Dear EFT Community,
Philip Davis used EFT on the neurological condition known as restless legs syndrome (RLS), with the result that this problem of 20 years “all but vanished.” When symptoms occasionally began to recur, they were easily halted with some tapping.
-EFT Universe
By Philip Davis
I was at a conference recently and at the end of the first day, a number of the delegates were at a local bar eating a meal. One of the delegates, “C,” suddenly started rubbing her legs, and walking around stamping her feet, rather like she had cramp in her legs.
I asked what was wrong, and was surprised to hear that it was something called Restless Legs Syndrome (or RLS). I had never heard of this, so I asked her about it. She explained that RLS is a neurological condition and there is no known cure for it. She, like many other sufferers of the problem, contracted it soon after giving birth, in her case, to her son, 20 years ago.
Subsequently, I researched this on the Internet and found it is also called Ekbom’s syndrome. The symptoms are:
- A strong urge to move your legs that you may not be able to resist. The need to move is often accompanied by uncomfortable sensations. Some words used to describe these sensations include: creeping, itching, pulling, creepy-crawly, tugging, or gnawing.
- Symptoms start or become worse when you are resting. The longer you are resting, the greater the chance the symptoms will occur and the more severe they are likely to be.
- Symptoms get better when you move your legs. The relief can be complete or only partial but generally begins very soon after starting an activity. Relief persists as long as the motor activity continues.
- Symptoms are worse in the evening, especially when you are lying down. Activities that bother you at night do not bother you during the day.
“C” said that she was often kept awake by this problem; she couldn’t settle because all her leg muscles were going in and out of mild spasms. “It’s horrible,” she said. Sometimes she had to walk around her bedroom for hours. If she was tired, or if she had drunk any alcohol, it tended to make it a lot worse. “But,” she said, “there is nothing that can be done. I just have to put up with it.”
The EFT practitioner inside me immediately rose to this “nothing can be done” challenge and so I suggested we might try some EFT on this. After some discussion about EFT, she was agreeable, and so we started tapping.
She estimated that the 0-10 intensity level was about an 8. So we tapped on:
“Even though I have these restless legs…”
Then we tapped the shortcut sequence, including the Top of Head point, saying “Restless legs.”
Afterward, she said that maybe it had improved slightly, but her legs were still jittery. So we tapped on: “Even though I have jittery legs, I deeply and completely love and accept myself and I choose to let my legs stay calm and relaxed.” Again she said that it was improved, but not gone.
I asked her about the causes of the problem, and she said that she had read it was a probably a bad connection in the brain, a short-circuit or something like that. Okay, I thought, if it’s a problem in the brain, maybe a bit of Brain Balancing in the form of the 9 Gamut sequence will help. So we did the 9 Gamut Procedure just once through.
The problem immediately disappeared. The intensity went to 0. “C” was amazed. She kept on looking at her legs, fully expecting it to return. But it never did that whole evening, much to her delight.
There was also no recurrence that night or over the next few days, even though there were times when she would have expected it to happen (when she was tired late at night, for example).
I don’t use the 9 Gamut sequence a lot in my work as a practitioner. It is rare that it makes a major difference like this when I do add it back in. So it just goes to show that my neglected friend, the 9 Gamut, does have its uses now and then!
I followed up 2 weeks later to discover that the RLS had returned, albeit at a much reduced level. Over the 2 weeks, “C” said that she would normally expect to have around 10 full-blown attacks of RLS, but she had experienced it only three times, and at a much reduced intensity. She said, “It was a very mild version of it, a kind of warning, not the full-blown thing.”
So we arranged to meet again and I started chasing the emotional drivers behind the problem. These were rapidly identified as being her home situation with her husband and children. So we tapped on all the issues surrounding that:
“Even though my husband takes me for granted…”
“Even though my kids don’t appreciate me… “
And so on.
What seemed to really hit the mark was tapping on “Even though my legs want me to run away from home…” so we tapped on some variations of that: “Even though I would like to leave this situation, I know it’s not possible and I accept the messages my legs are telling me, but now I choose to allow my legs to be at peace.“ and so on, with a whole long rambling Setup.
During the session, I also taught her the Basic Recipe and the shortcut version.
Over the next 2 weeks, she reported that she rarely gets the problem now, but when it does start, it is always when she feels that she should be doing something, but can’t for some reason. For example, when she has lots of computer work to do but cannot because one of her children are using the computer, or when she thinks about all the things that need doing, but duty demands she has to go out for the day.
Whenever this happens, she simply taps the RLS symptoms away herself, using a couple of shortcut rounds.
All in all, she is delighted that the symptoms she has been suffering for the last 20 years have all but vanished, and I am honored that I (and EFT) have helped her remove the symptoms of this “incurable” problem.
