By Laurel Parnell, PhD

What is bilateral stimulation and how can we use it to activate healing?

Within each of us is a hidden potential, a wellspring of untapped natural resources we can use to heal our psychological wounds and help us better navigate the challenges we face in our lives.

The problem is that these resources too often remain buried, and we don’t know how to access them. We dig in the wrong place, or we don’t think to dig at all. 

Spiritual traditions teach ways to contact our resources by using prayer and meditation practices. Tibetan Buddhism, in particular, has developed sophisticated technologies for developing and cultivating different states of consciousness. Today, in Western psychology, we have found a highly effective new way to harness the power of our inner resources.

The technique is very simple. Sometimes I still find it hard to believe that it works, even though I have experienced it myself, witnessed it work with my clients, and heard reports from my trainees and consultees. This method, called “Resource Tapping,” evolved out of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy, or EMDR. 

EMDR, which was developed by psychologist Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s, is a powerful, well-researched treatment for trauma that incorporates alternating bilateral stimulation into a structured therapy. Shapiro found that people could process a trauma memory at an accelerated rate when it was paired with bilateral stimulation. People who had been suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder would find their symptoms relieved after only a few sessions. 

In the early days of EMDR, we used eye movements exclusively for bilateral stimulation. Clients were instructed to follow the therapist’s fingers with their eyes, moving them to the far right and then far left. The eye movements used in EMDR were found to activate an accelerated processing effect. Clients would experience a mind-body free-associative processing during which emotions, body sensations, images, memories, and thoughts moved rapidly through their systems.

Tapping In Your Natural Resources

Some well-regarded brain researchers believe that the bilateral stimulation used in EMDR may be activating both hemispheres of the brain much in the same way that REM sleep does. During REM sleep, our eyes move rapidly back and forth, and we process and integrate information. But many people were not able to use the eye movements in EMDR. Some had eye injuries, were blind, or found it physically uncomfortable. 

Over time we discovered that other forms of bilateral stimulation also worked, as well if not better than eye movements, to elicit the accelerated processing effect.

We began to tap on clients’ knees and hands or to use alternating sounds, stimulating each side alternately—right-left, right-left. In this way we would activate each side of the person’s brain, which seems to be the key to the rapid processing effect we see in EMDR.

When clients activate a disturbing memory by evoking the emotions, body sensations, and thoughts associated with it, and then add bilateral stimulation, they begin an extraordinary free-associative process between mind and body. Clients can have thoughts, feelings, old memories, or dreamlike fantasies that move rapidly through their awareness. As this information is processed, they often have new insights and new ways of viewing themselves and their lives. By the end of an EMDR session, the old memories no longer feel disturbing. Clients naturally arrive at a place of health and wholeness.

Experience with thousands of people led to the foundational EMDR theory that within each person is a natural ability to heal that is disrupted after a traumatic experience. In this theory, our body-mind has a natural information processing system that works to process and assimilate new information. We have experiences all the time that are stored for later use.

However, trauma memories are processed in a different way. When we have a trauma our information processing system is disrupted. The information is left in fragmented form, unprocessed, and not stored in long-term memory. The unintegrated fragments often cause symptoms that disrupt our lives. A sound or even a smell that reminds you of the trauma can elicit a full-blown panic response. 

Unprocessed traumas can cause us to feel anxious and depressed and to have nightmares and trouble sleeping. Instead of feeling like the trauma happened in the past, it feels like it is alive in the present. When you have a wound, your body cannot heal until the wound has been cleaned of debris. In the same way that debris inhibits our bodies’ ability to heal, a serious trauma disrupts our natural healing system. The bilateral stimulation we use in EMDR activates our inherent information processing system and allows our minds and bodies to find their way back to wholeness.

Tap into Positive Emotional States

In the early days of EMDR we discovered that bilateral stimulation could also be used in a focused way to activate and strengthen certain resources within our clients. The first resource to be tapped in was the safe place. Guiding people to imagine a place where they feel safe and comfortable had been used for many years by psychotherapists to help people reduce anxiety. 

We found that directing clients to focus on a safe place and then adding short sets of bilateral stimulation worked even better than the imagery alone to calm them and provide them with a sense of control over their distress. This practice, called “installing a safe place,” helped traumatized people feel safer and was used by therapists prior to beginning EMDR sessions. 

Later we found that we could tap in many different kinds of resources—such as images of nurturing figures, protector figures, and inner wisdom figures—to help strengthen and stabilize clients who had been severely traumatized in childhood. Resource tapping became an important tool in helping to prepare clients for the difficult EMDR trauma processing work.

Over the years, resource tapping has expanded and developed considerably. There are many positive resources that can be tapped in that comfort us, lift our spirits, or empower us, including inherent qualities such as love, wisdom, and joy, as well as memories, experiences, images that arise from our imaginations, and people to whom we can connect. Moreover, tapping in has expanded beyond EMDR and trauma work. Resource tapping is now done as a stand-alone technique, independent of EMDR, and new applications for resource tapping are being discovered every day. 

Resource tapping is used to reduce anxiety and depression, help with sleep, increase creativity and performance, aid in healing, and decrease distress after a traumatic incident. Colleagues of mine in Germany are using it to help cancer patients cope with their illness. School children with heavy course loads are using resource tapping to help alleviate their daily stress. By focusing attention on our resources and adding short sets of simple bilateral tapping, we can strengthen these resources, making them more present and accessible to us.

Resource tapping is related to EMDR but is essentially a different model. With EMDR we focus on the trauma memory, add bilateral stimulation, and follow a protocol that allows the unfolding of a free-associative processing. In contrast, when we tap in resources we focus on the positive resource and only allow a short amount of bilateral stimulation. We keep the work focused exclusively on the positive, healing resources and do not allow a free flow of processing. 

The idea with tapping in resources is that we want to select the resources according to the situation. We are using the resources as specific tools for specific applications. For example, if I am feeling anxious, I want to tap in resources that will help me relax. I might choose a calming image such as a verdant meadow covered with bright yellow flowers, a bubbling brook, and gentle grazing deer. As I bring my imagination to bear, and really see, smell, and hear this meadow, I tap right-left, right left to increase the experience of relaxation this resource evokes in me. I do not allow myself to tap for too long. If I do, I risk activating anxiety-producing information. 

We tap in a resource by locating the best one and using our imagination to activate it. When the resource is activated, we use tapping (bilateral stimulation) to strengthen and integrate the resource more fully into our system. When I refer to “tapping” here, I mean tapping alternately right-left, right-left, softly drumming on your knees, thighs, or the sides of your legs. You can also cross your arms in front of your chest and alternately tap each shoulder—as though hugging yourself—in what is called the “butterfly hug.” Or you can alternately tap your toes or feet.

It is important to understand that resource tapping is not taking something from outside ourselves and putting it in; rather, we use this method to enhance resources that are already within us. 

Resource tapping has been very helpful for many people. It has become a wonderful tool to help reduce anxiety, cope with trauma and illnesses, sleep better, and increase confidence, among other things. Resource tapping is something that can easily be done on your own, without a therapist.

Bilateral Stimulation Can Calm You Down

Using tapping without imagery is a way to reduce anxiety and calm yourself or a loved one relatively quickly and easily. As explained earlier, bilateral stimulation such as drumming, tapping, or dancing naturally soothes us, possibly reminding us of the beat of our mother’s heart when we were in the womb. 

Bring your attention inward, and tap right-left, right-left, until you feel some relief. If you are a parent trying to calm a crying child, you can hold your child and tap gently on his or her arms or shoulders. When you do this, your child can better take in the support your holding provides. You can say comforting things to your child, such as “It’s okay, you’re okay, it’s over. You’re with me now,” and so forth.

If you feel anxious about speaking in front of a group, driving, crossing a bridge, or you’ve just had a scary experience that has got your heart racing, you can tap to calm down. You can repeat encouraging words to yourself as well: “I’m going to be okay,” or “I can do it,” whatever you need to hear.

Just tap right-left, right-left, alternately. If it helps, continue tapping. If for any reason you begin to think of something distressing, or if you feel more upset, stop tapping. Bring yourself back to the present moment. Find your breath. Take some deep, relaxing breaths, and exhale slowly. If tapping alone isn’t working for you, you might want to tap in one of your stored resources.

Exercise: Tapping without Imagery

If it is possible, find a place to sit that is quiet. 

Bring your attention to a still place inside yourself. Take some deep, relaxing breaths, and slowly let them out. 

Begin to tap alternately, right-left, right-left, on your knees. If you are tapping someone else, such as a child, you can tap knees, shoulders, or anywhere that feels good to that person. 

As you tap you can say comforting words. 

Tap 6 to 12 times. Check in to see how you (or the person you’re tapping) are feeling. If you are relaxing and feeling better, continue to tap. 

Tap as long as it feels good.

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Laurel Parnell, PhD, is one of the world’s leading experts on EMDR. A clinical psychologist, she has trained thousands in EMDR in her international workshops. Parnell is the author of Transforming Trauma: EMDR, EMDR in the Treatment of Adults Abused as Children, and A Therapist’s Guide to EMDR. 

Well Being Journal adapted the excerpt from Tapping In by Laurel Parnell, PhD. Sounds True, 2008. Reprinted with permission.