The Taproot Podcast - From Skeptic to Believer: MJ Denis on the Science of Emotional Transformation Therapy

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

https://mjdenis.com/whoismjdenis Join Joel Blackstock as he sits down with MJ Denis, LPC, LMFT, and certified ETT trainer from Austin, Texas, for an eye-opening conversation about Emotional Transformation Therapy (ETT) - a groundbreaking approach that integrates light, color, and neuroscience to transform emotional healing. In this compelling episode, MJ shares her journey from skepticism to becoming one of the leading ETT trainers in the country, having conducted over 3,100 sessions. Discover how this evidence-based therapy goes beyond traditional talk therapy and EMDR to create rapid, lasting change for trauma, anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, and chronic pain. Key Topics Covered: The science behind using specific wavelengths of light for emotional regulation Why ETT succeeds where EMDR and traditional therapies plateau Real case studies: From lifelong phobias resolved in minutes to chronic pain relief How therapists can integrate ETT with existing modalities (IFS, somatic experiencing, CBT) The neurological basis of color perception and emotional processing Virtual ETT sessions and expanding access to care globally Resources Mentioned: ETT Training Information: www.etttraining.com Find an ETT Therapist Directory Dr. Steven Vazquez's research and methodology Perfect for mental health professionals, trauma survivors, and anyone interested in cutting-edge therapeutic approaches that bridge neuroscience and emotional healing.  #EmotionalTransformationTherapy #ETT #TraumaTherapy #EMDR #BrainSpotting #Neuroscience #MentalHealthInnovation #LightTherapy #ColorTherapy #PTSD #AnxietyTreatment #DepressionTherapy #TherapistTraining #HolisticHealing

Get some calls on. Hi, this is Joel with the Taproot Therapy Therapy Collective podcast, Discover He'll Grow. And I'm here today with MJ Dennis from Austin, Texas. And she's a provider that I trained with when I did emotional transformation therapy. She was incredibly helpful. She did a lot of my consultations. And we've kind of kept in touch.

And she was just a really welcoming presence in the emotional transformation community to kind of welcome me in. want to make it sound like it's a cult, but it is a lot to learn. And there was like so much that the technical bit and a lot of things about, you know, how you're going to grow into these things that you are always so warm and open and encouraging. So I really appreciate that because it's been for my practice a lot now. And I'll let you talk about kind of your practice and we can have a conversation about ETT today and some of the some of the stuff that on its, on its face sounds kind of wild, you know, but but really is a scientific pursuit.

there. Hey, Joel. Thank you for saying that. I'm glad I did make you feel warm and welcome. ETT, emotional transformation therapy, was not something I saw coming, but once I learned how to do it, it transformed my practice. And so I am an LPC, a licensed professional counselor, and an LMFT, a licensed marriage and family therapist right outside of Austin, Texas, and Sam Marcus. I began, I started my counseling journey. I became a counselor in 2012 and became certified as a sex therapist through ASET.

And then after working at Crossroads Counseling Associates, we were affiliated with the Affair Recovery Center. And so working with. infidelity experts, I leaned into a lot of training in betrayal trauma recovery, so I'm an absent certified partner trauma specialist as well. I learned about being a sex therapist, I learned about out-of-control sexual behaviors. Through Sash, I learned about sex addiction. I really leaned into training outside of grad school. But I recognized as a I was working with clients, talk therapy is wonderful and it's effective, but it only gets so far. And so I decided to learn some brain-based interventions.

I knew that I needed something more to help my clients than talk therapy. So I learned how to do EMDR and eye movement, desensitization, reprocessing. I thought EMDR was amazing. And it was really, really helpful and a good fit for some of my clients. Some of my clients, it was not a good fit. And so I was looking for something better. Did you notice a three line between that? Because I'd like to look for the kind of a diagram of our journey.

It sounded like we kind of were on similar trajectories. And when I got trained in EMDR, I thought it was just kind of a purple hat therapy that maybe would distract people or something. And it didn't do much for me. And then I started noticing like, whoa, like for 2030, percent of people there is a very strong neurological effect. But within two weeks, I was like, this does not work for the reason that they say it works. Like, I don't see that bilateral synchronization thing. I mean, I think Francine Shapiro's guesses were great for 1984. I just think that we've got 30 more years of neuroscience. And I started looking for like, who's this helping,

who's this not helping? And I noticed that dissociative patients would respond really strongly to it, but it wasn't always the best for them because they tended to be layers where you would treat this thing they thought was the problem and then something else would come up and they would decompensate and then you'd treat that and it was like okay well we're going through a well so you know you take one thing off the top the next thing floats up eventually you're going to run out of stuff but the process was pretty messy so they tended to like it whereas I was like you don't realize what it's really going to be like to stir up eight months of work in a session you know I don't know I'm just wondering if you saw three lines of who it helped who it

didn't what you liked about it what you didn't because I'm EMDR trained I haven't done it for probably seven years. Brain spotting almost entirely replaced and ETT expanded that so I was just curious if you made observations at that time. I like you. I don't do EMDR anymore.

I don't need to. ETT is just more effective and efficient and I can treat a wider variety of conditions that impact people. my lens, Joel, is through safety, being in this field of sex therapy in conjunction with

betrayal trauma and infidelity. I often think through a safety lens. People come in so traumatized and grief-stricken. And when they've experienced betrayal, you know, the world doesn't feel safe. So when I'm doing therapy and using ETT, I like it more than EMDR because my brain says, I can keep my client safe. Meaning, when they were doing EMDR, it was almost like being on a train for some people. Memories would wash by people. And even though we can do some containment, I felt like I couldn't really control or keep them safe and focused during the process. That was my experience. That brain spotting became the surgical tool to go all the way through one thing.

Whereas when we were concentrating on an emotion and doing the things, they're like, now I'm on heroin, now I'm in the flop house, now I'm hiding out in Vegas. Now I'm doing this. Now I'm doing this. And they're confused.

But it really is like, you know, you're on this train of memory, everything related to that. Which the web, right? It goes from one memory to another. Yep. I think that's a riskier way to get there.

I mean, it did work for the people who got treatment that way. A lot of those patients have now come back and brain spotting the ETT, I think, took them deeper into things that we thought we were done with. Yes, yes. I still can offer EMDR, but once my clients experience ETT, that's, they find it a better fit for them. And so people don't ask for EMDR. I've had one lady in the last eight years asked me to do MDR.

So I met her where she was. With ETT, what ended up happening, I worked with a gentleman. I worked with a gentleman Rick Reynolds, who gets, he does all the trainings. He tries to stay really cutting edge. And he met Dr. Stephen Bosquez. And Dr. Vasquez had moved from Dallas to Austin. And it was actually practicing around the corner from our practice. And Rick did some training with him.

And Rick and I at that point, we were on either side of a wall. Our offices were next to each other. And so as we would walk our clients to the waiting room, he'd say, MJ, I have a client with depression. And I did ETT, and the depression is gone. And I remember just kind of patting him on the shoulder and saying, sure, Rick. And I was very skeptical.

And how can, how can that be? And then we would walk out and go to the waiting room and he'd say, MJ, have a client with anxiety. And I did ETT. And the anxiety is gone. Sure, Rick. And then story after Joel of working with somebody using ETT to help their OCD intrusive and ruminating thoughts stop and their compulsive behaviors remit. We talked about using ETT for ADHD presentations, for grief, for trauma. The list was endless. And at some point, I was so skeptical, but I trust Rick and he kept having these stories. So one day, my 8 a.m. client canceled and his 8 a.m. client canceled.

and he invited me to do an ETT session with him. And I jumped on that. Yes. At that time, Joel, so he said, MJ, think of something. When you think of it that you have a lot of distress or emotions about. Not that time something had happened with one of my sons. And as I was sitting in Rick's office, he stood in front of me with some sticks that had color on the end and he said mj i want you to talk about your boy and talk about this

experience this thing that's happening in your lives and look at the sticks with the color at the end and i'm going to move them and i want you to follow them with your eyes and joel i thought he had lost his mind about what is he talking about but i did i talked about the experience i cried i was very, very distressed. And as I followed with my eyes and I followed the sticks, I could feel my emotions changing. He switched out the different colors a few times. I could feel my stress getting lighter. My, the tears stopped and he then he moved me over and sat me from the physical changes.

They're always almost what people notice before the emotional change. It blooms into the. Well, right. The tears stopped. So my sadness was lightning, and I had all kinds of fear and sadness and mama bear guilt and shame and how do I protect my child and how did these things happen or going through my mind, distressing thoughts. When he sat me in front of the ETT chart, the spectral chart, it, as you know, it has colors, strips of colors on. And I remember Rick saying, if the colors change in any way, that means you're dissociating and tell me right away. Again, Joel, I really, Rick, the colors, this is a poster.

How are the colors going to change? But okay. So as he instructed me where to look, talk about my son and this experience, the color expanded. I was looking at green and the color expanded. He said, you're dissociating. Close your eyes. And then he had me do some thinking and answer a sensory question. I opened my eyes and the color was back.

And I didn't know what happened, but that was weird. And then look at this color. Talk about it again. The color disappeared. He said, you're dissociating. Close your eyes. He got me back online, right? Got me connected to myself.

And then after looking at a few colors, he suddenly said, okay, MJ, that's, it, you're done. And what do you mean I'm done? And he literally, Joel, he went like this, have a nice day. And I went back to my office and it had been like 23 minutes. And when I thought about what was happening with my son, I mean, neutral, my distress was reduced. My body, my nervous system felt calm. And even though I had no idea what had just happened, I knew I had to get trained in because he was on to something. He experienced something profound. Yeah, I won't talk to people about the science until they sit down.

I'm like, look, if you're going to sit down, it's couch for five minutes. I can show you something that you can't explain. But if I start talking about the science, you're just going to think of crazy. And then once they try it, they're like, wait, but how could that? And I'm like, well, because the optic nerve doesn't go directly to acipital. It wraps around the brainstem. And you feel 90% of what you're seeing before you actually see it. and bubble, you know, but if you start trying to front load that, you're, you're just going to

scare everybody away. But there is a really, there is an effect where people are like, you know, they kind of need to blink and test it. And then they're like, I can't, I can't explain this. I can't talk my way out of this. It's replicating consistently, you know. Yes. I have that same experience where I'll try to give someone a scientific explanation because

we humans, as you know, we, we, we, like that. like to understand when we want to understand. So one way I explain ETT, I'll say emotional transformation therapy is a form of psychotherapy that integrates the use of light and color. So while a person talks about a topic, there's a verbalization component and they feel their emotions, There's the emotional component while using visual eye stimulation. Those are the wavelengths of light. How a person feels emotionally and physically changes.

Let's be short blurb. So let's back up just a little bit. And Dr. Vasquez, who is going to be on here later, hopefully that will be the episode that follows this one. You know, he, most therapy, modalities come about when there's somebody in the I'd like to go a little bit back in his story and in yours like you know they come about where somebody says like I'm kind of tired of talking about the ego and the id what if there's five parts of self and then the patient says oh yeah I have an inner critic or pusher and then they write down well you should engage you know and it comes from that kind of clinical experimentation but you know Vasquez is a very educated guy I mean I think he's got like four degrees or something but he basically read research and it didn't come about that way. It was a neurological thing where he read all these ways the brain worked and was like, well, if it does this, would this do something to emotion, you know, based on other people's data? And, you know, in his book, I think he says he built six devices or eight devices or something.

And then basically four of them worked. And, you know, he was willing to get outside of the box. He had the creativity and the openness to say, well, what if, you know, I kind of like color and light. What if that does something? But he also had, and not be kind of afraid of that, he has a scary space, but he also had the scientific, you know, credulousness to say, these don't work. These aren't doing anything. When you shine light through skin, it tends to not work unless it's red. And then it just is affecting mitochondria and muscles, it's not really affecting the brain as much. You know, and so the four devices that he built based on those theoretical maps are really effective. And they've become the kind of modules that ETT is. But you had told me, I think, at one of the trainings that you'd seen him present a lot of the time and that you were kind of outraged about the absurdity of it you know that you before you actually came into ETT you were you're having the same kind of response that I was having of like you know this is crazy you know this this is this all the chroma therapies in the 70s were

scam this is just you know yeah you know yeah I met a another counselor uh doctor Annie Curlin she practices in California and I met Annie at a conference And she said, you know, MJ really should check out this ETT emotional transformation therapy. I do this. It uses light and color and it's amazing. And it transforms how people feel very quickly. And it is replicable and it's effective. And I blew her off.

I just, when I heard light and color, I thought, no, nope. A serious person. I do serious therapy. Yeah. no not doing that um and then i ran into her again a couple of years later and she said did you get trained in et t yet and no i did not and she said she pushed me again really consider this well it wasn't until rick learned et t and i had that experience at crossroads and i had even um seeing Dr. Vasquez do a demo at one of those conferences along the way when I was training.

It was a sash conference and I was training and how to be a sex therapist and do help people with sexual issues and Dr. Vasquez presented and he did a light box demonstration where he had somebody with distress, who was just another therapist in the room, sit in front of the device and he had them talk about their distress. They were in touch with their emotions. He showed light and color into their eyes, colors that matched their emotions, and the person changed. And I remember thinking, this is the setup. They staged this. I absolutely couldn't believe that transformation could happen that quickly. So the people see things on the light box sometimes.

I mean, they'll experience, you're just looking at a color screen and a flicker rate, but people, I didn't get that in the training, but a lot of other people did, and you all kind of prepared us for it. I think someone had seen who was processing grief of a dog, like a dog paw come out of the screen and stuff. The first time my oldest son did ETT using the light device. when he came home I said you know how was it I didn't ask him

the content I just was curious how the ETT went for him and he said mom I saw the death star turning so he saw a shift turning in the I don't know what he was processing but his brain did create an image but it helped him

and he was probably 19 years old at the time he experienced his first to ETT. So even that young. You had seen Vascus present a couple times and kind of been like just blown it off as this is a wild thing which is just I want to introduce that to since you know now you're a trainer of ETT that's kind of doing the top level stuff. Well and and I want to say this even now. So you know I went I did get trained in all the classes and I

ETT was so effective, I could replicate it. I did my ETT level one training, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I started using it Monday. I turned right around and started using it right away. And I've now done over 3,100 ETT sessions now and keep a track of them. And they work, like this works. So I went through the classes again to become a trainer. And now I've been going around the country and

training therapists all across the country. I'd love to before the end of my career have ETP therapists in all 50 states. And even when I'm demoing, Joel, when I'm teaching a class with Dr. Voskis, sometimes he'll let me co-teach with him. The transformation happens so quickly. Even now, I'm blown away, and I have disbelief. Like, I can't work so fast. I just was in Portland.

I just trained some therapists in Portland. And there was a counselor who was in the training, and she let me demo the light device. Her topic was, we do sentence starter sometimes. So the sentence starter was, when I think about the dark. Now, she had, she said her whole life, she had been afraid of the dark. and so here she was in her 30s still afraid of the dark and it was impacting her functioning and so that was her sentenced when I think about being afraid of the dark or when I think about the dark and fear came up and she experienced distress in her body it was like a bell curve

and as we use the light dyes this happened very quickly her brain remembered when she was four and she experienced an earthquake and she was with her family and in an apartment building and it was the middle of the night and everything shook and the TV fell off the wall and her mom grabbed her hand and she and her siblings and her parents ran out of the apartment building right the ground was shaking she was four she realized right her brain connected this memory her fear of the dark started with that memory she had no conscious connection to when it began. But in that instant, as I showed her shades of dark red, that far red for shock and loss and move to yellow to help with the fear and overwhelm, her fear went

away. And here she is in a training. She's a therapist. And she said, I'm not afraid anymore. And so we even thought about the last time she had been afraid of the dark, like kind of checking it out. We did a future when you think about being in the dark tonight, her fear was gone. And she said, she felt joy. And she said, I can't believe I'm even saying this. I feel joy. I'm kind of excited. It's going to get dark tonight.

And it was just so mind-blowing. And the whole class, all of those therapists were like, wow, this is just great. sometimes it happens that quickly well and so i was doing mdr and that led me to brain spotting and before i was doing mdr i was doing kind of like somatic and parts-based therapies and sort of like some hypnosis techniques but mostly um just i wasn't trained in semantic experience or anything but just those kind of parts-based semantic styles and so i was always like looking not at what somebody's saying but what they're feeling and not what they think caused the event but like all these emotions associated with the event because a lot of times that it gets you either deeper

into it or to another thing. I was always trying to look at like what are the deep kind of subcortical brains motivations here that we're not always quite aware of. And I don't think that you can analyze that or interpret at least maybe I'm just missing a gene or not not bright enough to be able to tell you exactly, you know, what happened in childhood. I think you just have to make room for it until it kind of naturally comes up and that people will make those connections given kind of the space and the redirection. back to what they seem to be running from or towards.

And so when I said on our podcast all the time, because, I mean, remember, we were the first people in Alabama that I was able to find that we're doing brain spawning. They were like, one person I tried to get the brain spawning with her, and she was like, oh, I got that training. I put it on psychology day, but I don't like it. And another person, yeah, anyway, there just wasn't anyone around.

Everybody acted like it was voodoo. Even the MDR people, which, you know, research, The clinical researchers don't always love EMDR because it doesn't work for, it's not as generalizable as some things, even though it does work for what it works for. And I kept saying on the podcast, like if you are a trauma patient where you're a therapist and you're desperate to help people and you've done lots of things and you can compare these and there's a new thing out there, send it to me. Don't tell me, well, my PhD advisor told me DVDT works for everything. So you should get DVT trained. Don't send me that email. But if you can say,

well, I think lifespan integration plays with the precunious in like our relationship to the salience of time around events, but I think EMDR does it cute, you know, if you can kind of Venn diagram these and you found a new thing,

tell me, please tell me. And so I kept hearing about ETT from people. And I would look it up and the website doesn't have a ton of details and it's like, what is this? Like, is it a talk therapy?

Like, I don't, and then, you know, I talked to some providers that were kind of almost like reticent to talk about the techniques. And there was like, well, you look at this board and there's color on it

And the people seemed incredibly smart. They seemed passionate about what they did. I was kind of doing everything I know to do to kind of bullshit to, you know, people that are looking for false positives and confirmation bias, or they're just kind of like doing a purple hat therapy. I mean, pretty credulous.

And they seemed like, I mean, I couldn't kind of find any place where they seemed off. So I went and Vasquez is going on about light and color. And I'm just sitting there in Austin being like, why did I pay all this money? am I here? And the same thing that you described, like, somebody was going up. And I was like, I volunteer for this because I just, I don't, I don't believe whatever. And, and I'm like sitting in

front of the board and, you know, the color yellow just would go black before my eyes. And I like, I couldn't. I was like, is this laser cut or, you know, what's, yeah, like, and I would touch it. And Vasquez was like, please, please, I ask you not to touch the board. They're $500. And I, but I couldn't understand why the color was going away. You know, it just the same, the same thing that so many people have had where it's like we can't believe it's going to happen until it happens. And even after the training, I mean, the training was pretty impactful and interesting that you buy all these things and I'm back in my office and I'm kind of trying to play with them. But I'm looking at, you know, the ETT One manual that has like, this is what

is going on when there's a primitive parasympathetic response on the color. This is what's going on when there's a parasympathetic response. This is when there's a sympathetic. This is when there is no issue with the color at all. And like, and I have these charts for every single color and I'm just pointing my, because I use the brain spotting pointer to point in the board, which works better for me because then I know exactly where they're looking even if they don't see the color the same way I see it. So I just tap where I want them to look. And I'm looking at these charts that the patients obviously don't have and they're telling me the exact same thing and it's changing from this one to this one to this one to this one. And after two weeks,

it was like, okay, well, I shoot, like I can't talk myself out of this because I'm sitting here with information that you don't have and I'm independently reproducing it. And I can't And it doesn't stop happening. But even back in Alabama, it was probably three, four weeks before I finally was just like, okay, like I, this neurologically is reproducible because I'm trying everything that I can to try and suggest something else to try and get it to not work like it's supposed to because I'm doubtful. I don't like authority. I don't like, you know, when somebody says these are the rules, I'm like, well, do they have to be? And I like, I couldn't make it not work, which was pretty wild. Joel was I think it was level two

when you came in and you've been sick and Yeah even then I had some doubt well yeah because I had a horrible ear infection and my eardrum had ruptured and so when y'all were like oh get the glasses we'll do the goggles for him it works for chronic pain I was like guys there's blood dripping out of my ear this morning

Like, I didn't mom issues my way into the light. And yet, when the light position is here, my ear is a five alarm fire. And when the light position is here, it's gone on. And I was like, no, you know, ears are weird. Some juice probably moved around. And then you're clicking the thing. And it's like every single time, three o'clock was a five alarm fire. Six o'clock felt nothing.

We changed the direction of which light entered your eyes. And you felt differently depending on. What angle of the light came in here? I remember working with you and it was really exciting because I knew you, you are a scientist in many ways. You are skeptical. You want data. You want to understand. And so I thought, if Joel can experience the goggles, he's hell, it's a felt experience, right?

And I knew. I just had that confidence, this will work. and so I remember being really excited with you when the symptoms decreased and some of them went away and you were able to sit through the weekend and I remember we kept checking in with you like how do you feel Joel it did work I've had those those my whole life they're pretty rough and I wasn't able to get to a doctor

anything because I was I had paid for the training I couldn't miss it there all day well so can you um say little bit for people that are like, okay, there's a light color, miracle, box, devised goggles, whatever, that heal people. How do I plug that into my clinical practice? This doesn't sound like me because I'm just a normal talk therapist. I mean, you were kind of coming from a cognitive and Rogerian world and then you had real specific trainings around, you know, the sex and different things, but just the kind of nuts and bolts of somebody comes in and

they've got the same issue and you're talking about it. I know you've even got some marriage counseling demos that you did on the light device, which are kind of interesting, I don't do marriage counseling. But could you just kind of walk through how MJ is a talk therapist who does talk therapy and then now you've got these new toys? How do you kind of plug those into the things that other people listen to this may do? I would say prior to ETT and my focus was CBT and definitely Rosary. I remember, you know, meet clients. where they are, be with them. People want to want to be heard

and understood, and the way to heal is through relationship and not being alone. So that was how I approached my practice. And people would talk about whatever was bringing them into the therapy room, whether it was an adjustment from one phase to another grief, trauma, a psychological condition.

And talking just wasn't enough. When I learned how to do ETT, now there's a trifecta. My brain thinks, you client, knee therapist, ETT. Now, this is science, right? I can use the ETT. I can use the light and color to make the therapy more effective. And so transitioning from being just a talk therapist to now an ETT therapist was easier than I thought it was going to be. People would say, this is very weird.

You want me to look at colors and talk about my feelings. I think that's really super strange. But I trust you, MJ, and I'm willing to try it. And once people experience that transition, the transformation and how they feel, they are drinking the Kool-Aid and it's easy. And my practice has been full for nine years. I don't even take, I don't have a wait list because I'm full all the time and I don't want to make people wait, but I will refer them. I need other, they need to keep training ATT therapist to, so I have more and more people. to refer to. And so when somebody comes in, Joel, and they say, I'll say, you know, let's do a check

in. How are you feeling emotionally? How's your body feeling? What would you like to talk about today? And as they start talking, I will often say, is this something you would like to ETT to streamline our 50 minutes together, instead of you talking about this and then we ETT it, would you like to talk about it while we use the colors to help you feel better as we go? And once people have experienced ETT, yes, I have one lady who, she actually yelled at me, Joel. She said, never let me come here and not do ETT again. She said, I talked about all the things.

Time was up. I felt terrible because I had all this emotion and then I had to go, I had to leave. And she said, I know I'll feel better after I do ETT. So sometimes for new clients, there is a helping them understand we're going to do a scientific process. We're going to integrate light and color into what we're already doing to help you feel better before you leave. And now people consistently, Joel, they leave my office feeling better than what. they got there. If they didn't, I would not be a therapist or that wouldn't be a trauma therapist.

And I certainly wouldn't go around training therapists around the country if I didn't believe and know this science was replicable. I see new therapists who are scared. They're green. They feel like they don't know what they're doing. And I encourage them. This is science, right? You therapist or me therapist, you client.

ETT, if we can integrate this and we do three things, another trifectal, have the client talk about their issue, they have to be connected to their emotions. So we're going to correct dissociation while showing them wavelengths of light that match their emotional content. What they feel changes. Science. It is replicable. Even the newest therapist can do this. Well, and in my mind, like when you're looking, because I'm, I'm, We're integrative. We wanted to get, you know, the cognitive therapy model of you go do CBT for six sessions. And if you don't have substantial improvement, then you need to take pills. You know, I saw that kind of waning. And there was a new trauma movement. And we wanted to have somatic experiencing. We wanted to have life spend integration. We wanted to have brain spotting. We wanted to have, you know, the QEG brain mapping. We wanted to have micronutrition. We wanted to have polyvagal stimulators. All the things that, you know, six years ago, now some of that's commercialized. But research was sort of indicated. it, that it was moving that way, you know, that stuff is always going to be more speculative because you can't randomize control trial, something that's very subjective or doesn't exist.

And then you need a couple of years to do that. But that's what I was seeing. And brain spotting was kind of the first thing. But so, I mean, I think the best models of therapy kind of do three things. And one, the first one is there's something that's immediately replicable. There's not 17 sessions of buy-in about like, oh, you don't believe it, but I promise if you do the work, this is going to happen, you can give somebody something in the room that day, you know, because you're sort of setting, even if

the model's not terrible, the provider's not exploitive, you're kind of, I just think, 20 sessions in, you just got to have faith in me, but I'm not going to give you anything yet. You're sort of setting up something that is not a great, you know, power dynamic relationship. ETH definitely does the first one. I mean, the second thing is

the models, I think, that are really good or kind of a universal language about emotion and how to engage with it. And so they integrate with any model, you know, like there's something that you don't, that, so somebody can come in to ETT as a cognitive behavioral therapist, as a DBT therapist, as a, experiencing therapist. Yeah, exactly. And you're talking about the same emotion, but just while you're talking about it, you say, okay, fine, you're saying you're not scared.

kind of feels, see scared, whatever, maybe I'm wrong, let's get on the board, you know, and, you know, so, and which leads me to the third thing is that they're sort of empowering both to the patient and the provider. It's not like, oh, the provider has all this training and is on this tower and it's telling you how to do it and you have to look at the right thing. It's, the better models, I think, um, engage intuitively, the provider and the patient in a way that you can still indicate with research, but it doesn't start with a number, you know. And with the board, even people like, I was doing brain spotting before I felt comfortable treating with the board, but I would assess on the board, and people would

go there and they'd see all of these distortions and the colors, and then they'd do brain spotting, and they come back and be like, I can, I can see green now. I can see green now. You know, I'm like, yeah, that's great. It went on crazy. That was going black for you for for two weeks, and now it's there, but we got working red. Red is having a problem. So it's like all of those things that I really look for in a modality that it's, it's universal enough. You don't have to learn all this weird language. You don't have to completely break your paradigm and and convert from one religion to the next one, that this is really just a faster way

of doing what you were doing anyway. You know, they're all present there for me. I have some therapist friends who are really experts in their field. One gentleman, Wayne Baker, he is an IFS therapist, and he's so good. He just loves IFS, and he also goes around with some trainers and trains other therapist and I of us. He is also an ETT therapist.

And these modalities just blends so well together. The parts of these language is even a part of the brain spawning training now. They've gone ahead and made part of it because you will dig these parts up with any of these things that are activating the subcortical brain that are brain-based, that just kind of skip all of the why I think that I'm here and go to why am I actually here. You're going to, you need to have parts-based language and semantic, you know, understanding of semantics. It's interesting with the, right, with ETT. We ask the person, we give them, have them talk about a topic, right?

And they tell us what they think. They access and kick up their emotions. And then we say, what do you notice you feel in your body? And that way, as we are changing the angle at which the color might come into their eyes, we can see at which angle do they have different sensations in their body, where does it feel better so that we can help them know, memorize the light that comes in at this angle, transpose to other angles to reduce any kind of emotional or physical distress. And so that blends in really this brain-based intervention, right, blends in really well with people who think in parts

and who do somatic experiencing in those body-based kinds of therapy modalities. Yeah, and I think another part of those what the best modalities do is like this one, I think, grows up with a provider. Like if you know nothing and have just taken your first class or you've done it for 20 years, it does scale. Because it's like when I started, you know, I was doing really good work and it was working. But I remember, you know, Vasquez coming in the second day and being like, okay, So everyone should have their colors memorized and every part of the brain they active in and everyone's kind of like and then you went around and we're like, no one has that done yet. No one ever does that. He always says that. You know, and then, you know, because it's such a new new thing and it's so technical. And then all of a sudden it becomes intuitive. It goes from being this scary detail or anything to this like, oh, I just get this. And I mean, it was like I sort of understood, okay, you know, orange is sort of ego and green is like anger, but it's also black hole sucking. It's going to show up an attachment disorder. or it's going to be burning in the chest, but it's kind of action and sometimes that shows up as anger.

But I didn't have a great understanding until I'd done the board for about a year. And then it just became this natural thing of like, oh, orange is just self and how comfortable we are with this sort of center of identity. And so when orange is bleeding into red, that means that somebody mistook my emotional needs, or I mistook somebody else's emotional needs for conditions for my own survival, rightly or wrongly.

You know, I, and, and yellow is trapped, controlled, paranoid boxed in constraints and green is kind of action and expansiveness, maybe anger. So yellow green is like in between those, like just confused and like I feel like something's hurting me, but I don't know what it is or I need to act, but I don't even know what action I want to do. You know, it's that space between, you know, anger and action and being boxed, you know, and then all of a sudden I was talking about this to patients, but it was, it just, you know, you kind of. have to start to feel how these things work and you have to watch you have to get comfortable with like okay green's in the chest but when i when that pops maybe it's going to hop up into blue or blue green and now the person needs to say something they need to verbalize something that they haven't done or maybe they're going to internalize it and it's going to hop down into yellow and it's going to be in their gut you know and you just get used to these patterns but you don't have to be the the master

that they i mean i you're effective as an eTP for brighter after the first training but then you could take a hundred more classes and you're still going to be you know getting familiarity with it and i think some of the better models are able to do that i hope that makes sense well as you're saying that i was thinking you are you're validating the therapist in the room right all therapy i think is intuitive right we we are in the room and we trust our gut instinct right and we listen to ourselves or mirror neurons, right? We feel what the client feels. One of the things I love about ETT is that now it's the therapist, even in the virtual room, right?

ETT can be done virtually. So we have a remote light device. So there's a way for clients to log into a website, the counselor, the ETT therapist, logs into the website, We have a logging code. Each therapist has their own. And so now we can do the light device with people over the internet. They can use their phone, their iPad, their computer. But here's the thing.

We can, because it's science, you know this, Joel. Parfato. verbalization, emoting, visual eye stimulation. So I can talk to somebody on the phone. and I can have them use a color out, and I can direct them which colors to look at while they are talking to me about the topic. I remember the very first time I ETTed myself. This story, it still blows my mind.

I did the ETT level one training, and that's where we learned how to use the spectral chart and the multidimensional eye movement, which are the sticks, the ones with the color at the end. And a brand new therapist, I don't really know what I'm doing. I started on Monday. It was working with my clients, even though I wasn't really sure what I was doing because I've just gotten trained. And so not long after that, I flew to Florida. And as I was on my way home on the flight, I was on the Southwest flight, the seats are a shade of indigo. That matters, but it didn't register to me at first. So I had some kind of a. sinus infection and my ears hurt so as we took off out of fort lauderdale and just the pressure in my head

hurt so much and as we were flying i could just feel it and i was starting to panic because i knew as we were coming into austin it was really going to hurt on the way down and i was getting distressed and it hurts so much and i i had been looking at the back of the seat in front of me thinking about how what i was feeling in my body and noticing how upset I was and my eyes drifted to the seat um diagonally from me the back of the seat diagonally from me and I just you know just kind of mindlessly looked that way um and then I heard you know could hear myself saying oh my gosh you know my my ears are bothering me and um and then I had an awareness of yeah I do feel something but I don't feel as worried and anxious over here. And all of a sudden I realized I was looking at the color

indigo. And when I had looked at it, when it was coming in my eyes straight ahead, I felt one degree of distress when I looked to the right at indigo. And also the indigo from the seat in front of me is now coming in my eyes at the angle. I realized it felt better over there. And I realized I was Z-T-Ting myself. So I looked at the seat, the back of the seat to the left side of me. And what do I feel? How do I feel emotionally about what I feel? And then I memorized what I was seeing on the side that felt better. I looked to the other side. I tried to imagine I was seeing that same shade of indigo. My distress lightened. And when we landed, my head did not hurt. My sinuses had cleared up some. I didn't have the same emotional distress.

And now I was actually elated because I had ETTed myself on an airplane after just one training, not really even understanding the science at all, not really knowing what I was doing, but it worked. That was part. That was gas in the tank for me to go get more training. Well, I want to be respectful of your time. This is a great introduction to ETT for anyone unfamiliar. Hopefully Vasco can get more into the weeds with us about his theories and,

how you developed it and everything. Is there anything that you want to say or anything you want to include? And we'll definitely link to your practice website and the ETT website. I want to make sure that, you know, we name where therapists can go if they want to get trained in ETT. There's a website. It's www.etraining.com. And that website, it has articles about what ETT training is. And that website, it has articles about what ETT is. is. It talks about the science of how ETT works. It has a list of, there's a therapist directory. So there's a place you can go to find ETT therapists around the world, the ETT therapist in France and in Portugal. And we have somebody who's going over to train in Israel. Like we are expanding. Dr. Vasquez has trained therapist, I think he said 20 countries around the world.

You got any in Norway? A couple of people from Norway have emailed me and I hadn't been able to find anyone in their part of the, in the country. I don't know if there's any more. No, but I would love to go there and train some people. So they can go and sign up for classes. So if people, if therapists are interested in learning this training, experiencing level one, they can go find one. They can go find where the next level one class will be held and it goes through level seven. So it's the first two training classes are about how to use the four pieces of equipment, the chart and the MDM ones and the goggles and the light device.

But then level three teaches protocols how to use ETT for trauma, depression, ADHD and ADD. OCD, right? It teaches how to correct dissociation. And then we have level four that talks about how to use ETT for physical conditions to reduce pain and change the stress and distress component tied to physical conditions. Level five talks about using ETT for spiritual issues. Six and seven are use ETT for addictions, which is very effective, and how to use this with couples. So they can learn all about what the classes are and sign up. Well, that sounds great. Thank you so much for your time, and we will definitely, I know, I have one question. Do you know if anyone that can do the remote ETT work,

who is not behind a board that will not let them practice out, like, internationally? Like, because a lot of the social workers, even if they have board reciprocity and the LPCs, even if they have board reciprocity and can see somebody from California and Alabama or whatever, which I can't. My board doesn't do that. Like, I've had emails from Thailand. I've had emails from Iran. I've had emails from Norway, lots of places. And I, if there's a provider that's like a life coach or a chiropractor or a board that doesn't stop them from doing international practice, do you know anybody in the community that could do that? So this is a very legitimate question.

If we have a therapist who is, you know, counselors are limited by their state's rules, right, that we can only practice within the state that we are licensed in. now life coaches have the ability to practice across state lines so this is still a really gray area because we have to abide by our board rules so that we don't lose our license life coaches in and of themselves cannot become trained in ETT as of right now it's restricted to somebody who has a mental health license. So LPCs and LMFTs and LCSW PhDs, right? So we can get trained in this.

Life coaches cannot. I do know that, you know, it is effective remotely. So we need to work on that to make sure that we can we can provide it all over the world. Yeah. Well, we'll link to your website. We'll link to the ETT website where you can find information about trainings and all of that. And then is there anything else you want to add?

We really appreciate you joining us to help share it. Because I think that once, you know, I know some people that got trained in EMDR and were like, well, that's not for me or got trained in hypnosis or got trained in DBT and are just kind of like, I wish I had done that because I've never used that. I've not ever really met anybody who got an E. provider training and then said, I don't like that. And I've also never met anybody. And I mean, a lot of those people email me if I talk about any of this stuff.

So if you have to get an email somebody that said, I did an ETT training and I don't use it and I don't like it. One of my one most profound moments, there's a lady who is very high up in the EMDR community, who is local to Austin. and she's been an EMDR practitioner since, you know, it began in the late 80s. She teaches EMDR and she came to the ETT training. I was in her level one class. I was co-teaching with Dr. Vasquez. And she was on the spectral chart and she decided that she wanted to ETT. when I think about not knowing about ETT before now.

She was moving through her grief because she devoted so many years to EMDR and then discovered this late in her practice that ETT was so effective. And she did move through her grief very quickly and came to a place of recognizing these skills integrate. it is good that she has skills from EMDR. She can use some of those skills in how she now does ETT with her clients. And she told me she doesn't actually use EMDR anymore. She is now an ETT therapist, which doesn't that speak to. There's still plenty of back and forth eye movements on UDT and different.

Yes. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. That's so kind to be to join us. And we will link to everything, MJ, in the show notes. So please click those links and check out her other stuff.