EMDR in my eyes

Lindsay, they have a forum here on BOL. You might do better to ask there.

But the quick and correct answer is, 'no'. Yet, I would say they are related to some of these concepts associated with hypnosis to the extent that any of those aspects of hypnosis fits with what I'm about to say, however. But otherwise, or beyond that, there is no direct relationship between any of this things to do with the eyes.

As far as I understand altered states and learning and trauma and so on...I believe a couple of things that have little of no well know research.

That is, 1) (many/most?) states of consciousness have unique physical characteristics to them. These are unique for the individual but would not necessarily be common between any two individuals.
2) the muscles in the head, face, (and eyes therefore) are effected. I can easily use the sense of my skull muscles to help me create many of my own preferred states. We teach people to notice this for themselves in our 1st day of the 8-day workshop and the vast majority, when directed to notice, mention that can feel this too and can easily manipulate them to recover their trance. This always effect the sense of tension, location, flexion, tonus, etc., in the muscles surrounding the eyes.
3) Reaction to a trauma, esp. the most severe, are learned states of consciousness (like...'ah, I'm in Viet Nam again') or ('I'm panicking again that I'll die in an auto accident right now') are learned in the muscles of the head and therefore eyes too (as well as in the breathing and entire body muscles to varying degrees depending on the accident/trauma).
4) Anything that disrupts the learned muscles set will change the muscles ability to stabilize that state. So, the eye muscles and the skull muscles, and too the face muscles (but to a lesser degree -- since these face muscles are collaboratively used for communication to a greater degree and may be dissociated from the rest of the head muscles to a far greater degree for most people), are essential for holding the altered state as they maximize the availability or unavailability of various experiential resources for each unique state.

But that brings us to EMDR. As the therapist's activity with the client's participation continues, the eye muscles can't both be used to follow the therapist's guiding motion and also to stabilize the trauma as they once had done. Essentially, they are re-trained in a way that is incompatible with the old traumatic context. As I began with, this is the death blow for the trauma state as the muscles of the scalp, skull, and eyes are the most essential for shifting states.

Well, there are a good deal of ramifications to this too...like why it might sometime fail, why some folk engage in compulsively repeated physical behaviors to help themselves past old trauma (ineffectively), and so on.

But remember, that is just my own speculation and tentative belief. I imagine that Erickson would not disagree. But I didn't ever happen to ask about EMDR in this way back then...it wasn't invented/discovered back then. So, I can only imagine. But I don't expect he would disagree, but rather he would send me searching for more and greater fascination with the stabilizing muscle factors for altered states that he had already noticed hundreds of time (given his physical background.
Jeff, are you reading this? I don't know if I ever shared this idea with you...what do you think of it?

Replies:

EMDR in my eyes, by Lindsay Smith, 09/07/01 Re:EMDR in my eyes, by Lindsay Smith, 09/07/01 EMDR Forum, by Steve Lankton, 09/08/01 Re:EMDR , by forgot to include name, 09/08/01 Great points , by Steve Lankton, 09/10/01

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