Tapping on specific body areas, mostly acupuncture / acupressure points on the face and head, are at the core of the Stop Your Pain Now! techniques that I pioneered in the 1980s. Tapping stimulates nerve endings in the skin that are sensitive to touch and pressure. Tapping these nerve endings blocks the input to the brain from pain nerve endings.
Various tapping techniques for pain relief, emotions, habits, and other health-related issues have been around for such a long time that many people have no clue of their origin, but I was there when these natural remedies were first introduced.
My first five years in practice was spent in the office of the legendary clinical investigator Dr. George Goodheart in downtown Detroit, Michigan. In the late 1970s when I was working in this office, he developed the concept of tapping acupuncture points. This breakthrough was based on principles of pain neurology that had been introduced shortly before that.
Originally, Dr. Goodheart found that holding light finger pressure to acupuncture / acupressure points on the body would achieve some success. He realized, however, that the touch and pressure nerve endings in the skin adapted very rapidly to the light touch stimulus. Just as you soon forget that your clothes are touching your skin, or that your watch is touching your wrist, the brain turns off irrelevant inputs so it will not be overwhelmed with extraneous information. In order to continuously attract the brain’s attention, and thereby make a significant change in pain, one must repeatedly touch (that is, tap) the skin so the brain cannot ignore the stimulus.
This was a huge step forward in pain relief using hands-on, natural health methods. Dr. Goodheart taught these principles to me and others. Since that time, many doctors of various disciplines have adopted these tapping procedures.
In the late 1980s, as I further investigated the latest advances in the neurology of pain, I employed tapping in combination with stimulation of various brain areas associated with pain to eradicate patients’ pain. This was the evolution of the Stop Your Pain Now! techniques that are discussed in the Stop your Pain Now! Handbook, Audio CDs, and DVDs. Take a look at our free video clips demonstrating some of the Stop your Pain Now! methods.
