The Core Principle: Where You Look Affects How You Feel
Brainspotting is built on a simple but profound discovery: your eye position directly correlates with your internal neurological and emotional experience. Where you look affects how you feel—and by finding the right spot in your visual field, you can access and process deeply held trauma, pain, or even positive resources.
The Discovery
In 2003, psychotherapist Dr. David Grand was working with a figure skater who couldn't complete a specific jump despite years of practice. During an EMDR session, Grand noticed that when the client's eyes reached a certain position, her processing intensified dramatically. He had her hold her gaze at that spot rather than continuing the back-and-forth eye movements of EMDR—and the breakthrough was immediate.
This moment led to the development of Brainspotting as a distinct therapeutic modality. Grand had discovered that specific eye positions correlate with activation in the subcortical brain—the deeper regions where trauma, emotion, and body sensation are processed.
The Visual Field as a Window to the Brain
Your visual field isn't just for seeing—it's directly connected to the deeper structures of your brain through the superior colliculus, a midbrain structure that integrates visual, auditory, and somatosensory information. This connection means that your eye position can serve as an access point to subcortical processing.
Unlike talk therapy, which primarily engages the cortex (the thinking, verbal part of your brain), Brainspotting accesses the subcortical regions where trauma and emotion are actually stored. This is why Brainspotting can reach material that traditional therapy cannot.
The Methodology: How It Actually Works
Step 1: Identifying the Activation
The process begins by identifying what you want to work on—this could be a traumatic memory, an anxiety trigger, physical pain, or even a positive resource you want to strengthen. You notice where you feel this in your body—perhaps tension in your chest, a knot in your stomach, or tingling in your hands.
This somatic awareness (body sensation) gives us a starting point. Your body already knows where the issue lives—we're just tuning in to what it's already experiencing.
Step 2: Finding the Brainspot
Using a pointer (often a small telescoping pointer with a tip), the therapist slowly moves through your visual field while you track it with your eyes. As the pointer moves, you notice where in your visual field you feel the strongest activation—where the body sensation intensifies, where emotions surge, or where you feel the most "pull."
There are two main ways to find a brainspot:
- Outside Window: The therapist observes your eye wobbles, blinks, or subtle facial changes that indicate reflexive responses—signs that a particular eye position is activating something deeper.
- Inside Window: You report your internal experience—where you feel the strongest sensation, emotion, or activation as the pointer moves.
Often, therapists use both windows together, looking for where the external reflexes and internal experience align. That convergence point is your brainspot.
Step 3: Holding the Gaze
Once the brainspot is found, you hold your gaze at that position. The pointer stays fixed, and you maintain your eye position while focusing on your internal experience—the body sensation, emotion, thoughts, or images that arise.
This is where the real work happens. By holding your gaze on the brainspot, you're maintaining a neurological connection to the subcortical activation. Your brain begins to process whatever has been held there—often for years or even decades.
Step 4: The Processing
What happens during processing varies from person to person and session to session. You might experience:
- Physical sensations shifting or moving through your body
- Emotions surfacing, intensifying, and then releasing
- Memories or images emerging—sometimes vivid, sometimes fleeting
- Insights or realizations about yourself or your experiences
- Body movements like deep sighs, yawning, or spontaneous trembling
- Complete stillness as your brain works internally
The key is that you don't have to "do" anything—your brain does the processing naturally. The therapist holds the space, tracks your process, and occasionally checks in, but the healing unfolds from within.
Step 5: Integration
As processing continues, the activation typically decreases. The physical sensation softens, the emotion becomes less intense, or the distress around the memory lessens. This is your nervous system integrating and releasing what it's been holding.
Some sessions reach a clear endpoint—a sense of completion or relief. Other times, processing continues between sessions as your brain keeps working on the material.
Key Mechanisms: Why Brainspotting Works
1. Dual Attunement
Brainspotting involves two levels of attunement:
- Relational Attunement: The therapeutic relationship provides safety and presence while you process difficult material.
- Neurobiological Attunement: The brainspot provides a direct neurological connection to subcortical activation.
Together, these create an optimal healing environment—you're safe enough to access deeply held material, and you have a direct pathway to process it.
2. Subcortical Access
Trauma and emotion are stored in subcortical brain regions—the amygdala, hippocampus, and other structures that operate below conscious awareness. Traditional talk therapy primarily engages the cortex, which is why talking about trauma often isn't enough to heal it.
Brainspotting bypasses the cortex and accesses subcortical material directly. This is why clients often experience shifts that feel more profound than what talk therapy alone could achieve.
3. Bilateral Stimulation
Many Brainspotting sessions incorporate BioLateral sound—gentle music or nature sounds that alternate between left and right ears. This bilateral auditory stimulation helps facilitate brain processing, similar to how REM sleep helps consolidate memories and emotions.
The bilateral sound is optional and used based on what serves each client's process. Some people find it deeply supportive; others prefer silence.
4. Somatic Focus
By anchoring in body sensation rather than story or thoughts, Brainspotting works with how trauma is actually stored—in the nervous system and body, not just in memories or beliefs.
This somatic focus allows processing to happen at a level deeper than words, which is especially valuable for preverbal trauma, implicit memories, or experiences that are hard to articulate.
5. Minimal Interference
Unlike some therapies that require extensive talking, analysis, or cognitive restructuring, Brainspotting relies on your brain's innate healing capacity. The therapist doesn't direct your process—they simply hold space and trust that your brain knows what to do.
This minimal interference allows your natural healing mechanisms to work without being disrupted by therapist interpretations or interventions.
Different Brainspotting Techniques
Activation Brainspotting
This is the most common form, used to process trauma, anxiety, or other distressing material. You identify what's bothering you, find where it activates in your body, and locate the eye position that intensifies that activation.
Resource Brainspotting
Used to strengthen positive states, build resilience, or access calm and safety. Instead of working with distress, you identify a resource—a time you felt strong, peaceful, or capable—and find the eye position that amplifies that state.
Expansion Brainspotting
A specialized form for performance enhancement, creativity, and accessing flow states. Used with athletes, performers, and anyone wanting to access their peak potential rather than process problems.
One Eye Brainspotting
Working with one eye covered (usually with an eye patch) can deepen processing by reducing bilateral brain integration and allowing more focused activation of one hemisphere. This technique is used selectively based on client needs.
Gazespotting
Instead of using a pointer, the therapist uses their own eyes as the focal point. This can create deeper relational attunement and is particularly effective for attachment-related work.
What Makes Brainspotting Unique
While Brainspotting shares some similarities with other trauma therapies like EMDR, somatic experiencing, and neurofeedback, it has distinctive characteristics:
1. Focused Rather Than Moving
Unlike EMDR's moving eye positions, Brainspotting uses a fixed gaze. You find the precise spot and stay there, allowing deeper processing without the constant movement.
2. Client-Directed Process
The therapist doesn't guide your internal experience or tell you what to focus on. Your brain leads the process, going where it needs to go.
3. No Required Narrative
You don't have to talk about the trauma in detail if you don't want to. The processing happens through the eye position and body awareness, not through storytelling.
4. Flexible and Adaptable
Brainspotting can be combined with other modalities, adjusted to each client's needs, and used for a wide range of issues—from trauma to performance enhancement.
5. Respects the Unconscious
Brainspotting recognizes that your brain knows more than you consciously do. By getting out of the way and letting your system lead, deeper healing can occur.
Experience How Brainspotting Works
Ready to see how this powerful methodology can help you? Schedule a free consultation to learn if Brainspotting is right for you.
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