Somatic Trauma Resolution
Brainspotting

Notice how when you think of a certain event or story your eyes look off into a specific direction?

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, are meant to flow, being expressed in a compassionately present manner so they can resolve and thus 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.

Talk and traditional therapy works “top-down,” starting with the thinking mind. This work is “bottom-up,” starting with the body’s signals and sensations to access and resolve the roots of relational patterns. The root of many of our patterns and wounds are preverbal and live below conscious thought, so working through the body’s felt sense allows for healing without needing to relive or retell every detail of the past.

Additionally, healing or transformation of any sort is also not just about digging into the past endlessly but requires a connection to a sense of inner inspiration both internally and externally. As such, I weave my somatic work with psychosynthesis coaching as the nervous system shifts so we can ground change into our lives in meaningful ways.

Somatic healing is rooted in the understanding that the body—not just the conscious, thinking mind—holds memory, emotion, and lived experience. Unresolved trauma or emotional overwhelm can remain in the nervous system as implicit memory until processed, quietly shaping how we feel, respond, and relate in daily life, often without our awareness.

Emotions are physiological. Notice how you feel butterflies in the stomach when nervous, tears rising when sad, heat in the face when angry? These are the body’s natural ways of processing emotion: responses that happen physiologically and viscerally, below the level of intellect alone.

But when experiences are too overwhelming or life interrupts the natural process, the nervous system can become “stuck” in survival states like fight-flight-freeze. Somatic healing supports the body in reharmonizing by completing what was once interrupted, allowing for release, resolve, and return to presence.

This work engages the unconscious, which we experience most vividly through interoception (our inner sensations) and proprioception (our sense of movement and position). Modern neuroscience confirms that the unconscious shapes the vast majority of human experience, and that lasting change happens when we work with these deeper layers directly. By using the body as the vehicle for awareness and integration (so not just as a set of movements or poses) somatic healing helps us access, process, and transform what words alone often cannot reach.

My somatic work and style is integrative in nature. See also my:

• somatic relational healing and attachment repair,

• somatic trauma resolution breathwork offering or

• general somatic healing here.

Trauma isn’t a pathology, but is an adaptive, protective response wired for survival. Healing trauma means restoring a sense of safety so you can be present with yourself again. Presence is the gateway back to your true self, because trauma creates barriers to the heart, which is inherently self-healing.

While trauma can stem from acute events (“big T”), trauma healing work also works with chronic, developmental, or relational wounding (“small t”) - the subtle yet lasting ways we disconnect from ourselves to survive. These survival strategies become protective identities that mask the authentic heart.

True healing supports the completion of what was once interrupted: stored impulses, repressed emotions, and unresolved stress. As we meet those parts with compassionate presence, the nervous system can slowly restore its natural flow.

Not everything in us is a trauma response, and it’s important not to reduce ourselves to that. But by honoring the ways your body and psyche once protected you, you can now choose a new path, grounded in safety, wholeness, and self-trust.

Even if you don’t resonate with the word trauma or wouldn’t describe yourself as having acute trauma, you may still experience overwhelming emotions, chronic stress, suppressed memories or feelings, unexplained tension or chronic pain, or grief. Trauma science is really about how the nervous system holds and resolves these states, so the same principles of healing apply. Whatever the name, true healing means returning to the body, to presence, and to your innate resilience.

Start by booking a free 20-minute consultation call to learn more, see if it’s a good fit, or get started.

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

In-person sessions are in Chelsea, Manhattan and carry a small additional fee.