult working with the military, because a lot of their training requires them to not necessarily give their emotions as much attention as I believe would be healthy, according to the tapping process,” Olson said.

But Olson doesn’t want to stop there.

She hopes to expand her business to students at Chico State who need energy healing, she said. She feels loneliness on campus.

“Everyone has a different experience on campus,” Olson said. “I just feeling like this kind of tapping is something that everybody can benefit from.”

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<strong>Taylor Letofsky can be reached at</strong>

<em>[email protected]</em>