Embodiment · “Being Precedes Having”
Calm/Safe Place + Butterfly Hug
To install and access a felt ‘calm place’ and pair it with slow alternating left-right (bilateral) self-tapping, giving the nervous system a quick, portable way to down-regulate and self-soothe.
Calm Place + Butterfly Hug in 5 lines: Picture a place where you feel safe and calm; fill it in with every sense and notice the ease in your body. Anchor it with one cue word. Cross your arms, hands near your collarbones, and tap left-right-left-right slowly while breathing and holding the calm. Stop if you feel more settled — or if distress rises. (This soothes; it does NOT reprocess trauma — that needs a trained EMDR therapist.)
What it is
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) was developed by Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s as a structured therapy for trauma.
Within EMDR, before any difficult material is touched, therapists teach “resourcing” skills — most famously the “Calm Place” (also called “Safe Place”) and a self-administered form of bilateral stimulation called the “Butterfly Hug.” This entry covers only those self-soothing resources — a portable way to down-regulate a stressed nervous system — and deliberately leaves out trauma reprocessing, which is the clinical core of EMDR and must be done with a trained therapist.
The practice pairs a vividly imagined place of calm with slow, alternating left-right tapping, using attention (The Inner Creates the Outer), felt sensation (The Inner Creates the Outer), and gentle acceptance (The Inner Creates the Outer) to shift the body toward settling.
The Method
Part A — install the Calm/Safe Place:
- Bring to mind a place where you feel calm and safe — real or imagined (a beach, a forest, a room). It should carry no trauma associations.
- Fill it in with all senses. What do you see, hear, smell, feel on your skin, sense in temperature? Make it vivid.
- Notice the calm in your body — where and how you feel the ease (chest, shoulders, breath). Stay with that pleasant sensation.
- Anchor it with a cue word — a single word (e.g. “calm,” the place’s name). Say it inwardly while feeling the calm, so the word and the felt state link. Part B — the Butterfly Hug (bilateral self-soothing):
- Cross your arms over your chest, so each hand rests near the opposite shoulder/collarbone (fingertips just below the collarbones, pointing up toward the neck) — your arms form a “butterfly.”
- Tap slowly and alternately — left, right, left, right — at a gentle, unhurried pace, like a slow heartbeat. Breathe slowly. Eyes closed or softly lowered.
- Hold the calm place / cue word while you tap, just letting whatever comes, come and go without analysing it. Continue for a short set (e.g. 6–12 slow taps), pause, breathe, and check in.
- If you feel more settled, continue gently; if distress rises, stop and return to ordinary attention (open eyes, feel your feet, the room). (Sourcing note: “Calm/Safe Place,” “Butterfly Hug,” and “bilateral stimulation” are EMDR terms; the Butterfly Hug was introduced by Lucina Artigas and Ignacio Jarero within the EMDR community and adopted into Shapiro’s framework. This describes only the resourcing / self-soothing application, faithfully summarised — not the eight-phase reprocessing protocol.)
Source & Lineage
Francine Shapiro (1948–2019) originated EMDR after noticing in 1987 that lateral eye movements seemed to reduce the charge of distressing thoughts.
She formalised it into an eight-phase therapy (EMDR, 1995) and wrote a lay guide, Getting Past Your Past (2012), which includes self-help resourcing tools. The Calm Place is a standard stabilisation/resourcing step in EMDR; the Butterfly Hug form of self-tapping was developed by Lucina Artigas and Ignacio Jarero for group disaster work and folded into wider EMDR practice. → (Shapiro).
Common refinements
Choosing a “safe” place with hidden associations. If a place is linked to a difficult person/event, pick another — it must be cleanly calming.
- Tapping fast or hard. Slow and gentle is the point; speed turns soothing into agitation.
- Using it to “process” a trauma. This resource is for settling, not for confronting traumatic memories — that is therapist territory (see safety).
- Pushing on when distress rises. If the calm place “won’t hold” or feelings escalate, stop and ground; that itself is useful information to bring to a therapist.
- Refinement: install the Calm Place when you’re already fairly calm, so it’s strong and ready before you ever need it.