The butterfly hug is a self-soothing technique where you cross your arms over your chest and alternate tapping your hands slowly, mimicking the movement of butterfly wings. It was created by psychologist Lucina Artigas in 1998 as a way to help trauma survivors calm their nervous systems without needing any equipment or a therapist present. The technique has since been used with thousands of disaster survivors around the world and is now recommended as a self-regulation tool for anyone experiencing anxiety, stress, or overwhelming emotions.
How to Do the Butterfly Hug
The technique takes about two minutes and can be done almost anywhere. Here’s how it works:
- Sit with your back straight. Close your eyes or lower your gaze, and take a few slow, deep breaths.
- Cross your hands and place them on your chest so each middle finger rests just below the opposite collarbone.
- Fan your fingers out so they rest flat against your chest, with your thumbs pointing up toward your chin. You can interlock your thumbs to form what looks like a butterfly’s body, with your hands as its wings.
- Begin alternating taps on your chest, left then right, slowly and rhythmically. Continue for at least eight rounds.
- Keep breathing deeply throughout, and notice any emotions or sensations that come up without trying to push them away.
The pace matters. Tapping slowly is important because a rapid rhythm can sometimes bring up distressing memories rather than calming you down. If you start to feel more upset during the exercise, slow your tapping even further. Some people need longer than eight rounds to feel a shift, and that’s normal.
Why the Tapping Pattern Works
The butterfly hug uses something called bilateral stimulation, which simply means activating both sides of the body in an alternating pattern. This left-right-left-right rhythm is the same principle behind the eye movements used in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), a well-established therapy for trauma and anxiety. The alternating stimulation appears to help the brain process distressing emotions and shift the nervous system out of a heightened stress response.
Research from the Institute of Psychotraumatology has found that the butterfly hug doesn’t just help people feel calmer in the moment. It can produce measurable changes in brain activity, supporting both emotional regulation and the reprocessing of difficult memories. The combination of rhythmic touch, deep breathing, and the physical sensation of your own arms wrapped around your chest creates a layered calming effect that works on multiple levels at once.
Where It’s Used Clinically
Therapists originally developed the butterfly hug for group settings where large numbers of people needed help at once, such as after natural disasters or during humanitarian crises. It became a core part of EMDR’s Integrative Group Treatment Protocol, which has been used with both children and adults in communities affected by mass trauma since 1998. Because it requires no equipment, no physical contact from another person, and no specialized training for the person doing it, the technique scales in ways that traditional one-on-one therapy cannot.
Today, clinicians use the butterfly hug in individual therapy sessions, group work, and even teletherapy. It’s commonly taught as a tool patients can use between sessions when anxiety or intrusive thoughts surface. Therapists, students, and healthcare workers also use it themselves. One study at a hospital emergency department introduced it specifically to help nurses manage on-the-job distress.
What It Helps With
The butterfly hug is primarily used for anxiety, emotional overwhelm, and trauma-related distress. It can be helpful during panic, after a nightmare, when intrusive thoughts won’t stop, or in any moment where your body feels flooded with stress. The technique is gentle enough to use with children, which is one reason it became popular in disaster relief work with young survivors.
That said, it doesn’t work equally well for everyone. Research published in the Journal of Nursing Practice found that some participants continued to struggle with controlling their thoughts and emotions even after using the technique. People experiencing very high levels of distress (rated 6 to 10 out of 10 on clinical scales) sometimes find that the calming effect isn’t fast enough or strong enough on its own. The butterfly hug works best as one tool in a broader set of coping strategies rather than a standalone fix for severe anxiety or trauma.
Keeping It Safe
The butterfly hug is low-risk for most people, but there are a few things worth knowing. The most important guideline is to keep the tapping slow. Fast, vigorous tapping can accidentally surface buried traumatic memories, which is the opposite of what you want during a self-soothing exercise. If you notice your distress increasing rather than decreasing, slow down your taps or stop and focus on your breathing instead.
There’s no fixed duration that works for everyone. Eight rounds of tapping is the standard starting point, but some people need several minutes before they feel a meaningful shift. You can repeat the exercise as many times as you need throughout the day. If you’re working through significant trauma, using the butterfly hug alongside professional therapy will generally be more effective than relying on it alone.