Maggie Kelly LPC

10/12/2026

New EMDR Music video in Healing Places from Around the World Series: Ojo Caliente Hot Springs

Tucked into the high desert of northern New Mexico, Ojo Caliente has been a place of healing for centuries. The ancestors of the Tewa people considered these waters sacred, and today it is one of the oldest natural hot springs resorts in the country.

What makes Ojo so special is the water itself. Several different mineral springs rise up from the earth here, each with its own character:
Lithia, long associated with calm and mood
Iron, warm and grounding
Soda, soft and soothing
Arsenic, traditionally used for aches and skin

I filmed this one slowly and quietly: steam lifting off the pools, sunlight on the cliffs, the gentle sound of water. Paired with bilateral EMDR music, it’s an invitation to let your body soften the way it does when you sink into warm water.

Try this as you watch:
Let your shoulders drop and your jaw unclench
Imagine warmth spreading from your belly outward
Notice one place in your body that feels even slightly at ease, and stay there
Warm water, desert stillness, and rhythmic sound all send the same message to the nervous system: you are safe enough to rest.

🎧 Headphones recommended for the full bilateral effect. Video link in comments.

10/12/2026

New in Healing Places from Around the World: Ojo Caliente Hot Springs

Tucked into the high desert of northern New Mexico, Ojo Caliente has been a place of healing for centuries. The ancestors of the Tewa people considered these waters sacred, and today it is one of the oldest natural hot springs resorts in the country.

What makes Ojo so special is the water itself. Several different mineral springs rise up from the earth here, each with its own character:
Lithia, long associated with calm and mood
Iron, warm and grounding
Soda, soft and soothing
Arsenic, traditionally used for aches and skin

I filmed this one slowly and quietly: steam lifting off the pools, sunlight on the cliffs, the gentle sound of water. Paired with bilateral EMDR music, it’s an invitation to let your body soften the way it does when you sink into warm water.

Try this as you watch:
Let your shoulders drop and your jaw unclench
Imagine warmth spreading from your belly outward
Notice one place in your body that feels even slightly at ease, and stay there
Warm water, desert stillness, and rhythmic sound all send the same message to the nervous system: you are safe enough to rest.

🎧 Headphones recommended for the full bilateral effect.

09/17/2026

I’m traveling to Our Lady of Lourdes next week to film and be part of the Pope’s visit, journeying alongside a group of Irish Carmelites. And I’m bringing something that matters more than any camera: intentions of healing.

Lourdes is a small town in the French Pyrenees. In 1858, a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary in a grotto there, and a spring rose up from the ground. Since then, tens of millions have made the pilgrimage, many of them sick or grieving, all of them holding onto hope.

So much of my work centers on the body’s capacity to heal from what has wounded it. I’ll be carrying these intentions close:
• Healing for those living with CPTSD
• The unwinding of generational trauma
• Comfort for those walking through grief and loss
•.Peace and healing for the people of Palestine.

The prayers are already coming in. For a friend battling depression. For a son’s healing. For a mother’s wholeness in body, mind, and spirit. Every one is going into this notebook.

There is something ancient in pilgrimage, in physically moving toward hope, in prayer. We were never meant to carry these things alone.

So here’s my invitation: I’m filling this notebook with healing prayers to carry to the grotto, and I would be honored to bring yours. If something is weighing on your heart, for you or someone you love, leave your prayer in the comments or dm me. I’ll write it down and carry it to Lourdes. 🕊️
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09/08/2026

I just returned from Burning Man, the first stop in a new series I’m creating on healing places around the world for my YouTube channel. I’ll be sharing the B-roll with my EMDR music layered underneath, so you can feel the place as much as see it. As a therapist Burning Man was a beautiful contemplation on healing.

A few things I’m still sitting with:

• Community making art. Thousands of people come together to build something no single person could, art that exists only because people made it together. There’s a particular kind of healing in that, in being part of a shared act of creation bigger than yourself.

• Collaboration within. Something similar happens inside us too. Out here, parts of myself that sometimes feel separate from each other got to collaborate, the Christian, the wild dancing free spirit, the performer. I came home more integrated for it, better able to bring those fuller parts of myself back to the people I love.

• Liminal spaces heal. There’s a reason so much transformation happens at thresholds. When you step outside ordinary life, out past your usual roles and routines, the nervous system finally has room to loosen its grip. In that in-between, things that felt stuck for years can move. The desert isn’t a distraction from real life; it’s a doorway back into it, changed.

• Grief, held in community. At the Temple Burn, people bring photographs of loved ones who’ve passed, leave them inside the Temple, and watch it burn together at week’s end. We sat in complete silence as the fire rose, tens of thousands of us, and every so often that silence broke open into howling, the whole crowd crying out like wolves for our lost pack members. One of the most moving rituals I’ve ever witnessed.

That, to me, is what healing really is: expression, and the courage to let go of what no longer serves us while holding on to what matters and is precious. Burning Man simply concentrates it.

Next stop: Lourdes, France. From the desert to the sacred spring, I can’t wait to see what it has to teach.

07/24/2026

Grateful to PESI for sponsoring me to attend Innovations in Psychotherapy 2026 in Anaheim this November. Some of the lineup I’m excited about: Dr. Ramani Durvasula. Dr. Orna Guralnik from Showtime’s Couples Therapy. Dr. Gabor Maté. Janina Fisher. Peter Levine. And so many more.

72% of the speakers this year are women. Twenty three women, nine men. Teaching on trauma, attachment, narcissistic abuse, coercive control, grief, sexuality, estrangement, the father wound, ADHD in women, somatic healing.

Excited to see a stage that reflects the reality of this field. Women’s wisdom in this work is so valuable, and there’s a lot of it in this lineup.

If you’re a therapist looking for a real deep dive this year, this is the one. Four days, CEs included, in person in Anaheim or fully online. November 10 to 13. Tickets are on sale now: https://my.pesi.partners/5C5QMZJ/2MP568X/

06/30/2026

A walk in the park literally changed the way we treat trauma.

In 1987, Francine Shapiro noticed something while walking outside. As her eyes moved left and right, the thoughts that had been overwhelming her lost their charge. That accidental discovery became EMDR.

Bilateral stimulation works because it shifts how your nervous system processes information. When we’re overwhelmed, our perception narrows. We get locked inside the experience. EMDR uses eye movements, tapping, or sound to gently move you out of that locked state, and when you come back to the memory, it feels different. Less heavy. More distant.

That shift in perception? That’s not just a technique. That’s the essence of healing.

💬 Have you tried any form of bilateral stimulation? Tell me below.

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06/11/2026

Something unexpected made it onto my training list this year: Therapeutic Fly Fishing with EMDR. 🎣

I've been fishing since I was a kid. That's me in the second photo with my twin brother, who clearly did not share my enthusiasm 😂

Long before I'd heard the words "bilateral stimulation," I knew the water was where my nervous system went quiet. Years later, as an EMDR therapist, I understood why.

Fly casting is bilateral stimulation, the same left-right rhythm behind every track on my EMDR Music YouTube Channel channel.

And through the lens of Dr. Stephen Porges' polyvagal theory, the river is working too. Moving water carries much of its sound in the mid-frequency range, the same band as the human voice. Low rumbles signal threat, high pitches signal distress, but mid-frequencies tell the nervous system: you're safe.

Bilateral rhythm through the cast. Safety cues through the sound. Co-regulation with nature itself. My two worlds were talking to each other all along.

That's why I'm training in TF-EMDR® through the Seiyu Institute, the first formal integration of EMDR and therapeutic fly fishing. And I'm bringing it to Colorado. 🏔️
✨ Single sessions: a half-day of EMDR on the river. No fly fishing experience needed.
✨ Intensives: multi-day, retreat-style work for deeper processing.

Healing doesn't only happen in a therapy office. Sometimes it happens with cold water running over your waders and a line in your hand.
Interested? Reach out at [email protected]

04/25/2026

I am so honored to have received the Hope and Healing Award from the Ray of Hope Cancer Foundation today at Hope Blooms at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

As a therapist, it is an honor to walk alongside people through their cancer journey. The fear that comes with a diagnosis. The grueling days of treatment. The complicated emotions of survivorship. And for some, the sacred space of end of life. Cancer touches nearly every family in some way and no one should have to walk through it alone.

If you or someone you love is navigating cancer in Colorado, here is what Ray of Hope offers:

The Mental Health Support Grant covers up to $600 in counseling sessions for patients, family members, and caregivers because the emotional toll of cancer doesn’t only fall on the person in treatment.

The Essential Needs Grant provides $500 directly to patients in active treatment for groceries, transportation, rent, and utilities with no restrictions.

If you are a Colorado resident, visit rayofhopecolorado.org to apply or learn more.

01/19/2026

Some wounds don’t come from what happened.
They come from what was missing.

When early relationships lacked consistent safety, emotional presence, or comfort, the nervous system adapted. Those adaptations often appear later as anxiety, emotional shutdown, people pleasing, or difficulty with closeness.

Through decades of clinical work, Dr. Daniel P. Brown identified a consistent pattern. Secure attachment develops when core attachment needs are reliably met. When they are not, the nervous system organizes around survival instead.

Attachment needs and how they shape the nervous system:

👉 Safety and protection
When met: a felt sense of safety, ability to relax, confidence in the world
When unmet: hypervigilance, chronic anxiety, difficulty settling

👉 Attunement
When met: feeling seen, understood, emotionally connected
When unmet: emotional loneliness, feeling invisible or misunderstood

👉 Soothing and co regulation
When met: emotions rise and fall without overwhelm, ability to recover
When unmet: emotional flooding, shutdown, difficulty calming

👉 Support for autonomy
When met: confidence in needs and boundaries, freedom to be oneself
When unmet: people pleasing, guilt around needs, fear of disappointing others

👉 Delight and warmth
When met: a stable sense of worth, ease in being oneself
When unmet: shame, self criticism, feeling valued only through performance

Dr. Brown developed the Ideal Parent Exercise to address these exact attachment needs. Through structured guided imagery, the brain and body can experience what was missing in a way that builds regulation, internal support, and trust over time.

Attachment wounds are not resolved through insight alone. The nervous system learns through experience.

🎧 To explore the exercise, listen to the guided Ideal Parent Exercise here:

Click here to Subscribe ➤ https://www.youtube.com/?sub_confirmation=1Connect & Join the Calm Collective ➤ https://www.bloomintobeing.com/linksEMD...

01/19/2026

I just got PADI certified in Belize, and I keep noticing how much EMDR Therapy mirrors scuba diving. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, an evidence-based therapy that helps the brain safely reprocess traumatic or overwhelming experiences so they no longer feel stuck in the nervous system. Like scuba diving, the work involves gradually going to emotional and neurological depth, with careful pacing so the system stays regulated rather than overwhelmed.

Here’s the parallel 👇

1. Preparation on the surface → History taking & resourcing
Before entering the water, you check your gear, review signals, and assess conditions.
In EMDR, safety comes first. Resources, consent, and clarity come before touching anything intense.

2. Regulated breathing → Bilateral stimulation
In scuba, slow, steady breathing keeps you calm and conserves air.
In EMDR, bilateral stimulation creates rhythm and regulation, helping the nervous system stay organized as depth increases.

3. Buoyancy control → Dual awareness
Good divers don’t sink or shoot to the surface. They stay neutrally buoyant.
Dual awareness keeps one foot in the present while the other touches the past. Aware, not overwhelmed.

4. Slow descent → Titration
You don’t rush depth. You equalize, pause, and listen to your body.
EMDR opens memory networks gradually, at a pace the nervous system can tolerate.

5. Exploring the reef → Processing
Once stable, you can actually see what’s there: colors, details, movement.
Processing allows the brain to reorganize what it finds without panic or force.

6. Safety stop → Integration
Before surfacing, divers pause to let the body adjust.
In EMDR, we close with grounding and integration so the nervous system leaves balanced and complete.

7. Surfacing → Returning to daily life
You come back with air left, not depleted.

Effective EMDR leaves people steadier, clearer, and more embodied.

Trauma healing doesn’t have to feel like being thrown into deep water.

When the structure is solid, the system knows what to do.
Same rules for entering the depths.