Freud, Walking & Bilateral Therapy

I recently stumbled upon a very interesting book called Walking Your Blues Away: How to Heal the Mind and Create Emotional Well-Being by Thom Hartman. The author argues that walking—a bilateral therapy that has been used by humans throughout history—allows people to heal emotionally as quickly as they do physically. He explains that traumatic events can become “stuck” in the brain and effectively get stored in the brain as if it were still a present-time event. When one walks both the left and right side of the brain are simultaneously activated which allows the brain’s two hemispheres to join forces and break up brain patterning and allow the sufferer to release these distresses. Harman’s walking consciously exercises can also be used for creativity, motivation and problem solving.

So what does this have to do with Freud? I was surprised to find that the book mentioned Freud at length because he in fact used bilateral stimulation in treating his patients. During therapy Freud used, “his hand or watch to move the patient’s eyes from side to side, and occasionally stroked alternate sides of the patients body.” (Hartman, 23). Freud used bilateral stimulation to help his patients process their emotions. If you’re interested in further reading, Hartman pulled this information out of a paper published by Freud and his mentor Josef Breur titled “On the Physical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena: Preliminary Communication”. Current day bilateral therapies include Eye Motion Therapy (EMT), Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).

On a personal note, the book helped me understand and explain on a scientific level why I benefit so much from going from going on walks or runs. While I’m running thinking isn’t such an arduous process or even really an active one. I noticed recently that ideas flow so much more easily and naturally while I’m running. My mind just seems to work better when it’s in motion, and now I know why!