EMDR Therapy

What is EMDR?

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a specialized body and mind therapy that can help heal past, recent, and even present-day experiences causing distress. It’s been extensively researched and is well-established worldwide for mental health treatment.

EMDR empowers the individual to tap into the body’s natural healing processes in order to integrate and move beyond traumas and disturbing life experiences. As life happens, our body and brain work together to organize the information we receive. The brain-body duo uses what we’ve learned along the way to make sense of what's happening to and around us. But when a person is overwhelmed, the brain cannot process information in the way it is intended to, and an event can become “frozen in time”. The way we make meaning of the event becomes distorted which then influences how we process new information and can interfere with the way a person sees the world and relates to other people in the present.

EMDR utilizes bilateral stimulation (BLS), like eye movements or tapping, to activate the left and right hemispheres of the brain and reprocess these memories much like we do during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep cycles to process the day’s events. This allows individuals to target and reprocess past memories in order to find relief from the negative messages, emotions, and body sensations associated with the trauma. The experience is still remembered, but the response from the original event is cleared and new experiences can be processed more effectively.