Alleviating physical tension and pain using EMDR

This paper describes the utilization of EMDR for physical pain and tension suffered by three tsunami survivors. Physical pain can be conceptualized as caused by trauma, a reaction to trauma, may be exacerbated by trauma or a cause of trauma. Even if it is purely physical, pain apparently impacts psychological aspect of a person e.g. emotion, cognition. EMDR was used to process physical pain due to motorbike accidents and severe headache that presumably related to high blood pressure or sun stroke. During desensitization phase the patients focused mainly on their pain or part of the body that was dysfunctional, while simultaneously attended to the sensation of tapping. All of the patients admitted that the pain were completely alleviated and positive change of cognition occurred after one session of 25-35 minute (desensitization phase with tapping) EMDR. The effect of these one-session EMDR treatments on those patients maintained for months later.

Conference

English

Shinto Sukirna

Sukirna, S. (2010, July). Alleviating physical tension and pain using EMDR. Presentation at the 1st EMDR Asia Conference, Bali, Indonesia