WHAT IS A BRAINSPOT?

“May you not disrespect your mystery through brittle words or false belonging.” - John O’Donohue.

A brainspot is a specific location, or a point, in a client’s field of vision that stimulates neural network activity around an activated issue or core wound. Through attuned awareness and focus on a brainspot, subconscious and somatic healing processes are activated while the energy of trauma releases from the brain and neurons rewire themselves organically.

Where you look, affects how you feel.

The retina originates as an outgrowth of the developing brain. Actually, the retina is a part of the central nervous system and is made of neurons. Almost half the brain is dedicated to vision. After the brain the eyes are the most complex organ in the body containing 200 million working parts.

There is a connection between the eyes, and the part of the brain that holds pain, unresolved issues, trauma, and neurological dysregulation. This is why you can talk your face off, do a million practices and work a million techniques and not see foundational, sustainable change —- you might not be engaging the part of the brain that alchemizes unhealthy core programming. If the subconscious is still into it, there is no amount of neocortical intelligence or awareness that will do a damn thing about it.

The goal of all kinds of psychotherapy is to move from dysregulation to regulation; incoherence to coherence.

Brainspotting aims to engage the regions of the brain that are involved in regulation, bypassing the regions of the brain that are not.

It’s a really cool, progressive way to re-wire the brain. And, it is different from EMDR in that the uncertainty principle is a key component— we trust the higher intelligence of the brain and the intuitive intelligence of the body as we work through the process. We surrender to and allow change from the inside out, instead of from the outside in. We trust that the body and brain are doing exactly what it needs to do in order to find coherence. Our bodies know much more than our limited egos and intellectual minds. I’ve found this to be true in studying brains and working in this capacity with clients.