This technique utilizes focal eye positions to activate different parts of the brain that are storing various traumatic memories or incomplete emotions. When we think or talk about a highly charged or traumatic event, we often feel some discomfort in our body and naturally look in a certain direction (a “brain spot”). Brainspotting relies on these natural processes, body sensations, and eye positions.​ We combine this with bilateral music, focused awareness, somatic orienting, and, most importantly, compassionate presence.

Emotions, which are natural reactions to human experiences including trauma, are meant to flow, being expressed in a compassionately present manner so they can release from the body-mind. Otherwise, this blocks the life force or openness of the individual, manifesting as parts of us that feel stuck, stressed, or tense.

Both EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and Brainspotting work with the eyes to process and resolve trauma. The primary differences are that Brainspotting focuses on using specific spots to look at (“brain spots”) rather than guided eye movements, and EMDR is a much more structured framework, offering less client-specific or present moment specific flexibility.

Brainspotting is a more recent modality but the reason it works is ancient. It’s simply a contemplative self-healing practice, using the power of mindful focused awareness. It’s about being present with what we feel inside so what binds us can flow through and release its grip on us.

Trauma is not a pathology, but an adaptive and self-protective or survival response. To heal trauma is to restore a sense of safety.

Our impulses to traumatic experiences need to be expressed and the emotions realized so the autonomic nervous system’s cyclical process can complete. By completing these impulses, feeling what needed to be felt through compassionate presence, and shedding layers of false identity, we can reconnect to our heart and true self which is innately healing and resilient.

Trauma can be acute/shock based that’s from a specific event, developmental based from our early life experiences, or from chronic stress and repressed authentic emotions overtime.

From my perspective, all trauma science and trauma healing is about actual healing, so although not everyone has experienced or identifies with explicit trauma, the inability to be present and be your authentic self is something far more universal.

Don’t get caught up in calling every part of you a trauma response though as that’s not helpful. Instead, use this knowledge as liberation to understand your nervous and attachment systems had initially been responding in a way to protect you. And now, if you’re ready to change, you can do something new. I’d be honored to support you on that journey with this work.

The body is the vehicle for us to experience, to live and to feel.

Somatic healing is an approach that focuses on the connection between the mind and body to help release trauma, stress, and emotions. It works on the idea that our experiences, particularly the ones that are hard to be present with, are stored in the body, or rather create layers of defense, protection, and compensation patterns that keep us in a sense of feeling stuck.

Healing can come from addressing this through the power of physical sensations and emotional feelings. Emotions that we allow ourselves to feel, using the body as the vehicle, flow through us and complete on their own. Notice how you get butterflies in your belly when you’re nervous, teary eyed when sad, flush when angry, etc. These are the body’s physiological responses to emotions moving through us.

Trauma overwhelms the nervous system and prevents our natural physiological response to the experience to complete. This makes the autonomic nervous system rigid, stuck in the experience of the past, and the life force of the individual unable to freely express. So somatic healing empowers our innate ability to resolve and release trauma on its own, shedding those defensive blocks and returning to our true self.

Somatic healing like somatic experiencing and breathwork are bottom-up methods, rather than top-down methods like talk therapy.

See also my somatic trauma resolution breathwork offering or more broad somatic healing here.

To learn more and see if this is a good fit for you, start by booking a free 15-minute discovery call using the calendar below.

I offer a 7-session package or a personalized 12-session Integrative Container, both with discounted per session rates.

Sessions are either online from anywhere in the world via live Zoom, or in-person in NYC.

For those in the New York City area, I always recommend in-person for any of my somatic work as it is more powerful when we’re together. Please reach out to book. I utilize a space in Chelsea, Manhattan.