The Tapping Solution for Chronic Back Pain

Relief from chronic pain could be at your fingertips. There are two basic types of pain: acute and chronic. We’ve all experienced acute pain in the form of bumps, scrapes, sprains and similar injuries. However, chronic pain — which affects more than 100 million Americans — is different.

Chronic Pain is often both misdiagnosed and improperly addressed (e.g. treated with endless prescriptions for narcotics). However, best-selling author Dr. Nick Ortner has an alternate solution: tapping.

Such practices as acupuncture and acupressure assist in pain relief by elevating the endorphin levels in our bodies. Since tapping engages acupressure points, it also cues our bodies to release those endorphins. In his book, The Tapping Solution for Pain Relief, Ortner offers instruction in tapping techniques to reduce or eliminate chronic pain. How does it work? Simple. While focusing on a specific negative issue or emotion, you use your fingertips to tap 5–7 times each on of the body’s twelve meridian points. According to Ortner, the act of tapping on these meridian points while concentrating on resolving negativity can actually help access your body’s natural capacity to rescue itself.

Along the way, Ortner also helps explain how tapping works by examining studies that link negative emotions and pain. In the 1970s, Dr. Candace Pert made a medical breakthrough in documenting how doctors have scientifically proven the link between our emotions and our physical bodies. Thus positive emotions may help us heal, while negative emotions can cause us pain. Ortner explains that since negative emotions are part of the body’s stress response, “that stress response can also turn short-term pain — like pain we experience after an injury — into long-term chronic pain.” However, tapping has been shown to interrupt that stress response and significantly lower levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol. “By putting the body into a more relaxed state, tapping allows the body to do what it’s meant to do, which is heal itself,” he says.

Ortner has also created a documentary about this practice ( The Tapping Solution) and produces the annual worldwide online event, the Tapping World Summit, which has been attended by over a million people. For more information visit thetappingsolution.com.

Also check out: Tension? Explore the Alexander Technique