Stress Busters to help with your day

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Mental health challenges affect 63 million Americans every year, and treatment ranges from medication to meditation to counseling.

The new and improved Mary Stump eats well and smiles often.

"I'd like one of your juices," she said. "I'm 64, and I'm aging backwards now."

But the road to happiness was a rough one littered with grief, misery and a brain tumor.

"Five people died in three years and my daughter and I were the only survivors," she said.

Instead of using medication to cope, Mary turned to a holistic therapy called Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT. While meditating on her stress, she gently taps on meridian endpoints.

Holistic health coach Suzette Roth says it's like acupuncture without the needles.

"We tap on the variety of points on the face and the collarbone," Stump said. "And what that does is it clears the energy field. I said it doesn't sound like something that would work for me."

But it did work. So now, whenever Mary starts to stress ... she starts to tap. And, she's not alone.

"And little by little, we'll clear out all the negativity," an online instructor said.

There are almost half a million instructional videos on Youtube.

"It really gives frustration a voice," she said. "So, you're not shoving it somewhere in your body, in your heart or in your head."

But is tapping really therapy or is it trickery?

In the book Trick or Treatment, physicist Simon Singh said it is nothing more than a placebo.

But a National Institute of Health Study rejects that, saying after just six sessions, psychological distress plummeted in veterans with PTSD.

But Mary didn't need a study to tell her it works.

"It's really opened me up," she said. "It's non-addictive, it's, you know, you're not going to harm yourself; you're going to heal."

A stress buster right at her fingertips.