Discover Therapy Beyond Words
Sometimes, talk therapy isn’t enough to heal from past difficult experiences or trauma. You may still feel panicked, anxious, or frozen, and struggle to make decisions or complete day-to-day activities and tasks.
At RhythmLife Psychotherapy, we utilize cutting-edge therapies, including EMDR, Flash Technique, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), and Brainspotting, to empower you to access and process experiences that words alone cannot reach. These powerful tools often work faster than other therapies, because they engage different parts of your brain directly. These techniques can also address a wide range of life and mental health concerns, facilitating profound transformation and helping you move forward in the most meaningful ways.
Your Healing, Your Rhythm
RhythmLife therapy sessions are client-directed collaborations with your therapist. Sessions are experiential using innovative mind-body techniques, including EMDR Therapy, Flash Technique, EFT, and Brainspotting.
During your session, we will focus on your emotions, body sensations, and discuss what is happening and its significance to your goals. Because the techniques I use are body-mind-soul, heart, and spirit-oriented, you can expect significant physical changes and energy shifts during your therapy sessions.
EMDR Therapy
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a brain-changing technique that helps process traumatic memories. By using repetitive right and left side stimuli of the body, through the eyes, sound, or touch, EMDR allows communication between different parts of the brain, thereby resolving symptoms of trauma.
Rhythmlife Psychotherapy incorporates components of Attachment-Focused EMDR, such as Resource Tapping, which helps to strengthen and prepare you for EMDR and to repair developmental deficits.
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Clients who suffer from the effects of trauma, severe to mild (due to childhood sexual abuse, car accidents, natural disasters, problematic family dynamics, bullying, etc.), find relief from symptoms that may have plagued their lives, relationships, and daily experiences. Difficult events which may have felt like they were being relived in the moment become a part of the past, and the brain, body and self are able to move forward with new, healthier perspectives.
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The EMDR process is a collaborative endeavor between the client and therapist, in which we work together to observe the body, emotions, and thoughts related to past troubling events or dynamics. I may use a wand or pointer, lights, pulsers, or sound, alternating between your right and left sides to guide you through your memories, pausing to reflect and notice shifts in thought, physical sensations, and emotions.
Ultimately, you’ll move through aspects of your past experiences and arrive on the other side with new perceptions of self and others, and a reduction or elimination of your troubling symptoms.
You may feel tired physically and emotionally after EMDR, and extra water and rest can help you to reach a comfortable balance post-session.
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Flash Technique
Flash Technique is an evidence-based method that gently reduces the distress you may feel from disturbing memories or experiences. Like EMDR, Flash Technique involves right-left activation of the body, either through rhythmic tapping, sound, or eye movement.
You won’t consciously engage with the traumatic memory, which allows for a soothing yet effective processing of trauma. Instead, we’ll discuss an unrelated topic that interests you, and I’ll guide you through tapping and eye movements to help process your traumatic memory.
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In contrast to other treatments, which some folks might avoid due to finding the emotions unbearable and overpowering, Flash Technique requires very little engagement with the traumatic material.
Flash Technique enables you to achieve significant improvements without needing to disclose or discuss details that you cannot tolerate. Flash Technique can also be used in conjunction with EMDR as a way to lower distress levels prior to and during EMDR, thereby softening the overall EMDR treatment experience.
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We’ll start the Flash Technique therapy session by you sharing two details related to your disturbing experience: your age at which the event occurred, and your current distress level on a scale of 0-10. This will place the experience in your implicit working memory, making it available for unconscious processing during the session.
I’ll then guide you to tap your legs slowly with your hands, or use a “butterfly hug” to tap your upper body, while we talk about an unrelated topic that you find engaging.
During the talking and tapping, I’ll occasionally direct you to “flash” — having you rapidly flutter your eyelids (or imagine that you have done so), after which the client immediately returns to the tapping and talking.
After a set of flashes, we will discuss whether you feel a shift in relation to the previously identified traumatic event — often, a sense of “distance” or “fuzziness” is experienced in relation to the event.
You may also feel that your distress level has reduced. Clients often tell me they feel calm and relaxed afterwards, as if whatever was troubling them is no longer pressing.
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Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) & Matrix Reimprinting
By rhythmically tapping on specific meridian points while focusing on your emotional challenges, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) effectively uses the body and mind to process feelings, sensations, and thoughts, frequently resulting in the resolution of problems, troubling memories, or symptoms. Matrix Reimprinting uses EFT tapping to transform negative beliefs and difficult past experiences into a positive and joyful present and future life.
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EFT can be especially helpful for people who are experiencing anxiety, depression, and trauma, as well as other mental health challenges. EFT is unique in that it is a very gentle process consisting of 48 different techniques that can be mixed and matched to find what works best for different people and issues.
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During an EFT therapy session, you can expect to tap several points on your face, hands, and body while repeating specific words or phrases related to your concerns.
As you do this, you may experience a range of emotions, often culminating in a sense of emotional release and physical shifts, such as yawns, tingling, and/or a feeling of clarity and lightness.
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During Matrix Reimprinting therapy, I’ll encourage you to figuratively tap on parts of yourself and others, while you literally tap on your face, hands and body.
Towards the end of the Matrix Reimprinting therapy session, we’ll work together to effectively “reimprint” your new experience of your trauma, problem, or relationship on yourself, possibly creating a ‘Future Template’ of how this transformation will unfold over time.
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Brainspotting Therapy
Brainspotting is an innovative therapy approach that targets the brain's natural ability to heal itself. By focusing on specific eye positions that correspond to emotional experiences, we gain access to crucial information stored in the mid-brain, which talk therapy cannot access. Brainspotting allows us to identify and process emotions, memories, ideas and events from across our lifetimes, effectively healing our nervous systems and facilitating change and growth.
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Brainspotting is often used to help folks experiencing trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, and grief. It’s especially effective for people who haven’t found relief in talk therapy or who are looking for a more direct approach to processing traumatic experiences and emotional pain.
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While listening to bi-modal sound or music (in which the sound moves back and forth between your right and left ears), we’ll work together to identify your self-determined focus for the session. Then, I’ll support you as you mindfully observe your thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations while focusing your gaze in specific positions and tuning into the bi-modal sound.
You may speak out loud about your experience, or remain mostly silent.
You may experience a range of emotions or physical sensations, access memories, visualize images, and gain new perspectives as the session unfolds, receiving encouragement and support to explore this material and discover new solutions and life possibilities.
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RhythmLife Therapy ServicesIndividual Therapy
Individual therapy sessions last 50 minutes, and we usually meet in person or virtually every week until you’ve met your mental health goals.
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Extended Therapy Sessions
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The techniques I employ can also be completed in person or virtually, available as 75-minute, 90-minute, or 2-3 hour sessions.
Therapy Intensives
Therapy intensives may be helpful for some clients, generally consisting of three days of 4-hour therapy sessions in person at my office in Albany, California.
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