In 1987 a psychologist named Francine Shapiro took a walk in a park. Her eyes moved side to side as she looked around. An upsetting thought lost its grip.
Most people would notice that for two seconds and forget it. She tested it. Two years later she published the first study. What grew out of that walk is EMDR therapy. The World Health Organization backs it for PTSD. So does the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
The engine inside EMDR therapy is simple: left, right, left, right. Eyes, taps, or sound. It is called bilateral stimulation. Researchers still argue about why it works. The working model is that the back and forth calms the alarm in your head and puts you close to dream sleep, when your brain does its filing.
We take that engine out of the clinic. Then we pair it with much older tools. Yoga. Picturing. A line you say.
In a session the sound plays left and right through speakers by your mat, or headphones. You move. You breathe. You keep coming back to what it feels like to already be the version of you that believes the line. We call that the Envisioned Moment. We call the practice an Envisioning.
A line on its own does not do much. The state is what makes it land.
The name has a story too. I came to this through my own EMDR therapy, and the name honors a training I took years before that. Both threads are on the about page. A method should say where it comes from.
It is not EMDR therapy and it is not therapy. EMDR therapy works on a person's hardest memories with a licensed pro holding the process. An Envisioning never asks you to relive anything. It borrows the engine, aims it at who you are becoming, and stays easy on purpose.
It is not hypnosis. You are awake and in charge the whole hour.
I say all this because the method deserves its real story, and you deserve to know what you are lying down for. It is mental fitness, built on borrowed science and very old yoga.
One hour. $200. At your place in LA, or Zoom.
Or come to the Wednesday class. $28.