OEI Therapy | Observed Experiential Integration

Put Trauma into the Past &
Create New Possibilities

About OEI

What is OEI therapy?

Observed & Experiential Integration (OEI) is a gentle, body-based trauma therapy that works through your eyes and visual system instead of through talking. It helps your brain process painful experiences so they feel like the past instead of something still happening now.

Who developed OEI?

OEI was developed in Vancouver, Canada in the 1990s by Dr. Rick Bradshaw and Audrey Cook.

Audrey Cook, a marriage and family therapist had worked extensively with First Nations communities. After training in EMDR in 1993, she noticed that many clients with complex relational trauma became overwhelmed or numb. That led her to try guiding the eyes one eye at a time, which became the OEI technique known as switching. Her work with First Nations families also shaped her focus on healing within families, not just individuals.

Liana trained in OEI under both Dr. Bradshaw’s and Audrey Cook’s mentorship

How does OEI therapy work?

When trauma gets stuck, it can show up as tiny “glitches” in how your eyes move: small jumps, freezes or blinks. Your therapist watches for these as you follow a slow-moving target. Techniques like Switching, where one eye is covered and then the other, help your brain release the stored charge and file the experience as past.

How is OEI different from EMDR?

Both use the eyes to help the brain process trauma, and OEI grew out of EMDR. The difference is that OEI works by closely observing small eye glitches and often using one eye at a time. Many clients find it gentler, and you usually don’t need to hold the traumatic memory in mind or describe it.

Is OEI therapy evidence-based?

OEI has published research, including a 2014 randomized clinical trial in Traumatology. In that trial, three one-hour OEI sessions reduced PTSD symptoms more than in a wait-list group. A 2011 study of women with PTSD after sexual assault was published in the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration. The research base is still smaller than for EMDR, but it is growing. Read more on the Research page →

Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?

-MO

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Why is Integration Important for healing?

Integration is important because when traumatic memories aren’t integrated we feel stuck, triggered, and unable to move forward with our lives. We are in avoidance and dissociated, which interferes with the brains ability to engage higher-level brain functioning.

When the past is not integrated, we experience symptoms of dissociation and panic symptoms such as a racing heartbeat, tight chest, difficulty breathing, nausea, or “butterflies” in the stomach. We might even experience headaches, visual distortions (ranging from blockage of vision to blurring), tingling or numbness in hands, face, or feet, and drowsiness or light-headedness.

Accelerated OEI: Trauma-Informed OEI Therapy

OEI is especially helpful for those who find talk therapy overwhelming or ineffective because it focuses on observing and experiencing sensations in the body rather than verbal processing of traumatic memories. This enables individuals to finally access healing in a gentle and more effective way.

Accelerated OEI therapy gets a big boost from Accelerated Hypnotherapy so that healing takes months, not years. It takes the painful past out of your future so that you can create new possibilities for a whole new future.

Fast forward to a whole new future.

OEI therapy creates a safe and nurturing space for individuals to work through their traumas and distressing experiences, as quickly as you ready for.

Why is Observed and Experiential Integration Therapy Effective?

OEI is grounded in neuroscience and works directly with how trauma is stored in the brain. It addresses trauma responses like fight, flight, freeze or faint by helping individuals integrate fragmented memories and emotions. This approach results in a sense of relief, reduced triggers, and improved emotional balance.

Benefits of OEI Therapy

Observed and Experiential Integration (OEI) therapy can provide faster symptom relief compared to traditional talk therapies because talking about the past necessitates revivification, which creates more trauma by recalling and re-experiencing the negative emotions of traumatic memories.

Accelerated OEI provides gentle, non-verbal processing for those who don’t want to talk about their trauma (and rightly so, we want less of it, not more).

Integrated healing that addresses both emotional and physical symptoms can take place gently and effectively without revivifying the past.

Heal the Past

Healing through visual,
not verbal, pathways with
Observed & Experiential Integration

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Key Benefits of OEI Therapy

✅ Reduced Trauma Symptoms: OEI helps resolve PTSD, anxiety, and panic symptoms.

✅ Improved Emotional Regulation: Enhance your ability to manage and regulate intense emotions.

✅ Increased Self-Awareness: Promotes self-awareness, emotional regulation, and integration of fragmented experiences.

✅ Resolution of “Stuck” States: OEI addresses anything that makes you feel ‘stuck’ or ‘stirred up,’ including relationship conflicts and unusual emotional intensity.

✅ Enhanced Cognitive Function: OEI reduces fight, flight, freeze, and numbing responses to enable higher-level brain functioning.

✅ Addresses a range of conditions: Effective in addressing other conditions such as self-esteem problems, compulsions, agitated depression, body dysmorphia, substance use, and conflicts in interpersonal relationships

Additional Benefits of OEI

✅ OEI helps to access awareness regarding human experience

✅OEI helps to resolve physical pains and paresthesias, speech impairments, disturbing (post-traumatic) inner voices, and visual distortions

✅OEI helps to address and resolve shame, guilt, self-loathing

Is OEI Therapy an Evidence-Based Practice?

OEI is an evidence-based practice. Research supports its effectiveness in reducing PTSD symptoms. Studies show that OEI can lead to significantly lower CAPS scores for PTSD compared to control groups.

OEI has been rated highly for reduction of PTSD symptoms.
A randomized clinical trial showed that OEI outperformed a delayed treatment control condition for reduction of PTSD symptoms.
This section addresses the importance of OEI as an evidenced-based practice.

Accelerated OEI offers a gentle yet effective path to recovery, allowing individuals to move past their trauma and reclaim their sense of safety and well-being.

Take the First Step to Gentle, Effective Healing.

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“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

E. Roosevelt

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OEI can help, even if you’ve tried everything but nothing seems to be working…

Transformation doesn’t have to take years…

If it does, you’re probably trying to use your logical, conscious mind to solve trauma that need to be resolved at the subconscious level.

If you have tried everything but nothing seems to be working…

You probably would have figured it out by now.

Some problems can be fixed with your conscious mind. You apply logic and intention to the problem and it goes away because these problems don’t have any underlying emotion or trauma memories attached to them.

Sometimes, despite our best efforts and logical solutions provided by traditional therapy, we still feel stuck, wondering why we can’t move forward.Years of therapy might not be able to fully address deeper, unresolved, deep-rooted trauma that is working against you, in the background, just below the surface. You feel stuck and triggered in the present because of your past experiences and feel like your future is being blocked by your past.

Unlock Your Future with Accelerated OEI

There are different types of problems, there are obstacles standing the way of you living your best life but first, you need to resolve the past so you can get out of your own way.

That’s when you the path to your success becomes easier.Accelerated OEI specializes in helping you achieve rapid transformation and finally break free from past trauma that keeps us feeling stuck, overwhelmed and triggered.

OEI is an evidence-based approach is designed to address and gently resolve traumatic memories that have kept you from experiencing healing.

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