#MariaDeDauw #Brainspotting #Healing #TransformativeEnergeticBodywork #soul #bodywork #root #brainspottingtherapy #trauma #coaching #process #deepinnerwork
About a year ago, I became fascinated by brainspotting. A childhood friend who is a psychologist introduced me to it. Around the same time, it also reached me through other channels. She was curious and enthusiastic, and the training sessions offered by Brainspotting.BE (the official branch of Brainspotting in Belgium) piqued my interest as well. After some research, we decided to enroll in the Phase 1 training. It was wonderful that this was something we could do together, and it overlapped with our work fields. Both of us have rather complex expressive personalities and have known each other for half our lives, so who better to guide you through deep processes and exchange sessions with.
During Phase 1, it quickly became clear that the techniques were new to me but on familiar ground. I told the trainer that it felt like bodywork without touch, and she agreed. I noticed that I could quickly get the hang of it since the therapist’s role in this case is mainly to create a safe container (spaceholding, essentially) while following the client's brain waves and process, guiding and adjusting with various techniques for more grounding if dissociation occurs. These waves come from the limbic brain, so during the session, only process language is used—no neocortex rational chatter as that pulls you out of the process. Simply let whatever comes up arise: physical reactions, nervous system discharges, emotions, thought streams, sensations, images, memories, an inner journey... trusting that your brain knows best how to untangle 'trauma knots' with this support and from the eye position(s). And this happens and brings about a lot of release.
The trainings themselves are intensive, as you both receive and give sessions and also follow group demos, leaving you quite fried after 3 days. Super interesting, widely applicable, and important to first receive a lot of sessions yourself, so you can give sessions with more presence. My own work focuses on processes via (deep and energetic) bodywork, so this new angle without touch but with eye positions fascinates me greatly—I noticed again that the same intensity is possible without touch. Yet it’s also about body awareness and thus the focus on sensing. And it’s completely safe, so safe that it can be applied to children without any problem.
I have previously experienced a similar intensity without touch in other ways during energetic healing work and also during plant medicine journeys—forms of healing that come with other pitfalls. Forms where guidance, set, and setting are much more crucial. Brainspotting is easier for most people to learn and significantly safer.
During Phase 2 training, we learned additional techniques to use with people with complex trauma, less resilience, and specific issues such as victims of sexual abuse. Meanwhile, we continued to regularly exchange sessions on all kinds of issues—over time, a core issue became visible to me. A pattern I have carried with me for a long time, now visible as the root, the common denominator of various situations I struggle(d) with, which keep repeating themselves in different ways in my life. Now I want to tackle this core pattern, dig up that root. It feels like a thick shell I need to break out of, break through, out of isolation.
It's hard for me to know exactly which work brings which awareness and healing since I apply so many different techniques for and to myself. I undergo a lot of bodywork because I see it as part of both my work and my personal growth. Personal growth that not only nourishes me but is also crucial for evolving in my work. Besides brainspotting, there are sessions in my own Transformative Energetic Bodywork, transformational cupping sessions, meditation and field, sea rituals, singing lessons, light activations, breast tissue treatments... It all connects for me, showing me all the places in my body, mind, nervous system, and heart that still hold pain and tension, and helps me release a bit each time.
I know where I want to go, a place beyond all that trauma, a place of expansion and creativity. I see and feel trauma as constricting tension fields, often pain-related, literally in the physical body in the different tissues, connective tissue, nervous system, and brain. Literally physical, but also mental in thought patterns, emotional and energetic in feeling patterns and sensing. These fascinating processes and my work show me how traumatic or painful experiences are stored in body, mind, and heart. And how these tension fields hook in very specifically and overlappingly in your physical body over your mental and emotional… I see how different issues can sometimes hook into each other. I see it in myself and others. And how they can also sometimes be intertwined with collective fields. Sometimes many little things make one big thing and sometimes big and small are intertwined, in short, a complex clusterfuck!
It's not easy to rewire your brain, clear out old trauma networks and create new ones that seek finer experiences and make a softer, more loving life possible. It's long work and yet fascinating and certainly worth it. Over the last few years, I have been able to truly experience the liberation of deep pain several times within myself. I’m clearly not through everything yet and now on a new layer, but my experiences do teach me that rewiring is possible, that even deep traumas don’t have to define you forever, that you can heal from them. You may not be able to erase them as if they never happened, but you can heal from them and live beyond them—free from the constant pain, tension, fear, anger, fatigue, or whatever it was that kept the pattern alive in you, free to make a new start, stand in life in a new way, move, relate, and create in a new way. This isn’t just about me, because I’ve seen remarkable progress in this with various people in my practice as well.
It remains to be seen how I will integrate brainspotting into my own work—probably as part of a trajectory. In the meantime, I’ve already enrolled in Phase 4 training with David Grand to further explore how I can also use bodyspotting and expansion techniques. I’m really looking forward to breaking through this layer as well and seeing and feeling my life and body change! I do love the ocean.
Warm regards,
Maria De Dauw
© Maria De Dauw / Maria De Dauw ®
Comments