Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) has become a remarkable therapeutic tool used to assist survivors of traumatic incidents to recover the loss of self and personal functioning that frequently accompanies trauma. Studies demonstrate that by using EMDR as an adjunct to therapy, survivors can more quickly experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to accomplish. Developed by Dr. Francine Shipiro, EMDR research is demonstrating that the mind is equipped to naturally heal from psychological trauma much in the same manner that the body is equipped to heal from physical trauma.
Theorists propose that when an emotional incident is too painful for an individual to consciously cope with, the resulting memory becomes “locked” in the mind. It is thought that all the emotions and cognition, as well as, sensations associated with a traumatic event become frozen within the subconscious. While an individual may make every effort to forget the event or to avoid thinking about it, even if for years, the effects of the traumatic incident may still be expressed through emotional and/or physical issues currently causing that client distress.
As a result, survivors of trauma frequently suffer from sleep disturbances, anxiety, depression, unexplained anger, and dramatic mood swings, as well as, disturbances in the self perception, beliefs, relationships and physical well being. This combination of symptoms often make the experience of living extremely distressful or painful. EMDR, as an adjunct to therapy, can offer incredible relief particularly to those clients for whom traditional talk therapy has proven to be less than successful.
EMDR is a non-evasive technique that involves the simulation of rapid eye movement (REM), which occurs naturally when we sleep, during wakefulness. This is accomplished by following the therapist’s fingers across the field of vision after an established protocol for treatment is generated.
It appears that there is a connection between rapid eye movements and a process by which our mind begins to naturally heal traumatic emotional material. It is an interesting fact that research has consistently demonstrated a corresponding decrease in an individual’s ability to enter into REM sleep after having experienced a traumatic event. This suggest that avoidance plays a part in preventing the individual from healing, and that the mind is equipped to do this naturally if allowed.
Some theorists believe that by stimulating this process during “wakefulness”the blocked material is activated and made available to an “inherent information processing system” within the brain. This mechanism is thought to be designed to digest highly charged emotional material and return the functioning of the mind to its natural state prior to the trauma.
On some occasions during an EMDR session, very strong emotional reactions may occur as the traumatic material is being re-processed. As your therapist, I will prepare you for this event, should it occur, and provide you with strategies that will allow you to continue to move towards a healthy recovery. It is important that you understand that EMDR is only conducted when the therapist has properly prepared the client, and when the client feels emotionally ready to do the hard work of healing.
Trained in the use of EMDR in 1994, I have assisted many clients as they have made profound recoveries and returned to living healthy lives after enduring incidences of abuse, rape, or life threatening traumas.
Two other exciting healing techniques for the management of trauma and strong emotion are Thought Field Therapy (TFT) and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). Both of these techniques have roots in quantum physics, eastern medicine, and acupressure, and have been labeled “energy psycho therapies”. I suspect that in the future EMDR, as well, will be found to work directly with the bodies’ energy systems. It is my belief that these techniques will revolutionize psychotherapy and medicine in the 21stCentury, although it will require open-mindedness in a profession schooled in traditional thinking.
Developed predominantly by Dr. Roger Callahan, and later modified by Gary Craig, these techniques can often quickly and painlessly diagnose energy deficient meridian systems that are thought to become blocked by unresolved emotional material. These energy disturbances are thought to hold an “energetic imprint” of a traumatic event, or unresolved emotion, which will create specific emotional states when triggered. The memories are not thought to be stored in the brain but in rather in the chi or “life energy” that flows in, around, and through the physical body. It is common for clients to report significant relief from depression, anxiety, long-standing phobias, compulsions, and traumas within minutes, or in just a few brief treatments. The removal of emotional blockages has also been shown to have a positive impact on the healing of the physical body. In many eastern therapies, all disease is thought to have an unresolved emotional component. This mind-body connection is being recognized today in western medicine as well.
TFT is an integrated, meridian-based, mind-body-energy psychotherapy, which includes diagnostic and treatment procedures while the client is attuned to their problem. In TFT, the negative emotions are alleviated through the gentle self-activation of designated acupressure points, which are said to neutralize or eliminate the energetic cause of the experienced emotional problem at it’s fundamental root.
Some clients may not be comfortable with the arm testing or “applied kinesiology” that is used when TFT diagnostics is recommended. However, applied kinesiology plays an intricate role in the causal diagnosis procedure of Thought Field Therapy. In this procedure, muscle testing is utilized which provides information that is believed to tap the flow of chi energy in the body, rather than muscle strength itself.
This testing requires some physical contact between the therapist and client. The therapist will ask the client to extend his/her left arm horizontally to the side. The therapist will gently try to push the arm down while the client gently resists, thereby assessing the client’s energetic strength. At the same time, the client will be instructed to touch each of the meridian’s sites with their own right hand until the arm cannot be pushed down. Once a strong arm response is achieved, the client is ready to treatment.
The client will then be asked to think of something upsetting which will usually cause the energy strength through the arm to deplete upon testing. The client will be instructed to touch various meridian sites while the therapist simultaneously pushes on the client’s arm again. The basic principle of causal diagnosis is that if the therapist pushes down on the client’s arm to find that it is initially weak while the client thinks of something upsetting, and then becomes strong when the client simultaneously touches a meridian site, this reveals that this meridian site is the correct point to be treated. Testing in this manner will reveal a sequence of points to be treated by tapping. Correct sequencing is crucial to the success of the thought field therapy. Through causal diagnosis, a sequence of treatment sites becomes the diagnosed algorithm for treating a specific emotional state or trauma.
Through meditation and practice I have developed an ability to muscle test myself on behalf of the client eliminating the need for direct therapist-client contact in most cases with better result.
EFT, though similar, does not require muscle testing in order to be effective. The client and therapist work to construct an “intention statement” that incorporates the problem the client is experiencing with a statement of self-acceptance that energetically prepares the client’s system for change. The client then taps a series of acupressure sites, as directed by the therapist, while repeating a “reminder phrase” that helps the client remain attuned to the thought field. Occasionally, and only with the permission of the client, the therapist may tap for the client if tapping becomes too much of a distraction, or if the client is too upset while working through a strong emotion, to do the tapping for themself.
Reiki, is another healing art in which the reiki practitioner prepares him/herself to act as a channel to move ki, or the “universal life force” to the client through various hand positions. This energy is said to have divine consciousness, and thus once channeled to the client, automatically knows where it is needed and what must be done to correct problems in thespiritual, mental, emotional, and physical bodies of the client. As a Reiki Master, I have incorporated some of these techniques with the others mentioned, particularly when resolved deep emotional and psychological pain.
If you have a computer, I would like to suggest that you do some research on your own by directing you to the appropriate internet sites. An informed client commands the greatest power to heal. As always, I will not allow any participation in any technique that you, as the client, are not fully informed of, or comfortable with.
It is important to remember that each client must define what is traumatic, and what treatments may be beneficial. We are all created with different abilities to manage emotional events, as well as, different sensitivities to the emotional experiences that we will encounter in the process of life. No one event is experienced as universally traumatic.
As compliment to the acupuncture techniques offered at Asian Institute, the emergence of these energy psycho-techniques offers significant support for the proposition that nature, or perhaps a higher power, has provided us with a means of correcting disabling emotional states of being. The reality may be that it simply has taken us this long to observe them.
Borrowed from his workshop (Using EFT for Healing Chronic Health Issues) Dr. Stephen Daniel notes that prominent physicist in the last 77 years, and others going back hundreds of years have all said the same thing:The root of health and the root of all illness is an energy problem in the body and mind. When we find a way to fix that problem, it will revolutionize health.” To quote several:
“All matter is energy”
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“Treating Humans without concept of energy is treating dead matter”
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, M.D. Hungary, Nobel Prize Laureate (1893-1986)
“Future medicine will be based on controlling energy fields.”
Prof. William Tiller, Ph.D. (Stanford University)
“Diseases are to be diagnosed and prevented via energy field assessment.”
George Crile Sr., M.D., Founder of the Cleveland Clinic (1864-1943)
“Body chemistry is governed by quantum cellular Fields.”
Prof. Murry Gell-Mann, Nobel Prize Laureate, USA
“All living organisms emit field.”
Semyon D. Kirlian, U.S.S.R. (1900-1980)
Donna Eden is a present day energy healer and clairvoyant who has the unique ability to see subtle energies that move in, through, and around the human body. Her gift has lent further credibility in this century to what Eastern doctors have known throughout the ages. In her book, “Energy Medicine” Donna states that, “every person carries a distinguishing energy, so too does every cell, every organ, and every system of the body.” She further suggests that through skillful “energy testing” a person’s unique and ever changing energy field can be assessed and properly treated increasing health and vitality in the body. Developed as muscle testing by George Goodheart and later refined by his protege’ Alan Beardall, energy testing is thought to allow the tester to determine if a meridian, chakra, or auric layer of the client’s subtle energy field is blocked or flowing properly.
Chinese medicine is founded in the belief that illness shows up in the bodies subtle energy fields long before it manifest as symptoms or disease in the physical body. When illness has presented in the physical body it is thought to be the result of blocked, and/or unbalanced energy primarily within the meridian systems. Acupuncture serves to restore this energetic balance resetting the flow of energy within the body as a precursor to restoring health. While acupuncture is beginning to find acceptance in some western medical circles, the concept of energy healing has yet to gain mainstream recognition despite support from the scientific community.
Similarly, the field of traditional psychotherapy, and western medicine, have been overwhelmed by studies and scientific research that support the rather dramatic connection between emotional health and illness. Stress, trauma, along with chronic grief, anger and resentment have all been shown to have a debilitating effect on the immune system and have been statistically linked to higher levels of strokes, hearth disease and immune compromised illnesses. (The Healthy Immune System edited by Vijay Fadia 2006)
In the early 1980’s pioneering research in the field of psychotherapy examining the technique of Eye Movement and Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro, and the energy work of Thought Field Therapy (TFT) developed by Dr. Roger Callahan challenged the traditional “insight model” of achieving mental health and subsequent physical well being.
Offshoots of their work culminating in Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and the Tapas Method (forms of acupressure and acupuncture stimulation) have given birth to an innovative level of mental health service for clients suffering from chronic emotional and psychological conditions, while noting the subsequent positive impact this has had on numerous physical conditions. Recent scientific research has also confirmed the efficacy of prayer and meditation as a healing form of energy. While psychotherapy is at the doorstep of a new era, mainstream acceptance of the potent healing force of energy techniques has yet to gain formal recognition among the psychological community as well.
After eighteen years of private practice and over thirty years in the field of mental health, I am excited to be practicing at the Asian Institute of Healing Arts. While I am licenced as a Specialist in Marital and Family Therapy, I have developed extensive skills in the resolution of traumatic memory. It is in my devotion to helping clients with this particular psychological syndrome lead normal lives, that my appreciation and gratitude for energy techniques developed.
Dr. Meister and I have a deep respect for, and belief in, the Art of Energy Medicine. He understands the impact that energy work can have in healing the body, while I understand the impact that energy work can have healing emotional pain. Combining disciplines, one working with the body, and the other working with the spirit of those who have disruptive underlying emotional issues, we believe all possible energy channels will be open to healing. It is our hope that this format will bring a full compliment of services to those seeking better health and stability in a rather demanding time.
TFT (Thought Field Therapy) Resource Site:
EMDR Resource Sites:
EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques):
Reiki:
www.WorldwideReikiOrganization.org
Reiki Photographs:
