David Grand will be teaching Brainspotting training courses on the following dates and at the following locations:

• Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY: May 17-22, 2009 (Phase 1 and 2)
  
• Berlin, Germany: June 13-14, 2009 (Phase 2)
• Boulder, CO: October 22/23/24/25, 2009 (Phase 1 and 2)
  

For more information please contact lauriedela@aol.com or (516) 826-7996.

The following are descriptions of one and two day trainings presented by David Grand:

Brainspotting:

“After attending Dr. Grand’s Brainspotting training course I arrived home to find that our gardener had fallen off the roof of the house. He was taken by the firemen to the hospital, but they couldn’t find any fractures. However, he couldn’t walk because of his pain. I did a Brainspotting session with him and I went for the pain points just as we learned in the course. It was magic. In 50 minutes the pain disappeared along with the trauma scenes. He is working in the garden as we speak. I am fascinated by what I learned.” – Rita Tessari, PhD, psychologist

“I have been a psychiatrist for more than 33 years, and Dr. Grand opened up my head and my soul to new ideas. Old dogs can learn new tricks.” – Paulo Zampieri, MD, psychiatrist.

“Brainspotting is based on the profound attunement of the therapist with the patient, finding a somatic cue and extinguishing it by down-regulating the amygdala. It isn’t just PNS (Parasympathetic Nervous System) activation that is facilitated, it is homeostasis.”
— Robert Scaer, MD, The Trauma Spectrum
 
"Dr. Grand's Brainspotting is the most powerful, useful and enjoyable training I have ever attended."
—Christine Ranck, PhD, co-author, Ignite the Genius Within  

"After Brainspotting therapy I couldn't access even the memory of the trauma anymore."
—Alan Goldberg, PhD

Brainspotting is a powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation and a variety of other challenging symptoms. Brainspotting is a simultaneous form of diagnosis and treatment, enhanced with Biolateral sound, which is deep, direct, and powerful yet focused and containing. Brainspotting functions as a neurobiological tool to support the clinical healing relationship. There is no replacement for a mature, nurturing therapeutic presence and the ability to engage another suffering human in a safe and trusting relationship where they feel heard, accepted, and understood. Brainspotting gives us a tool, within this clinical relationship, to neurobiologically locate, focus, process, and release experiences and symptoms that are typically out of reach of the conscious mind and its cognitive and language capacity. Brainspotting works with the deep brain and the body through its direct access to the autonomic and limbic systems within the body’s central nervous system. Brainspotting is accordingly a physiological tool/treatment which has profound psychological, emotional, and physical consequences.

Note: scroll down to read more on Brainspotting

To learn more about Brainspotting, click here.

Grand System Performance and Creativity Enhancement:

This presentation teaches how to harness powerful state-of-the art Grand System performance and creativity enhancement techniques with professional and elite athletes, performing artists, writers, executives. Also addressed will be the business end of developing a successful performance-oriented Brainspotting practice. Performance Brainspotting is explained step-by-step as a creative, in the moment approach unusually effective in removing blocks and inhibitions to performance and creativity, and opening up peak performance for those already high functioning. The neurophysiology and psychology of performance anxiety (speaking anxiety, stage-fright, audition anxiety) are taught from a theoretical and practical basis. The use of Brainspotting and Ego State work to heal the inner critic and its particular impact on performance and creativity will be examined as well as using Brainspotting with athletes tracking body sensations, micro-movements, the “yips” freeze phenomenon and the pervasive effect of sports injuries.

Grand System Acting Coaching: The Healing Art Form

Grand System Acting Coaching is the innovative use of Brainspotting protocols and bilaterality to help actors face creative and performance challenges. Acting parallels Brainspotting therapy by activating of emotional memory, use of body experience with imagery and sense memory. This presentation addresses audition and stage anxiety, role preparation, going into character, leaving character and creating unconsciously held character memory. Actors are traumatized by constant rejection and coaches and directors who strip their defense mechanisms to evoke emotion - Grand System acting coaching provides both creative enhancement and healing. Grand System Singing Coaching is also highlighted. This workshop uses live demonstrations by professional actors and singers.

For more information please contact lauriedela@aol.com or (516) 826-7996.
 
More on Brainspotting:

It is theorized that Brainspotting taps into and harnesses the body’s innate self-scanning capacity to process and release focused areas (systems) which are in a maladaptive homeostasis (frozen primitive survival modes). This may also explain the ability of Brainspotting to often reduce and eliminate body pain and tension associated with physical conditions.

A “Brainspot” is the eye position which is related to the energetic/emotional activation of a traumatic/emotionally charged issue within the brain, most likely in the amygdala, the hippocampus, or the orbitofrontal cortex of the limbic system. Located by eye position, paired with externally observed and internally experienced reflexive responses, a Brainspot is actually a physiological subsystem holding emotional experience in memory form.

When a Brainspot is stimulated, the deep brain reflexively signals the therapist that an area of significance has been located. This typically happens out of the client’s conscious awareness. There are a multitude of reflexive responses, including eye twitches, wobbles, freezes, blinks (hard and double blinks) pupil dilation and constriction, narrowing, facial tics, brow furrowing, sniffs, swallows, yawns, coughs, head nods, hand signals, foot movement and body shifting. Reflexive facial expressions are powerful indicators of Brainspots.

The appearance of a reflexive response as the client attends to the somatosensory experience of the trauma, emotional or somatic problem is an indication that a Brainspot has been located and activated. The Brainspot can then be accessed and stimulated by holding the client’s eye position while the client is focused on the somatic/sensory experience of the symptom or problem being addressed in the therapy.

The maintenance of that eye position/Brainspot within the attentional focus on the body’s “felt sense” of that issue or trauma stimulates a deep integrating and healing process within the brain. This processing, which appears to take place at a reflexive or cellular level within the nervous system, brings about a de-conditioning of previously conditioned, maladaptive emotional and physiological responses. Brainspotting appears to stimulate, focus, and activate the body’s inherent capacity to heal itself from trauma.

In “inside window” Brainspotting the therapist and client participate together to locate Brainspots through the client’s felt sense of the experience of the highest intensity of affect/body distress. Brainspotting can be done with one eye or two. Brainspotting can be directed at distress and Brainspotting can be directed at establishing and strengthening resources.

Brainspotting is also very useful to access and develop internal resource states end experiences. These resources allow the therapist and patient, where necessary, to “pendulate” between resource or positive states and trauma states during Brainspotting to enable more gradual, graded processing and desensitization of intensely traumatic and emotionally charged issues and symptoms.

Brainspotting processes down to the reflexive core. Often when it appears one has reached a zero distress level, a new strata or floor is broken through, probing deeper into the brain. The reflexive core is in the deep, unconscious body brain. It is as out of our awareness as respiration, circulation, and digestion. Brainspotting dismantles the trauma, symptom, somatic distress and dysfunctional beliefs at the reflexive core.

Brainspotting is a “body to body” approach. The distress is activated and located in the body which then leads to the locating of the Brainspot based on eye position. As opposed to EMDR where the traumatic memory is the “target”, in Brainspotting the Brainspot is the target or “focus or activation point”. Everything is aimed at activating, locating, and processing the Brainspot.

Brainspotting is most powerful and effective when done with the enhancement of BioLateral Sound CDs. Biolateral sound enhances the brain’s processing abilities by alternately stimulating each cerebral hemisphere. For highly dissociated or very fragile clients, Brainspotting can be initiated without any bilateral intensification, which can be added later as the client is more integrated and flexible. The healing sound directly enters the brain through the auditory nerves while the eardrums are vibrated bilaterally.

Any life event which causes significant physical and/or emotional injury and distress, in which the person powerfully experiences being overwhelmed, helpless, or trapped, can become a traumatic experience.

There is growing recognition within the healing professions that experiences of physical and/or emotional injury, acute and chronic pain, serious physical illness, dealing with difficult medical interventions, societal turmoil, environmental disaster, as well as many other problematic life events, will contribute to the development of a substantial reservoir of life trauma. That trauma is held in the body.

In most cases, the traumatized individual does not usually have the opportunity or the support to adequately process and integrate these traumatic life events. The traumatic experience then becomes a part of that individual’s trauma reservoir. The body and the psyche cannot remain unaffected by the physical, energetic and emotional costs extracted by this accumulated trauma load. The medical and psychological literature now acknowledges that approximately 75% of requests for medical care are linked to the actions or consequences of this accumulation of stress and/or trauma upon the systems of the human body.

Every health care professional encounters treatment situations in which physical symptoms cannot be separated from their emotional or psychological correlates. Traumatic life experiences, whether physical or emotional, are often significant contributing factors in the development and/or maintenance of most of the symptoms and problems encountered in health care.

Brainspotting is a physiological therapeutic tool which can be integrated into a wide range of healing modalities, including psychological as well as somatic approaches to treatment. Brainspotting can be useful as a complement to various body-based therapies including advanced bodywork, chiropractic, acupuncture, somatic therapies, physical therapy, nursing, medicine, and other specialized approaches to physical healing. It is a valuable resource in the treatment of a wide range of medical, physical, and psycho-emotional issues and symptoms encountered by health professionals.

Brainspotting provides a neurobiological tool for accessing, diagnosing, and treating a wide range of somatic and emotionally-based conditions.

Brainspotting can be an effective and efficient treatment tool for:
Physical and emotional trauma
Recovery from injury and accident trauma
Trauma resulting from medical interventions and treatment
Stress and trauma-related medical illness
Performance issues, including sexual dysfunction
Fibromyalgia and other chronic pain conditions
Addictions (especially cravings)
ADD and ADHD
Perceptual problems
Stuttering
Environmental Illness and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Phobias
Asthma
Preparation and recovery from surgery
Trauma resulting from war and natural disasters
Anger and rage problems
Anxiety and panic
Management of major medical illness