Okay,
Hello.
My name is Felicia and you are probably listening to this because you are curious what EMDR tapping is and means.
I want to be clear that this in no way can replace therapy and yet it can be a great resource especially for being an adjunct in addition to mental health work especially if you are working with a therapist who has training in EMDR because while you're doing that work it can bring up a lot of tough stuff and in between sessions it can be wonderful to be able to do these what they're called is resources.
I jokingly call it bubble wrap.
It's kind of helping soften the edges of some of the tougher sharper experiences that you might have while processing and working through trauma.
So just to be clear this is not the full-blown EMDR therapy where you would be working through old childhood or trauma wounds.
Sometimes you can also use EMDR to work through cravings,
Anxieties,
Negative beliefs about yourself that might be playing into depression or attempts to control or regulate your nervous system but that are ending up to be ways that are actually getting in the way of living your life rather than helping.
So basically how EMDR works I'm going to give you a little mini lesson here so that you can understand what we are and are not doing here.
EMDR helps you take negative maladaptive beliefs about yourself that are negatively impacting your life and replace them with adaptive beliefs and you do that through something called reprocessing and desensitizing.
We're not doing that here.
That is something you need to do with a licensed professional who's trained in EMDR processing because in a way you need like a lifeguard of sorts to be able to help guide you,
Help you figure out when to take breaks,
Help make it a therapeutic experience.
So we're not doing that here.
What we are doing is we're taking some of the resources and skills that we teach people when they're going through that really tough work of doing EMDR and we're bringing small components of just the bilateral stimulation or tapping which I will explain later in this talk that are beneficial in a way that's really cool.
Basically when we tap in a slow deliberate manner we're doing something called bilateral stimulation.
Again I'll go into that a little bit more in depth later but that soothes our nervous system and it helps integrate and strengthen in calm experiences,
Good positive experiences.
So we're just taking something that's a small component of EMDR and it's based on some really cool science and we're just adapting it in to making these guided meditations even more beneficial for you.
So if you're interested in doing the full EMDR experience again that is something you would need to do with a trained professional and a licensed therapist but here we're going to go ahead and we're just going to use tidbits of EMDR that are really cool and beneficial.
So that's a little bit about the background of this and I'm going to go ahead and talk you through some of the reasoning behind why we do this tapping and how to do it and give you a little bit of guidance and an experience of what that might be like to try it.
So EMDR resource tapping is a technique that helps you feel grounded and calm by focusing on safe soothing experiences.
It's like gently guiding your body and mind to reconnect with a place of peace and stability.
So I'm going to go ahead and guide you through a simple tapping exercise.
If you're unsure about the physical part that's perfectly okay.
Just follow along with me at your own pace and remember there's no right or wrong way to do this.
To start you'll go ahead and find a comfortable sitting position.
Maybe your feet are flat on the ground and your hands might be relaxed in your lap and when you're ready you can just go ahead and if your palms are down on your legs you can just go ahead and lightly lift your fingers and drop them down.
We're going to do this alternating between one hand and then the other.
So right left right left.
So gently lifting your fingers either your index and middle fingers or all of your fingers so that the pads of your fingers are ready to make contact with your body.
The tapping should be soft light and rhythmic not hard or forceful.
Think of it as a gentle tap like a soft knock on a door or a delicate pat on the back.
It should be soothing.
A common place to do this is going to be on your legs.
I like that people with chronic pain especially can like that because you're not having to engage very many muscles to do it or hold a specific position but otherwise just let the movement feel natural and effortless like slight drumming with your fingers.
You might even go ahead and do this on the arms or right below the collarbones.
So if you're going to do the arms or the collarbones what you can do is cross your arms across your chest almost like you're going to hug yourself and then just wrap one palm over like your right palm over your left upper arm and your left palm over your right upper arm.
Same thing you can just lift and tap lift and tap again slow and gentle if that's what feels good.
You can go firmer if that feels soothing and relaxing.
You can also keep that kind of crossed arm position but place your palms right underneath your collarbones on the upper part of your chest and tap there.
Again using an amount of pressure that feels good to you and is soothing.
So remember there's no need to force anything.
The tap should feel soothing not uncomfortable.
So gently lifting your fingers either your index and middle fingers or all of your fingers so that the pads of your fingers are ready to make contact with your body.
The tapping should be soft light and rhythmic not hard or forceful.
Think of it as a gentle tap like a soft knock on a door or delicate pat on the back.
It should be soothing.
A common place to do this is going to be on your legs.
I like that people with chronic pain especially can like that because you're not having to engage very many muscles to do it or hold a specific position.
But otherwise just let the movement feel natural and effortless like slight drumming with your fingers.
You might even go ahead and do this on the arms or right below the collarbones.
So if you're going to do the arms or the collarbones what you can do is cross your arms across your chest almost like you're going to hug yourself and then just wrap one palm over like your right palm over your left upper arm and your left palm over your right upper arm.
Same thing you can just lift and tap,
Lift and tap.
Again slow and gentle if that's what feels good.
You can go firmer if that feels soothing and relaxing.
You can also keep that kind of crossed arm position but place your palms right underneath your collarbones on the upper part of your chest and tap there.
Again using an amount of pressure that feels good to you and is soothing.
So remember there's no need to force anything.
The taps should feel soothing and not uncomfortable and again if at any point it feels awkward or too intense try adjusting the pressure or the rhythm or the speed and see if that's soothing and helpful.
But if it's not soothing or relaxing then go ahead and just stop doing this and this technique is probably something you're going to want to skip until it feels good for you.
The key is also a relaxed rhythm so I would go something like right left right left but again just go at a pace that feels good to you.
There's no right or wrong way to do this as long as it's soothing.
I want you to know that if this doesn't feel good to you that doesn't mean there's like anything inherently wrong with you.
It just means that for whatever reason this isn't working so there's no reason to push it.
If you're still really interested in bilateral simulation then you might go ahead and explore tracks that have audio versions of it where you're getting the sound more in one ear and then the other right left right side left side and so on.
And then if you ever end up doing EMDR with a therapist there's other ways of doing it such as holding bars that they're these kind of electric bars that vibrate in one hand and then the other and there's also a light bar or different ways where you can do eye movement which is the EM eye movement in EMDR.
That's where it actually started was moving your eyes from left to right to left to right which is also something you can try at this slow pace and see how it feels for you.
That might look like picking a corner of your room that's about an equal distance from the center of your vision to the right and then to the left or like the side of a window and the other side of a window or one piece of art to a window or so and so on and so on to be able to kind of look right left right left to get that bilateral stimulation that way.
So let's go ahead and practice this and I'll go ahead and lead it as if you're tapping but if you want to try eye movement from side to side go ahead and try that too.
As you begin to tap right left right left I want you to soften your attention onto what feels good like you're having a positive experience that could be a part of the body that feels good it could be a memory a mood a thought or a feeling that feels good in this moment as you're tapping.
With every tap imagine that you're reinforcing this feeling of comfort and safety within yourself.
As we continue go ahead and just allow your mind to be anchored in this sense of peace.
With each tap you're letting your body relax a little bit deeper without rushing just allowing yourself to experience what this is like noticing if you can connect to an inner sense of calm.
And you can keep doing this for as long as you'd like letting the meditation or this talk run out but whenever you're ready you can stop tapping and remember that you can come back to this whenever you want or need to.
This tapping helps your mind and body to reconnect to those peaceful resources so that you can return to them whenever you need.
So if you notice that you're needing more grounding in your life you can always come back to this tapping practice knowing that it's not just a simple gesture but a powerful way to help your brain integrate positive experiences and experience more calm.
And when you hear me in my meditation say go ahead and start tapping if that feels good to you now you know what I mean.
