A mind–brain–body approach
Brainspotting is a mindfulness-focused, somatic, brain-based therapy that helps access and process emotional experiences beneath conscious awareness. It uses eye position, body awareness, and mindful attention to connect with experiences held in the brain and body, allowing processing to unfold more fully and naturally.
Many people are drawn to Brainspotting when insight has brought understanding but they are ready for a deeper level of change. This approach works directly with the brain, body, and nervous system, creating space for healing beyond words alone.
What is a brainspot
A brainspot is an eye position associated with an internal experience — often linked to an emotional pattern, a memory, or a response held in the body.
You may have noticed this in everyday life. When you reflect on something meaningful, emotional, or stressful, your eyes often drift to a particular place. That position connects with how your brain and body hold the experience. In Brainspotting, we find and stay with that spot so the brain can begin processing what is ready to come forward.
How Brainspotting works
We begin with something you would like to work on. This may be a feeling, a pattern, a memory, or an area of life that feels stuck, heavy, or unresolved.
As you focus on that issue, we notice what happens internally — thoughts, emotions, body sensations, images, or small changes. From there, we identify an eye position connected to that experience. Once a brainspot is found, you hold your gaze there while staying present with what is happening inside. The process shifts from explaining to noticing what unfolds naturally.
The brain and body move toward processing and integration when given the proper support and enough space.
What a typical session looks like
A session often begins with a short discussion about what feels most important to focus on that day. We identify the issue, notice how it shows up in your body or emotions, and then find an eye position connected to that experience.
From there, the session becomes more inward and focused. You stay with your gaze and track what is happening internally while I remain attuned and support the process. At times you may share what you notice; at other times there is more inward observation.
Some sessions bring strong emotional or body shifts. Others are subtler, with changes unfolding more slowly. Both can be meaningful. We usually leave time near the end to reflect, ground, and notice what feels different.
From the bottom up.
Much of what keeps us stuck doesn't live in the thinking, verbal brain — it lives deeper, in the regions that hold emotion, memory, and the body's survival responses. Talking can help us understand a pattern, yet insight alone often doesn't release it.
Brainspotting works from the bottom up. A brainspot — a particular point in your visual field — connects to where an experience is held, giving the brain direct access to process and reorganize it at its own pace.
Access
A brainspot locates where an unresolved experience is held in the nervous system.
Process
With focused attention and bilateral sound, the body begins to move what felt stuck.
Integrate
Experiences reorganize and settle, making room for balance and relief.
Less talking, more inner processing
Brainspotting often feels different from traditional talk therapy. The attention shifts from explaining the story to noticing what is happening inside you in real time.
Many experiences are held at a level words only partly reach. Brainspotting creates conditions for deeper layers to come forward through sensation, emotion, and internal awareness — so healing can happen where the pattern is held.
The use of music
Music is often used in Brainspotting to support focus and deeper processing. In many sessions, bilateral music is played through headphones, with sound moving softly from one ear to the other.
This can help the brain stay engaged, support internal focus, and create a stronger sense of rhythm and containment during processing. Many find that music helps them stay more fully with their experience. Music remains optional and is always chosen based on what feels most supportive for you.
What it can help with
Brainspotting can support a wide range of concerns — especially patterns that feel firmly established or hard to shift with insight alone.
Anxiety & chronic stress
Activation that keeps the body on alert long after the moment has passed.
Emotional overwhelm
Feelings that build faster than they can be made sense of or settled.
Earlier experiences
Past events that still shape how you feel and respond in the present.
Relationship patterns
Emotional reactivity and recurring dynamics in how you relate.
Burnout & depletion
The wear that builds when stress lives in the body over time.
Self-doubt & inner criticism
The harsh inner voice that wears down confidence and self-trust.
Grief & emotional pain
Loss and untreated pain the heart and body are still carrying.
Perfectionism & overthinking
Mental loops that keep you bracing, planning, and rarely at ease.
Panic & body-based anxiety
Fear that arrives in the body before the mind can catch up.
Feeling grounded & connected
Difficulty feeling settled, present, or connected to yourself and others.
Beyond healing, Brainspotting is also used to open up and strengthen what's already there:
How it differs from talk therapy
Talk therapy can bring valuable insight, understanding, and perspective. Brainspotting adds another level by working directly with the brain and body, where many experiences are stored.
Instead of staying mainly in conversation, Brainspotting brings attention to what is happening internally in the moment — through body sensations, emotions, images, and small changes. This supports change at a deeper level, allowing old patterns to process and loosen where they are held.
Research & clinical use
Brainspotting is still an emerging therapy, so the direct research base remains smaller than longer-established methods. At the same time, the published studies so far are promising, and the model rests on several principles that already have meaningful support in the broader literature — including focused attention, body awareness, nervous system regulation, and the importance of a strong therapeutic relationship.
The model was developed by David Grand and grew out of trauma-treatment work. Official Brainspotting materials describe it as a method that uses eye position, focused mindfulness, body awareness, therapist attunement, and often bilateral sound to access deeper neurophysiological sources of emotional and body-based distress.
What gives the approach added credibility is that its core building blocks overlap with areas already well supported in psychotherapy research. In other words, Brainspotting itself is still building its evidence base, while several of the principles it draws from already stand on stronger empirical ground.
Selected Brainspotting studies
Hildebrand, Grand & Stemmler (2014) — A preliminary study of the efficacy of Brainspotting for PTSD. Pilot of 22 clients in Germany and the U.S.; reported significant reductions in PTSD symptoms and related disturbance over three sessions.
Hildebrand, Grand & Stemmler (2017) — Followed 76 adults after traumatic events and found significant PTSD symptom reduction after three 60-minute sessions, concluding Brainspotting appeared to be an effective trauma-treatment approach.
D'Antoni et al. (2022) — A comparative study of brain–body techniques for distressing memories. In a non-clinical adult sample, a single Brainspotting session showed beneficial effects in processing distressing memories.
D'Antoni et al. (2021) — Pilot study reporting reduced disturbance linked to distressing memories and increased heart rate variability after Brainspotting in a non-clinical sample.
Theory behind the model
Corrigan & Grand (2013) — Lays out a neurobiological hypothesis for why a visual-field position may connect with sensorimotor memory and processing.
Corrigan, Grand & Raju (2015) — Expands the proposed mechanisms behind sustained attention, body activation, orientation, and trauma processing in Brainspotting.
Foundations it draws from
Mindfulness & focused attention — Reviews describe mindfulness-based treatments as promising approaches for trauma-related symptoms.
Body & somatic psychotherapy — A systematic review found beneficial effects across a broad range of psychological suffering, while calling for more high-quality studies.
Interoception & body awareness — A widely cited review describes body awareness as a key mechanism in many mind–body therapies.
Therapeutic attunement & alliance — A review of PTSD psychotherapy found therapeutic alliance to be a consistent predictor of treatment outcome.
As with any approach, results vary from person to person. This information is educational and is not a substitute for professional care.
Videos & resources
A few short videos to see and hear how Brainspotting works.
Video one
This video is by OliveMe Counseling. Good overview what is brainspotting.
Watch on YouTube →Video two
This video explains a little more about Brainspotting and how it helps release stuck patterns. By Victoria Cumberlege.
Watch on YouTube →Note: send me the YouTube links you list on your Services page and I'll drop them in here as embedded players or titled links.