In October 2025, my essay Closing a Chapter on EMDR went viral…at least as viral as things can go in a community as insular as the EMDR community! In that essay I explained my frustrations with being an EMDR Therapy trainer in the modern trauma field, noting that my heart just isn’t in it anymore. I declared that I wanted to walk away now instead of going through the motions for another 20-30 years. My resolve about this remains firm.
I am still walking away, yet in a different manner than I originally announced. In the original announcement, I noted that I would be selling the Institute for Creative Mindfulness (ICM) to one person. The plans have changed and I can now better describe what I am doing as dissolving ICM as it currently exists.
In the new plan, which can be best described as a dissolution, current ICM faculty members will be given a chance to work with me on the business details to take over the ICM curriculum and content as it currently exists and run it under the auspices of their own independent companies. For the last several years, ICM has already been working to give our individual trainers more of their own autonomy. This dissolution will make it official. I am still working out the details of which faculty members will be opting into this offer. I am also authorizing those who are opting in to make their own changes to the manual and content after one year, and they will also be permitted to build their own faculty and consultant listings as they see fit in this modern age of EMDR Therapy training.
When I explained this plan to one of our long-time consultants, she remarked that it is like I am blowing on a blossom of dandelion seeds and letting them scatter to the wind and see how they will grow. Since dandelions can have an association of being a weed, I looked up what other flowers germinate in this way and discovered that there are many, including goldenrods. It’s no coincidence that so many goldenrods have been crossing my path since coming up with the new plan and starting to enact it!
The Institute for Creative Mindfulness plans to close its full-time operations on May 1, 2027. At that time, those faculty members who are opting into the new plan will be running their basic trainings fully under the branding of their own businesses and ICM will not be involved. ICM will continue to have an operational website that continues to list our historically available video resources, free webinars, and the Redefine Therapy Blog for the period of at least 2 years. We will list the company links to those who have opted in as being part of the “Creative Mindfulness Network.” However, ICM will no longer keep a directory of individual trainings, consultants and consultants-in-training, or those who have completed training with the original ICM. We are keeping the website up temporarily in continuing service to the EMDR community and in service to those faculty members who will be launching out on their own.
To those who are wondering if they’ve missed their chance to take a basic training course with me, you are in luck. I am making myself available for two more cycles with me in our “deluxe” model that folds in the cost of consultation:
OCTOBER 4-6; NOVEMBER 8-10; DECEMBER 10-11, 2026 (all-day)
- Taught with Jasmine Adams, LCSW
- Includes 42.5 CEs and all EMDRIA-required consultation
- For more information including pricing, click HERE
JANUARY 8-10; JANUARY 29-31; FEBRUARY 19-20, 2027 (all-day); with 2-hour follow-up consultation sessions on March 3 or 6
- Includes 42.5 CEs and all EMDRIA-required consultation
- for more information including pricing, click HERE
I am also working hard to offer guaranteed offerings of my most popular advanced topics courses between now and the close of our full-time operations in May, which you can stay updated on by clicking HERE. If you were hoping to train with me specifically on dissociation, check out our homestudy offerings where some of my most popular courses are catalogued, or consider checking out the in-person training retreat on dissociation that I am offering in Cancun February 7-13, 2027, which now offers EMDRIA credits!
My intention is to fade away from EMDR basic training activities fully over the next year. I know that many people in the plural community have asked me to continue doing small trainings for them, yet my overall hope is to stay on the trajectory I’m on by moving away from EMDR and focusing on other things. I am scheduled to be ordained an Interfaith chaplain on October 17, something I’ve been working hard towards through my seminary studies at the Chaplaincy Institute.
I don’t see myself leaving EMDR Therapy or the field of psychotherapy altogether. I am still available to be booked for teaching courses with other companies or organizations that I support. I will continue to consult where I can be helpful. However, my heart and soul are calling me elsewhere. I want to spend more time writing and exploring the places of needed intersection between spiritual care and psychological care…the kinds of intersections that we cannot find in a protocol. And yes, this does involve me getting back into direct care with therapy participants more fully, including in intensive model work with EMDR, expressive arts, and spiritual care under my private practice, Redefine Therapy.
As I explained in my original essay, I am viewing my departure from EMDR Therapy training in a similar fashion to how I viewed my religious deconstruction. I still support the practice of EMDR Therapy, yet I want to be involved less and less with the institutionality of it all because those components are not helpful (or “adaptive,” in EMDR parlance) for me overall. Yet I support my friends and colleagues who have the stamina and the drive to stay involved with it all.
I am simply on a different and new path and appreciate your support, your good wishes, and if you offer them, prayers as I walk forward.
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