A randomized clinical trial of emotional freedom techniques for chronic pain: Live versus self-paced delivery with 6-month follow-up

Randomized trial👥 147 participants⚖️ vs. waitlistModerate rigor✓ Source-checked📍 Australia

In plain English. 147 adults living with ongoing pain — most of them women in their 50s — took a six-week tapping program, either with a live instructor or working through it online at their own pace, while others waited. Both tapping groups felt less pain and functioned better in daily life, and that improvement was still there six months later. Notably, doing the program alone online worked just as well as having a live instructor, suggesting tapping can be delivered remotely without losing its benefit.

What they found

147

people took part

147 chronic pain sufferers were randomized to a 6-week EFT program (delivered live in-person or self-paced online) or a waitlist; EFT significantly reduced pain severity and interference and improved quality of life, with gains sustained at 6-month follow-up, and the live and self-paced online formats were equally effective.

How the study worked

Who took partadults with chronic pain (89.9% female, mean age 54.6) (n=147)

What they didIn a randomized controlled trial, participants were randomly assigned to receive tapping or a comparison condition, then measured and compared.

Compared withwaitlist

Measured withpain severity, pain interference, quality of life

💡 Where this could help

If these six-month gains keep holding in bigger samples, imagine someone with years of chronic pain, unable to travel regularly to a clinic, working through a self-paced online program from their kitchen table, learning to administer tapping to themselves with results similar to showing up in person and a practitioner guiding each session. That equivalence between formats could make relief reachable for people in rural areas, those with mobility limits, or anyone who can't afford ongoing in-person sessions.

🔬 What to study next

Since live and self-paced delivery produced equivalent six-month results, the next question is what's happening physiologically during that pain relief — does self-administered tapping shift inflammatory markers linked to chronic pain (like CRP or IL-6), change pain-related brain activity on fMRI, or alter sleep architecture via actigraphy, regardless of whether someone learned it from a screen or in a room. A dose-response study tracking how much practice produces how much relief could also help programs identify the minimum ongoing practice needed to sustain benefit past six months.

The full record

Design	Randomized trial
Participants	147 people
Population	adults with chronic pain (89.9% female, mean age 54.6)
Comparison group	waitlist
Outcome measures	pain severity, pain interference, quality of life
Journal	European Journal of Pain
Year	2025
Country	Australia
Language	English
Method	EFT / tapping
Publication type	Study / trial
Verification	✓ Confirmed against the primary source

Read the original study →

Cite this study

APA

Stapleton, P., Wilson, C., Uechtritz, N., Stewart, M., McCosker, M., O'Keefe, T., & Blanchard, M. (2025). A randomized clinical trial of emotional freedom techniques for chronic pain: Live versus self-paced delivery with 6-month follow-up. European Journal of Pain. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejp.4740

This record is part of the Tapping Evidence Base — an openly-sourced, fully-referenced directory of the research on EFT/tapping. Explore more studies on Pain