"Brainspotting is a no assumptions approach; stay in the tail of the comet; it is meant to use as your heart guides you." 

-David Grand PhD

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What color is your front door? What gift did you receive for your last birthday?

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If you were paying attention, your eyes gazed off to different locations to recollect your answers.  In Brainspotting, the therapist and client attune, connect enabling the brain to perform subconscious processing through a window into the brain; your eyes.

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The Neuroscience of the eye “spot” and the “felt sense” body connection enable the brain to process subcortical which engages the area of the brain that talk therapy does not have access to healing.  It is a “physiological approach with psychological consequences” that allows us to access our self-healing potential via bypassing the thinking of the neocortex and promotes organization and integration through reorganizing the files in our brain; “a Brainspot is a stored oculomotor orientation to a traumatic experience which has failed to integrate” (Corrigan & Grand 2013).

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It is an integrative approach to healing by reconnecting the body with the mind based on neurobiological findings that the brain can heal itself as stated by Dr. Norman Doidge in his book The Brain That Changes Itself. 

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Cognitive based approaches like talk therapy activate the part of the brain associated with higher order thinking called the neocortex which is not associated with regulation. “Question asking, processing, and analyzing are part of the executive processing systems of the neocortex. Although these functions have their place in therapy, Brainspotting is like a laser beam focus into the midbrain and nervous system. This is where trauma, emotional stress, habits, repetitive patterns, and sensory experiences are stored.

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 Only 20% of the information coming into the brain is based on what is already stored in our brain and able to be processed with our thoughts and cognition. This is one reason cognitive approaches are limiting and why mind-body or brain-body based approaches are vital to healing. Cognitive approaches do not allow us to access the majority of what is happening in the brain and how we store our experience”(paraphrased from Authenticity Associates webpage on Brainspotting)

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According to Bessel van der Kolk, MD, “...trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body.  …The body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present. We can now develop methods and experiences that utilize the brain’s own natural neuroplasticity to help survivors feel fully alive in the present and move on with their lives.”

According to Dr. David Grand, “Brainspotting gives us a tool, within this clinical relationship, to neurobiologically locate, focus, process, and release experiences and symptoms that are typically out of reach of the conscious mind and it's cognitive and language capacity.”