Brainspotting (BSP)
According to David Grand, Ph.d, Founder of Brainspotting. More information, including video clips, can be found on www.brainspotting.pro.
Brainspotting is a powerful treatment model that gives us the tools to locate, focus, process and release experiences and symptoms that are usually out of reach of the conscious mind and its cognitive and language capacity. Brainspotting works through its direct access to the autonomic and limbic systems within the central nervous system and therefore taps into the brainstem (mid brain) to process trauma. The subcortical brain controls all bodily functions and is the seat of instinct, thought, creativity and spirituality. In Brainspotting we say, “What’s in the brain is in the body and what’s in the body is in the brain.”
Trauma overwhelms the brain’s processing leaving pieces of unprocessed experiences frozen in time and space. Unprocessed traumas are held in capsule form in the brain (Robert Scaer, MD). Brainspotting facilitates the opening of these capsule so that this distress of the trauma can be released.
Brainspotting is a psychotherapeutic approach that uses the field of vision to locate “relevant eye positions” that are postulated to correlate to neurological stimulation and internal experience. Brainspotting stimulates, focuses and activates the body’s inherent capacity to heal itself from trauma. The distress is activated and located in the body which then leads to the locating of the Brainspot based on eye position.
A “Brainspot” is the eye position which is related to the energetic/emotional and felt sense activated energy of the trauma that is held in the brain. When a Brainspot is stimulated, the deep brain reflexive signals inform the clinician that an area of significance has been located. The Brainspot can then be accessed and stimulated by holding the clients eye position while the client is focused on the somatic/sensory experience of the area of distress being addressed in therapy.
The maintenance of the eye position or Brainspot within the intentional focus of the body’s “felt sense” of that trauma or issue stimulates a deep integrating and healing process within the brain. This processing, that seems to take place at a reflexive or cellular level within the nervous system, brings about a deep regulation of the previously dysregulated system of the client. Brainspotting seems to stimulate, focus and activate the body’s innate ability to heal itself from trauma.