EMDR and right-left brain stimulation

This presentation will present and demonstrate my clinical observations, that clients while talking or working on their issues will sometime lean their heads toward the right or the left shoulder. People with their heads to the left will tend to report thoughts, while those with their heads to the right will tend to report images and emotions. In therapy, utilizing EMDR when clients have leaned their heads to one side, I have tended to reinforce the side they put their head to, utilizing eye movements in a diagonal direction, corresponding to the direction the head was learning. That is. If the person learned their head to the left, I would move my hand from their upper left side to their lower right side, and opposite if their heads leaned to the right. The outcome of these diagonal eye movements was that it tended to evoke cognitions when the head leaned to the left or images when the head learned to the right. Client who come to therapy requesting help concerning fears, tend to lean their heads to the rights, corresponding with imagery and imagination of the right hemisphere and may lack the cognitive, logical thinking skills (left hemisphere) to counter their fears. With these clients, when the SUDS do not drop significantly, I will tend to do body-cognitive interweave. I request that the client lean their head on the left and work over and over with cirrsponding sets of diangonal eye movmenets. The left hemisphere of the brain is thus stimulated and logical thinking (PC) is enhanced. This helps to counter and balance out the negative images, and the fear decreased.

Through care histories and examples, I would like to accomplish the following objectives: 1) to make the participants more aware of body language and it its significance in therapy; 2) to examine the differences between the right and left hemispheres of the brain and their relationship to therapy with EMDR; and 3) to introduce and demonstrate a body-cognitive interweave in EMDR therapy with client s who request help with fears.

Conference

English

Michel Allon

Allon, M. (2004, June). EMDR and right-left brain stimulation. Presentation at the 5th EMDR Europe Association Conference, Stockholm, Sweden