EFT for Pain

EFT for Natural Pain Relief

Pain is a mystery. How pain and EFT work together for natural pain relief is an even larger mystery. In its rather short existence, Emotional Freedom Technique has established a growing legion of “tappers” who use EFT for pain of many origins simply because they cannot deny their own favorable EFT and pain response, whether for acute or chronic pain relief. However, it bothers most people to knowing they can have pain and EFT will reduce or eliminate it, without having any idea how and why using Emotional Freedom Technique for pain is so effective.

Definitions of pain, as well as medical descriptions and explanations of the biology, chemistry and neurology of pain are noticeably short. This reflects how little is know about pain, or how to offer chronic pain relief through energy healing therapy. Even though it is a subject of naturally intense human interest, pain is explained with limited and often contradictory medical research information. It would seem that while more information about EFT and pain would open the topic with reliable information, it often only serves to perpetuate the mystery that pain always has been.

As an example, notice how vague and uninformative is this common definition of pain: “An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage." Most other definitions are equally unsatisfying.

Therefore, you might not discover much information establishing how EFT therapy can be used for natural pain relief or how they relate to each other. This is not a shortcoming of EFT. It is more a reflection of our general low level of understanding about pain, not lack of effectiveness of Emotional Freedom Technique to treat pain disorders. If you understand the EFT and pain information scarcity, you should feel more confident taking advantage of the effectiveness of using EFT. Additionally, since EFT employs the use of fingertip tapping on acupressure points of the meridians, there is only slightly more known about EFT from its use of this form of Alternative Medicine.

Pain is a signal that exists only in the mind

What do you do when the “check engine” warning light comes on in your car? Disconnect the wires to keep the light from bothering you? Put a piece of tape over that part of the dashboard so you not see the warning? Put cotton in your ears so you cannot hear the beep? That would be silly! No, you promptly go to your mechanic to learn what is wrong that made the warning go off. Pain is the same.

For optimal health, it is necessary to pay attention to the pain signals we receive, not cover over or ignore them. Pain should bring attention to problem areas within our lives – physical and emotional – and action to correct those problems.

"The reign of pain falls mainly in the brain," comments Dennis Turk with wit and clarity. He is a professor of anesthesiology and pain research at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He continues to say, "You can never have pain without a conscious organism to interpret it," meaning, a functional brain. The brain interprets various sensations to evaluate how potentially dangerous or just bothersome they might be. All of this means that without the brain, there is no pain.

Pain not only involves the mind, it requires the mind. Pain is a perception of the mind, and only exists in the brain. When you hit your thumb with the hammer the pain you feel is not in the thumb, it is in the brain. The message only starts in the brain, but it is felt and exists exclusively in the brain.

Further, the mind must make a deliberate analysis of an event to decide if an actual perception of pain should result from the event. Thoughts, conscious and subconscious, are involved in the formulation of the perception of pain. This should be interesting to anyone interested in natural pain relief because most everyone believes a nerve cell somewhere in the injured thumb sends a pain signal to the brain that the thumb is injured. This is true only in part. The other part is that it is the mind interprets the situation as pain after the signal is received.

Anatomy of pain and EFT

From an anatomical standpoint, as best can be determined at this time with our limited knowledge of brain function, there is no appreciable difference between the brain area for interpretation of pain, and the brain area for the storage of physical or emotional pain memories. It would seem that the entire brain experiences and stores pain, both physical and non-physical pain. The entire brain is involved in the experience of pain. Because there is a dual system of accessing and experiencing pain – whether the pain is physical or emotional – it would make sense that a physical means (tapping) can be used to deal with the emotional memory and the emotional experience of pain. With the brain’s ability to multi-task in this way, the overlapping of pain with other memories and emotions becomes easier to understand. On this basis, EFT for pain treatment is far easier to understand.

If pain involves and is interpreted in the whole brain – not any one or two isolated or specialized parts of it – any emotions you feel will potentially interact throughout the brain tissue. Here is the major point: Pain and our memories overlap in the brain because all our stored emotions and memories share nerve circuits and space with pain memories within the brain. An amazing example of multi-tasking! Therefore, if emotions and pain share the same neural pathways and neural connections, then treatment of emotions related to pain can take place using those same shared circuits. That seems to be how the emotions, pain and memories become interconnected in the first place. The treatment of pain and EFT process of tapping on the related emotions and memories are addressed within those same emotional circuits.

Stress – a large and loose catch phrase – is a common psychological instigator capable of starting, perpetuating, or intensifying the brain’s perception of pain. Reduce the emotional stress overload from any level and from any source, and pain reduction can rapidly occur. Distressed muscles throughout the body tend to tense, aggravating pre-existing physical discomfort. In this way, emotional distress can amplify pain perception. "Emotional arousal or stress may lead people to interpret their situation as being more difficult, and may make them avoid certain types of activities, because they're afraid it's going to make their pain worse," says Turk.

To alleviate the emotional stress, Turk recommends reducing the uncomfortable response to the stress. In this way Emotional Freedom Technique and pain management work remarkably fast and efficient. Any EFT therapy will reduce the emotional response to memories and situations that were previously frequent sources of stressful stimuli. With that understanding, using EFT to treat pain makes sense.

EFT for Pain

“When discussing treatment options for chronic pain and EFT is mentioned, I always give strong approval because I have witnessed how EFT is often highly effective when traditional methods are not.”
J. Hilliard, DO

Universally, EFT therapists estimate an average of 80% of clients report noticeable to complete pain relief from emotional stress reactions after using Emotional Freedom Technique and the result tends to be long lasting. No medications, surgery, or invasive procedures are needed; and, on top of all that, EFT can be self-administered.

This remarkable record of acute and chronic pain relief is achieved simply by the client tapping on acupressure points while holding the thought or memory related to certain negative emotions. This can be easily and quickly accomplished in a conventional office setting or while doing EFT by phone. Actually, there are many reasons why energy psychology as a stress relief technique oftentimes seems to work better in an EFT telephone session.

EFT and pain management are more commonly used together in Alternative Medicine for chronic pain relief. EFT often works for pain relief where nothing else will because it influences two vital causes of pain that are largely ignored with the standard medical psychopharmacological approach to stressful emotions.

1. – Energy Disruption: It has long been known that subtle energies circulate throughout our bodies and that the free flow of this energy can be vital to our health. Interrupt this energy and the result can be pain and disease. Stop this innate energy flow altogether and you may be headed toward death. Eastern medical practice is based on the concept of this subtle energy animating the body for over 5,000 years. Even Einstein's E=MC2 is an expression of the same concept that all matter is composed of the same subtle energy of the universe.

To anyone familiar with Alternative Medicine, it is no surprise that favorably influencing disruptions, by tapping on the acupressure points of these subtle energy pathways can lead to rapid relief of unexplainable symptoms, as well as significant chronic pain relief. Fortunately, Emotional Freedom Technique, founded by Gary Craig, even allows beginners to improve the free flow of the life force by stimulating acupuncture point with simple fingertip tapping for natural pain relief.

2. – Negative Emotions (Grief, Fear, Anger, Loss, etc): Emotions trigger a variety of chemical reactions primarily in the brain and adrenal glands. Positive or desirable emotions tend to cause the release of healing chemicals, while negative or undesirable emotions tend to cause the release of disease-causing chemical throughout the system. One example you may be familiar with has to do with stressful emotions (anger, anxiety, phobias, worry) might contribute to ulcers or high blood pressure. Another would be an immediate flight or flight response( increased heart and breathing rates, muscle tension, dilatation of the pupils, flaring of the nostril, perhaps even emptying of the bladder) when frightened. Pain disappears, or at least subsides, once negative emotions from a wide variety of sources and expressions have been neutralized with EFT.

The mental affects the physical, and the physical affects the mental. While that statement is universally accepted, it is the practice of EFT and pain therapy that demonstrates it best of all. There are physical consequences to dealing with the myriad emotional factors everyone deals with. The emotional ups and downs a person experiences in life also have an immediate as well as cumulative physical consequence. Over time, these physical consequences can and do result in pain. This is why it is estimated that 40% to 70% of all chronic pain is associated with illness, and a similar percent of illness has an emotional component. When, not if, physical pain is expressed from an emotional origin, the physical pain must be dealt with on an emotional basis. At this point, it becomes easy to understand that pain and EFT make perfect sense.

Physioemotional stress relief results in chronic pain relief

When no pain reduction has occurred after using conventional medical treatment for pain, and EFT has been discussed with your primary treating medical professional, it is reasonable to consider an emotional component to that pain. Whether it is an acute (recent) pain or a chronic (old) pain and EFT therapy is the next step you which to explore, there might be more reason to do so than you are aware.

It is very common for pain of an obviously physical cause to also have a strong emotional component. Do not assume that all pain is exclusively or primarily of a physical nature, even when the pain might start out that way. Seeking EFT for this kind of natural pain relief still makes sense and is still very effective. Any one seeking chronic pain relief should definitely investigate the ease of dong EFT by phone.

Even when pain has an obvious physical cause (hitting your thumb with a hammer), an emotional component of that pain can still develop that might ultimately be more important than the physical start. As an example, perhaps you hit your thumb with a hammer when you are hanging a picture of your mother, with whom you have some strong emotional issues, either positive or negative. While the pain in your thumb starts as a physical thing, it could become emotional in nature if at the time you hit your hammer you were also thinking abut her – consciously or unconsciously – in a “mental file” related to your mother. Quickly, the pain overloads and disrupts the mental circuits related to your mother and it becomes part of your emotional memory, the mental file, associated with her. If this happens as it has been proposed, the pain in your thumb will continue for longer than it should, long after the physical injury heals. How to treat the thumb pain? Approach the memory file of your mother containing the corrupted file that you were in when you hit your thumb, treat it with EFT and pain in your thumb will likely fade away. Sure, this is perhaps a gross simplification, but this is exactly how EFT commonly works in a situation like this.

The questions to ask when approaching a stubborn pain and EFT seems like a possible treatment option, “Could there be some other issue tied to this physical pain that prevents its release. Is there something this pain is hiding? What could be the emotional component to this physical pain? Is this pain really ‘stuck energy’ because of a ‘corrupted memory file?’”

Faithfully applying the EFT therapy process should simultaneously neutralize both the physical pain and the emotional association of these interconnected brain messages.

Non-responsive pain and EFT options

If, after treatment with EFT, and pain is not reduced to your satisfaction, you should consider several specific actions:

1. Your set-up statement was too global; be more specific and detailed
2. You have not used enough repetition; continue with what you are doing longer and modify your set-up statements
3. You have some self-sabotage going on with the set-up statement; evaluate and rethink how you are approaching the strategy
4. You are not focused or enthused during the rounds of Emotional Freedom Technique; state your set-up and reminder phrases with more enthusiasm and do not allow yourself to mentally wander
5. Consider going to the website of Dr. Mercola and searching there using “mercola pain” to learn more about the subject
6. Contact an experienced EFT therapist for assistance to work with you. Call for a consultation at

Hopefully, it should be easier for you to understand or at least admit the possible connection how pain and EFT relate. When addressing acute, chronic or medically non-responsive pain and EFT is used for the first time, 80% will experience some degree of noticeable natural pain relief. With little to lose and so much to gain by why of pain reduction, like Gary Craig has always said, “Try it on everything.”