Some things stay stuck no matter how much we talk about them. You understand what happened, you can explain it clearly, and yet the feeling in your body hasn't moved. Brainspotting is a way of working with exactly that — the part of an experience that words alone haven't been able to reach.
What is Brainspotting?
Brainspotting is a focused, body-based therapy developed in 2003 by Dr. David Grand, who noticed that where a person rests their gaze can be tied to how deeply they reach an experience. It grew out of his work with trauma and EMDR, and rests on a simple observation: where you look affects how you feel. Certain eye positions — "brainspots" — appear to connect to the deeper, subcortical parts of the brain that hold distress below language, the regions that quietly regulate emotion, memory, and the body's survival responses.
Because those regions sit beneath conscious, verbal thought, they don't always respond to talking things through — you can understand exactly what happened and still feel it lodged in your body. Brainspotting offers a different doorway. By gently locating and holding a brainspot connected to what you're carrying, we can reach and process what has stayed stuck, often without needing to explain it or relive it in detail. Many people describe it as their body finally being allowed to finish something it had been holding for a long time.
How Brainspotting works
In a session, I help you find a "brainspot" — an eye position that resonates with the issue you want to work on. From there, your attention stays with the felt sense in your body while I stay attuned alongside you. Rather than analyzing or re-telling the story over and over, your nervous system is given the space to process at its own pace. Many people are surprised by how much can shift without needing to put everything into words.
What Brainspotting can help with
Brainspotting can be helpful for trauma and post-traumatic stress, anxiety, grief, the lingering weight of adverse or overwhelming experiences, performance blocks, and the sense of being emotionally stuck despite your best efforts. It is often used alongside relational and Somatic Experiencing work, since all three attend to how experience lives in the body.
What a session looks like
Sessions are calm, collaborative, and paced to your comfort — never a matter of pushing through. You stay in control throughout, and we go only as far as feels manageable in any given session. My role is to keep the space safe and steady while your own system does the deeper work.
In-person in Toronto, online across Ontario
I offer Brainspotting in person in Toronto and through secure online sessions across Ontario. Brainspotting adapts well to online work, so you can do this from wherever you feel most settled.
Take the first step
The first step is simply a conversation. I offer a free 15-minute consultation — no pressure, just a chance to see whether this approach and I are a good fit for what you're carrying.