The butterfly hug comes from Lucina Artigas, a Mexican therapist who developed it in 1998 while working with survivors of Hurricane Pauline in Acapulco. She has since described it with her colleague Ignacio Jarero, including in their chapter on the method. This worksheet stands on its own: it is not connected to Artigas, Jarero, EMDRIA or any other EMDR organization, and none of them has reviewed or endorsed it.

What the hug is for, and what this page uses it for

In its original setting, the butterfly hug is a working part of EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapy. People tap themselves left and right while a trained clinician guides them through distressing memories, often in groups after disasters. Artigas and Jarero are plain about their view: in their 2021 write-up they state that the hug is not a self-soothing technique, and that the calm people report is a byproduct of that reprocessing.

This page borrows the gesture for something smaller: a few quiet minutes when ordinary stress has wound you up, like the hour before a big meeting or a night when your mind will not settle. It is not EMDR therapy, and it is not a way to process trauma on your own. If you are carrying trauma, do that work with a trained therapist, who can keep you steady while old material moves.

How to do it

1. Sit or stand comfortably. Cross your arms over your chest and rest the tip of each middle finger just below your collarbones, fingers pointing toward your neck.
2. If you like, hook your thumbs together. They become the butterfly's body, and your spread fingers become its wings.
3. Close your eyes, or let them go soft and look down toward the tip of your nose.
4. Tap one hand, then the other, slowly, like wings opening and closing. Let the rhythm drift if it wants to.
5. Breathe low into your belly and notice whatever passes through: a thought, a sound, a tight shoulder. Leave each one alone, the way you would watch a cloud cross the sky.
6. When your body tells you it has had enough, lower your hands to your lap. Their instructions put that at about two or three minutes.

How this page works

The painted butterfly stands in for your hands. Tap its wings in turn, as slowly as feels calm, and after four taps the page reads your pace in taps a minute and keeps it for next time. Mark how settled you feel on a five-step scale that runs from darting to resting, then begin. The wings take turns at your pace, in silence, so you can follow them for a few beats and then close your eyes.

Press enough when you are done, mark where you have landed, and name the moment if you like. Each round goes into your field notes, which keep twelve. From the third round on, the notes start telling you what tends to help: whether rounds of two minutes or more take you further than quick ones, which moments you reach for the hug most, and what your usual pace is.

What the research can and cannot say

Most studies of the butterfly hug sit inside EMDR programs, where it is one ingredient among several, so they cannot show what the tapping does by itself. Used alone for stress, the evidence is thin: a 2025 review of its use for anxiety in older adults found only three studies that met its criteria, with samples as small as two people and few rigorous controls, and its authors called for proper randomized trials.

The nearest solid evidence is about touch rather than tapping. In a randomized trial of self-soothing touch, 159 healthy young adults went through a standard lab stress test, and those who used a soothing self-touch, such as a hand over the heart, or who received a hug had lower cortisol afterward than the control groups. They did not report feeling any less stressed, though, and a hand resting on the chest is not the same thing as alternating taps.

So treat the hug as an experiment you run on yourself. That is why this page asks where you stand before and after every round: a few weeks of your own notes will tell you more about whether it suits you than a study of strangers can.

When to use it

Try it in the ordinary tight spots of a week: before something big, when sleep will not come, after a hard conversation, while you wait for news. It needs both hands, so save it for a moment when you are not driving or carrying anything.

If an old, painful memory surfaces and starts to grow, stop. Open your eyes, press your feet into the floor and look around the room, then bring that memory to a therapist rather than pushing through it alone. When turning inward stirs you up, the outward-facing 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding walk can bring you back through your senses first.

To see why a small stressor tips you over on some days and not others, The Window of Tolerance maps the edges of your steady zone, and Somatic Exercises for Anxiety gathers other short body practices to compare with this one.