Increased body awareness- a positive side effect of EMDR

For many of us, our bodies exist solely as a transportation vehicle for our heads. We generally give little thought to our body unless it cries out to us in a state of discomfort or illness. Our mind is what captures, and at times, seizes our attention.

This is not by accident. In our Western society we’ve been conditioned to believe there is an invisible line that divides the mind from the body. The mind, we are told, is rational. Everything else is not.

With the emergence and popularity of somatic psychotherapy treatments, this arbitrary line between mind and body is vanishing.  As a result, people are more effectively able to gain relief from their mental health symptoms and learn a powerful tool…body awareness.

EMDR is one such somatic treatment.

Somatic psychotherapy does not involve physical touch. Rather, a somatic approach in this sense, accesses the body through learning to listen to your body. Clients learn to use their mind to access their bodies and they learn to allow the physical sensations of their bodies to inform their minds. Not only does this erase the mind-body divide, it also makes somatic treatments accessible through remote therapy.  

Emotions are stored in our physical bodies. Our minds remember the thoughts and images of an intense emotional experience. Our bodies remember the sensations. Think about the first time your high school crush asked you out and you may experience the ghost of butterflies fluttering around in your stomach. Recall the death of your mother and your chest might start to feel hollowed out, your heart constricted.

When we use EMDR to address trauma, the thoughts, images, emotions, and sensations of an experience get processed. This is because EMDR uses the natural ability of the psyche to heal past wounds and the psyche does not recognize arbitrary lines that separate these human experiences.

I often tell clients that they will become experts at body awareness through the process of EMDR simply because I ask the question, “What do you notice?” over and over again. During a re-processing session, each segment of bilateral stimulation (BLS) lasts about a minute. After each BLS the client is asked what they notice. Noticing could mean a thought, an image, an emotion, a sensation, or nothing at all.

In the beginning, noticing a body sensation, especially when it is subtle, can be challengin. It takes concentration to bring your awareness to the different parts of your body. For some clients, this is the first time they have deliberately directed attention to their bodies. Through practice, like most things, this skill gets strengthened.        

Not just any awareness but non-judgmental awareness…

Some of us do notice our bodies. We notice it a lot. We notice how it fails us; how it doesn’t look or act the way we want it to. Experiencing body sensations can highlight our physical or psychological flaws. While we’re aware of our bodies, we’d rather not be.  

This is judgmental awareness. We notice our bodies and then our mind places a value on what we notice. This value is based on our past experiences (beliefs, societal attitudes, familial roles, personal expectations).

The difficulty with judgmental awareness is it is simply quite often wrong. These judgments are informed by outdated scripts that serve only to confirm the negative biases we hold about ourselves. If we look at the patterns, these scripts have likely been running through our mind for many years, possibly for as long as we can remember. Chances are some of these biases aren’t even ours but instead are based on beliefs inherited from caretakers or society.

Placing judgement on what we notice doesn’t respect the mind-body connection. Rather than making space for body wisdom, judgments imply the mind is the only important thing to listen to. This reduces us into one-dimensional images of ourselves with little room for growth or change.

Through EMDR clients learn how to build non-judgmental awareness. Noticing within the context of EMDR re-processing is absent of analyzation. Whatever you notice - tearing up behind the eyes, throat tightening, a release of your shoulders, your foot tingling, a song humming through your head- it just is. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s just something to notice.

Non-judgmental awareness does not conclude that what we notice is without meaning. On the contrary these experiences hold meaning, we’re just not trying to force meaning. Instead, we’re engaging in bottom-up processing that allows the sensations to inform us. We are accessing the wisdom of our body through listening to it, rather than telling it.  

Ever have someone tell you how you’re feeling instead of listening to how you feel? Has this ever helped you to feel better? Chances are that all the feelings you were feeling got worse. That is what we do to ourselves when we judge rather than listen.    

Non-judgmental body awareness provides us with important information that helps us change up old narratives which creates fertile ground for change. Bringing our nonjudgmental awareness to a body sensation can quiet the mind, allow the body to naturally recalibrate a heightened emotional state, and if we listen closely wisdom to percolate up.