Brainspotting Therapy

Brainspotting therapy emdr Corinne Blum Life Coach www.corinneblum.com

“Where we look affects how we feel.”

~ David Grand
(founder of Brainspotting)

Brainspotting therapy emdr Corinne Blum life coach www.corinneblum.com

What Is Brainspotting?

Brainspotting was founded in 2003 by Dr. David Grand, PhD. It is a neurobiological treatment method to: “locate, focus, process, and release experiences and symptoms that are typically out of reach of the conscious mind and its cognitive and language capacity,” as David Grand describes.

Brainspotting is a tool that allows us to directly access the deeper parts of our brain (the subcortical parts of the brain including the amygdala and brainstem) and body (autonomic and limbic systems within the body’s central nervous system) where we can process, release and heal trauma and any old emotional, physical and psychological “wounding.”

In short, Brainspotting bypasses the neocortex, thinking/speaking mind, and goes straight to what we could say is the core of our trauma, wounding, patterning and belief systems. It can be a much faster process of healing as it essentially allows the brain and body to self heal as it processes whatever was left unprocessed and frozen due to trauma (whether big or small).

What Is A Brainspot In Brainspotting?

A Brainspot is a point where your eye focuses that activates a sensation, emotion or physical response in your body. By focusing on that spot, we’ve created an access point for the deep brain and body to process whatever wasn’t fully processed in the past due to our often, freeze, fight or flight response to trauma (whether that trauma was major or minor).

The reason why this method is so powerful is that it bypasses the talking brain and goes directly to where the wounding took place and allows healing to occur much quicker than analysis and talking therapy otherwise might.

Trauma/Wounding Happened In The Body Not The Brain

David Grand says that he believes most of our trauma occurred preverbal. I would agree and further say that even if our trauma, wounding and the onset of our limiting beliefs happened once we could speak, as children, our brain is not yet developed to be able to “make sense” of, and therefore process, our experience.

When we feel hurt as children it happens in the emotional body. From the emotional wounding, we create limiting belief systems and build a false identity based on those beliefs about ourselves. When we grow older, we might go to therapy and try to finally “make sense” of what happened by analysing our past, patterns and belief systems. However, if we think we can heal by talking, alone, we’re missing a very important part of the process of healing because the wound didn’t happen in the mind and therefore cannot be healed in the mind (neocortex to be precise).

That’s why in my work as a Coach, I go into the body, the sensation, emotion and experience of what you are presently going through. By going into the body, we can directly access the core of our patterning and go straight to the solution/resolution/healing which is giving ourselves the unmet need. Of course from that point, it’s about learning new ways of showing up for ourselves. After all, we are unraveling a very old habit and creating a new, healthier habit in support of who we truly are rather than our false self.

Brainspotting beautifully supports this process as it bypasses the analytical thinking mind and goes straight to the core of the wounding. On that note, trauma can be with a big T or a little t, as Gabor Maté says. Each and every one of us has experienced some kind of trauma even if that trauma was that we felt not loveable, significant or good enough to our parents.

The Healing Process Shouldn’t Be Arduous

The healing process shouldn’t be arduous and lengthy. You don’t need to relive your past pains. Instead, we need to just access the core of the pain and give it the loving attention that it has always needed.

Talking therapy can be useful to understand our patterns and personality, but healing won’t happen in the talking brain alone, because the wounding didn’t initially take place there. Have you had that experience where you can talk and talk about your “problems” but nothing changes? Analysing our past can actually keep us stuck within our past, our pain and our patterning. To evolve forwards we have to go into the embodiment.

Brainspotting As A Tool To Self-Heal: We Are Remarkable Beings Capable Of Self-Healing

Over the course of my practice, I’ve had the honour to witness how amazing our body and being is at healing. I’m excited to incorporate Brainspotting because it is yet another tool that can offer a much more rapid way of healing. We don’t need to get stuck in the story. We can self-heal and move forwards into a much more liberated, expansive version of ourselves…which really is just returning to our true, Authentic Self.

Love As The Container & The Power Of Presence

We don’t often talk about love in traditional therapy, but I strongly believe that love is the container that can hold and heal everything and it is an essential part of our healing process.

Being held in the compassionate, loving presence of a practitioner, is healing in and of itself. So much of our wounding occurred because we felt alone with our experience. At worst, we felt abandoned, rejected and neglected. To feel all those things and then need to process difficult and painful emotions we can’t yet make sense of, on our own, is scary and overwhelming to a child. No wonder we freeze.

So don’t underestimate the healing power of just being held with pure presence which is what a Brainspotting practitioner offers. When we feel held, heard, seen and empathised with, we get to relax, feel safe and allow the healing process to happen more freely.

You might find this episode from my podcast Raw Conversations with Corinne Blum, interesting.

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