EFT Shoulder pain has its roots in unresolved

emotion
Note: This is one of 3,000 articles written prior to the updated Gold Standard (Official) EFT Tapping
Tutorial™. As a result, it is likely outdated. It provides practical uses for EFT Tapping but you should also
explore our newest advancement, Optimal EFT, by reading our free e-book, The Unseen
Therapist™, and/or get help from a Certified EFT Practitioner.

Hi Everyone,

Stick around EFT long enough and you will see that most of our aches and pains have
emotional roots (even though it often appears otherwise). Nancy Privett provides proof of
this once again as she addresses the emotional roots of a sore shoulder. Note how the
core emotional issues show up in during the EFT process. This happens with great
frequency.

Hugs, Gary

By Nancy Privett

Hi Gary,

Here is a clear case of a physical problem having emotional underpinnings, which were all resolved with
EFT.

Marie came to see me to use EFT for her sore left shoulder and upper arm.  This area had been hurting
for a few days.  The muscles all around the shoulder were sore, as well as the ones going up into her
neck and down into her upper arm.  She had limited mobility and could not reach behind her to fasten her
bra.

I asked Marie what had been going on around the time when she noticed the sore muscles and the only
thing that came to her mind was that a few days previously she had been to New York City to see a show
with friends and had been holding her purse tightly against her left side with her arm.  The next day she
woke up with the soreness.
I noticed that when Marie mentioned her problem she said:  “I feel like my mother, all crippled up and
can’t move.”  When I asked about that, she said that her mother, who had died eight years previously and
who had lived with Marie and her family for the last several years of her life, had a lot of physical
problems, including arthritis in her shoulders. 

Marie repeated the phrase about feeling like her mother several times when talking about her shoulder,
which was a clue that the physical symptoms might be connected emotionally with something to do with
her relationship with her mother.  However, we began tapping on the physical limitations and pain, and
right away Marie felt a difference.  She went from a discomfort level of 8 on a scale of 0 to 10 to about a 5
out of 10.  Some phrases we used were:

Even though I have this soreness in my shoulder…

Even though I can’t move my arm the way I want to…

Even though I have this pain in my upper arm…

Even though it hurts to raise my arm…

Even though I can’t reach behind my back…

Even though this pain goes up into my neck…

Even though it hurts more now in my neck than in my shoulder…

The discomfort was staying at a 5, so I decided to use something I learned from a previous EFT
newsletter article, (sorry I can’t remember the reference) based on NLP languaging.  I have had good
results with this technique before. 

I asked Marie to focus on the discomfort and answer the following as quickly as possible.

What color is the discomfort?

Is it bigger or smaller than your hand?

Is it transparent or solid?

Is it moving or still?

And, most importantly:  If it were associated with a feeling, what would that be?  To Marie’s surprise, the
answer to the last question was “sadness.”  So we tapped on that:

Even though I have this sadness in my shoulder….

Before we had completed the round of tapping, she said, “Oh!  Of course!”  She then told me that the
eighth anniversary of her mother’s death was in three days, and she was going to be away on a business
trip on that day.  She began crying, saying that she didn’t realize how important it was to be home on that
day.  (Her mother had died suddenly and unexpectedly at home, in Marie’s arms.)  We then tapped on:

Even though I am very sad that I won’t be home on the anniversary of mom’s death…

When that round ended, Marie said that she had always felt bad about the event of her mother’s death
because, even though her mother had died in her arms, Marie felt like she hadn’t said the right things to
her as she was passing in order to comfort her.  We tapped on:

Even though I feel guilty and bad that I didn’t give mom the comfort she needed as she was dying in my
arms…

Even though I didn’t say the right thing to her as she died in my arms…

Even though I should have known the right thing to say to comfort mom as she was dying in my arms…

(Notice the reference to the fact that Marie’s mother had died in Marie’s arms, and it was her shoulder
and upper arm that was now hurting.)

I then suggested to Marie that it really was a lovely and comforting thing in itself that her mother died in
her daughter’s arms.  I said, “Just think, when you die, wouldn’t it be nice to be in held in one of your
children’s arms when it happened?”  She said she hadn’t thought of that, but it was true.
The session was ending and Marie’s shoulder discomfort was still a 5 on a scale of 0 to 10, but she said
that “everything feels different.”  I had an intuitive feeling that after sleeping, her balance would be
restored in the morning.

The next morning she called to say that she felt great and that all her shoulder and arm and neck pain
was completely gone.  She also felt lighter about her mother’s death and didn’t feel the sadness that she
wouldn’t be home for the anniversary.  EFT resolved both the physical symptoms and the underlying
emotional cause.

Nancy Privett