Right Brain – Left Brain

Balancing the right and left brain helps bring balance to one’s inner world. In the therapy process, using a combination of the right and left brain enables one to experience healing at a far deeper level. Although words can evoke feelings, part of our left brain’s function is to analyze, categorizes, and judge all of the experiences that fill our life. This is done in the form of verbal language or use of words. It often reinterprets, alters or denies the truth of what really happened. It is merely capable of expressing what we “think” we feel, while the deepest, real, feelings go unnoticed and unexpressed.

The use of imagery in creative process (which is the language of the right-brain function) comes into play when we encounter inner-conflict. Use of imagery is the mind-body’s inner language. Using art and image to express what our mind-body is trying to say, bypasses verbal expression and mental thoughts. With this process we can become fully present to how the body is experiencing our feelings, rather than listening to the mind’s version of feelings. It is in the body-experience of feeling that allows for release and promotes healing. As the mind creates an image, the body begins the process of making art to express that image. As this happens, healing takes place in each and every cell of the body.

Francine Shapiro, who developed EMDR, makes a comparative reference of EMDR, art-making and sandPlay. She explains that the reason art-making and sandPlay work is because as one paints, draws, writes or creates a sand world, the hand is moving back and forth across the paper or sandtray just like bilateral stimulation of EMDR, which connects the right and left brain. Essentially, the midline of the brain is crossed, which is what seems to access the stuck trauma.