David Grand
Brainspotting
A therapy for trauma, and for whatever you cannot get past: a memory, a fear, a jump you keep missing. Developed by psychotherapist David Grand.
01 / The accident
A figure skater, sixteen. A year of weekly sessions. She kept missing one jump.
Her therapist, David Grand, was moving a finger for her eyes to follow. At one point her eyes wobbled and froze. He stopped and held it there.
Ten minutes with her eyes on that spot did more than a year of talking had. The next morning she landed the jump.
“It was like a hand grabbed my wrist and held my finger in place.”
David Grand, psychotherapist
02 / Why eyes
Your eyes are wired to the part of the brain that feels, not the part that talks. That is Grand’s claim. So where you look can reach a feeling that words cannot.
Where your eyes come to rest is information.
“Where we look at different times is not random — in fact, I believe it is never random.”
David Grand
03 / The map
It is the eye position where whatever you are carrying feels strongest. There is no chart. Up and to the left means one thing for you and something else for the next person in the chair.
Grand says patterns are always changing. Expect last week’s spot and it will turn up somewhere else.
“With brainspotting, each person has their own map.”
David Grand
04 / Finding it
All three end with your eyes fixed on one point. What differs is who finds it.
01 · found from the outside
The therapist watches your face and stops the pointer when something flickers.
A blink, swallow, or head tilt. Grand’s original, slower method.
02 · found from the inside
The pointer moves. You say where the feeling is strongest.
Left, middle or right; then above eye level, at it, or below.
03 · already happening
You found it yourself five minutes ago, talking to a spot on the wall.
Grand added this one last. It asks the least of you.
05 / A session
The setup takes a few minutes. After that, the technique is holding still.
One thing to work on. A specific moment beats a whole decade.
How strong is it right now (zero to ten)? Brainspotting calls this activation, because plenty of people feel something they would never call distress.
Where is it in your body? Chest, throat, stomach, jaw.
One of the three ways above. The pointer goes up and stays.
Eyes on the spot. Watch whatever turns up: feelings, pictures, memories. Most people say little. The goal is for the number from step two to fall.
“The brain knows what to do. And 99 percent of the time, it knows what to do better than the therapist does.”
David Grand
06 / Below the words
The claim underneath all of this: the worst of what happened to you is kept below language, where there is no story to tell. Talking reaches the part of you that talks. The rest stays put.
“At that point, there’s no language and there’s no story — it is just all felt sense and body experience.”
David Grand
07 / The person opposite
Grand puts the relationship first. Someone watches you closely while you watch a point in space. He calls it dual attunement.
His picture for it is a comet. The therapist rides in the tail and follows wherever you go. He says a brain is too complicated to read from the outside.
“The client is the comet, and the therapist tries to get in the tail of the comet to follow wherever the comet goes.”
David Grand
08 / The vocabulary
Brainspotting renamed things other therapies already had words for. These two say what it thinks it is doing.
09 / Catch yourself
The therapy needs a trained therapist and a good reason. The reflex underneath it costs nothing to notice.
Next time you are thinking hard, notice where your eyes settle. They often move to one side and stay.
“You just see that you were looking at a spot on the carpet, and when you come out of it after ten minutes or so, you say, ‘Why was I looking over there?’”
David Grand
The short version
The eye position matters, Grand says. The therapist follows your lead.
Where this comes from
Brainspotting is young. It dates from 2003, and the research is still early: pilot studies, case series, and one 2025 practice trial of a hundred clients seen by a single therapist, who names randomised controlled trials as the next step. Critics argue the proposed brain route is unproven; brainspotting researchers replied, and both sides are linked above.