If you're in physical pain right now, I want to say two things up front: your pain is real, and it deserves real care from a doctor. What I've watched EFT Tapping do, for over twenty years now, is work on the stress and emotion sitting on top of that pain, alongside whatever treatment you're already getting.
This page started as my interview from one of our Tapping World Summits, Dramatic Pain Relief with Tapping: The Miraculous Results and How You Too Can Use It Today to Get Relief. Since then I've expanded it into a fuller guide: the technique, the research, and a free round you can try right now.
There are more articles on pain and the body waiting in our archive.
If you’re in pain right now or know someone who is, listen in on how to quickly manage or eliminate pain from trauma, injury, or surgery.
That 2014 Summit audio interview is no longer available, but the Pain Relief Tapping Meditations it's built on are alive and well in the app today.
- Instantly reduce anxiety and stress
- Fall asleep faster and sleep better
- Boost productivity, stay motivated
- Relieve chronic or occasional pain
- Release anger, find peace
Until next time….
Keep Tapping!
Nick Ortner
Why tapping helps with pain
Before anything else: your pain is real and physical. Nothing here says otherwise. What tapping works on is the stress-pain loop, the well-documented way chronic stress and unprocessed emotion turn up the volume on pain. Tapping works the nervous-system layer that sits on top of the pain, alongside whatever your doctor is doing for the injury or condition underneath.
Stress doesn't just live in your head. When your body is in fight-or-flight, muscles tense, inflammation rises, and your nervous system gets more sensitive to every signal it receives, pain included. Tapping calms that alarm system, and as it quiets down, pain often eases with it. That doesn't mean the pain was ever imaginary. It means the volume has a dial, and tapping is one way to turn it down. For the full research behind that idea, see what the research says about tapping for chronic pain.
Free. The best place to start.
Want to learn tapping from the people who know it best?
The Tapping World Summit has taught tapping to people all over the world since 2009. Ten days, 24 of the world's leading tapping teachers, 100% free.
Join the free summitA 3-minute pain round
Rate your pain from 0 to 10 right now. Then tap through the points below, tuning in to the sensation itself: where it is, what shape it has, even what color it feels like if you close your eyes. Check your number again when you're done.
- Setup (repeat three times, tapping the side of your hand): "Even though I have this pain in my body, and I'm frustrated with my body for not cooperating, I accept myself and where I am right now."
- Eyebrow: "This pain, right here."
- Side of Eye: "This shape it has, this feeling."
- Under Eye: "If it had a color, it would be..."
- Under Nose: "I'm so frustrated with this pain."
- Chin: "Frustrated with my body for not cooperating."
- Collarbone: "I'm allowed to be angry about this."
- Under Arm: "And I'm also allowed to let some of this go."
- Top of Head: "I welcome some relief, even a little, right now."
Reassess your number. If it moved even a little, that's your nervous system responding. Do another round on whatever's still there, whether that's the sensation itself or the frustration underneath it.
Tapping phrases for pain, by moment
Different moments with pain call for different words. Here's a quick-reference table for five common ones; for the full phrase library, see our complete guide to EFT tapping phrases.
| Moment | Setup statement | Reminder phrase |
|---|---|---|
| A flare-up | "Even though this pain just spiked and I wasn't ready for it, I accept myself and my body anyway." | "This flare-up, right now." |
| Can't sleep from the pain | "Even though this pain is keeping me awake and I'm exhausted, I accept how I feel." | "Awake because of this pain." |
| Fear it won't stop | "Even though I'm scared this pain will never let up, I accept myself and this fear." | "This fear that it won't stop." |
| Anger at my body | "Even though I'm angry at my body for not cooperating, I accept myself and my body anyway." | "This anger at my own body." |
| Before movement | "Even though I'm bracing for pain before I even move, I accept myself and give my body permission to try." | "Bracing before I move." |
What the research says about tapping for pain
Our full breakdown lives on what the research says about tapping for chronic pain; here's the short version.
| Study | Design | What it found |
|---|---|---|
| Stapleton et al., 2025 | RCT, 147 adults, live vs. self-paced online, 6 weeks | Reduced pain severity and interference, improved quality of life, gains held at 6 months |
| Stapleton, Oliver, O'Keefe & Bhuta, 2022 | fMRI, 24 adults, 6-week program | Pain severity down 21%, pain interference down 26%; reduced connectivity in the brain's pain-amplifying circuitry |
| Ortner, Palmer-Hoffman & Clond, 2014 | Pilot, 50 adults, 3-day workshop | Pain catastrophizing down 43%, held at 42% at 6 months |
| Brattberg, 2008 | RCT, 62 women with fibromyalgia | Improved anxiety, depression, and quality of life; no significant change in pain intensity, the one null result in the set |
We're including the null result on purpose. Fibromyalgia is one of the hardest pain conditions there is, and one study finding mood and quality-of-life gains without a pain-intensity effect is useful information, not a reason to look away from it.
What our data shows
Across our Pain Relief category in The Tapping Solution App, 30 sessions have been completed 957,816 times. Self-rated pain goes from an average of 6.3 to 4.0, a 36% drop. Our single most-used pain session, Release General Pain, has been completed 377,654 times, with the average rating going from 6.1 to 3.9.
Zooming out further, across 16.6 million rated sessions from 868,244 people in our app, pain sessions show one of the largest before-to-after changes we measure, d = 1.2 in research terms. And in a peer-reviewed study of 270,461 App users published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth (Church & Stapleton, 2020), a single guided session reduced self-rated stress by 45% on average, the same nervous-system calming this page is built on.
This is self-report, within a single session, not a controlled trial. It's also the largest dataset on tapping and pain that exists, and it points the same direction as the studies above.
What people say
"I am so grateful for the tapping app. I am currently looking for work and I am having great difficulty sleeping, even with my Lorazapam and tapping. I fall asleep but wake up 3-4 hours later. Stress has taken a toll on my mental and physical health."
Cynthia, living with chronic pain and its toll on sleep, rated herself a 9 before this session, a 7 after
"I have 1000s of thought loops over hurtful things said in my lifetime. My breathing is affected and my chest gets so tight. In this session I let one go and my chest relaxed. What a relief."
Dimples, on the physical tightness that comes with carrying old hurt, rated how she felt a 10 before the session, a 3 after
Now part of a Medicare program
Research is one thing. Access is another. As of this summer, tapping is part of a Medicare program: NeuroTap Health, our sister company, offers a guided program for adults with Original Medicare living with chronic muscle and joint pain at $0 out of pocket. Here's how it works.
Tap along with me
Want to follow along out loud? This video walks through EFT Tapping for pain relief, point by point.
Go deeper
- What the research says about tapping for chronic pain, our full research breakdown, study by study.
- EFT tapping for back pain, if your pain is specifically in your back.
- The 9 tapping points, with a printable chart.
- EFT tapping phrases and EFT tapping scripts, for more ways to word a round.
- Real stories of pain relief and real stories of chronic pain relief, from our community.
- Jean's story, on using Tapping alongside fibromyalgia.
- Try Release General Pain free in The Tapping Solution App.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does tapping help with pain?
Many people find it does. Tapping doesn't treat the physical source of pain the way a doctor or medication does; it works on the stress-pain loop, the well-documented way stress and unprocessed emotion turn up the volume on pain. In our app, people using our Pain Relief sessions rate their pain dropping from an average of 6.3 to 4.0, and a 2025 randomized trial of 147 adults found tapping reduced pain severity and interference, with gains still there six months later.
How do you tap for pain?
Rate your pain from 0 to 10. Tap through the standard sequence, three rounds on the side of the hand naming the pain while accepting yourself anyway, then the eyebrow, side of the eye, under the eye, under the nose, chin, collarbone, under the arm, and top of the head, tuning in to the sensation itself as you go. Check your number again, and repeat if it's still high.
What do you say when tapping for pain?
Start with the sensation itself ("this pain, right here") and get specific: where it is, what shape or color it has, and what feeling comes with it, often frustration or fear. Naming the real, specific experience, rather than just "pain" in general, tends to bring the number down faster.
Does tapping work for chronic pain specifically?
The research says yes, with real limits. A 2025 randomized controlled trial of 147 adults with chronic pain found six weeks of tapping reduced pain severity and interference and improved quality of life, sustained at six months. A 2022 brain-imaging study of 24 adults found the pain-amplifying circuitry in the brain quieted down. One study, a 2008 fibromyalgia trial, found mood and quality-of-life gains but no significant change in pain intensity itself, the one null result in the set.
What does the research say about tapping and pain?
Four studies matter most: a 147-person randomized trial (Stapleton et al., 2025), a 24-person fMRI study showing brain changes (Stapleton et al., 2022), our own 50-person pilot showing a 43% drop in pain catastrophizing (Ortner, Palmer-Hoffman & Clond, 2014), and a 2008 fibromyalgia trial that found no pain-intensity effect (Brattberg, 2008). Across 16.6 million rated sessions in our app, pain sessions show one of the largest before-to-after changes we measure.
When should I see a doctor about my pain?
Tapping works alongside medical care, never instead of it. See a doctor for pain that's new, severe, or getting worse; pain after an injury or surgery; pain with numbness, tingling, or weakness; or pain that doesn't fit a pattern you recognize. Tapping is a tool for the stress and emotion layered on top of pain, not a diagnosis or a treatment for whatever is causing it.
