Elbow Pain Returns

Posted by Ron Ball

Mar 09, 10

I recently taught EFT to a group of people. One of the most skeptical people in the audience was quite surprised to find after doing some tapping, his joint pain completely disappeared. He was amazed and did EFT by himself at home where he also got relief five or six times and then it stopped working. What happened? Typically it’s because tapping on a physical issue relieves the pain temporarily. It’s when you you resolve a core issue that you’ll find more powerful, long term results.

Last night the gentleman called me. He was having a lot of discomfort, particularly in his elbows. His doctor said that it was because of a side effect of a potent medication he was taking. The soft tissue was inflamed and swollen. When he bent his elbow, the angle or torque created the discomfort.

I asked him what his SUDS (Subjective Units of Distress) level was with the discomfort. He said it was at a three. It’s important to note that this is a subjective measure. For someone else, this person’s three could be a ten. So we started tapping a few rounds with a normal EFT setup statement:

Even though I have this swelling and discomfort in my left elbow, I deeply and completely accept myself.

We promptly got nowhere. No change whatsoever. So I asked him, “If there was an emotion connected to this discomfort what might it be.” With a perplexed look he said that he had no idea. So I asked him if his left elbow could speak what would it say it wanted.” Another blank look. Usually, when I do these things, I get good results. Not this time. I’m not attached to the outcome so it was time to play in a new direction.

Sometimes what happens in the body is literal. Joint problems can mean being stiff, inflexible. It can mean not wanting to deal with uncertainty or having a fear of change. I had a feeling to go with this so I did. We tapped on the following EFT setup statement.

Even though I have discomfort in my left elbow, my energy and my body easily flow with change.

This clicked and bingo, we got results immediately, going from three to one. I don’t like to stop there so instead of doing the EFT Shortcut method again, we went to the classic long version which includes using the finger tapping points, the gamut point, eye movements, etc. After one more round of tapping, he was at a zero and very happy about it. When he “tested” his left elbow, there was no discomfort and then he was surprised to find the same thing happened with his right elbow.

With EFT, you’ll often start with physical sensations to uncover what emotions may lie underneath. In this case, it was a fear of change. Gary Craig has said that you might have to keep trying different “doors” until one finally opens.