Healing Technique: Brainspotting

This is a summary of the book Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change by David Grand. Brainspotting is a technique developed from a chance experience while the author used EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing, one of the top 5 trauma therapies in the world) and uses eye positioning to access brainspots, areas of the brain that subconsciously store trauma, which you determine by your level of distress in any given eye position. The position of the eyes while accessing a brainspot allows for the subconscious release of stuck emotions.

As a caveat, accessing the subconscious mind in any way can bring up intense emotions and distress and even trauma responses. If you are to do this on your own, I'd strongly urge caution if your typical state is a highly dysregulated one. Seeking a professional for assistance can be critical to working through extreme distress.

The first way of doing brainspotting is to determine what you want to work through either by bringing up something specific or searching your body for any kind of activation (not calm). You then move your eyes from left to right and keep your eyes where your subconscious becomes activated the most. Then you experiment by moving your eyes up or down, once again searching for the greatest subconscious activation. Once you've settled on a particular spot along your field of vision that activates you the most, keep your eyes there allowing your subconscious brain to take control. As you do this process you should engage with whatever comes up in a state of curiosity, allowing your brain to process however it needs to, even if it doesn't make sense to you. Trying to control the process prevents it from being effective. Keep your eye's focus in the same place until you don't feel any more distress or activation.

The second way is to only use one eye while doing the exact same process. In order to do this cover one eye and monitor your level of activation, then do the same for the other eye. One eye should be less activating than the other. Use the less activated eye to do brainspotting until there is no distress, then switch eyes.

The third way is to find the eye position in which you feel the most calm and grounded and keep your eyes there in order to increase the feelings of calm and groundedness within yourself. This method works effectively and is less apt to bring up extremely distressing feelings making it a safer method to achieve the same results.

Visual convergence is when the client shifts between a pointer and the wall by shifting eye focus. This technique works with some people where all else fails.

Brainspotting may not completely get rid of any given stressor.