What is Brainspotting?

“Brainspotting is based on the profound attunement of the therapist with the patient, finding a somatic cue and extinguishing it by down-regulating the amygdala. It isn’t just PNS (Parasympathetic Nervous System) activation that is facilitated, it is homeostasis.”
— Robert Scaer, MD, “The Trauma Spectrum”

Brainspotting is a powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing, and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation and a variety of other challenging symptoms. Brainspotting is a simultaneous form of diagnosis and treatment, enhanced with Biolateral sound, which is deep and direct yet focused and containing.

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’s cognitive and language capacity.

Brainspotting works with the deep brain and the body through its direct access to the autonomic and limbic systems within the body’s central nervous system. Brainspotting is accordingly a physiological tool/treatment which has profound psychological, emotional, and physical consequences.

The use of Brainspotting can support the clinical healing relationship. There is no replacement for a mature and nurturing therapeutic presence and the ability to engage another suffering human in a safe and trusting relationship where they feel heard, accepted, and understood.

It is theorized that Brainspotting taps into and harnesses the body’s innate self-scanning capacity to process and release focused areas (systems) which are in a maladaptive homeostasis (frozen primitive survival modes). This may also explain the ability of Brainspotting to often reduce and eliminate body pain and tension associated with physical conditions.

A “Brainspot” is the eye position which is related to the energetic/emotional activation of a traumatic/emotionally charged issue within the brain, most likely in the amygdala, the hippocampus, or the orbitofrontal cortex of the limbic system. Located by eye position, paired with externally observed and internally experienced reflexive responses, a Brainspot is actually a physiological subsystem holding emotional experience in memory form.

When a Brainspot is stimulated, the deep brain reflexively signals the therapist that an area of significance has been located. This typically happens out of the client’s conscious awareness. There are a multitude of reflexive responses, including eye twitches, wobbles, freezes, blinks (hard and double blinks) pupil dilation and constriction, narrowing, facial tics, brow furrowing, sniffs, swallows, yawns, coughs, head nods, hand signals, foot movement, and body shifting. Reflexive facial expressions are powerful indicators of Brainspots.

“It’s not about the fix, it’s about feeling and trusting that the fix comes from the feeling.”
Wesley Detwiler PhD

The appearance of a reflexive response as the client attends to the somatosensory experience of the trauma, emotional or somatic problem is an indication that a Brainspot has been located and activated. The Brainspot can then be accessed and stimulated by holding the client’s eye position while the client is focused on the somatic/sensory experience of the symptom or problem being addressed in the therapy.

The maintenance of that eye position/Brainspot within the attentional focus on the body’s “felt sense” of that issue or trauma stimulates a deep integrating and healing process within the brain. This processing, which appears to take place at a reflexive or cellular level within the nervous system, brings about a de-conditioning of previously conditioned, maladaptive emotional and physiological responses. Brainspotting appears to stimulate, focus, and activate the body’s inherent capacity to heal itself from trauma.

“Inside window” Brainspotting requires the therapist and client to participate together to locate Brainspots through the client’s felt sense of the experience at the highest intensity of affect/body distress. Brainspotting can be done with one eye or two. Brainspotting can be directed at distress and can also be directed at establishing and strengthening resources.

Brainspotting is also very useful to access and develop internal resource states end experiences. These resources allow the therapist and patient, where necessary, to “pendulate” between resource, or positive states, and trauma states during Brainspotting to enable more gradual, graded processing and desensitization of intensely traumatic and emotionally charged issues and symptoms.

Brainspotting processes down to the reflexive core. Often when it appears one has reached a zero distress level, a new strata or floor is broken through, allowing a deeper probing into the brain. The reflexive core is in the deep, unconscious body brain. It is as out of our awareness as respiration, circulation, and digestion. Brainspotting dismantles the trauma, symptom, somatic distress, and dysfunctional beliefs at the reflexive core.

Brainspotting is a “body to body” approach, where the Brainspot is the target or “focus/activation point”. Distress is activated and located in the body and the focus/activation point, aka the Brainspot, is found based on eye position. Everything is aimed at activating, locating, and processing the Brainspot. Contrastingly, EMDR is where the traumatic memory is the “target.”

“The most powerful resource each of us has are our survival instincts and compacity for homeostasis.”
Mariya Javid-Payne

Brainspotting is most powerful and effective when done with the enhancement of BioLateral Sound. Biolateral sound enhances the brain’s processing abilities by alternately stimulating each cerebral hemisphere. For highly dissociated or very fragile clients, Brainspotting can be initiated without any bilateral intensification, which can be added later as the client is more integrated and flexible. The healing sound directly enters the brain through the auditory nerves while the eardrums are vibrated bilaterally.

Any life event which causes significant physical and/or emotional injury and distress, in which the person intensely experiences being overwhelmed, helpless, or trapped, can become a traumatic experience.

There is growing recognition within the healing professions that experiences of physical and/or emotional injury, acute and chronic pain, serious physical illness, dealing with difficult medical interventions, societal turmoil, environmental disaster, as well as many other problematic life events, will contribute to the development of a substantial reservoir of life traumas. Those traumas are held in the body.

In most cases, the traumatized individual does not usually have the opportunity or the support to adequately process and integrate traumatic life events. Traumatic experiences then become a part of that individual’s trauma reservoir. The body and the psyche cannot remain unaffected by the physical, energetic, and emotional costs extracted by this accumulated trauma load. The medical and psychological literature now acknowledges that approximately 75% of requests for medical care are linked to the actions or consequences of this accumulation of stress and/or trauma upon the systems of the human body.

Every health care professional encounters treatment situations in which physical symptoms cannot be separated from their emotional or psychological correlates. Traumatic life experiences, whether physical or emotional, are often significant contributing factors in the development and/or maintenance of most of the symptoms and problems encountered in health care.

Brainspotting is a physiological therapeutic tool which can be integrated into a wide range of healing modalities, including psychological, as well as somatic approaches to treatment. Brainspotting can be useful as a complement to various body-based therapies including advanced bodywork, chiropractic, acupuncture, physical therapy, nursing, medicine, and other specialized approaches to physical healing. It is a valuable resource in the treatment of varying medical, physical, and psycho-emotional issues and symptoms encountered by health professionals.

Brainspotting provides a neurobiological tool for accessing, diagnosing, and treating a multitude of somatic and emotionally-based conditions.

More information and videos can be found on https://brainspotting.com/