Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy

Healing the past so you can live more fully in the present.

At Empowered Spaces, we offer holistic, trauma-informed approaches that honor your mind, body, and nervous system. One of the ways we do this is through Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) — a powerful, evidence-based therapy that helps your brain and body complete the healing process that was interrupted by trauma or distress.

You deserve to define your own path toward healing.

Healing at the level of body, mind, and spirit. 

Image: Brea Youngblood

EMDR is an integrative therapy that helps you heal from overwhelming experiences by engaging your brain’s natural ability to process and integrate memories.


When trauma happens, parts of the experience can remain “stuck” — sensations, images, emotions, or beliefs that didn’t get the chance to resolve.

EMDR helps the brain reprocess those memories so they can finally settle into the past where they belong.

This process allows you to release the charge held in the body, shift long-standing patterns of fear or self-blame, and reconnect with a deeper sense of safety and wholeness.

What is EMDR?

How EMDR Supports Healing

Through EMDR therapy, you can:

  • Gently process painful or traumatic memories without having to retell every detail

  • Reduce emotional intensity and body-based distress linked to past experiences

  • Reconnect with a sense of safety, stability, and inner calm

  • Restore your brain and nervous system’s natural capacity for healing

  • Experience greater clarity, confidence, and peace

EMDR is not about erasing your story — it’s about transforming your relationship to it, so that it no longer defines or controls your present.

  • PTSD or complex trauma

  • Anxiety, panic, or chronic stress

  • Grief or loss

  • Physical or emotional abuse

  • Chronic pain or somatic symptoms

  • Relationship and attachment wounds

  • Performance anxiety or creative block

EMDR Can Support You If You’re Navigating:

Your body remembers how to heal. EMDR helps you find your way back.

A Compassionate Path to Integration

EMDR offers a way to gently revisit what has been too painful to face, while staying grounded in the present moment.

As the brain reprocesses old material, the nervous system settles, and new perspectives and possibilities emerge.

Healing doesn’t mean forgetting what happened — it means remembering with compassion, without reliving the pain.

Meet the Therapists Trained in EMDR

The therapists listed here are members of the Empowered Spaces Collective. Each therapist owns and operates their own independent private practice and leases space within our center. While we share values, community, and a trauma-informed approach, each therapist is solely responsible for their own services, policies, and clinical work.

“The past affects the present even without our being aware of it.”

- Francine Shapiro

Learn More About EMDR

(for those wanting to understand the science and process more deeply)

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) was developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro and is now one of the most researched and effective therapies for trauma recovery.

When something traumatic happens, the brain’s natural processing system can become overwhelmed — leaving parts of the memory “stuck” in the body and emotional brain (amygdala) rather than fully integrated in long-term memory (hippocampus). This can lead to distressing symptoms like flashbacks, anxiety, or self-critical beliefs.

EMDR uses a process called bilateral stimulation — typically gentle eye movements, alternating tones, or tactile vibrations — to replicate the natural healing that happens during REM sleep.

This rhythmic left-right pattern helps your brain reprocess difficult experiences, linking them to adaptive, healing networks.

During EMDR sessions, you’ll:

  • Begin with grounding and resource-building to create a sense of safety

  • Identify the memories or themes connected to current challenges

  • Engage in bilateral stimulation while noticing images, sensations, or beliefs that arise

  • Allow your brain to naturally integrate new insights and relief

The result is that the memory loses its emotional intensity — it becomes a part of your history rather than a current reality.

  • Clients often notice:

    • Feeling calmer and more grounded

    • Improved sleep and focus

    • Reduced reactivity and triggers

    • Greater self-compassion and confidence

    • More ease in relationships

    • The ability to feel present and embodied

Benefits of EMDR

EMDR helps you reconnect with your resilience —

not by avoiding the past, but by integrating it, with compassion and care.

More Information on EMDR

How EMDR Psychotherapy works in your brain

EMDR and C-PTSD Treatment with Dr. Arielle Schwartz

Animation to explain EMDR Therapy and Trauma to Adults.