Preparation / Resource Clinical practice

Imagine a calm place

Choose a place and details to make it your own.

This is a reference tool, not a replacement for EMDR therapy. EMDR must be delivered by a trained clinician. If you are using these tools outside of therapy and become distressed, stop, ground yourself, and contact a mental health professional.

Keeps your choices. You can return to this guide at any time.

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Step 1: Where is your calm place?

Clinical sources

Safe Place Builder

What the evidence supports

Research on a complete therapy does not establish that an isolated activity or this website produces the same outcomes. EMDR includes assessment, preparation, memory work and follow-up with a trained clinician. Its mechanisms are still being studied.

These pages compile published sources. An independent clinical review of this site and a trial of its tools are not documented here. Labels describe the technique’s use context; they are not an efficacy certification.

VA: EMDR evidence and limitations · NICE: recommendations by age and context

Shapiro, F. (2018). Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures, 3rd ed. Guilford Press. (pp. 117–119, Safe/Calm Place protocol.)
Korn, D. L., & Leeds, A. M. (2002). Preliminary evidence of efficacy for EMDR resource development and installation. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(12), 1465–1487. (Provides preliminary RCT-adjacent evidence for resource installation including safe place.)

How to use this activity and clinical context

What this is

A guided walkthrough of the classic safe-place resource: pick an environment, add comfort elements, describe sensory details, and anchor the experience. Nothing is stored — the exercise is the point.

When to use it

Phase 2 preparation, when first installing the safe place resource.
Closure, if a session’s content leaves the client without their resource readily accessible.
Home use, as a re-anchoring exercise.

Clinical notes

For in-session resource installation, the clinician may add BLS after the client settles into the safe place. This tool does not provide the BLS — use the Visual BLS or Audio BLS tool alongside.