When the Body Holds Trauma: Combining EMDR and Dry Needling for PTSD Healing

By Elyse Danielson and Radhika Bhagat

At Peaceful Minds Counseling Services and Care2Cure Physical Therapy in Dexter, Michigan, we have come together to conduct a research study focused on helping individuals with PTSD improve trauma processing and healing. Through this collaboration, we are exploring the effects of using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR) in a mental health setting followed immediately with Dry Needling in a physical therapy setting.

Opening Peaceful Mind in 2018, my own journey deeply shaped the work I do today. I have overcome a great deal of medical trauma and there was a point where I realized I needed more than just “getting through” things—I needed to truly process and heal from them. That’s when I was introduced to EMDR therapy. During EMDR sessions, you briefly focus on traumatic memories while engaging in bilateral stimulation such as eye movements, tapping, or auditory cues. I was trained in EMDR in 2020 and have utilized this therapy since. I have also personally done a great deal of EMDR with a licensed therapist and experienced a lot of body reactivity, particularly the psoas muscle. I spoke with my physical therapist, Radhika, who recommended dry needling. She had noticed that many of her patients with a history of trauma tend to carry significant tension in their psoas muscle, and that releasing it can sometimes trigger an emotional response alongside substantial physical and, often, mental relief.

After experiencing the dry needling, what stood out to me was how connected the emotional and physical experiences were. I could feel that trauma wasn’t just living in my thoughts; it was being carried in my body, too. Dry needling, the treatment used in this study, is a physical therapy technique that uses thin acupuncture needles to release trigger points in tight muscles. This treatment can help reduce pain, improve blood flow, and support the body’s natural healing process. When combined with traditional physical therapy, dry needling can improve pain relief and functional mobility more effectively, especially for patients with chronic pain.

As the owner of Care2Cure Physical Therapy, I opened my practice in 2017 with the goal of bringing physical therapy back to its true purpose: individualized patient care. Over the years, many large physical therapy clinics have shifted toward an insurance-driven, high-volume model where patients are often shared between therapists and assistants in an assembly-line approach. This experience can feel impersonal for both patients and providers.

I wanted to create a different kind of practice—one where patients receive consistent, one-on-one care tailored to their specific needs. In my experience, patients recover faster and achieve better outcomes when they work with the same therapist and receive customized treatment. While treating patients with low back pain—particularly those with a history of PTSD—I began noticing an unexpected pattern. Patients reported that treatments involving dry needling of the psoas muscle not only relieved physical pain but also helped them process emotional trauma. Hearing similar experiences from multiple patients suggested a strong mind-body connection.

This discovery led me to connect with Elyse. Together, we recognized the potential of integrating physical therapy and mental health treatment to better support patients with PTSD. We decided to partner in conducting research to further explore and support this theory. The focus of our current research is the psoas muscle—a muscle often associated with storing stress, emotion, and trauma. The psoas can also contribute to chronic low back pain and research has also shown a strong connection between PTSD and lower back pain. We believe that by releasing tension within this muscle through trigger point dry needling immediately after EMDR therapy, we may be able to support deeper emotional processing and trauma recovery.

The idea to combine therapies came from seeing how intertwined the mind and body truly are. Trauma, grief, stress, and anxiety don’t just affect us emotionally; they show up physically too. Combining EMDR with dry needling felt like a natural extension of treating the whole person instead of separating mental and physical healing.

The results we’ve seen have been incredibly encouraging. Clients often describe feeling more regulated, more connected to themselves, and able to process experiences that previously felt “stuck.” Some people have found that combining the therapies helped them move through trauma more gently and effectively because both the emotional and physical responses were being addressed together. For me, the most rewarding part is watching people realize healing is possible and helping to remove the shame or fear around asking for support.

We are currently looking for additional participants who have been diagnosed with PTSD and who also experience lower back pain. If you believe you may meet these criteria and are interested in participating in our study, we would love to hear from you.

Please contact Care2Cure Physical Therapy at care2curept@gmail.com or (734) 580-2046, or Peaceful Minds Counseling Services at peacefulmindcounselingservices@gmail.com or (734) 649-6348 for more information.