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Just wondering if anyone on here has worked with bilateral stimulation to help with healing.

I am not even entirely sure what it is... .but I had a friend suggest yoga and bilateral stimulation to help deal with these recovery issues. Bilateral stimulation is anything that stimulates both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously. For example, when you are feeling down, missing the other, not being rational or your brain is frozen in one hemisphere, stimulating the other side is a magical way to heal quickly.

My friend recommending placing my tongue on the roof of my mouth while exercising. Sounds kinda weird to me but I am sort of at that point of desperation where this black cloud hanging over me needs to go away.

I've listened to binaural beat soundtracks.  I had some odd experiences (spontaneous muscle twitches were common, or a phrase unrelated to my other thoughts suddenly pops into my head like "Practice safe sects"... .say it out loud... .)

It didn't seem to lead to any lasting mood changes for me.  However, I do know there are modalities (such as yoga, Feldenkrais, certain types of chiropractic, bioenergetics) that make use of mind-body and nervous system integration.

You said your friend suggested yoga as well, have you tried it yet?  I tend towards anxiety rather than depression (too much energy that eventually collapses in on itself, rather than starting from feeling slow, not enough energy) so I really enjoy yin or restorative yoga.  I once had tears streaming down my face throughout an entire restorative class (didn't know what about, just felt like a release).  The instructor didn't come and say anything to me, I think she may have known I was not in distress and needing help, but rather releasing.

If you feel like getting the energy going is more what you need, you might try ashtanga or kundalini.  

Please be aware as well that my experience with these modalities (and I've tried quite a few) is that they can stir up powerful emotions, but teachers and practitioners vary significantly in their ability to deal with what gets stirred up.  

It might be wise to ask your teacher or facilitator if they have experience with using their given method for trauma survivors.  What you'd want to avoid is the situation where you are in distress, and the instructor engages in spiritual bypassing, e.g. tells you "everything is an illusion", "your soul chose to be born to your particular mother in order to learn lessons", etc.

hey cloud-

eeks mentions binaural beats.  I'm a big fan of binarual beats and isochronic tones, both of which are methods of brainwave entrainment.  Our body's nervous system is an electrical system, which can be measured, and the electrical activity in our brains functions at a wavelength, depending on how 'active' our brain is at the time: when we're asleep, brainwaves oscillate down around 0.1 to 3 Hz (cycles per second), and when we're fully conscious they can be as high as 40 Hz.  Mellow, relaxed states occur between 8-15 Hz, and meditative states occur between 4-7 Hz.  So enough of the techno, we all function in all of these states at different times all the time, and in standard meditation practice we can produce the lower states intentionally, for whatever reason we're meditating, although that can take years of practice to be effective and to master.  So brainwave entrainment is a way to use technology to go there easily.  You typically put on a pair of headphones and listen to a soundtrack that has binaural beats or isochronic tones in it, and just sit back, chill, and go with it wherever it's going; different soundtracks go to different brainwave frequencies.  So what happens, as you listen to the sounds, is you brain becomes 'sympathetic' as it's called, it matches the target brainwave: if you're listening to a 'mellow out' track (alpha wave it's called), you will just chill, enter a state of whole-body relaxation, a meditative track, theta wave, will take you into a meditative, hypnotic state where all sorts of stuff can show up, stuff you need to process, stuff you need to release, stuff that is empowering, whatever.  Then the lowest state, delta, listening to those will just put you to sleep, which is handy at night.

Anyway, to your point, another aspect of brainwave entrainment is that it aligns both halves of the brain, gets them in sync on the same wavelength, which for me feels like my brain is all one instead of fragmented, and I'm thinking and feeling from the center and bottom of my brain instead of the top, which I tend to do.  Anyway, a CD full of brainwave entrainment tracks is a few bucks on Amazon, and I recommend at least trying it.  What I've been doing lately is taking a portable player and headphones with me and get to a meeting early, and I sit in the parking lot and listen to a track for a few minutes before going in, chills me right out, and folks tell me how relaxed I look, which is cool because that was the point.

There are also folks who are proponents of rebounders, which are those little round trampolines that you bounce on for exercise.  The theory is when you're bouncing your brain is momentarily weightless, just floats in your head, and chanting incantations, listening to empowering music, focusing on your future, whatever while you're bouncing, adjusts your focus and conditions your brain when it's totally connected, you get both sides at once, and the conditioning is therefore more powerful and complete.  I haven't noticed a huge shift doing that, but bouncing is fun, and intentionally focusing on my bright future with the tunes cranked is always a good thing, so that may be worth a try too.

(http://www.health101.org/rebounder07.jpg)

Hey cloud ten, Plain old walking, of course, is bilateral stimulation, though I find it takes 20 mins or more to be effective.  Sometimes I deliberately use my left hand (I'm righty) to stimulate the right side of my brain, which is the hemisphere that is more creative, expansive and less judging.  There is a great book on this subject called My Stroke of Genius.

LuckyJim