Brainspotting

Brainspotting (BSP) is a technique which was developed by David Grand Ph.D. in 2003. He discovered “Where you look affects how you feel.”  It is the brain activity, especially in the subcortical brain that organizes itself around that eye position.

A person’s eye position can help them to access sensory information from within the brain. Often our implicit memories are a felt sense within the body, which may be difficult to verbalise. However, our distress can show in many ways such as anger, anxiety, fear, sadness, insomnia, flashbacks, dissociation, illness or bodily reactions.

During your BSP session you will be enabled to find the eye position which attunes to your bodily and sensory responses; enabling co-regulation in the presence of your BSP therapist. Becoming ‘unstuck’ from these emotions and experiences will be the result of your body and brain working together to develop new neural pathways which move the activating thought or event from the implicit memory into the neo-cortex where it can be stored as a standard memory and release the bodily distress.

The Neuro-experiential model – (brain and sensory)

Our eyes are the only sensory organ connected directly to the brain; the muscles lead to the Occipital Lobe at the back of our brain.

The Retina processes 10 billion bits of perceptual information per second; much of which remains outside our conscious awareness.

Brainspotting can be used when working with issues which are causing you emotional or functional distress. It works well to address bodily ailments. Many sports people, performers and public speakers have found BSP has worked for them in becoming ‘unstuck’ around performance issues.

Brainspotting is a way to process traumatic events and store them as memories instead of unpredictable flashbacks. The technique can break through the Dissociative barrier to retrieve memories and make them manageable alongside co-regulation with your BSP therapist.