Our regional networking day on Faith and Spirituality in EMDR, held online on Friday 21 November, brought together one of the most diverse and deeply engaged groups we have hosted in recent years.

From the moment colleagues began joining the Zoom room, the atmosphere was warm, curious and grounded. Therapists from across the UK — and from further afield — expressed gratitude simply to be in a space where the spiritual lives of our clients, and our own frameworks of meaning, could be spoken about openly.

The programme featured contributions from nine speakers, each offering a different lens on how spirituality and faith meet trauma and EMDR:

• Selvira Draganović — Bosnian perspective on religiosity, war, community and identity
• Rabbi Dr David Roth — Jewish theology, meaning, responsibility and intergenerational experience
• Dr Ashraf Muwafaq Flaiyah — Islamic psychology and EMDR in Iraqi and Middle Eastern contexts
• Shohreh Akarzadeh — Bahá’í writings on the soul, nobility, and the spiritual dimension of healing
• Beverley Hutton — Christian imagery of comfort, cleansing and compassionate holding
• Kamla Dadral & Naina Gupta — Hindu philosophical and clinical perspectives
• Jutta & Katharine Brayne — Nature-based spirituality and contemplative silence in therapeutic work
• Shelley Pompana — First Nations teachings on ceremony, land, ancestors and spiritual presence

What unfolded across the day was not a debate or a technical workshop but a human exploration — sensitive, thoughtful and often quietly affecting.

Selvira Draganović: Spirituality that supports, and spirituality that wounds

Selvira opened from Sarajevo by locating spirituality within the Bosnian post-war experience. She highlighted the difference between healthy forms of spirituality — those that stabilise, comfort, and help clients feel held — and unhealthy forms that induce guilt, shame or withdrawal from help. Many participants commented on how familiar these statements sounded, and how rarely they are named explicitly in supervision or training.

Her reminder that spirituality can be both resourcing and harmful set a balanced tone for the rest of the day.

Rabbi Dr David Roth: Choice, responsibility and the Jewish frame

David Roth wove together Maslow, Viktor Frankl, Jewish theology and the intergenerational implications of trauma. He drew attention to the tension between surrender and agency, and to the way faith traditions can support clients in moving from powerlessness to meaning-making. Participants responded strongly to his reflections on responsibility, choice and the enduring impact of cultural memory.

Dr Ashraf Muwafaq Flaiyah: The Islamic model of the human being

Ashraf presented from Iraq a clear, clinically useful four-part Islamic model — body, self, mind and spirit — and showed how this aligns with EMDR’s Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model. Several colleagues commented on the clarity with which he explained both explicit and implicit integration: spiritual safe places, faith-based positive cognitions, and the therapist’s internal stance of compassion, dignity and hope (rahma, karama, fitra).

His presentation offered a practical bridge between EMDR structure and spiritual meaning-making.

Shohreh Akarzadeh: The nobility and nature of the soul

Shohreh’s contribution brought a contemplative stillness to the room. Drawing on Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, she read passages concerning the nobility of the human soul, the relationship between the spiritual and physical worlds, and the idea that human behaviour often reflects distortion rather than essence. The chat filled with words like “beautiful,” “profound,” and “moving,” reflecting the emotional resonance of her presentation.

Beverley Hutton: Christian imagery of comfort and holding

Beverley’s presentation drew on scriptural imagery — notably Isaiah 66:12–13 — to illustrate themes of holding, cleansing and compassionate comfort. Her examples of resource imagery and mother–child metaphors landed very directly with many colleagues. Several participants wrote that the Christian imagery brought a sense of grounding and reassurance.

Kamla Dadral: Hindu philosophy, trauma and transformation

Preparing her thoughts with input from colleague Naina Gupta (who couldn’t be with us live), Kamla introduced Hindu concepts such as Atman, Karma and Dharma, alongside yogic ideas of balance and consciousness. The two of them explored how trauma healing in Hindu traditions is not only symptom relief but a pathway to transformation and alignment with one’s deeper self.

Their reflections on bilateral stimulation and its parallels with yogic energy channels offered an unexpected but intuitive connection that many found enriching.

Jutta & Katharine Brayne: Silence, nature and contemplative depth

The penultimate presentation before closing came from Jutta and Katharine Brayne. Focusing on nature, silence, and contemplative inward attention, they reflected on the role of stillness in EMDR — both as a personal practice and within sessions. Participants described their experience of the silence segment as “healing,” “connecting,” and “deep.”

Their exploration of the parallels between contemplative inward focus and EMDR’s bilateral stimulation resonated strongly, grounding the day in lived human experience rather than abstract ideas.

Shelley Pompana: Ceremony, community, ancestors and the land

Our concluding speaker, Shelley Pompana, joining us from Canada, offered a First Nations (Indigenous) perspective that brought the day to a deeply human close. Speaking from lived experience, she described:

• the centrality of ceremony in healing
• the relationship between individual, community, land and ancestors
• teachings passed down through generations
• the collective and relational nature of trauma and recovery
• spiritual presence as part of identity, continuity and belonging

• and how the metaphor of the eagle’s wing, presented movingly with her partner Moses, could be used in place of our more familiar “butterfly hug”.

The chat became notably tender in response — filled with comments like “beautiful,” “profound,” “touching,” “soulful,” “this touched my soul.”

It was a fitting and resonant way to end a day centred on respect, presence and the complexity of human meaning.

A day that mattered

Across all contributions, a consistent theme emerged:

clients’ spiritual and cultural worlds are not peripheral to therapy — they are often central to meaning, identity and healing.

Participants repeatedly highlighted:

• renewed confidence in meeting spiritual material sensitively
• relief at hearing commonly held but seldom discussed clinical dilemmas
• appreciation for the diversity of voices
• a sense of warmth, connection and shared humanity

One attendee wrote, “I feel blessed to be part of this community.”
Another said, “This gives me more confidence to bring spirituality into the work.”

Save the Date – In-Person Networking Day

Saturday 18 April 2026
Theme: Race, Difference and Racism in EMDR Practice

Our next EMDR Association East Anglia networking day will take place in person.
We will look directly at how race, difference and racism shape our clients’ inner worlds and trauma histories, and how EMDR therapists can respond with clarity, courage and clinical depth.

Full details coming soon — please mark the date in your diary.