What is EMDR?

In 1987, Francine Shapiro noticed on a walk on a park that negative thoughts she was having spontaneously disappeared. She got curious and retraced her actions, realizing that she’d been watching something moving back and forth, left to right, when the thoughts left.

She found that these eye movements decreased negative thinking, and brought her curiosity to the others, engaging in research, and developing the standard protocol of EMDR as we know it today.

EMDR helps individual reduce distress and let go of negative beliefs associated with traumatic events. Bilateral stimulation (auditory, visual, or tactile), paired with brief visualization and somato-emotional focus on certain memories, stimulates the brain to resolve the unprocessed material creating the traumatic distress.