When I first started my EFT practice, I’d been a massage therapist for many years, and every so often I’d pull out my trusty massage table to work with one of my long-time clients.
Judy had been coming to me for about nine years. She had been injured doing assembly work in a factory, and every few months her neck and shoulders would get so tight she’d end up with terrible headaches. Whenever the pain became unbearable, she’d come to me for massage and that would usually do the trick for about six weeks or so.
One day Judy showed up for a massage in really terrible shape. Her neck was so stiff she couldn’t even turn her head from side to side. She had to move her whole torso!
On the zero to ten scale, her pain was a nine!
She was in such distress I decided we should try some tapping before the massage. I had no idea whether it would actually help—she’d once told me about seeing the damage to her neck on x-rays, but somehow I knew we should at least try it.
I had Judy tap on her karate chop point and repeat: “Even though I have this neck pain, I deeply and completely accept myself”.
The tapping we did was very basic, mostly just repeating “this neck pain” with each tapping point, though I also had her do the 9-gamut technique as well.
Very quickly her pain level dropped down to a 6 or 7. That got her attention!
We followed up with another round of basic tapping: “Even though I still have some of this neck pain” and tapping through the points with "This remaining pain." This dropped the pain level down to about a 4, then another round got it down to a 3. Judy was excited, but at this point progress seemed to stall, so I asked if she thought there was an emotional contributor to the pain.
Judy didn’t blink an eye “Oh yes!” she said, “ANGER!”.
After so many years of giving Judy massage, I’d heard the whole story of her injury many, many times! It was very clear to me what we needed to tap on:
“Even though this pain has kept me from living the life I wanted to live.”
“Even though I'm angry at my supervisor for not protecting me.”
“Even though I’m angry at the company for trying to deny my disability claim”
“Even though I'm totally sick of this pain and angry it won't get better”
“Even though I’m angry at my body”.
After a few rounds of this, her pain was down to zero. Judy was astonished! She began moving her head from side to side, cautiously at first but then wildly swinging it around in a circle! I have to admit, I found this very alarming, but Judy was absolutely ecstatic. Pain free for the first time in years.
Ten minutes! That’s all it took. Since I still had to give Judy a massage, I’d been watching the clock and in just ten minutes we'd accomplished far more than 75 minutes of intensive massage therapy.
This was one of those genuine “ten-minute miracles” EFT is famous for. They certainly don’t happen every time, or even all that often. And expecting instant results can lead to disappointment and giving up, when sometimes persistence is vital.
But they really do happen sometimes, and it’s a truly wonderful experience to participate in that.
I told Judy that I didn't know if we'd solved the problem forever, but if it came back then she'd be able to tap on the pain as soon as it was noticeable, and before it got very bad. She loved the idea of being in control of the situation, after so many years of feeling victimized by the injury.
I saw Judy one last time, about four months later. She called for a massage and I assumed her neck had started hurting again, but she said no—it was just a little tension in her lower back from over doing it in yoga class. Weirdly enough, I think she’d almost forgotten she’d even had a chronic neck problem for most of a decade.
So that’s the story of how I lost a regular massage client to EFT, but believe me, I’m not complaining! It’s an incredible joy to see someone heal like that. And though that was many years ago, I’ve never lost my gratitude to Gary Craig for sharing this gift of EFT with the world.
Copyright 2023 Rob Nelson
Interested in working with Rob? Click here for details