Brainspotting is a cutting-edge, evidence-based, neuroscience-meets-intuition method for deep healing of trauma, challenging emotions, and limiting beliefs. A derivative of EMDR, Brainspotting is fast-acting and the results are lasting; once the emotions and symptoms of trauma are released, they are fully completed. In other words, the symptoms and the emotional distress are gone... For good. Most clients experience at least alleviation of their symptoms after just 1 session, and even those with complicated trauma experience a profound or even total release in 4 to 6 sessions. ​The client is completely conscious during a Brainspotting session, and is an active agent in their healing. So, how does it work? Brainspotting uses the client’s visual field to access unprocessed trauma in the subcortical brain — i.e., the deep emotional and subconscious center. This is the more primitive part of the brain where emotions, memories, and involuntary brain/body reactions to trauma and feelings are housed. This part of the brain is not accessible through talking or logical thinking. This is why cognitive-based therapeutic approaches like talk therapy, as well as views like "pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps" and telling ourselves to "just get better," don't work. When we do that, we're using the rational part of the brain and completely bypassing the emotional brain, where how we feel and what happened to us are stored. What kinds of issues can be healed and alleviated through Brainspotting? As for what to work on in Brainspotting, it can be an event (like the loss of a loved one or a childhood trauma), an experience (like insomnia or binge eating), a negative belief (like "I'm not loveable" or "I'm a bad person"), or an emotion/emotional experience (sadness, anxiety, anger, depression, etc.). More often than not, those experiences will overlap. Thankfully, we don't need to know why or how; because we're working in the subconscious, irrational part of the brain in Brainspotting, we don't need to understand all the pieces in order for the modality to alleviate them.  What makes Brainspotting different than other approaches? ​Brainspotting is different from mainstream methods like talk therapy and cognitive-based behavioral approaches in several ways. Those therapies are rooted in talking and rational thinking — activities that are governed by the prefrontal cortex, i.e., humans' cognitive, analytical mind. Talk therapy can offer relief by allowing the client space to offload by talking. Talk therapy can also provide important information by way of psychoeducation. But in terms of treating the emotions and bodily expressions of trauma (think: anxiety, sadness, grief, and even some physical health issues like IBS, muscle tension, and TMJ), cognitive-based approaches miss this mark. This is because such approaches target the prefrontal cortex, a totally different part of the brain than where trauma is stored. In fact, rationality may even exacerbate distressing emotions by silencing them, stuffing them down, overexplaining them, or trying to logify them away. What is more, when emotions aren't alleviated by talk and logic, we tend to blame ourselves for not "feeling better." This just makes us feel worse. ​On the other end of the spectrum are somatic approaches to trauma healing, like breathwork and energy healing. Like Brainspotting, somatic and energy-based treatments help alleviate stress in the body. But somatic and energetic treatments do not explicitly address root causes — i.e., the subconscious emotional imprints and memories of traumatic events. As such, somatic treatments address the bodily symptoms of the trauma, but by design, do not engage the part of the brain where root causes lie. By working in the emotional subcortical brain, and through deep attunement between the practitioner and the client, Brainspotting allows difficult emotions to fully process and release. In a relatively short amount of time, pain is let go and space is created for light, joy, expansion, curiosity, and emotional freedom.