I've spent twenty years watching people tap on chronic pain, and I co-authored one of the studies below. So this page isn't neutral. It is complete. Every study in our evidence base that measured pain as an outcome is here, including the one that didn't find a pain effect.
Before anything else: your pain is real. Nothing here suggests 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 the disease underneath.
If you want the how-to rather than the research, our guide to using EFT for physical pain walks through the technique. For the parallel evidence on trauma and the nervous system, see tapping research for veterans and combat PTSD.
The strongest study: a 147-person randomized trial
Start here. This is the largest, most rigorous chronic pain trial on tapping, and it was published in 2025 in the European Journal of Pain.
Stapleton et al., 2025: 147 adults, randomized, live versus self-paced online.
A randomized controlled trial of 147 adults with chronic pain (average age 55) against a waitlist control, through a six-week EFT program delivered either live in person or self-paced online. Tapping significantly reduced pain severity and pain interference and improved quality of life, and the gains were still there at the six-month follow-up. The self-paced online format worked as well as the live one. Full record.
Two things matter here. The design is the kind researchers trust: randomized, with a control group, and a follow-up long enough to show the effect lasted. And the finding that self-paced online tapping worked as well as a live group is exactly what makes an app-based practice credible.
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Join the free summitWhat the brain shows
Most pain research relies on people reporting how they feel. This study looked at the brain itself.
Stapleton, Oliver, O'Keefe & Bhuta, 2022: 24 adults, brain scans before and after.
Twenty-four adults with chronic pain completed a six-week online tapping program with fMRI scans before and after. Pain severity fell 21%, pain interference fell 26%, and anxiety fell 37%. The scans showed reduced connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and the brain regions that modulate pain and drive catastrophizing. In plain terms: the parts of the brain that amplify pain were talking to each other less. Full record.
That's objective data lining up with what people reported. It's a small group and there was no control arm, so it's a strong signal rather than the final word. But it's the first time anyone has watched tapping change the pain circuitry on a scan.
The study I ran myself
In 2014 I co-authored a pilot study with Dr. Morgan Clond, who is now the medical director of our sister company NeuroTap Health. Fifty adults with chronic pain, a three-day tapping workshop, and a six-month follow-up.
Ortner, Palmer-Hoffman & Clond, 2014: 50 adults, 3-day EFT workshop.
Published in the Energy Psychology Journal. Pain catastrophizing, the habit of bracing against pain and expecting the worst, dropped 43% (p<.001), and scores improved across the Multidimensional Pain Inventory: severity, interference, life control, and emotional distress. At six months, the catastrophizing reduction held at 42%. It was a pilot, so there was no control group. Full record.
What stayed with me wasn't the numbers. It was watching people who had spent years braced against their pain let their shoulders drop, some of them for the first time in a decade. The numbers said the same thing, and they were still saying it six months later.
What 16 million sessions show
There's one more body of evidence, and it's ours. In The Tapping Solution app, people rate how they feel before and after every session, on a 0 to 10 scale. Across 16.6 million rated sessions from 868,244 people, we've measured the change in eleven areas, and pain is one of them. The before-to-after change on pain sessions is a large effect, d = 1.2 in research terms, which is bigger than most pain interventions ever report.
That's within-session self-report, not a controlled trial, and we say so in the paper. It is also the largest dataset on tapping that has ever existed, and it says the same thing the trials say: when people tap on pain, the pain goes down.
Where the research is still catching up
Three more studies round out the set, and one of them is the null result.
Brattberg, 2008: 62 women with fibromyalgia, randomized, no-treatment control.
Eight weeks of daily self-administered tapping, published in Integrative Medicine: A Clinician's Journal. The tapping group had lower anxiety and depression and improved on five of eight quality-of-life measures. Pain intensity did not differ significantly between groups. This is the one study in the set that did not find a pain-specific effect. Full record.
Bougea et al., 2013: 35 tension-headache patients, randomized.
Two months of twice-daily tapping in Athens produced significant improvements in stress, headache frequency, headache intensity, and every quality-of-life subscale. Salivary cortisol didn't change, so that particular stress hormone doesn't explain the improvement. Full record.
Stapleton, Chatwin, Sheppard & McSwan, 2016: a single 4-hour session.
One four-hour group session. Pain severity dropped 12% and pain impact dropped 18% afterward. A short-term signal from a single session, not a lasting-change claim. Full record.
Fibromyalgia is one of the hardest pain conditions there is, and one trial finding gains in mood and quality of life but not pain intensity is useful information, not a verdict on tapping. It tells you where the next trial should look.
The bottom line
Put it together and the picture is clear. A randomized trial of 147 people found tapping reduced chronic pain and the gains lasted six months. A brain-imaging study showed why: the circuitry that amplifies pain quiets down. Our own pilot found the bracing-against-pain habit dropped by nearly half and stayed down. And 16 million app sessions point the same direction.
Most of the individual studies are small, and pain research on any intervention tends to be. The direction of the findings, across designs and across two decades, is not in doubt. If you live with chronic pain, tapping is worth ten minutes of your day. The studies say so, and so do the people who've done it.
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.
FAQ
What does the research say about tapping for chronic pain?
The strongest study is a 2025 randomized controlled trial of 147 adults with chronic pain, published in the European Journal of Pain: six weeks of tapping reduced pain severity and interference and improved quality of life, with the gains still there six months later. A 2022 brain-imaging study showed the pain-processing regions of the brain quieting down after a tapping program. Our own 2014 pilot found a 43% drop in pain catastrophizing that held at six months. And across 16 million rated sessions in our app, pain sessions show a large before-to-after change.
Does using tapping for pain mean my pain isn't real?
No. Chronic pain is real and physical. What tapping works on is the stress-pain loop: the well-documented way stress and unprocessed emotion turn up the volume on pain. Turning that volume down doesn't mean the pain was imaginary. It means there was a dial.
What's the strongest evidence for tapping and chronic pain?
Stapleton et al., 2025: a 147-person randomized controlled trial in the European Journal of Pain. Six weeks of tapping, delivered live or self-paced online, reduced pain severity and interference and improved quality of life, sustained at six months. The self-paced online format worked as well as the live one.
Did any studies find tapping did not help with chronic pain?
One. A 2008 randomized trial of women with fibromyalgia found tapping improved anxiety, depression, and quality of life, but not pain intensity itself. It's the only study in the set with a null result on pain, and it's on this page with the rest.
Want to try the technique these studies describe? Intro to Tapping (Start Here) is a free session in The Tapping Solution App that walks through the sequence.
