In this article, I am sharing the benefits of EFT to manage pain and stress after unexpected injuries.

Daily beach walks for sanity

In December 2024, I spent 6 weeks in South Africa to visit my mom with Parkinson’s Disease. I went for a beach walk every morning to start the day with self-care and build good energy to face the tasks for the rest of the day.

It was high summer in South Africa, and far hotter than comfortable. Walking in the shallow ocean water was a blissful relief.

One morning, as I strolled through the lovely 21 C water, I felt a sharp pain underneath one of my toes.

I hobbled out of the water to find a place to sit. It was getting more painful by the second! My first thought was that I must’ve stepped in a shard of glass.

This was the festive season, and unfortunately, many of the beautiful beaches in South Africa are being polluted by inconsiderate people leaving their trash (like glass bottles). I’ve seen numerous pieces of glass on my walks and have always tried to pick them up and deposit them into a bin.

Figuring out the problem

I sat down, trying to inspect the underside of my toes, which still had fine sand on them. Was there a little splinter of glass?

I remembered I had my water bottle with me, and rinsed off my toes so I could see better. By now, I was ready to cry — it felt like a little fire had been lit in my toe; it was unspeakably sore. I had to breathe really loudly to avoid screaming.

It crossed my mind that a piece of glass would cause constant pain, and not become more painful by the second. (Speaking from experience of that, too!)

Aha! I see it!

And then, I saw it… a bee sting, still stuck inside my toe!

(Note: And what was a bee doing in the shallow water of the ocean, you ask? The answer is at the bottom of this article.)

At this point, I could not think straight about all the advice I’d read about how to remove bee stings… I just knew it had to come out! So I probably injected even more of the venom as I scraped it out with a fingernail.

It burned like hell.

What to do now?

“Okay, it was out — now what?” I thought. I was very far away from the car (probably a km). I’d never be able to walk back to the car with this pain, never mind thinking straight to drive!

And that’s when finally, my brain kicked in, and I remembered I could use EFT for anything.

“Well, let’s try”, I thought. Nothing else was available.

I have to be honest and say the first few rounds (tapping through all the EFT points, over and over) I was just screaming and muttering one word and it starts with an “F”!

It felt like I needed to express the awful pain, the shock, the surprise, disappointment at not being able to complete my walk — and that particular word does all that, plus a lot extra. 😀

Thankfully it was only around 7. 30 am so there were no people around me to overhear the wailing!

Calming down

That provided the chance to start calming down my nervous system, which meant the parts of my brain that can think and make decisions, could come back online. Before that, it was just survival instinct only.

Finally, I could think straight enough to remember Intention Tapping.

With Intention Tapping, we release the emotional attachments and aversions we have to something (a person, an event, a situation, a thought). And we can also help our bodies to restore energy flow, so it can do its job.

Here are a few sentences I used on that day, while tapping through all the points:

• I release all my emotional attachments to this bee sting.
• I release all my emotional attachments to this fiery pain in my toe.
• I restore the right energy flow to my toe.
• I restore the right energy flow to the shock!
• I release all my emotional attachments to — “I won’t be able to get back to the car, and everything that means.”
• I release all my emotional attachments to the projection that this will hurt for a long time.

I did a few more, just kept breathing, tapping round after round, sometimes even silently. Just giving my body and mind a chance to process the whole thing.

(Side Note: if you want to know more about how to use Intention Tapping, drop me a note! I’m in training to become a Trainer, yay!)

Relief

And then, within a few minutes (I’m guessing around 7–8 or so), the pain started subsiding. Where it was a level of 9 before I started tapping, it came down to a 3 or 4.

I was able to gingerly and carefully, start putting weight on that foot. That wasn’t possible before! I slowly made my way back to the car and drove home, all in one piece.

Note: There is a follow-on to this story where I started noticing the mental after-effect of stepping on a bee at the beach, and I’ll write about that another time. It nicely illustrates our subconscious minds’ protective mechanisms.

Was it the EFT that helped the pain to subside?

Now, I don’t know how long it would have taken for the pain to subside if I had not been tapping. So of course, it’s hard to prove that it was the EFT that made the difference — I couldn’t do a double-blind experiment.😀

I do think and believe it was the tapping that helped the venom to work its way through so quickly.

I’ve recently become a practitioner of a method called “Old Pain 2 Go” — where we learned how complex the pain processes in the brain are. It calculates how much pain to send to a specific body part. When we feel unsafe, our brain produces far more pain signals.

With the tapping, I was able to work through the “I’m unsafe and this will never stop” feelings very quickly, so the brain could downgrade its ‘threat warning’ and thereby downgrade the pain.

(I’ll talk more about Old Pain 2 Go soon.)

EFT: A HandyTool wherever we go

EFT has been extremely helpful: an always-handy tool at my fingertips. I’ve been an EFT Practitioner for almost 20 years, and I’m still so grateful for it and to Gary Craig, the creator of EFT.

If you want to get started with EFT and not sure how, have a look at some of my EFT videos where you can tap along and get a sense of using it for yourself. Here’s a playlist of videos for when things don’t go as well as expected.

Questions?

Feel free to write me from the message box below. I answer personally, and might write an article or create a video just for you!

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If you were interested in why there are drowning bees in the ocean:

I’ve seen drowning bees on so many of my morning beach walks. I asked ChatGPT, and it provided a few reasons that all make sense. Here’s the list, if you’re curious.

Bees near the ocean might seem surprising, but there could be a few reasons for their presence:

1. Water Source: Bees are often drawn to water sources to regulate their hive’s temperature and dilute honey for feeding. The salty sea water might attract them if there are no other nearby water sources. However, bees don’t usually handle salt water well, which could explain why they get overwhelmed and drown.

2. Wind Currents: Strong winds along the Natal South Coast might carry bees out over the ocean, disorienting them. Bees aren’t natural fliers over large bodies of water, so they could tire quickly and fall into the waves.

3. Floral Resources Near the Coast: The Natal South Coast is home to many flowering plants that attract bees. If they’re foraging near the coast, they might inadvertently end up in the water, especially if the waves come close to flowering vegetation or if they misjudge their flight.

4. Migration or Disorientation: In some cases, bees might be disoriented by reflective surfaces like the ocean, which can confuse their navigation system. This disorientation can lead to accidental encounters with the water.

5. Heat and Exhaustion: On particularly hot days, bees might search for water or shade near the coast, and the added stress of heat or exhaustion could make them more prone to accidents.

It’s sad to see them in trouble, but this is part of the natural challenges they face. If you’re interested in helping, you could set up a small, shallow freshwater source nearby to encourage them to stay away from the salty waves. Bees tend to prefer water sources they can land on safely, like a shallow bowl with pebbles or sticks for perches.