EMDR: Rewiring the Body’s Natural Healing Pathways

Trauma has a way of imprinting itself into the body, not just as memories, but as patterns. Patterns of fear, hypervigilance, shutdown, pain, and beliefs about ourselves we never consciously chose. Over time, those patterns become the lens through which we experience the world.

This is why modalities that honor the body’s natural processing system are so effective. Recently, I completed training in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) so I can incorporate this powerful modality into my work with clients. And what I love most about EMDR is that it doesn’t impose anything artificial on the psyche. It simply helps the brain finish a job it tried to do long ago: heal.

What EMDR Actually Is

EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, rhythmic left-right eye movements, tapping, or auditory cues, to activate the same neural pathways your brain uses when you walk, run, or engage in somatic activities that move energy through the body.

This bilateral movement mimics the brain’s natural REM-sleep processing system. It opens the “file drawer” of stuck, unprocessed trauma and allows the mind-body system to digest it in real time, completing what the nervous system couldn’t complete during the original event.

EMDR is not hypnosis, reliving trauma, or talking in circles.

It is intentional, structured, and rooted in the body’s own biology.

Why EMDR Works

When you experience trauma, especially trauma that overwhelms your system, memories can become “stuck.” The body freezes, and the nervous system stores the moment as if it’s still happening. This is where symptoms often come from:

• Chronic anxiety

• Shutdown and avoidance

• Pain or tension patterns

• Negative self-beliefs (“I’m unsafe,” “I’m powerless,” “I’m not enough.”)

• Emotional reactivity

• Trauma responses that seem “out of nowhere”

EMDR reopens the pathway and allows the brain to reprocess the memory with present-day wisdom and present-day safety.

A helpful image is to imagine old cartoon reels, the kind where images flash frame-by-frame. During EMDR, traumatic memories often move like that: fragmented pieces, slowed down, passing through your awareness as the nervous system resolves what’s incomplete.

Clients often feel a full somatic experience during this: warmth, release, shaking, insight, tears, relief. The body does what it was designed to do.

Getting to the Root Cause (Without Unnecessary Labels)

One of the strengths of EMDR is that it can resolve symptoms at their origin, which often eliminates the need for excessive diagnoses or allows clients to move out of diagnoses that were simply trauma adaptations.

So many “mental health diagnoses” are really the body saying:

“Something overwhelmed me, and I didn’t get to finish processing it.”

When you support the body in completing that process, symptoms can shift dramatically.

Even physical pain, especially chronic pain, often carries a trauma component. Research on somatic markers shows that trauma can create muscular holding patterns, altered pain pathways, and inflammation.

When trauma is resolved, the body often releases the pain pattern it was protecting.

ACEs: Why Some Journeys Take Longer

The ACEs score (Adverse Childhood Experiences) measures early experiences of neglect, abuse, instability, or chronic stress. A higher ACEs score means the nervous system had to adapt early, often before language or memory were fully formed.

For these clients, EMDR can be incredibly powerful, but the journey may be deeper and more layered. Why?

1. Trauma was ongoing, not a single event

2. The brain formed beliefs early (“I’m unsafe,” “I’m alone,” “I have to handle everything myself”)

3. Early memories may surface, sometimes ones that were partially or completely repressed

4. EMDR may connect adult trauma back to childhood roots, where the original maladaptive beliefs were formed

This is not regression, it is integration. EMDR helps weave a new narrative:

“I am safe now. I am supported now. The past is not the present.”

Over time, clients develop new default patterns that replace the old trauma-based ones.

The Body’s Role: Somatic Integration

EMDR works beautifully when paired with body-based therapies, because trauma isn’t just a psychological experience, it’s a physical one.

Pairing EMDR with:

• Myofascial release

• Chiropractic work

• Breathwork

• Nervous system regulation practices

• SPIN / reflex integration

• Red-light and photobiomodulation

…can accelerate healing by releasing the physical tension patterns the trauma created.

EMDR frees the mind.

Somatic work frees the body.

Together, they create profound and lasting regulation.

EMDR as a Path Forward

What I love most about EMDR is that it honors the truth that the body already knows how to heal. Trauma interrupted the process, EMDR simply gives it back.

Healing doesn’t require reliving every detail or assigning more labels.

It requires giving the nervous system the environment, safety, and rhythm it needed all along.

If you’re curious about EMDR, exploring somatic healing, or navigating trauma patterns that keep resurfacing, I would be honored to support your journey.