Your Brain Is Your Body: EMDR as a Somatic Therapy
WE USE THE BODY TO HEAL THE MIND (and VICE VERSA)
I’m going to start this blog post in the most therapist-y way I can think of -
How are you? How are you feeling? I know you can't answer out loud in a way where I’ll hear it, but I'm genuinely asking you to check in and answer the question:
How are you feeling right now?
What are your thoughts like in this moment — excited, anxious, curious, doom-spiral-y? And what about your body in this moment — does it match your head, or are they sending totally different signals? Quiet mind, tense shoulders? Tired brain, weirdly wired body?
I ask my clients this all the time, because most of us are just pushing through life without actually checking in. And when we slow down to notice what's happening in our whole self, we learn a lot about where we actually need some attention.
This is especially true in EMDR therapy — which uses body cues to measure how much healing is actually happening. Here's how.
WHY TALK THERAPY ISN'T ALWAYS ENOUGH
Traditional therapy is great at helping you understand why you feel the way you do. Maybe you trace your fear of public speaking all the way back to a fourth-grade teacher who mocked your stutter. Insight! Growth! Self-compassion! And sometimes that's genuinely enough and the case is closed.
But sometimes it's not. You get it intellectually — and your palms still sweat the second you're called on in a meeting. That's because our experiences don't just live in our brains. They live in our bodies too. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eP83QSAf2A]
Our nervous system was designed to keep us alive, not comfortable. Back in caveman times, pausing to think "hm, is that rustling actually a tiger?" was how you became tiger lunch. So our bodies learned to react fast — fight, flight, freeze, fawn — before our brain even weighs in.
The problem? That same system fires when we're not in danger at all. And when trauma, anxiety, or depression gets stuck in the body, talking it through might not fully release it.
That's where EMDR comes in.
SO WHAT IS EMDR, EXACTLY?
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. (Yes, it's a terrible name. Even the woman who invented it — Dr. Francine Shapiro [https://www.emdr.com/francine-shapiro-ph-d/] — said she wished she'd just called it Reprocessing Therapy. But here we are.)
EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (alternating left-right brain activation) to help your brain reprocess stuck memories — the ones that still trigger you, make you anxious, or show up as chronic pain or shutdown. It's been extensively studied and is recommended by the World Health Organization, the American Psychiatric Association, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as a top treatment for PTSD.
[https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/post-traumatic-stress-disorder]
[https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/ptsd.pdf]
[https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treat/txessentials/emdr_pro.asp#six]
HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU'RE FEELING IT, IF NOT FOR THE THOUGHTS?
EMDR connects you to your body in two main ways.
First — you literally have to move. The whole thing that sets EMDR apart is the bilateral stimulation (BLS) happening while you're recalling the traumatic memory. BLS just means alternating stimulation from one side of the body to the other, back and forth. That can look like:
Eyes moving side to side (think: what we imagine hypnosis looks like — but EMDR is not hypnosis)
Tapping hands on knees
Walking or riding a bike
A ping alternating between your left and right ear
Holding "tappers" that buzz left hand, then right hand
When your brain gets that back-and-forth input while you're moving through a memory, it helps it reprocess what got stuck.
Second — your body is how we measure progress. When I'm working with a client, I'm constantly checking in:
"What emotion do you feel right now, thinking about that experience? Where in your body do you feel it? What does it actually feel like — a pit in your stomach, a tightness in your chest? And how strong is it, 0 to 10?"
We might start at a dark, heavy feeling of dread sitting in the chest at an 8 out of 10. And then we do the work — and we keep checking back in. Maybe that dread shifts into anger. Maybe the heavy cloud starts to break up. Maybe by the end of the session we're at a 3 out of 10. When a client can sit with the memory and feel no disturbance at all, we know we're done (for now).
Being an EMDR client myself didn't just bring me a lot of healing — it taught me how much my emotions actually live in my body, and how hard my body is always working to communicate with me. That awareness changed how I move through hard feelings in everyday life too, whether that's using BLS on myself, breathing deeply, or a grounding meditation.
Here's the truth: our bodies are supposed to feel things — pleasant ones and deeply uncomfortable ones. The feeling isn't the problem. Spending your life trying to outrun it is. EMDR can help you actually face, feel, and heal the hard stuff.
If you're ready to take your healing somewhere new, check out our EMDR Therapy or schedule a consultation to find out if it's the right fit for you.