Relief for an arthritic knee despite its medical diagnosis
by CJ Puotinen
(This report was published May 15, 2006, in Gary Craig’s online newsletter.)
Most people with chronic pain are willing to experiment with EFT without reservation – they’re sufficiently desperate to try anything, even things that are weirder than tapping. When their pain disappears, they just relax and enjoy the relief.
But for some, a doctor’s pronouncement or the patient’s own belief about a condition can be a stumbling block.
Several years ago I gave an “Introduction to EFT” demonstration to 60 people at an assisted living home in New Jersey. All were of a mature age and had various aches and pains.
After the first two or three rounds of tapping to reduce their pain and improve their range of motion, all but seven or eight reported significant relief or improvement. This is in keeping with Gary Craig’s estimate that EFT usually works for about 80 percent of those who try it. After another few rounds, most of those who didn’t respond at first said they felt better.
But one woman looked troubled. When I asked her to describe her pain, she said, “It’s my left knee. I hurt it when I was a kid, and it’s always been a weak spot for me. It hurts so much that for the past few years, I haven’t been able to get up from a chair without pushing myself up first.” She demonstrated by pressing hard against the chair seat to lift herself up.
“The reason this won’t work for me,” she explained, “is that the pain in my knee is real. I mean, it has a real cause. My doctor showed me the x-rays. He showed me the calcification around my knee and said it’s osteoarthritis. It’s not an imaginary condition. It won’t ever get better. That’s why my knee still hurts.”
I said, “OK, let’s all tap together with this lady for her knee.” Soon everyone was tapping on their Karate Chop points while saying, “Even though my knee hurts, I deeply and completely accept myself. Even though it hurts because I injured it when I was a kid, I completely accept and forgive myself, and I forgive my knee. Even though my knee will never get better because it’s a real injury complicated by real osteoarthritis and calcification, I deeply and completely love and accept my knee. Even though my doctor showed me the x-rays and said that my knee will never get better, I love and accept my knee, and I love and respect my doctor. He’s the expert. I believe him. Even though this is a real condition, it isn’t imaginary, I deeply and completely accept and love my knee and everything else in my body, I forgive my knee, the calcification, the osteoarthritis, the x-rays, my doctor, and anything that has contributed in any way to my knee’s condition. I am pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to let all this go, to let the pain go, to let all the reasons for the pain go, to say goodbye to the pain, and to kiss the pain in my knee goodbye. Goodbye pain!”
We all blew a goodbye kiss to the pain and then tapped on the EFT points with reminder phrases like pain, knee, osteoarthritis, my doctor, calicification, etc. Then, when I asked the woman how much her knee hurt, a look of surprise crossed her face. “Why, I don’t know,” she exclaimed. “I don’t know where it went.”
“Well, let’s see if you can find it,” I said, holding out my hand. “Can you reach your arms out straight ahead?” She did. “Now, keeping your arms in front of you, can you stand?”
She started to move, then looked frightened and sat back.
“Are you afraid of falling?” I asked.
She nodded.
“OK,” I said, “let’s all tap on that. Even though I’m afraid of falling, I deeply and completely accept myself. Even though the thought of standing without any support from my hands makes me dizzy, I completely accept and love myself. Even though I can’t believe my knee has stopped hurting, and that confuses me, I love and accept myself and my knee. Even though standing up without holding on to something is dangerous, and I feel dizzy, and my doctor said my knee will never get better, I’m ready to set those beliefs aside and let them go and be pleasantly surprised at how easy and normal it feels to just stand up. In fact, I’m going to do that right now.”
After one quick round of tapping, that’s what she did. She held her hands straight in front of her and rose straight up out of her chair to a standing position.
Four other women said after the demonstration that they too had come into the room with serious knee pain that lingered through the first rounds of tapping but disappeared when we tapped about doctors and medical diagnoses.
Many EFT practitioners have worked with patients who are uncomfortable saying anything that contradicts their doctors’ pronouncements, but incorporating the medical diagnosis and its seriousness into the setup phrase often results in rapid improvement.