Somatic Trauma Resolution
Brainspotting
Brainspotting is a powerful yet simple, method that helps the brain and body process trauma, unresolved emotional memory, chronic stress, and emotional blocks.
Because our eyes are directly connected to the brain’s subcortical systems, emotions like shame or fear often trigger instinctive gaze aversion. Brainspotting harnesses this natural reflex, using specific eye positions (“brainspots”) that link to unprocessed experience. This allows the nervous system to complete what was left unfinished, often leading to genuine resolution and renewed access to resilience, creativity, and inner resources.
I integrate focal eye positions with somatic approaches and subtle hypnosis, deepening the mindful, focused attention that neuroscience recognizes as key to neuroplastic change. Compassionate presence are co-regulation central in this work as healing is not just about what the brain rewires, but how the body and the self feel safely met in the process.
My brainspotting sessions can be especially supportive if you are:
Navigating grief or loss
Recovering from acute trauma or crisis
Living with chronic stress, overwhelm, or burnout
Struggling with insecure attachment or relational wounding
Carrying unprocessed trauma, shame, or repressed emotions
Stuck in a freeze or shutdown response
Seeking to repattern limiting beliefs and self-blocks
Wanting more presence, intuition, and creativity in life
Our eyes instinctively hold what words cannot. “Brainspots” are gateways into the nervous system, unlocking patterns and releasing what has been carried too long.
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When we think or talk about a highly charged experience, the body often reacts before the mind does, and our eyes instinctively fix on a particular spot that reflects that stored activation. Brainspotting uses this natural orienting reflex of the eyes and midbrain to access the deeper limbic and body-based memory networks, allowing the nervous system to finally process and unwind what’s been held beneath awareness.
It’s a simple, contemplative process that uses focused eye positions and shared attunement to let your system resolve what it’s holding, without relying only on narrative details.
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They’re related but not the same. EMDR uses guided eye movements in a structured protocol. Brainspotting uses specific gaze points (“brain spots”) and follows the client’s nervous system in the present moment.
Some people find EMDR too fast if they don’t have enough somatic grounding and containment first, which is not always the case as EMDR has a very specific eight step process therapists follow. Brainspotting is more flexible and more contemplative, and in my approach, more body-based and centered on both safety and rewiring.
I do not offer EMDR and am not a licensed therapist. I offer Brainspotting as an alternative rooted in mindfulness, somatics, hypnosis, and the science of neuroplastic change for real transformation.
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Somatic healing works with the nervous system, where experience is organized beyond conscious thought. Through bottom-up, felt experience, unfinished survival responses can complete, restoring safety, integration, and the capacity for presence and choice, so change becomes embodied,
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Trauma is not a pathology, but an adaptive survival response.
When experiences overwhelm our capacity to process them, the nervous system organizes around protection rather than presence. Healing trauma means restoring safety so unfinished responses can complete, allowing the system to return to regulation, connection, compassion, and choice. This restores the capacity to be intimately present with oneself and life.
Not everyone has necessarily experienced explicit trauma, yet similar protective patterns can form through unresolved memories, repressed emotion, developmental adaptation, relational imprinting, and the natural shaping of identity over time. These patterns shape how the nervous system relates to safety and belonging, often outside our conscious awareness.
For this reason, my work does not separate trauma resolution from developmental integration. Survival responses, attachment patterns, and sense of self co-develop, and healing involves restoring nervous system safety while also integrating how identity and perception formed around our lived experience. As unfinished responses complete, presence, agency, and authentic expression emerge naturally.
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Start by booking a free 20-minute consultation call to learn more, see if it’s a good fit, or get started.
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Sessions are either online from anywhere in the world via live Zoom, or in-person in NYC.
In-person sessions are in Midtown Manhattan and carry a small additional fee.
Emotions are meant to move in waves.
With compassion and co-regulation, the body can complete what was left unfinished, allowing the nervous system to restore balance and the mind–body connection to bring us back to harmony.
Meet your practitioner
About Susan Reis
I’m so glad you found your way here. I’m a certified brainspotting and somatic practitioner, helping clients reconnect with their bodies, release survival patterns, and restore a sense of safety, aliveness, and presence. My work is relational, attuned, and grounded in compassionate presence. Having walked through freeze, disconnection, and chronic pain myself, I bring both lived experience and professional training to hold this work safely and prevent re-traumatization. Brainspotting is innately meant to be a somatic process, but I more intentionally integrate the work for deeper transformation, while also subtly using mindfulness and hypnosis techniques to increase focused awareness which is how the brain truly rewires.
I look forward to supporting you on your journey.
Let’s discuss your unique goals together.