Dear EFT Community,
Here Sylvia Ross is able to share EFT with a neighbor who experiences relief from pain. Two months later, the neighbor is startled when Sylvia mentions the pain; she seems to have forgotten how bad it was!
-Dawson Church
I met with Bonnie, a fifty-eight-year-old neighbor who had been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia approximately ten years previously. She woke up one morning and just couldn’t get out of bed; she could barely move. She also has a history of seizures but had not had any in the past year. She is on six different medications, including a type of morphine for pain.
Bonnie gave me an overview of her history, which included many of the insights for CFS listed in Messages from the Body, by Michael J. Lincoln, PhD, including mental and physical abuse from her mother, being a workaholic and perfectionist, and more.
As she told her story, her stress level rose. Concerned about her history of seizures, I had her stop and fill out a short intake form listing two symptoms with their levels of intensity on a scale of 0 to 10. The first was upper back pain with a level of intensity of 7. The second was lower back pain with a level of intensity of 10. She’d had both pains on and off for five years and their intensity had increased as she brought forth memories in our session. She rated her overall stress level at 6.
We then did one round of EFT for pain in her back and I had her gently touch and tap all the points while I rubbed the Gamut point on her right hand. It was all very soft-spoken, as I was concerned about her seizure history, and the Setup statements were basic: “Even though I have this pain in my back at this intensity and all these memories have added to it, I completely love accept and forgive myself, and anyone else.”
I asked for a rating on her pain, fully expecting not much movement. After a look of puzzlement, she said, “It’s gone!” and then she yawned at least ten times. I thought she might fall asleep at the table. At that point, it was time for her to go. She talked about how wonderful she felt and wanted me to see her son who has multiple sclerosis and her husband who also has back problems. Taking an EFT chart of the tapping points, she promised to tap at home.
A couple of days later I stopped in to see how she was doing and again she told me how good she felt. Her back pain had not returned. The only tapping I did with her that time was for a trigger point on the sole of her foot, which has bothered her since she had major surgery on her ankle after a car accident. I touched the spot to make sure we had located it and then we did one simple round. Again, the pain was gone!
For some reason, me touching the person’s sore spot before I do a round of tapping seems to benefit the process. I do this often and have had extremely good results: usually one or two rounds will clear the pain. It seems to work better than verbally describing the location in the Setup Statement, which I also do.
Two month update: Bonnie’s back pain has not returned! I saw her casually in her yard recently and she actually looked surprised when I asked her about her pain. She had gallbladder surgery a couple of weeks after her original session and had some complications from the surgery, but she assured me that she had no back pain.
