How Fast Should EMDR Eye Movements Be?

Fast enough to take real effort to track, but never faster than feels comfortable. Standard EMDR guidance says to move “as fast as you can comfortably tolerate,” in sets of about 15 to 30 seconds. Research comparing speeds found a faster pace (around 1.2 Hz) reduced a memory’s vividness and emotional charge more than a slower one (0.8 Hz).

What speed do EMDR therapists actually use?

There’s no single fixed number. A therapist typically moves their fingers, a light bar, or a tapping rhythm at a pace that takes real concentration to follow. They watch how the client responds and adjust from there.

EMDR Institute guidance describes these sets as usually lasting between 15 and 30 seconds, with breaks in between to check in. The client can stop at any point, often just by raising a hand.

Most laboratory research uses a fixed reference speed instead of adjusting in real time, since a study needs a consistent “dose” to test. It’s a research convention, not a clinical rule. In practice, therapists move faster or slower than any single research pace, depending on what a client can actually track.

What does the research say about speed specifically?

This is the part most quick explanations skip. A 2015 study in Frontiers in Psychiatry had people recall a disturbing memory while making eye movements at 1.2 Hz (fast) or 0.8 Hz (slow), or with no eye movements at all. Researchers found the faster pace left memories rated less vivid, less emotionally charged, and harder to retrieve afterward than the slower pace did. The slow-eye-movement group landed in between the fast group and the no-movement group on every measure.

A related 2016 study in the Journal of EMDR Practice and Research tested whether that effect held up over the following days, not just in the moment. It found that fast eye movements led to fewer unwanted intrusive memories afterward than slow or no eye movements did, across two separate experiments.

Both point to the same explanation researchers favor for why eye movements work at all: they tax your working memory, the mental scratchpad that holds a small amount of information active at once. A faster, more effortful movement competes harder for that limited space, leaving less of it free to keep a memory feeling vivid.

Is faster always better, then?

Not quite, and this is where a lot of quick takes overreach. Two things cap it.

Comfort is the real ceiling, not speed itself. The instruction has always been “as fast as you can comfortably tolerate,” not as fast as physically possible. Neither study above tested pushing past someone’s comfort, and there’s no evidence that forcing an uncomfortable pace adds any benefit.

Speed also isn’t constant through a session. Shapiro’s own EMDR therapy manual describes a fast pace for actively reprocessing a memory, and a slower, shorter pace for calm-place work and installing a positive belief. That second mode isn’t trying to tax your memory. It’s trying to settle your body, which a fast, effortful pace can work against.

	Fast pace	Slower pace
Used for	Reprocessing a distressing memory or thought	Calm-place work, resourcing, installing something positive
Guiding rule	As fast as you can comfortably track	Slow and steady
Typical set length	About 15 to 30 seconds	Shorter sets
What it’s doing	Taxing working memory to soften a memory’s charge	Settling your body, not competing for mental bandwidth

What does this mean for self-guided bilateral stimulation?

You don’t need a lab-calibrated 1.2 Hz to get something out of bilateral stimulation yourself. The same two-speed logic applies. Working through a specific looping thought calls for a pace that takes real effort to track, fast enough that you notice yourself concentrating on the movement. Winding down or calming your body calls for the opposite: slow and steady beats fast and effortful.

Start in a middle range and adjust from there, based on what you can actually sustain rather than on chasing the fastest setting. Eye movements aren’t the only option either. Alternating taps or tones follow the same speed logic if tracking a moving target isn’t comfortable, and the butterfly hug works through the same pacing question with touch instead of sight.

EmEase, a self-guided EMDR app, builds this adjustment in directly. Both its visual bilateral stimulation (a moving on-screen target) and its audio version (alternating tones) let you set your own pace at app.emease.com. Speed up for something that needs real focus, or slow down for a calming reset.

What if the eye movements feel too fast or make you dizzy?

Slow down. Discomfort is a signal to ease off, not push through. If dizziness, eye strain, or a headache shows up, stop, look away from the moving target, and let your eyes rest before deciding whether to continue at a slower pace.

If you’re new to this altogether, can you do EMDR on yourself? is a good place to start before fine-tuning speed.