The HARP program at the Chesterfield County Jail in Virginia has used tapping extensively and brilliantly in reducing recidivism from the national average of 70% down to 23%. We have been fans of this model application of energy work, but never met its Director, Kerri Rhodes, until the ACEP (Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology) Conference in May 2026.

Kerri’s talk on how she brought tapping to the jail was as poignant, riveting, and inspirational as any talk you are likely to hear at a conference in the next decade. She shared her journey as a devastated mom following her loving, outgoing, brilliant son Taylor’s death by an overdose at age 20, and the winding journey that led to her groundbreaking work with people who have been incarcerated. The crushing weight of her grief compressed the foundations of her soul, and a diamond was formed there that Kerri has polished into a beacon of hope for thousands.

Reflecting on the Conference, Kerri wrote on Facebook about how much resistance she had faced every step of the way. Any of you who have tried to bring energy medicine or energy psychology into your local hospital or community health center can imagine. Kerry used the metaphor of a fish climbing a tree. But she went on, in a manner that reflects both her humility and her ability to keep a beginner’s mind despite her considerable success:

This weekend, something shifted. I wasn't a fish climbing a tree. I was a fish in the ocean. My team was in the ocean [two of her staff were also at ACEP]. It felt as though the Universe wrapped its arms around us and said, “You are exactly where you are supposed to be. Keep going. Keep doing the hard things.” And I cannot fully describe what that felt like.

To spend time with people whose books have sat on my desk, whose ideas have shaped my work, whose courage helped create an entirely new conversation around healing—it was surreal. I got to learn from and talk with people I have admired for years. To be in the same room as Donna Eden, Dr. David Feinstein, and Dondi Dahlin was beyond anything I could have imagined. To have them admire the work I am part of in the jail still blows my mind. For basketball fans, it felt like walking into a gym to shoot hoops and finding Michael Jordan standing beside you asking if he could join the game.

The experience filled my soul in ways I am still trying to process.

Kerri invited the three of us to make a presentation at the prison. We did on June 4. We have made presentations in jails before, and we reflected how it had a familiar beginning: A guard escorts you through one heavy door to a small passageway. It slams shut behind you. Then the next heavy door opens. Finally to the door behind which a large room full of incarcerated men and women were seated and waiting. That’s the moment it changed. We were met with enthusiastic applause, cheers, smiles, appreciation. And we hadn’t yet done a thing (Kerri must have said something nice about us). The next several hours were amazing.” We later described it this way to our staff:

The group had many men you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley supporting one another with a combination of soft sensitivity, unflinching honesty, grounded compassion, and teary eyes that were a cognitive jolt coming from the same large, muscular, heavily tattooed bodies. The HARP program has created a culture that brings out each prisoner’s humanity, dignity, vulnerability, and self-respect, whereas the stark defensive instincts of survival are more prominent in most prisons where we’ve made presentations.

For several hours, the entire group drank in every energy medicine technique we offered. For instance, we brought up two of the tougher looking men to demonstrate the energies between people during a confrontation. Both energy-tested strong. Then the bigger man was instructed to pass his eyes down one of the major energy pathways of the slightly smaller man. It resulted in the energy test showing weakness. This was fascinating to everyone in the room, as you can imagine. We said, “When we demonstrate this to college football players, they want to know how to do this to the other team. But that’s not what we teach. We teach you how to keep your energies strong so the other team can’t mess with them.” We then showed the man whose energies had just been weakened a simple invisible technique to keep his central energy system strong. This was followed by asking the larger man to now try to weaken him, not just with the energy of his eyes, but to send all the aggressive thoughts he could. His face showed that he took the instruction seriously. But the other man’s energies didn’t budge on the energy test.