Emotional and intellectual effects on bilateral tapping while looking at a fixed direction

In Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, bilateral stimulation, such as eye movement and taps, can facilitate the brain to process on the material. Some therapists believe the effectiveness of EMDR could be enhanced if asking clients to move eyes to follow the alternating taps deliberately at same rhythm. However, there has been little discussion regarding the effects on allowing clients to retain their eyes on a single side. Would this be able to promote the effectiveness of treatment if allow a client to fix his or her eyes on a certain side while doing the bilateral stimulation? What effects does it have on a client’s healing? We find that in some cases of our EMDR treatment, clients reported certain effects when their eyes were looking at one side while doing alternating tapping. The content clients reported during the EMDR procedure were inclining to be more emotional driven when they were only looking at the left side; on the contrary, their reports were more intellectual focused when looking at the right side. It implied that during the bilateral stimulation, such as taps, looking at the left side might enhance emotional processing in the brain, while looking at the right side might promote intellectual processing in the brain. Such effects need to be proved in further studies.

Conference

English

Shuang GeSui

GeSui, S. (2014, January). Emotional and intellectual effects on bilateral tapping while looking at a fixed direction. In EMDR and research (Udi Oren, Chair). Presentation at the 2nd EMDR Asia International Conference, Manila, The Philippines