Brainspotting is a newer modality in the world of therapy, having only been discovered in the early 2000’s. It was created by Dr. David Grand, a therapist in New York who was an early trainer in EMDR. Dr. Grand used a form of EMDR he called Natural Flow EMDR which incorporated very slow bilateral movements to process information. He was working with a client using EMDR when he noticed that her eyes began to wobble and then locked into place with his hand that was doing EMDR. He instinctively kept his hand in place and was amazed to see the spontaneous processing the client did while her eyes were locked into this position. The next day the client contacted him and told him the struggle she had for months with a skating move vanished and she could do the move over and over again.

From this moment, Dr. Grand started experimenting with clients using various eye positions and later added in using bilateral sounds through music he created. He coined the term Brainspotting to give this modality a name and started sharing this new technique with other therapists who were getting just as amazing results. And so a new therapy modality was born and has now been taught to thousands of professionals across the world.

The core of Brainspotting is that it is a mind-body based therapy. The motto of Brainspotting is that “where you look affects how you feel.” What this means is that brain activities in the subcortical brain arrange themselves around certain eye positions and looking in certain places can increase or decrease our body’s sensations or emotions. When we bring awareness to these eye positions and connect them with awareness of these sensations, it assists in releasing them from the body and the brain begins the process of self-healing. As Bessel van der Kolk states in The Body Keeps the Score, trauma and past experiences are stored in our body and many traditional talk therapies cannot access this trauma in the way that somatic therapies like Brainspotting and EMDR can. 

Brainspotting can be a wonderful tool to use in combination with the therapeutic relationship to bring healing to many mental health concerns, including depression, anxiety, and PTSD. I would encourage you to watch the following videos to learn even more about Brainspotting and how it can be helpful.

https://vimeo.com/187493121?iframe=true&width=75%&height=75%

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlJ4MwY5phI&t=350s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FO_udVWkqA&t=131s

You can also learn more about Brainspotting from their website:

https://brainspotting.com/about-bsp/what-is-brainspotting/

If you are interested in learning more about how Brainspotting can help you, please click here to schedule your free 15-minute consultation to learn how I can help you in the next step of your journey.