Pain Relief

How to Use Tapping for Pain Relief

Written by: Nick Ortner

If you’re one of the over 100 million Americans suffering from chronic pain, or one of the millions of others suffering around the world, you’ve probably looked far and wide for a solution to give you relief.

Beyond the physical pain alone, physical pain puts tremendous limitations on our lives.

The American Association of Physicists in Medicine, through their research, has stated the following about physical pain:

You see, when you’re dealing with physical pain it limits your ability to live a full life.

You’re constantly putting mental attention and energy towards dealing with the pain, holding you back from putting that attention and energy towards the things you want to do in life. Releasing your physical pain is about a heck of a lot more than just feeling better in your body. It’s about giving you the freedom to live the life you want, how you want. But I’m here to tell you that…


Physical Pain Doesn’t Need to Limit Your Life Any Longer…


The simple technique known as Tapping that I’ll share with you on this page, along with the specific process I’ve outlined for you, will allow you to finally get to the root cause of your physical pain and release it… permanently!

If you’re somebody who’s been suffering with physical pain for a long time, you’re probably thinking that this sounds too good to be true, but I promise you that by the time you get to the bottom of this page, you’ll have a totally new understanding of what’s likely causing your pain, as well as a clear path to how you can release it.

You see, since 2004 when I first began my own Tapping journey, I’ve helped thousands of people release physical pain.

And every time I speak onstage, regardless of what continent I’m on, I ask who in the audience is experiencing chronic pain. Without fail, at least one-third of the people in the audience raise their hands. And none of these events are focused on physical pain or pain relief!

And thankfully, because of the effectiveness of Tapping, I am almost always able to bring pain levels down and bring instant relief to the people I work with, and oftentimes within just minutes.

Now if you’re like most people in Western culture, the idea of having pain relief in minutes sounds almost too good to be true. The normal “solutions” we’ve been taught to seek out by doctors include things like surgeries, injections, and medications and none of them ever seem to have very fast or lasting results.

That’s because…


Traditional solutions for pain relief completely miss the underlying causes of physical pain…


Most doctors have a huge gap in their understanding of physical pain, and the solutions for creating lasting pain relief.

What traditional doctors miss is the understanding of the role that our emotions, whether they be conscious or unconscious, play in our physical health.

You see, we all naturally feel negative emotions as a result of the many stressors and demands of everyday life. When these emotions build over time (especially with anger) and remain unexpressed, they can become buried in the unconscious mind.


As negative emotions accumulate over time, they develop into physical symptoms. Here’s how it happens…


Let’s say, for example, that you went through a horrible divorce years ago. It needed to happen, and you now know you’re better off as a result.

You feel as if you’re over it today, but, in fact, while the divorce was happening, your unconscious mind buried some very strong negative emotions without your realizing it. That’s what the unconscious mind does — it takes over without our knowledge or consent.

Over time, those repressed emotions limit oxygen supply to your muscles. That oxygen deprivation then leads to muscle constriction, which spreads to nearby muscles. As time goes on, when your muscles remain tight and constricted, you experience pain.

Imagine if I asked you to clench your fist right now and keep it clenched. After a minute, your hand might get tired. After ten minutes, maybe your hand would ache, and then pain would set in. What would happen if you kept it clenched for a whole day, month, or year?

Obviously, you would experience pain, muscular degeneration, and all sorts of problems, not just in your hand, but in your wrist and arm, as well. Eventually your shoulder would be affected, and so on. Imagine the same thing happening in whatever part of your body is in pain. The tension builds, muscles contract, blood flow constricts, and pain follows, all because of unconscious emotions.


The negative emotions linked with your physical pain can be around a number of different events that have happened in your past or they can be around one particularly traumatic event, such as an accident that caused an injury…


Very often when I explain to people how our emotions cause physical pain, they’ll tell me, “But I had an accident that caused a physical injury, how is that related to my emotions?”

What people so often overlook, is the emotions around the accident, such as the fear, hurt, or anger they experienced during the event, or the emotions they have felt since the accident, such as embarrassment around what happened, or fear of the pain not going away, or anger towards somebody that may have caused the accident.

All of these emotions play a huge role in locking in the physical pain of an accident, no matter how “physical” you may believe the accident to be.


Here’s how Tapping works to release negative emotions locked in your unconscious mind, and thus release physical pain from the body…


So how does tapping figure into the science of pain and, more important, pain relief and the bodymind?

There’s a growing body of research on the topic.

In a double-blind study conducted by Dawson Church, PhD, Tapping was shown to produce, on average, a 24 percent drop in cortisol after just one hour of Tapping. During that same hour of talk therapy without Tapping, participants showed a much smaller drop in cortisol levels.

Research has shown that acupuncture, and potentially acupressure, as well, provides pain relief by increasing endorphin levels in the body. Since Tapping engages acupressure points while also lowering cortisol, it’s likely that Tapping, like acupuncture, allows the body to release the endorphins that then relieve pain.

In other cases, like in someone who experiences chronic pain but has no physical conditions or abnormalities, such as someone who has debilitating back pain but has no herniated discs or other abnormalities, the brain may be creating very real physical pain in the body without an obvious physical trigger.

Fortunately, a growing amount of research is giving us a better understanding of what pain is and how to relieve it.


The incredible results that tapping has on alleviating chronic pain may be explained, at least in part, by its ability to access what are called meridian channels.


While knowledge of these channels dates back to ancient Chinese medicine, it wasn’t until the 1960s that these threadlike microscopic anatomical structures were first seen on stereomicroscope and electron microscope images. These scans showed tubular structures measuring 30 to 100 micrometers wide running up and down the body. Described in a published paper by a researcher named Kim Bonghan, they are also referred to as “Bonghan channels.” As a reference point, one red blood cell is 6 to 8 micrometers wide, so these structures are tiny!

You can think of meridian channels as a fiber-optic network in the body. They carry a large amount of information, often electrical and often beyond what the nervous system or chemical systems of the body can carry. By accessing these channels while processing emotions, thoughts as well as physical conditions like pain, Tapping is able to get to the root cause of chronic pain more quickly than other approaches can.

Because Tapping sends calming, relaxing signals directly to the amygdala, it may also help us to override the brain’s negativity bias more rapidly. By using Tapping to neutralize what it thought were threats to its survival, we’re able to reprogram the brain to support more positive experiences, such as pain relief, pleasure, and relaxation.


How to Start Using Tapping to Relieve Your Physical Pain…


There are a few great resources that can help you in getting started using Tapping for Pain Relief:

Resource #1 – The Tapping Solution for Pain Relief Book: A Step-by-Step Guide to Reducing and Eliminating Chronic Pain

If you’re serious about wanting to eliminate physical pain from your body than this book is a must!

In this book I’ll guide you on a journey that begins on the surface – Tapping to address the pain itself – and then we’ll move together to the deeper issues that often affect pain, addressing emotional pain, underlying beliefs, trauma, and much more.

With easy to follow Tapping scripts and exercises you’ll know exactly what to do to get relief.

There are many ways that brain and body can create, increase, and prolong pain. After reading this book, you’ll not only understand what’s causing your pain but also how to achieve complete and lasting relief!

Go here to pick up your copy of this book today.

Resource #2 – Free Training

I’d love for you to join me on an upcoming free webinar presentation that I’m running on this topic. This is a content-packed webinar where I will take you, step-by-step, through the process of discovering the unconscious emotional and energetic causes of your physical pain and how to use the Tapping to eliminate them.

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I hope you take advantage of these two resources. I know they can help you.

If you have questions at any time please don’t hesitate to ask. Just send me an email by clicking here. Or join me on Facebook here.

Until next time…

Keep Tapping!

Nick Ortner


What did you learn from this post? What questions do you still have? Post your comments below!



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29 Comments on this post

  1. Eileen Robbins says:

    Hi and thank you from Australia.. I have wondered if you would consider a specific chronic illness tapping meditations. I have suffered chronic Lyme disease with its added pain and difficulties of denial of recognition and desperately needed treatments by health authorities near 17yrs.US statistics by CDC is that 330,000 and rapidly increasing Americans contract this illness annually..not to mention the massive growing global numbers. Depilitating, disabling, chronic pain and brain issues and isolation is only part of this illness. For greater insight, Dr. Mark Hyman has first hand knowledge of this pandemic and lack of supports available to patients. I thought that specific meditations for illnesses would help enormously..this one in particular.

    • Nick Ortner says:

      Hi Eileen! Thanks for your suggestion. I will add it to our list. 🙂

      We actually do have a resource in our Tapping Insiders Club for Lyme Disease. You can check that out here.

  2. kate says:

    i have a foot injury that will not heal. it’s painful, but livable and no one has been able to help. i’m in physical therapy now. it’s been a over a year and a half since the injury. since there was not an underlying emotional reason, so to speak, will tapping help? in other words, it wasn’t like i had a stressful job and developed back pain, so i can tap and soothe the emotions around the job. it doesn’t deprive from an experience that i can link it to directly. i was skiing and tweaked my foot and it just never got better.

    • Nick Ortner says:

      Hi Kate! Great question. Sometimes the emotional response we have to an injury right now is what’s preventing it from healing. If we’re annoyed, angry, stressed out, frustrated, etc. because our bodies aren’t healing the way we want it to, those emotions can disrupt our nervous system and keep pain trapped in our bodies. Even if there wasn’t a specific emotional reason, tapping and help calm the stress response, lower inflammation, and release tension that allows for faster healing. 🙂

  3. Tina Lewington says:

    I have pain in the arch of my right foot, it started well over a year ago. Doctors have no idea what it could be as nothing shows up on any tests. I believe tapping would help but as I can’t remember what was going on in my life when it started, I’m not having much luck with tapping. I remember getting up for work one morning and that is when I noticed the pain. Any help with this would be much appreciating. As I teach English in China I’m on my feet most of the day.

    • Nick Ortner says:

      Hi Tina! While I can’t offer specific advice (b/c everyone is different) in Louise Hay’s book, You can Heal Your Body, she says that feet represent our understanding of ourselves, of life, and of others. So perhaps you can examine those areas of your life to see if there is any connection. Also, pain may just be telling us to make a change. Standing all day may be putting too much stress on your feet. 🙂

  4. bozz says:

    i am bed bound for the last 4 years ,,i cannot move my legs and the only thing the doctors say is i will never walk again,,, i bought a while ago the tapping for pain relief the audio book , what would you recommend i do which tapping program should i start with the doctors have not found any disease or anything wrong and they dont know why i cant move my legs,,, i am determined to do something about it as the doc wont ,,, can u advise me nick . i hve been living with excrutiating pain and pills to kill the pain,, but iknow better,, i am sure tapping is the solution for me i am positive but i dont know what to do ,,,

    • Nick Ortner says:

      Hi Bozz, I’m sorry to hear about your situation. While I can’t provide specific advice, I’d suggest going through the Tapping for Pain Relief Program, where you may find insights and relief for your legs. You may also wish to try and contact an EFT practitioner to help assess your condition and work with you one-on-one. Many work through video chat, so you wouldn’t even have to leave your bed.

  5. Ellen F. says:

    For most of my adult life I had frequent pain in my right hip, which was manageable only with regular chiropractic adjustments, and of course EFT, which helped for a while but the pain would eventually return. In August 2012, during a persistent bout of hip pain I couldn’t seem to get any relief from, Peggy, a former classmate on the class reunion committee called several times to talk me into attending our 45th high school class reunion. I didn’t remember her from high school since our class numbered close to a thousand students and she and I ran in different circles, but I remembered her from elementary school. On this one particular phone call she yakked on and on about events and people I didn’t know and I just sat and listened, waiting for an opportunity to end the call.

    When Peggy said “I remember when you got hit by a pickup truck while crossing the street in front of our school.”
    At this I perked up! “You remember that!”
    Her: “Yes, I saw the whole thing. I was walking right behind you.”
    Me: “And you remember everything?!”
    Her: “Yes, in vivid detail. It was awful.”

    I have a very sketchy memory of being hit by a pickup truck while in first grade in October 1955. I remembered stepping off the curb, but not the impact. I remembered lying on the sidewalk afterward, and some comments from the gathered crowd, and insisting I wouldn’t go to the hospital unless my teacher, Mrs. Smith, went along. And I remember lying on an operating table with a glaring light above me, and hoping the huge needle being prepared wasn’t for me. That’s all I remember. Five things.

    Me, to Her: “Tell me what you saw, because I remember very little about it.”

    As Peggy talked I tapped, moving through all the points as she gave details. Since she was a prolific chatter I had plenty of time to go several rounds.

    My hip pain totally disappeared! That tapping experience was nearly seven years ago and I haven’t had any pain at all in my right hip since then.

    • Nick Ortner says:

      Wow! That’s an amazing story, Ellen! Thanks so much for sharing. Great thinking having someone else tell the story while you tapped. 😉

  6. Fred says:

    Work with Sr.citizens who are extremely unreceptive to EFT/Tapping. Also often have secondary gain issues, e.g. want to hang on to part of pain because it gives them something to talk about,i.e. sharing pain stories.
    HOW TO DEAL WITH THESE TWO PREVALENT AND IMPORTANT ISSUES.

  7. Martha says:

    I need a practitioner in the Berkeley, CA area

  8. Miguel says:

    Hey nick, recently discovered tapping and found it fascinating yet. Though this is not directly related to this i wanna ask since it is the most profound issue i currently have. I am a soccer player and have always wanted to do it professionally as a career. However i have issues in shooting the ball that my shooting power is very low. I would like to know how tapping can help me to overcome this and to increase my shooting power. Thanks in advance.

    • Nick Ortner says:

      Hi Miguel! Using Tapping for increasing sports performance is actually a whole field by itself. While I wouldn’t be able to comment on your specific issue (there could be multiple reasons) you may wish to check out this enlightening interview with Dr. Erin Shannon, who works with high-level professional athletes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP9co9Nn7OA&t=61sali

      You may even wish to seek out an EFT practitioner who specializes in sports performance for your specific needs. 🙂

  9. Slidday says:

    Hey nick, I have felt little weakness in my left side for a couple of months. I consulted doctor, and he did a bit of muscle testing and said they is no apparent issue. However i feel it all the time. How would tapping help in this?

    • Nick Ortner says:

      Great question, Slidday. The easiest way that I like to address pain issues is by tuning into the body and asking yourself, “If there was emotion trapped in this part of my body, what would it be?” Then listen to what the intuition of your body tells you and begin tapping on that emotion to release it. Another question you can ask yourself is, “What was going on in my life when this physical issue first showed up?” Sometimes the emotions from our experiences get trapped in certain parts of our bodies. 🙂

  10. gregg berman says:

    QUESTION ON TAPPING FOR PAIN. I’m an EFT Practitioner and also a pain sufferer. As a chronic pain sufferer, I have a question about the process. I have had low back pain that at times has been debilitating, leaving me bed bound and then walking on canes (thankfully years since that bad) and to some extent there almost every day. The thing is, while i don’t like having the pain or the limiting effects, I also am not sure I want to completely get rid of it. In my case I feel it’s protective. It is excellent motivation to do the things I need to for self care.
    When i’m working out well and stretching well the pain doesn’t impact me. It’s only when i don’t do those things. Sometimes like recently when i had a flare up after a lot of bike riding, it sent me down the path to researching back/hip pain from riding bikes and figuring out how to treat it. I’ve learned so much about how to care for my body from the pain cues i’m getting. And further I worry that if i didn’t have those cues, like touching a hot stove if you had a numb hand and getting a more severe burn, I’m concerned that not having the pain cues would have me run the risk of unwittingly doing damage to my back.
    So I wonder, 1)In my case is there a reason for tapping on the back pain if I’m at risk for more serious injury if i don’t have my cues? 2)Though i do tap on pain for others, I wonder how we know if we are supporting healing or masking a beneficial signal?
    Thanks for your insights.

    • Nick Ortner says:

      Great questions, Gregg. Having adversity in our lives is one of the greatest catalysts to progress, and finding solutions. Pain itself is neither good nor bad. The question you’ll want to answer for yourself is, “Is it a problem in my life.” If the answer is yes, then you’ll want to tap to release it. If no, then just continue what you’re doing, because your’re gaining knowledge from it. 🙂

      The same question would apply to your clients as well. If they are coming to you for pain relief, then it’s something they want to get rid of to improve their lives. The key to remember as a practitioner is meeting your clients at their level, not at our own.

      I hope this helps a little! 🙂

  11. Ian Stark says:

    Over the last 5 years I have gradually lost my sense of balance.This curtails moct outdoor activities and a reduced cofidence in dealing with crowds.Can Tapping help?
    Regards,
    Ian

    • Nick Ortner says:

      Quite possibly, Ian. A lot of times, our physical ailments appear as a result of emotional issues or patterns of beliefs we may be facing. I find the best way is to use the body as a metaphor for our emotional lives. For example, is there any other part of your life that feels out of balance? That may be a good place to explore with tapping. 🙂

  12. Judith J King says:

    Can tapping help the anxiety that I feel when I have an appt or am going somewhere. I have had IBS for many years but am on a Low FODMAP diet that has helped tremendously…..but I get worked up afraid I’ll miss the appt/ need to stop somewhere but can’t find a place in time. I realize the gut-brain relationship…..& I have seen that work in having to ‘GO’ right as I’m walking out the door. If I leave early, then I’m sitting waiting for appt & stress builds to the point I have to go there & maybe hold my appt up/or reschedule. Then I beat my self up from embarrassment.

  13. Colleen says:

    Have rhmatoyed arthritis and would like to keep up wit tapping

  14. Pam says:

    I would like a tapping text to print out for hip pain relief please.

  15. Selenah Granger says:

    I have been feeling very desperate with back pain. This is my 5th day without pain mediclocation so you are there just in time.

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