EFT for Back Pain

310 Pages·2009·3.25 MB·English

by  Gary Craig

EFT for Back Pain: A Specialized Use of Emotional
Freedom Techniques

by

Gary Craig

and 59 EFT Practitioners, Instructors,
Students, and Users
EFT for Back Pain: A Specialized Use of Emotional Freedom Techniques

Copyright 2008 by Gary Craig
www.emofree.com

Edited by CJ Puotinen

The clip art contained herein has been provided by the following: New Vision Technologies, Inc.
Corel, 3G Graphics, Inc., Archive Arts, Image Club Graphics, Inc., Cartesia Software, One Mile
Up, Inc., Techpool Studios, and Totem Graphics, Inc.

Important note: While EFT has produced remarkable clinical results, it must still
be considered to be in the experimental stage and thus practitioners and the
public must take complete responsibility for their use of it. Further, Gary Craig is
not a licensed health professional and offers EFT as an ordained minister and as
a personal performance coach.

Please consult qualified health practitioners regarding your use of EFT.
EFT for Back Pain: A Specialized Use of Emotional Freedom Techniques

A Vital Guide for Reading This Book

In a nutshell, EFT is an emotional version of acupuncture, except we don't use
needles. Instead, we stimulate the acupuncture meridians by tapping on them with our
fingertips. This often brings forth astonishing results that are likely beyond your
expectations. The procedure is easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to share with
others. You will learn the basics and more in this book.

EFT is good for everything. While this book focuses on EFT’s use for back pain, I
must emphasize that back pain represents but a tiny fraction of EFT’s long list of
successes. For example, EFT is good for pain and symptoms of all kinds and often
works where nothing else will. It is also astonishingly useful for emotional issues of
every type and reduces the typical psychotherapy process from months or years down
to minutes or hours. Further, those wishing to improve their performance in sports,
business, public speaking, or the bedroom will also find EFT a valuable aid.

This book is like an encyclopedia. It is so comprehensive that it could easily be
considered an “EFT Encyclopedia for Back Pain.” Most readers will not need to read it
all, but every reader will want to keep it around as a priceless resource because it
contains approaches and concepts that you will not find in other health-related books.

This book contains creative approaches written by many EFT experts. EFT is an
“open source” healing tool that encourages experimentation. This means that we start
with an easy-to-learn, simple procedure that works beautifully in the majority of cases.
After that, anyone can experiment with the process and develop other refinements.
Thus, for your expanded education, we are sprinkling within this book the opinions,
refinements, and creative approaches of dozens of EFTers.

Depending on your interest level, previous experience, and individual response to EFT,
there are several ways to read this book.

If you are a “Newbie,” or newcomer to EFT, I hope you may wish to start at the
beginning and read it all the way through. By the time you reach the end, you will have
an excellent chance of being completely and permanently free from pain, in addition to
having a thorough understanding of EFT and the ability to share this useful technique
with friends and family.

If you’re impatient to get started, go straight to my Quick Start section on page 6. The
Quick Start walks you through basic EFT, which by itself has brought relief to
thousands. If basic EFT eliminates all of your pain for good, congratulations. You’re one
of our famous “One-Minute Wonders” and you can get on with your life. If the pain
doesn’t completely go away or if it returns at a later time, the rest of this book provides
all the assistance you need to improve your results and make the improvements last.

If you’re interested in the background of EFT and some of the technical, scientific, or
engineering explanations that I’m fond of sharing, download our free EFT Manual from
EFT for Back Pain: A Specialized Use of Emotional Freedom Techniques

the official EFT website, www.emofree.com. This book was designed as a companion
to the EFT Manual and you’ll learn something valuable from both.

For convenience, the manual is also available as a paperback book sold in retail
bookstores and online. Look for The EFT Manual (EFT: Emotional Freedom
Techniques) by Gary Craig, published by Energy Psychology Press, 2008.

If you’re an experienced EFTer, peruse the Table of Contents and go where your
curiosity and interest take you. One of my goals in writing this book is to provide as
many interesting examples as possible, so that all of us – including EFT instructors and
practitioners – can add to our repertoire of approaches and strategies for making EFT
more effective and versatile.

Our DVDs are vital to your complete comprehension of EFT. I would like to
emphasize that this book and the EFT Manual do not contain everything there is to
know about EFT. For example, there is no substitute for the demonstrations on our
DVDs, which show EFT in action in seminars conducted throughout the United States.

The DVDs offer many live demonstrations of pain relief, including back, hip, and
shoulder pain. For a complete description of the contents of each DVD, go to
www.emofree.com/EFTStore/ and click on “full details” for any of the collections.

Once you understand the basics by watching the first hour of the first DVD in our
introductory set, you can simply tap along with an endless number of sessions designed
for your use. While doing so, you will learn as you go, you’ll be entertained, and, without
much effort, you will collapse or neutralize issues that have until now interfered with
your recovery.

As I like to remind everyone, there is more human drama, inspiration, and humor in our
videotaped seminars than there is in any reality television show!
EFT for Back Pain: A Specialized Use of Emotional Freedom Techniques

Table of Contents

A Vital Guide for Reading This Book

Table of Contents

Notes and Acknowledgements 1

Introduction 3

Quick Start 6

Chapter One: Welcome to the world of EFT 8
What exactly is EFT? 9
How to learn EFT 11
Why EFT often works where nothing else will 12
Pain’s emotional causes 13

Chapter Two: EFT for Back Pain 16
Acute and chronic pain 16
Pain and emotions 19
Pain and anger 20
Using EFT 23
Defining the problem 23
Measuring Intensity 23
The “Basic Recipe” 24
Ingredient #1 – The Setup 25
The Affirmation 26
Ingredient #2 – The Sequence 30
Ingredient #3 – The 9 Gamut Procedure 33
Ingredient #4 – The Sequence (again) 35
The Reminder Phrase 35
Subsequent round adjustments 37
How to use EFT for back pain that returns to the same place 39
EFT for Back Pain: A Specialized Use of Emotional Freedom Techniques

Chapter Three: Optional Points and Refinements 40
Optional points 40
Possible outcomes 40
Two helpful additions 43
Emphatic EFT for low back pain brings dramatic shifts 43
Touch and Breathe (TAB) method 47
One-minute wonders 47
Year-long nagging back pain gone in 30 seconds 47
Basic EFT quickly alleviates long-term back pain 48

Chapter Four: The Acceptance Phrase 50
Paradoxes in validating the self 51
A self-acceptance experiment 56
Soft language to ease the EFT Acceptance Phrase 61

Chapter Five: Tap While You .... 64
The tap-while-you-gripe technique 65
Can you do EFT incorrectly? 67
Finding your “personal” EFT points 69
How to tell whether EFT is working 70

Chapter Six: Exploring Underlying Issues 73
Introducing aspects 73
Be specific 74
Defining the pain 76
The “core issues” of back pain 81
The Personal Peace Procedure 83
The Watch a Movie and Tell a Story Techniques 84
Visual, auditory, and kinesthetic experience 85
The Movie Technique for a kinesthetic back pain patient 86
The Tearless Trauma Technique 87
Using the Tearless Trauma Technique 89

Chapter Seven: Choices, Solutions, and Tapping Tips 91
Dr. Patricia Carrington’s “Choices” Method 91
EFT tapping tips 95
Incorporating several approaches in one EFT session 95
Top ten tapping tips 96
When EFT doesn’t work 101
How perseverance and a very long setup cured my back 105
When EFT doesn’t work at home 108
EFT for Back Pain: A Specialized Use of Emotional Freedom Techniques

Chapter Eight: EFT in Action for Back Pain 112
Three methods for working with pain 112
Pain from severe lower back injury is resolved with three rounds of EFT 113
Relief for 30 years of back pain from a car accident – no more Vicodin 114
Eight months of chronic back pain disappears in 20 minutes by phone 116
Attorney relieves client’s back pain 118
After three years of back pain, skeptic tries EFT and is now pain-free 119
My sister’s hip pain vanishes despite her skepticism 119
Instant relief of back and hip pain astonishes nurse 120
EFT for a friend’s back strain 121
Three-week incapacitating back pain relieved in one phone session 122

Chapter Nine: EFT as First Aid 127
Back pain subsides and spine goes into alignment 127
EFT for a painful spinal disc 128
How I fixed my dentist’s back pain 130
Relieving the postman’s pains 131
Treating upper back pain in an EFT seminar 132
EFT takes care of a headache, knee pain, and back pain
while on vacation 133
Releasing old memories eliminates pain from disc disease 133
Terri’s pain relief 134
“Bedside EFT” for patient pain relief 136
EFT cancels an ambulance call 140
EFT and my car crash 141
EFT prevents bruising and pain after a fall 142

Chapter Ten: The Search for Core Issues 144
Core issue questions 145
Core issues release severe back pain 147
Back pain and a painful anniversary 149
Back pain from scoliosis and spinal bifida disappears 151
Neck pain relief after finding the emotional core issue 153
Back pain: Even though this should be working and it’s not 155
Back pain disappears after doing EFT for entrepreneurial worries 156
How cats became the core issue behind lower back pain 158
Clarifying core issues on paper 158
Journaling and core issues 159
Bypassing core issues 160
Sneaking up on the core issue 160
EFT for Back Pain: A Specialized Use of Emotional Freedom Techniques

Chapter Eleven: Eliminating Self-sabotage 162
Using EFT to overcome the resistance to exercise 163
Conditions that interfere 164
Psychological Reversal 164
Self-talk and the writings on your walls 165
Tail-enders 165
Secondary gain 166
Saying goodbye to the past 168
Then what? 169
What if? 169
Effectively using “What if?” in EFT Setup Phrases 170

Chapter Twelve: Improving Results 172
Chasing the pain 172
Chasing spinal stenosis pain 173
Woman says “EFT doesn’t work for me” 174
Incorporating parts 177
Communicating with myself 178
Think in pictures 179
Try mental tapping 180
Surrogate or proxy tapping 180
Borrowing benefits 181
Borrowing benefits from DVD eliminates shoulder and neck pain 183
Additional tapping procedures 184
The floor-to-ceiling eye roll 184
Collarbone breathing 184
More about the 9 Gamut treatment 186
Advantages of the 9 Gamut procedure 186
Reframing the Pain 188

Chapter Thirteen: Pain, Anger, and Metaphors 192
Metaphors and back pain 192
Clearing a back pain metaphor 193
Shooting back pain metaphor 194
She stabbed him in the back 195
Sadness and a 17-year-old back pain 196
Range of motion metaphor releases shoulder pain 197
Letting go of anger 199
Severe back pain subsides after anger issue uncovered 201
Anger and rage are at the root of this back pain 203
When it’s impossible to forgive 205
Letting go of anger that feels necessary 206
What your aching body has to say 207
EFT and skillful metaphors for Rheumatoid Arthritis pain 210
EFT for Back Pain: A Specialized Use of Emotional Freedom Techniques

Chapter Fourteen: The Art of Forgiveness 214
Add “understanding” 214
Replacing “forgiveness” with “understanding” 215
Release “a little” anger 216
Using EFT for forgiveness: The one-percent solution 217
A forgiveness exercise 219
EFT gratitude protocol 222
Tapping on gratitude with EFT 223
Flooding the mind with affirmations 225
Phrasing affirmations as questions 226

Chapter Fifteen: Helping Animals with EFT 229
Helping a dog with an arthritic back 230
Surrogate tapping for Cassie, the dog 231
EFT for a dog’s back injury and cataracts 232

In Conclusion.... 233

EFT Glossary 234

Appendix A: Three detailed examples and a technical report 237
Irene Mitchell’s story 237
Releasing seven years of pain and much more 245
Relieving pain with EFT using persistence, metaphors,
chasing the pain, reframes, and creative language 251
Technical evidence of the link between emotional causes
and physical ailments 257

Appendix B: Improving EFT’s results with self-tests 262
The Pulse Test 262
Do-it-yourself muscle testing 265
Testing yourself with kinesiology 266
EFT’s acupuncture points 273

Appendix C: Charts and forms 274
Using the 0-to-10 intensity scale 275
EFT’s Basic Recipe 276
My back hurts: Defining the pain 277
Personal Peace Procedure 279
The writings on your walls 281
Tail-enders 283
Choices phrasing setup cards 284