Brainspotting
What is Brainspotting
Brainspotting (BSP) is a fast and precise method to locate and resolve stress and trauma from the past. It finds often unconscious activating neural networks that are responsible for distress, pain, and suffering so they can be fully processed through in the present. This process restores health and happiness and enhances performance in whatever you do.
BSP uses bilateral stimulation to assist “cleaning out” the dysfunctional activations. This will libarate our brain/body's natural healing power to relieve distress, pain, and suffering.
BSP can be also used to “create and install” desired brain/body neural activation pattern that enhance peak performance in sports, testing, art and music, creative writing, and other areas of human pursuits.
David Grand, Ph.D discovered the phenomenon of Brainspotting in 2003. He is an internationally recognized theorist, trainer, and lecturer and has devoted his life to advancing, expanding, and communicating about the state-of-the-art tools available for healing trauma and enhancing performance. Lisa Schwarz M.Ed developed the Resourcing Brainspotting Model that is powerful and an essential tool for working with individuals with history of severe dissociation and traumatization.
How Brainspotting works
Brainspotting is one of the best weapons against toxic stress and negative life experiences which can "accumulate and freeze" in your brain and body. These experiences cause many emotional and behavioral issues including inability to perform optimally, pains, severe negative motional states, and even chronic illness.
Stress and trauma (physical or psychological) clog our brain and body much like accumulated old files and running applications slow down a computer system. Our brain/body parts carrying the trauma become increasingly unavailable to deal with the present. Further problems arise when trauma is triggered by certain current issues/problems and being "replayed". Our perception, judgement, and reaction to the current issues are being "colored, confused, and enmeshed with" past events associated with the trauma often without our awareness. Hence, we experience magnified stress, fear, anxiety, depression, irritation, frustration, and anger. As a result we suffer irrational thinking, feeling, and behaviors that are not in our best interests. This process, if prolonged, will lead to neuronal and other physiological changes to form chronic illness.
BSP helps to reclaim your life. It zooms directly into the brain/body parts carrying trauma. It "reprocesses", "releases", and "erases" these distresses returning the patient to optimal function. It frees up the resources of the brain/body and restores its ability to attend and experience the present.
As David Grand, PhD described, "Brainspotting works by finding the eye position that coordinates with where the trauma is held in the brain. By gazing at a pointer in this eye position the brain/body processes and releases the trauma, sometimes with remarkable speed ... As a result, our re-experience of trauma, be it anxiety or fear or pain dissipates and we feel freed up enough to perform like our old selves."