Energy Techniques and Brainspotting
Do you have the on button for your nervous system stuck on? Constant hypervigilance, can’t relax, rageful or anxious. Or is your nervous system stuck on the off button, you feel numb or depressed? Clinical Emotional Freedom Technique, Comprehensive Energy Psychology and Brainspotting can help your body let go of these emotions. These two states are usually the effect of trauma, per Peter Levine of Somatic Experiencing discusses this lack of ability to stay in the window of tolerance.
What is Brainspotting?
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Trauma needs an energy or brain based modality to heal quicker, like Brainspotting.
Brainspotting is simple. You watch a pointer and depending on where the memory is stuck you keep your eyes there. Where you look is how you feel according to David Grand, creator of Brainspotting. Brainspotting locates points in the client’s visual field that help to access unprocessed trauma. It accesses the deepest part of the brain, the midbrain. You can also use bilateral stimulation where you listen to music through headphones alternately in your left and right ears. Emotional memory is stored and processed in the limbic system, the area of the brain that triggers the fight or flight response. I am Brainspotting certified.
Once the sensations in the body are reduced then it is much easier to implement cognitive techniques to manage any symptoms that may be left if any
These are an alternative to traditional talk therapy and help us get unstuck. Trauma is stored in the non-verbal part of the brain and can be felt throughout the body. It is stored over time deep within the brain, leaving “brainspots” according to brainspotting expert, David Grand. You may feel this distress in your body, tightness in your stomach or in your back for example.
Energy Psychology techniques and Brainspotting are effective for:
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Phobias/fears/panic attacks
- Depression and anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Performance anxiety and enhancement
- Preverbal traumas or developmental traumas
All of the energy and brainspotting modalities can work at any age. Brainspotting is even used with infants. This is great for any infant in the NICU, which is a preverbal trauma. The body holds onto traumatic memories, so it is important to release them when they happen through one of these techniques. We can even work on very old memories and make them less intense when you think about them. Often, the inner knowing within you, will switch the language used around the event in the end. Kinder, self-compassionate thoughts and a new way to look at the memory can occur. Even traumas we don’t remember can be healed through the body.
Clinical Emotional Freedom Technique
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or tapping is an Energy Psychology technique that uses the meridian points to help balance energy in the body. This can be done on shallow issues like anger or stress. This concept of stimulating meridian points comes from Chinese Medicine. Just like acupuncture stimulates the energy flow through the meridians with needles so does EFT. However, EFT doesn’t use needles instead we use your finger points. I guide you through the tapping sequence while you remember a feeling or unresolved issue. After one round of tapping clients usually experience less intense sensations in the body when they remember the event or feeling. The ultimate goal is to reduce the bodily sensations when remembering a trigger or emotion to zero activation.
Dawson Church did research on what happens in the body when people use tapping and he found that cortisol levels were lowered. This is very exciting because stress increases cortisol and this method can lower it.
Clinical EFT is used to heal trauma. Using EFT without a therapist, can trigger a trauma response called, flooding. This is uncomfortable and not needed to heal from trauma. Essentially, you do not need to have an overwhelming triggering of emotion to resolve trauma if you work with a trained trauma-trained therapist.
Comprehensive Energy Psychology (CEP) Technique
EFT works majority of the time. However, sometimes our energy systems are not working correctly. If this is the case I will use CEP technique to muscle test (just like chiropractors and acupuncturists) to see if the energy is flowing correctly. If it isn’t there are corrective exercises that are given. Once the energy flow is resolved then we move onto removing any subconscious blocks. We muscle test for these blocks. Then we muscle test for the best treatment either tapping, chakras, or biofield. The chakras are energy centers throughout the body. I will educate you on them and then help to clear what is stuck and this will help resolve the symptoms. The biofield is your aura and this is another energy field that can have stuck energy which we then clear and symptoms resolve.