WHAT IS BRAINSPOTTING WITH DR. GRAND

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to the Psychological Theories podcast,and this podcast would take a journey into
the human mind with one psychological theoryat a time. So let's begin.
So, doctor Graham, thank youvery much for doing this. I really

(00:22):
appreciate you spending the time with us. I guess my first question is really
curious. By the way, folks, doctor Graham wrote two great books called
brain Spotting, The Revolutionary New Therapyfor rapid and effective Change and Emotional Healing
at warp Speed. It's also theco author This is Your Brain on Sports.
Before we get to those books,Doctor Grant and brain Spotting, I

(00:43):
gotta ask you what led you intothe discovery of brain spotting. Well,
it wasn't so much that something ledme into it. It's that it came
to me and I received it.I noticed it. I was already a
therapist for over twenty years, trainedin a variety of different techniques, and

(01:03):
I was using it. I wasworking with an ice skater who was blocked
on a particular jump called the tripleloop, which she could do every other
jump triple jump, but not thetriple loop. And she would go once
twice and then would pop out ofthe jump instead of completing it, and
it was a compulsory jump for theeither the short or the long program,

(01:26):
and so it really blocked her,even though she was a championship caliber skater,
and we had done a lot ofwork with this and other things.
And I was doing a combination ofa body therapy with an eye movement therapy.
I was going very slowly across herfield of vision, and she had

(01:47):
had her visualized and feel herself justat that moment of popping out of the
triple loop, and just when Igot over here, her eye went into
this incredible wobble like I had neverseen before, and then it just locked
on. So it felt like ahand grabbed my wrist and kept it in
place. And she went into thedeepest processing for the next ten minutes,

(02:09):
and one trauma would come up,whether it was personal or had to do
with skating or injuries or failure,and processed through, and then another one,
and she was literally looking at myfinger and like she was watching the
videos. And I was just mesmerizedby this. I didn't really know what
was happening. And about halfway throughtraumas that we had worked through already,

(02:34):
at least, I thought we hadworked through already, came up again and
processed through to a deeper level.That got my attention as much as the
first part, because it showed thatwhat looked like it had been processed through
to the bottom really hadn't gotten closeto reaching the bottom. After ten minutes,
this intense processing stopped. We justkind of finished up. And the

(02:57):
next day she called me from thepractice rink and she said, David,
I just did a triple loop withno problem. And I did it again
and again and again, and shenever had a problem with it before.
So that's how it came to me. Ah, that's interesting. That's great
for her too. Oh yes,absolutely. Was she as surprise as you,
Uh yeah, in her own way, yes, in her own way,

(03:21):
yes, because she had been sostuck on it for so long.
Now it's interesting is when you putyour finger up. I know, last
week the class and I were kindof looking at going, was this some
kind of version of EMDR, becausethis is what people might be thinking.
Is it Absolutely not? In fact, EMDR is based on eye movement,
Okay, brain spinding is based onfinding relevant eye positions in the visual field

(03:46):
and having the person gaze at those. So it is the absence of movement
that creates the stillness that allows theprocessing to go deeper and deeper and deeper
into the brain. Additionally, thisis a little bit more technical. Brain
spotting is based on what I callthe dual a Tuman frame. It's all
about a tuman the basis of it. The the basic part of the frame

(04:14):
is the relational frame. Relational atunment built upon that is what I call
the neurobiological frame, which has todo with body awareness and relevant eye positions.
So it's the two levels of atunment together. But if you look
through the literature on EMDR, youwill find nothing about the relationship. If
you look through the literature on brainspotting, you'll find everything on the relationship.

(04:35):
So are those are just two reasonswhy why brain spotting is not only
a separate modality, it's in manyways an opposite modality. Interesting, now,
getting a litany of questions popping upin my head. Class, If
you have any questions, you canalso throw them in the chat. By

(04:56):
the way, folks are talking todoctor grand gr and d. You can
find him a spotting dot com.Doctor Grant, you said relevant spots.
So this to me now makes methink, are we looking at different places
of their eyes if you're looking upor you're looking to the side. I'm
kind of getting a little bit ofNLPs kind of thing right now going in
my head. But is that whatyou're referring to? Is it or not?

(05:16):
NLPs has a prescribed map that youlook up here for this, you
look up here for that, andthis over here. There is no map
in brain's body. Each person.Not only is each person different and there's
no map, each person is differentfrom session to session. So if you
were working on a spot over herewith a client and they come in the
next session and they're still working thesame issue, and you find that where

(05:39):
it feels the most active or accessibleto them might be a completely different spot.
So the attunement is based on notonly being with the client in the
moment, but being with their neurobiologicaland their visual orienting experience at that time.
I'll give you an example. Ifyou talk to somebody about something that's

(06:02):
important to them, whether whether you'rea therapist or whether it's just talking to
a friend or a relative, you'llfind that when they lock onto the essence
of it, their eyes will jumpto a position and they'll just be gazing
at that position as they're talking toyou. Now, some people actually think
it's avoiding eye contact, which it'sthe opposite of. There's something about that,

(06:24):
that eye position that's so compelling thatthe person needs to look there to
access in the deepest of ways,whatever it is that they're thinking about,
whatever they're expressing, whatever is soimportant to them. In brain spotting,
we look for those, We lookfor those. We call them gaze spots.
They're spontaneous spots where people gaze atas they're talking to us about what's

(06:46):
important. And you pointed out,I say, you see where you're looking
over there. Just keep looking overthere, Notice what you're feeling, notice
what you're looking at, and let'ssee what comes up, what comes next,
what comes next, And they goto a very focused form of mindfulness,
which is really how the system healsitself and reregulates itself. It's fascinating

(07:08):
stuff. By the way, folksthat want to learn more about gay splotting.
On chapter five of his book,it's they're dual of twoments over in
chapter six. So if you're gettingtantalized, now, this is where you
can go. Doctor Grant I'm gonnaask one more time different types of theories
that keep popping in my head ofthe talk to you, because it sounds
a little bit I'm seeing. Iwonder if you incorporate anything from doctor Shore's

(07:30):
work in regards to attachment theory,nor a biology, or doctor Ogden's work
on sensory motor operation. Is thatall anything at all from there? Not
directly, but we're all looking atthe same phenomena, so so they're you
know, when when people look atthe same phenomena, they won't say the
exact same thing, but they'll beoverlap with that. Attachment is crucial for

(07:57):
all human beings, really cute,crucial for old mammals, but for the
human mammal attachment is a very tenuous, vulnerable kind of process. And if
there is chaos, or if thereis disruption or even worse trauma in the
attachment process, it will be withthe person, you know, as they

(08:18):
grow into adulthood, and everybody whocomes in for therapy who has any kind
of significant, you know, issues, it goes all the way back to
attachment. So in that way,it's definitely part of brainspotting. I want
to add brain spotting is a verydevelopmental model. We look at whatever a
person brings in as being a roadmapto where they've been going all the way

(08:43):
back to the beginnings of their lives. And the attachment period in the first
few years of life are such vulnerabletimes that traumas that happened during these times
come out as and look at looklike symptoms for someone in their twenties or
thirties or forties. And let mejust jump in, and you can't.

(09:05):
You can't access pre verbal trauma withtalk therapy or with any therapy that goes
into the system from the top down. Okay, any language or cognitive cognition
based therapy, Okay, is developedmentally comes more you know when the person

(09:26):
is further along, so you canonly get This is why body therapies,
semantic therapies are are so effective.But but what the semantic therapies miss is
the relevance of eye positions. AndI want to add the eyes are absolutely
fascinating. The eyes are actually anoutgrowth of the brain. In utero,

(09:48):
the eyes grow out of the brainand the retinas and the optic nerves are
actually made up of neurons made upof brain cells. So the eyes and
vision are inseparable from all neurological processes. That's why I positions are are so
crucial and so easily missed. That'sfascinating stuff. We have a question from

(10:11):
Kennedy. We'll get to that ina little bit. Kenny is a good
question. Let me let me goback to this developmental process. I don't
know if you've worked with children andtried brain spotting with them, have you
seen them behave in similar fashions toadults. I guess I'm trying to get
out. Well, I'm not achild therapist, and I'm not an expert

(10:35):
on child therapy, but there arebrain spotty therapists who are. We have
won in Austria Monica Bowman, whoteaches seminars on using brain spotting with children.
What's the difference between doing brain spottingwith children and adults. With children,
it works faster, Okay, yeah, you know you'll find that I

(10:56):
position and have an adult look atit for half an hour at fifteen minutes,
thirty minutes, forty five minutes toreally process, you know, more
deeply. With a child, sometimesthirty to sixty seconds on the spot actually
helps them to process through because they'rethey're carrying less in their system, but
their systems are just a lot moreopen. That's fascinating. That's interesting.

(11:22):
Does a raise question I'm gonna goto that personal offense. Kennedy just seems
to go nice flow here and thenwe'll go back to yours. Is at
what age can you confidently start implementingbrain spotting intervention? Well, I cannot
explain it to you. Okay,but but but people report having effective use
of brain spotting as as young asone year old. Okay, Now,

(11:46):
remember the visual systems of one yearold. They're they're very active and so
on. But if you catch theirattention, you know, and you catch
their attention with something where you couldjust see that it either is activated for
them or that it's calming for them, and you just hold that with them
as long as they can. Thatthey're not they don't have language yet,

(12:09):
but they're processing just on a veryvisceral level, whatever it is that is
distressing to them. That's interesting.I'm trying to see a couple of the
questions, but I'm trying to seeI'm gonna get the venture into the neurobiology
component pages. Questions, could youelaborate more on how eye positions are linked
to processing trauma and facilitating change.I'm not sure we're gonna get ahead of

(12:31):
ourselves on that one. That's agood question. With the ice skater.
The answer is it starts with theice skater. That eye position right over
here, just slightly to the left, you know, at eye level,
was an access spot for her.Okay, that somehow access deeper and more

(12:54):
efficiently into her neurobiology down past theneo cortex, into the subcortex, down
you know, into the limbic systemand the autonomic nervous system. Something about
eye positions helps us to do that. Now, when vision comes in into
the eyes, okay, it getsit gets sent down two pathways that come

(13:16):
together in the occipital cortex. Thatis getting real neuro kind of stuff and
and and that uh, and thatregister in the superior colliculi, which is
in the midbrain right at the topof the brain of the brain stem.
The top few layers of the superiorcolliculi are visual and that's the core of

(13:37):
where of where visual memories are stored. Antonio Domacio, who you know is
is a great brain scientist, saidthat that it's the it's the seat of
the of the self, the seatof the soul. Back here. So
if there are if there's unprocessed traumathat is accessible visually at the visual layer

(14:01):
and the top of the of themidbrain. Okay, that eye position,
this is our theory. Can accessthe unprocessed trauma, you know, can
find you say, find the file, the right file, and by holding
the eye position you know fixed there, can keep that file open and allow
for processing down to a midbrain level. So again, that's that's one of

(14:24):
our core neuro theories. That's fascinating. And do you think am I going
to frame this question? So whenpeople access some of their traumas we know
some of them are very salient thatcould be stored in the amygdala or other
places, does it allow them toaccess these memories in a safer way or
is that something the therapist is goingto have to help them with more well,

(14:46):
safer compared to what safer compared tonot having brain spotting? I guess
relatives with that. Well, uh, you know, there are a lot
of other effective modalities out there,So I don't want to answer that question
and cast dispersions on other modalities.I would say that the attunement of the

(15:09):
therapist and the wisdom of the therapist, especially to development, especially to trauma
and dissociation, would have a lotto do with that. There there are
if you just compare eye fixation toeye movements. Okay, if you're working
with someone about you know, areally profound early trauma and you find a
spot over here and the person justgazes at it and it processes over that,

(15:33):
you can you can viscerally feel thedifference between that and working off the
same thing going like this, okay, in terms of containment and maintaining grounding.
And but any therapy can uncover somethingat any point, even if it's
talk therapy or CBT you're not lookingfor. A dissociative barrier can can be

(16:00):
breached and whatever is behind it cancome out. So there's no failsafe way
of having that not happen. Okay, But this is why the relationship is
so important. That's why it's thecore of brain spotting. Okay. If
you are present with the client andthey have a connection to you, and
they feel a sense of trust inyou and its stability with you, when

(16:22):
the tough stuff comes out, okay, they're able to feel like they're they're
not catapulted into the state of isolationthat they experience that at the time of
the traumas, especially early traumas.That's why we put the emphasis on the
relationship, because the healing comes throughthrough the relationship. It doesn't come through

(16:44):
the technique. Okay, the techniqueis only as powerful as the relationship.
I like that a lot. Doyou do any particular theories that you seem
to work better with brain spotting,CBT, object relations anything of that sort
or not really? Uh Well,CBT is is more of a practice modality,

(17:07):
you know. Object relations is moreof a theory. I was.
I studied, you know, I'vebeen earning this business a long time,
so so I studied originally back tonot only Freudian but the neo Freudians and
object relations and uh, the psychoanalyticdevelopmental models and so on that really underpins

(17:30):
so much of what people know now, but they don't really know necessarily where
it comes from. Uh. Butuh, we draw from neurobiology as much
as we draw from psychology. Okay, if you know, if if if
you have a psychological theory that isn'tgrounded in neurobiology or is actually opposite to

(17:52):
what we know in neurobiology. Wedon't. We don't give much credence to
that it has to make sense neurobiologically. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna you
get questions, but I gotta saysomething here because I think it needs to
be said. The population of theworld right now is eight billion. The
population of Europe and North America isone billion. So North America and Europe

(18:18):
is one billion. The rest ofthe world, you know, is seven
billion. Psychic psychological concepts and andand the research that goes along with it
is very Western, and it goesback just you know, a hundred years,
a few hundred years, and andit's been exported all over the world,

(18:38):
just like we've liked the West hasexported things all over the world in
not such good ways with colonialism,etc. So on, But healing wisdom,
you know, and and they don'tnecessarily there's different viewpoints around the world
about what we call the nervous systemother places called chakras, Meridians and so
on. Energy. Who's to saythat the one billion people are right and

(19:06):
the seven billion people are wrong,and that the ideas of the one billion
should be superimposed on the seven billion. Okay, we have this this term
evidence based practice. Well, whodetermines what the evidence is? Well,
it's a Western concept, okay,and it is applied by Westerners, Okay,

(19:29):
but what in essence, what it'ssaying is that the wisdom of the
rest of the world, you know, going back thousands of years, is
not evidence. That's a pretty tellingsort of thing, brain spoty, and
we use what we called it theneuroexperiential model, is expands beyond the West,

(19:51):
and it takes in the wisdom fromthe rest of the world. And
we're always looking for wisdom from fromthe East, from Africa, from South
America, from indigenous peoples because becausepeople were doing healing, in fact,
they probably were using eye positions goingback you know, centuries and millennia and
having some good effect on it.But it just didn't fit the Western idea

(20:14):
of evidence. So I just neededto say that. Now, it's interesting
that sometimes I've mentioned to the class. I don't know if I mentioned it
too this class roor now, butit's funny how a lot of times people
act like CBT or certain types oftheories or practices or new When we look
at the Greeks from two thousand yearsago with stoicism, and they applied a
lot of the same belief systems thatwe do two thousand years later. I

(20:37):
might argue they did it better thanwe do it. I might agree with
you if you look at their literature. It is very deep in high level,
isn't It's incredible. I'm gonna gonow to Kennedy's question. So I
kept her waiting long enough, butI think it's right around the area here.
It says I saw on TikTok abouthow lateral eye movement exercises increased serotonin

(20:57):
levels. It does have any relationshipto brain spotting. Well, I'm not
sure that TikTok is the best sourceof scientific information. And and and I'll
and I just want to use thisto expand things a little bit. Nothing
in the brain is literal and linear. Everything is nonlinear, okay. In

(21:22):
fact, everything the brain operates ona quantum basis. You know, the
idea that something is located in theamygdala, as opposed to something is located
through the entire brain, and somehowit may be organized through the amygdala.
There's no nothing that happens in apart of the brain that doesn't happen in
all of the brain or all ofthe nervous system. So going back to

(21:42):
the question, is it possible thatfor some people at sometimes lateral eye movements
can have an effect on serotonin level? Probably? Probably, But there's another
saying this is western you know,Uh, correlation is not causation. So

(22:03):
if that happens, you know,uh, it's so it's so complex,
you know, and there's so manydifferent brain uh chemicals that that are operational
at one time, so that ifit affects the serotonin level, it probably
affects you know, a lot ofdifferent levels. And and how that all
comes together, you know, Idon't know, but to put it,

(22:26):
put it this way, does brainspotting affects the serotonin level of people at
different times? It probably does.But you know, in science, you
can you know, most things areput forward as facts in the field of
psychology and mental health are actually theoriesthat have been around a long time that

(22:49):
just have become accepted as facts.So the fact that this gets this result,
we're working with with an infinite numberof varias bolts. You know,
in the human system, the humannervous system has one to four quadrillion synaptic
connections. That's more than the starswe know about in the universe. So

(23:12):
how can you know about that?How can you know about a system like
that from the outside, you know, That's that's my question. That's a
good question. I have no answerfor him. But because we were waiting
doctor Graham, folks again, youcan find the book called brain Spotting,
The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid andEffective Change and Emotional Healing at warp Speed.

(23:33):
Also co offered This is Your Brainon Sports. You can find more
about him at brain spotting dot com. Jonathan, I'm gonna hold your question
off for a little bit because it'sgonna tie you into another question for doctor
Grant. But Kennedy comes back withanother interesting question that kind of takes me
to what I wanted to take youtoo. She mentions, as someone who
has never witnessed brain spotting in action, can you describe what it looks like?
So I was kind of wondering thesame thing if you could take us

(23:56):
through I know you took us kindof through the ice Skeeter, but if
some of it comes in with trauma, for instance, and they come to
see you, what do you do? What's the process like? Is it
just natural? Is it? Isthere a system going on? How would
that work? Well, first ofall, almost everybody I see has trauma

(24:19):
that is contributing to what brings themto see me. This is part I
said. Brain spotting is a developmentalmodel, and we look at things from
a developmental trauma and association point ofview. Association is when a system puts
up a protective barrier in order tosurvive, but what's behind the protective barrier
ends up being hidden and lost.So coming back to the question, a

(24:42):
person comes in to see me,I ask, you know, first of
all, I wait to see whatthey have to see. Talking about a
first session, and I'm looking forthem to tell me, in their words
and their concepts, in their owntime, what it is that that goes
on for them that has led themto have the courage to come to see

(25:03):
me in the first place. Andfrom there, uh, you know,
I ask kind of follow up questions. Almost everything I do is following,
not leading, because one to fourquadrillion synaptic connections. You have to take
what comes to you. If youthink you know there or you can lead
it, you can't. And thisis this is a a failure in different

(25:26):
therapeutic processes. But assuming that I'mgoing to do brain spotting with a person
of first session, okay, Iwill ask them what would you like to
work on today? And it doesn'thave to be you know, some therapies
you have to you have to givea memory, you have to give something
that you can put into words,you have to give a cognition, all

(25:48):
these kind of things. In brainspotting, it's it's self defined by the
client for the client, and thenthey'll they'll say, whatever it is,
you know, and then we maygo into a more extensive discussion about it,
or we may just quickly go intobrain spotting. With this, it's
all a matter of the individuality andfollowing the client wherever they go. Let's

(26:10):
say the client had something more discreet, They had a bad car accident six
months ago and they have driving phobia. Now, okay, that's that's actually
an easier thing to work with,you know, surprisingly enough, as opposed
to more complex trauma, which usuallyeverybody has in their own way. But

(26:32):
I'd say, okay, just areyou activated around the car accident? Now
the person says yes, we willask them zero to ten, how activated
are you? Zero is neutral?Nothing? Ten is the most it can
be. Person says a six.Okay. Now from there, we have
three different ways of finding the eyeposition. The first way is is if

(26:55):
this person, as soon as hestarted to activate himself around the accident,
he went like this, his headwent back and he looked up, you
know, or he went like this, I might say, just keep looking
where you're looking and notice where you'refeeling in your body, and let's see
where it goes. But the othertwo ways of finding the relevant eye positions.

(27:17):
Let's say the person it's a sixand they're feeling compression in their chest.
I will go slowly across their eyeposition, looking for reflexes in their
eyes, in their face, oreven in their body. You know,
you get across here and the personstarts blinking very fast. You get over
here and the person's head goes back. You get over here in the person
clears their throat. Those are allreflexive responses that are indicating that something about

(27:42):
that eye position is touching on somethingin this state of activation that they're in.
And then from there I'll choose orwill choose together a reflex spot.
We call that in brain spotting outsidewindow. Because the therapist is looking from
the outside into the client's eyes.Or I might say to the client,

(28:03):
Okay, we're going to see theeye position where you feel it the most.
Do you feel it more looking toyour right, Do you feel it
more looking in the middle, ordo you feel it more looking to your
left? Okay, the client says, to your left. Then we'll say
is it more above eye level?At eye level or below? They say
higher, higher, right there.Okay. That's the third way of finding

(28:29):
a relevant eye position. We callit inside window because the client is directing
us from the inside. So oncethere are on any of the spots,
the gay spot, the reflex spot, or the inside window spot, the
client just starts by being aware ofwhat they're feeling in their body and they
are guided to go into a mindfulnessprocess. Okay, you don't direct yourself,

(28:53):
you don't judge yourself, you don'thold yourself back. You notice what
comes up, what comes next,what comes next, what comes next,
And what happens is that the systemgoes into a deep form of processing that
somehow takes them out of the disregulationand out of the trauma and moves them
towards the here and now and movesthem towards more of a sense of homeostasis

(29:15):
or regulation. And periodically you checkin on the activation number. Person started
at a six. The process forabout fifteen minutes, you say zero to
ten, how much you're feeling it. Now it's a four. You keep
going and and sometimes in a sessionyou'll get down to a zero. And
sometimes it won't get down to azero. We'll go from a six,

(29:36):
two or three. But a lotof processing has happened, happened with that.
Okay, we're at the end.We say, okay, I want
you to go back to the accidentnow, okay, let it come up
now and see what it looks likeand feels like. And the client will
say, it's kind of like vague, it's hazy, or it's further away,

(29:56):
or you know, I kind ofsee it, but I'm not reacting
to it. Those are Those arereflections of changes in the in the neurobiology
in response to this processing. Andyou can get to a point where it's
at a zero. We call iteven a squeeze lemon zero, where we
have the person try to activate themselvesas much as they can until they can't

(30:18):
even activate it at all. Ofit Okay, and something has shifted in
the person's nervous system by by doingthis, So that would be that's an
example of how we do it.It's a relatively simple example, a great
example. It's really interesting to seehow that would work. I've got a
lot of questions now, but I'mtrying to trying to think how we're going

(30:41):
to handle this. Lost my trainof thought. Okay, so in your
book you mentioned it's interesting in chaptereight. Was kind of a fascinating title
of chapter eight, z axis andconvergence. Convergence? Is that mentioned in
this example we just gave us oris this something copper? No, no,
no, This is actually going backto high school geometry. Going across

(31:03):
horizontally Z the X axis going upor down as the Y axis, and
the Z axis is depth. Okay, Now, because the visual field is
three dimensional and the perception of traumais three dimensional as well. For some
clients, Okay, when you movethe pointer further away, it gets less
activating. When you move the pointertowards them, it gets more activating.

(31:27):
So that's exploring the Z axis.But there's another fascinating phenomenon here. Okay.
If if this is the eye positionwhere they feel at the most and
the client looks through the pointer tothe most distant spot on the wall and
you know, aligning with this withthe pointer and goes back and forth between

(31:47):
the two every three to five oreight seconds. Okay, it activates a
an oculo cardiac reflex the eye muscles. This is good. You know I
told you about the eyes are partpartly made up of brain cells. The
eye muscles, there's six eye musclesfor each eye are loaded with reflexes,

(32:08):
and one of those reflexes is avegel reflex. You may have heard of
polyvagel theory. Well, you canactually activate the vegel system by looking by
converging and diverging, and converging anddiverging, the whole nervous system calms down
and quiets down. Okay, becauseyou're getting that vegel access. Now if

(32:30):
you're doing it on the spot wherethe person feels the trauma activation, and
you're getting this again this old technicalstuff, but I'm only answering your questions.
You're you can literally down regulate usinga vegeal reflex that goes all the

(32:51):
way down, you know, intothe heart, into the digestive system.
So when I was cutting my teeth, as a therapist. We didn't know
this stuff, we couldn't do thisstuff. And only as the years and
the decades went on did we learnmore and more about these things. And
here's the good news. Whatever weknow now tomorrow and next next month,

(33:14):
and next year and next decade,we're going to know a lot more than
we know right now in terms ofpromoting emotional healing. Absolutely, it is
an exciting look at the future.Absolutely. Yeah. Because chapter nine you
talked about the neurobiology of brain spotting. So this is what you're covering right
now. Some of these aspects hereyou'd probably go deeper in the book as

(33:34):
well well. Actually, the bookcame out ten years ago, so we
have some ideas and information that havecome on since then. I'll give you
an example of it. The neocortex, the thinking brain, the human brain,
the conscious brain, the language brain, okay, is brilliant at what

(33:58):
it does, but it has verylittle capacity capacity for regulation, Okay,
for the regulating systems where you likebalance or emotional balance or being able to
regulate emotions, there's no capacity forthat up here. So any therapy that
is language based and thought based isgonna go here. And it's gonna spend

(34:22):
a lot of time here. Okay. But if you go down the lower
part of underneath the neocortex, youhave you have different areas that are highly
involved in regulation. Okay, Sothis is another part of the brain theory
of brain spying. You want tobypass the neocortex, okay, which has

(34:49):
little to no capacity for systemic regulation, to get access to the subcortex,
to the parts of the subcortex thatare highly involved in regulation. If a
person has panic attacks, that's disregulation. A person has has OCD, that's
disregulation. Person has flashbacks, that'sdisregulation. Person has depression, that's another

(35:14):
form of disregulation. So you haveto be able to help the system to
come from disregulation towards regulation. Youhave to be able to access the parts
of the brain that are directly involvedin that. Well, the more talking
you get into, the less accessyou get to the regulating parts of the
brain. This is why we keepit to a minimum. Where do you

(35:36):
feel it the most? Here?Here, here, up down below,
right over here? Okay, seewhat happens from there. We minimize the
language, we minimize the thinking basedkind of processes, which helps us to
access the areas of disregulation or regulation. That's why be looking for where the

(36:00):
person feels at the most. That'swhy we're looking for those reflexes. Okay,
that tells you where the regulation systemis, down to the brain stem,
down even to the spine where alot of the reflexes are spinal.
This is why we look for thatspontaneous gaze because that spontaneous gaze tells us
that this is where the person isaccessing it into the system that's trying to

(36:23):
regulate itself, that's been having troubleregulating itself. That makes me think about
the pre funnel cortex and it's responsibilityfor emotional regulations. So is that what
you're referring to or does it haveany play at all here? Only secondarily?
Secondarily it for primary emotional regulation.Now, because emotional regulation is all

(36:46):
based on somatic processes, and it'sall based on survival issues of flight and
fight and freeze. What is bythe way, it's not fight or flighty.
Mammals are not looking for a fight. They're looking to survive. A
mammal will run away before it fights. It will only fight when it's cornered.

(37:07):
So it's really excuse me, it'sreally fight, flight or fight,
and then if that doesn't work,freeze Okay. When a person has in
the state of flight, the animalgets the anxiety signal, which tells us
dangerous here run okay. So theflight response is very much related to anxiety,

(37:30):
the fight response is very much relatedto anger, okay, and the
freeze response is very much related tohelplessness. All core survival mechanisms that are
mammalian, that are the substrates,are of our emotional processes. So how
can the prefrontal cortex mediate things thatare so primal? Okay? You can

(37:58):
tell yourself. That's like, andyou tell somebody who's really upset, oh,
don't worry, don't be upset,and it doesn't of course, it
doesn't help. Okay. What youcan say is okay, I'm here with
you. Okay. Let's you saythings in the kind of voice and the
kind of gestures that are more calming, in a more primal sort of way,

(38:19):
and you have to take your timewith it, because the system doesn't
shut shut off as quickly as itmay shut and turn on. Interesting.
I like that, I know we'regoing towards ready, forty five minutes in
I can't believe it pretty fast,isn't it. Let me ask you this.
I'm gonna jump on to Jonathan's questionhere obviously to other questions for me.

(38:43):
Actually, you know what, beforewe get to Jonathan's question, there's
a couple of other ones that areattached to it. In chapter ten,
you talk about the body is memory. Tell us a little bit about that.
What is this all about? Youkind of referenced it earlier. It
seemed like you've alluded to it earlier. What would happen if you think back
to a significant memory in your lifeand the memory comes up, but there's

(39:07):
no emotion and you're not feeling anythingin your body. Okay, you think
about the first date that you had, Okay, and you bring it up.
The only way that it has resonanceis what you feel and what you
feel in your body. You know, you may feel kind of a warm
feeling in your body, or ifyou're thinking about a cringe worthy memory,

(39:29):
you'll feel that cringing in your body. But if you go to a cringe
worthy memory and there's nothing, nobody, no emotion, nothing, it
has it has no value as amemory. Okay. And what happens is,
let's say you take a traumatic experienceokay, where you've got very frightened

(39:52):
by something. Okay, the fearthat you felt in your body is as
much a memory as the image ofwhat frightened you. In fact, I
would argue that the feeling, thatfear feeling in your body is more of
a memory than the image. Soif you bring up the image but the

(40:13):
body memory doesn't come up, it'snot much of a memory. It's a
disembodied memory. But you know what, you can have that fear in your
body and be remembering that frightening experiencewithout having the visual or the auditory memory
that goes along with it. Alot of what we feel emotionally is actually
memory that is that we're not recognizingas memory because it's it doesn't come up

(40:35):
with a declarative memory that goes alongwith it. I like that. I
know it's always interesting to see howthe nervous system responds when your access memories.
You'll start breathing heavier depending on thememory. Of course, Well,
if you have somebody come into youroffice and they want to work on something
that is very traumatizing to them,and they're walking in there in a safe

(40:58):
environment with a safe person, they'vebeen seeing it for three months, you
know, and they're familiar with theplace, and they bring up the memory
and you say how activating is atzero to ten and they say nine.
Their body is reacting like they're indanger when they even though they know this
is this is the prefunnel cortex knowsthere's no danger. Okay, the body

(41:19):
is still reacting as if there's danger. It's it's they're actually having a body
flashback, okay, which is whatcreates that activation in a session, whether
it's in brain spotting or any othertherapy. Let me ask you your opinion
on this. I have a lotof friends and special forces and this is
something similar a lot of times thatI hear from them. Do you like
the phrase They usually use it withthe migdala, but in this case when

(41:43):
wee, we'll use it with thebody that it overrides the prefunnel cortex or
is it just different pathways that arecommunicating they're not communicating properly. What do
you think? I think both thingsyou say it are are makes sense.
Okay. By the way, whenit comes to people have been involved in

(42:04):
combat and they talk about and thiswe see now again with natural disasters they
talk about the thousand miles stare.Person is like this okay, and they're
just gazing off into space and they'relike not really there and so on.
Not true at all. That's that'sa gay spot Okay. There's a part

(42:25):
of them that they left behind onthe battlefield that never came home, and
they're gazing off into space in somerelation to that part of them that hasn't
come home. Okay. If anyother therapist is not a brain spotting therapist
is going to is going to misreadit and isn't going to make use of

(42:45):
it. You know, by theway, any therapists who are listening you
know here, you know, youdon't have to come to a brain spotting
training to learn about this, especiallygay spotting. It's the most natural thing
of all. Okay. Coming backagain to combat, it's usually not just

(43:07):
one event for combat trauma. It'susually multiple events over an extreme period of
time. And some of it iswhat happens to you, or almost what
happens to you, but a lotof it is what happens to somebody else,
the vicarious traumatization, okay, Butwhat happens is when you know,

(43:30):
the unprocessed trauma inside of the returningsoldier. Their nervous system is still reacting
as if they're in they're in thefield of combat. That's where and brain
spinding is not the only modality that'sthat's successful and working with this, although
it's highly successful. But what whatyou're doing is you're helping the parts of

(43:54):
that of that soldier that we're leftbehind in the battlefield to be identic fight
and to come back from the thenand there to the here and now.
And it's not like it didn't happen, and it's not like it wasn't profound,
but it is that the person isnot endangered now as they were then.

(44:15):
Definitely going to share that idea withthem when we put that on the
podcast. Over there by the wayagain, folks, is doctor Graham g
r and D. The author ofbrain Spotting, The Revolutionary new Therapy for
Wrapping an effective change and emotional healingat warp Speed. We're gonna talk about
warp speed in a second. Healso co authored the book This is Your
Brain on Sports. You can findmore about him at brain spotting dot com.

(44:36):
Doctor grahams we head towards the tailend of the interview. Thank you
very much again for doing this.What do you mean warp speed? How
fast can people get over some ofthese traumash Well, for some people it
can be two sessions instead of twentysessions. For some people it can be
twenty sessions instead of two hundred sessions. For some people it can be three

(45:00):
years instead of instead of fifteen years, and they still you haven't really come
to any kind of resolution with it. So I want to mention complex trauma,
which I also call developmental trauma okay, takes longer to heal okay,

(45:20):
and it's usually developmental trauma or complextrauma is many traumas at different parts of
a life, but always going backto the early years of a person's life.
So you can get, for somepeople in two years of brain spotting
a much deeper, more comprehensive healingin relation to complex trauma or developmental trauma

(45:44):
than you might with certain other modalities. Again I'm not naming names that in
ten years you might not get closeto as much as you got in two
years. So that's so warp speedfor somebody's two sessions, for another person
it's twenty. For another person it'stwo years. You're a star trek fan
out of curiosity. I used touh, the original series, the first

(46:07):
few movies and so on, Butbeyond that, I didn't you know.
I didn't you know Captain h thecar that was? That was I wasn't
into it. You're a shottinger,Leemore an emoy fan. Absolutely. Our
last round of questions against Jonathan kindof starts it off with which type of

(46:28):
client is brainspotting not work for?Uh? Client who won't walk into your
office, client who walks out ofyour office in the middle of the session,
doesn't come back. Okay, here, here's the I'm being a bit
facetious, but this is this isone of the strengths of brain spotting.

(46:50):
It is based on a tunement,which means it's individual in the moment.
You can never work with this withtwo people the same way. You're going
to work with each person differently,and and if it's in your expertise.
Let's say a person has a Idon't call it dissociative disorder because I don't

(47:12):
believe that it's a disorder. Ithink it's an adaptation or a reaction pattern.
Or let's say a person has highlevels of dissociation. You have to
have expertise and working with that.Being a great brain spotting therapist isn't enough.
If you're working with addictions, youhave to have expertise and addictions.
If you're working with children, youhave to have expertise with that. If
you're working, you know, withdifferent cultures, you have to have expertise

(47:36):
with that. So with that asa caveat, if we're working with the
one to four quadrillion synaptic connections thateach person has that they bring in with
them, and we sit with theperson in such a way that we don't
assume anything about them, and thatwe receive whatever they say, and we

(48:00):
believe whatever whatever they say, andwe see them as the as the source
of information. We see them asthe smart ones about themselves, not us
therapists as the smart ones. Whatmakes us smartest to realize what we don't
know and what we can't know,and we follow the client wherever they go
in that way, you can youknow, Yeah, brain spotting is made

(48:27):
to be adapted to any individual orsituation. So I mean, I'm gonna
see if I can if I summarizethis right of course, correct me if
I'm wrong. So it seems likethis is going to jump onto this questions
for a second, But it seemslike brain spotting, there's an innate response
for this gaye spotting. Would anythingelse interfere with that innate response, such

(48:51):
as if drug use like you mentioneda minute ago, schizophrenia anything at all,
or would do you think the innatesystem would still be functioning properly enough?
Well, brain spotting won't take aschizophrenic person and have them become not
schizophrenic. Okay, So, butevery person who has diagnosable schizophrenia because a

(49:14):
lot of times dissociative disorders or conditionsare misdiagnosed as schizophrenia. But anybody who
has schizophrenia is a human being thathas their own developmental history and their own
developmental traumas because there's so much geneticloading. You know, there can be
other family members with schizophrenia, parentor so on. So there's a lot

(49:34):
of trauma that people who have schizophreniaor bipolar condition, you know, have
that that you can work with thatperson, but you have to be an
expert in working with those particular populationsas well. But brain spotting can be
used with them, not to cureit, but to help the person to
heal in the context of what theirpotential healing is interesting. I guess I'm

(50:00):
just gonna throw this out there.I haven't thought about it enough. Maybe
I should have put in either way, anything with dementia, Parkinson's, anything
there, it gets altered, interfereswith that innate response again for gazing or
you know, as long as thenervous system is working enough, Okay,
you can work with a person andwhatever happens happens. You know, Can

(50:24):
you work with someone who's who's awho's had a stroke to the you know,
to the degree that they can anduh, But again, we've seen
a lot of surprising responses to brainspotting with different situations or conditions, but

(50:45):
it's not predictive that you can dothis with anybody who has that kind of
condition. So so we're very cautiousabout, you know, overclaiming what we
can do with brain spotting. Iguess my last question, what's in the
horizon for brain spotting? Is thereanything that you see that you're excited about
in the future of brain spotting?Well, I discovered brain spotting twenty years

(51:08):
ago. We're in our twentieth yearanniversary. Every year since then through on
my own and then with the otherpeople who've become expert in brain spotting.
Brain Spotting evolves and changes all thetime. Okay, I introduced the neuroexperiential
model of brain spotting two years agoand it's changed brain spotting dramatically from what

(51:31):
it was before that. So brainspotting is going to continue to evolve.
But I'll tell you something that you'llnever hear from the head of any other
modality. The ultimate goal of brainspotting is to usher in the next modalities
that are more powerful than even brainspotting. It's to have there be a

(51:52):
beginning of middle and an end ofbrain spotting. Because we will have served
our purpose and followed our course atother other approaches that we don't have now,
we'll be able to do even betterthan what brainspotting is doing right now
and into the future. I'm excitedfor that. Any final questions, folks,

(52:14):
before we let doctor Grhand go hereagain, folks, doctor Grant,
you can find about brainspotting dot com. The books are called Brainspotting, The
Revolutionary and New Therapy for rappid andeffective change and emotionally healing of warp speed.
This is your brain on sports.Actually, doctor Grant, you mentioned
the book was about ten years old. Would you refer them anywhere else aside

(52:34):
to the book? I know,get a history of it and everything,
but anywhere else you wouldn't send them. The book is still comprehensive, you
know, it's it's not outdated,for say, even though it can be
updated, and it will be updated. My website is a very good source
of information, brainspotting dot com.I also have a video that I did

(52:55):
many years ago called what is brainSpotting? YouTube? Video out there?
There's other content like that, sothere's there's a lot of a lot of
material that's out there. Excellent,all right, any other questions, No,
thank you so much, doctor Grant. I really appreciate it taking the
time. You're in the East Coast, aren't you. I'm in Long Island,

(53:15):
New York. That's correct. Well, thank you very much for staying
up. I appreciate it very much. Well, thank thank you so much
Carlos for having me on this,and thank thank everybody who's been here with
us together. Absolutely, I'll sendyou the link once it goes up,
probably next week. Wait, Ilook forward to it. I have a
great one, so nice meeting.You. Nice meeting you, all right,

(53:37):
Bye bye now