Article written by Denver Brainspotting Therapist, Lauren Battista
For athletes, there are few things more frustrating than knowing you can do something, and then suddenly feeling like you just…can’t. Maybe you’ve practiced the movement hundreds of times and your body knows the mechanics. Your coach knows you’re capable of it, and maybe you can even do it perfectly in practice.
But then the pressure is on, and something changes. You tighten up, hesitate, start thinking about something that used to happen automatically. Maybe then your timing changes, your body freezes, or suddenly, a skill you’ve trusted for years just doesn’t feel accessible anymore.
And naturally, the response is usually to try to think your way out of it.
“I just need to be more confident. I need to stop overthinking. I know I can do this. I just need to relax and get out of my own way.”
But what happens when you already know all of that and your body still isn’t cooperating? Insert…Brainspotting.
Brainspotting Actually Began With an Athlete
Brainspotting was discovered somewhat unexpectedly by psychotherapist David Grand, PhD, in 2003 while he was working with a competitive figure skater. The skater was highly talented but struggled in competition.
At times, she described being unable to feel her legs or feeling as though she had forgotten a routine she knew extremely well. One skill in particular– a triple loop– remained blocked despite extensive therapeutic work.
During one session, Grand was using slow eye movements with her when he noticed something unusual. As the skater’s eyes moved across her visual field, they began to wobble and then appeared to freeze at one particular location. Instead of continuing past it, he stopped there. As she maintained her gaze at that location, memories, emotions, and body-based experiences began to emerge and process.
According to Grand, the following morning she called to tell him she had repeatedly completed the triple loop that had previously been blocked! This experience eventually became the foundation of Brainspotting and the idea often associated with the approach: “Where you look affects how you feel.”
Why Does This Matter for Athletic Performance?
Athletic performance is an incredible example of just how much our brains and bodies do outside of our conscious awareness. Think about what happens when you have to catch a ball, land a jump, swing a golf club, execute choreography, serve a tennis ball, or respond to another player’s movement. At a certain level, you aren’t consciously talking yourself through every individual step.
Actually, just imagine trying to. “Okay, move my foot here. Now rotate my shoulder. Bend my elbow this much. Shift my weight. Now follow through…”
You’d probably make yourself…worse. When we’ve practiced something enough, much of the movement becomes automatic. That’s part of what allows an athlete to move quickly, fluidly, and intuitively.
But our nervous systems are also constantly taking in information and responding to cues outside of our conscious awareness. Previous injuries, falls, mistakes, criticism from a coach, high-pressure moments, embarrassing performances, fear of reinjury, or even the accumulated pressure of needing to perform can become associated with a particular movement or situation.
So an athlete may consciously know “That injury is healed. I know how to make this shot. I’ve landed this a thousand times. I’m prepared for this competition.”And yet their body responds as though something isn’t quite safe.
That disconnect can be incredibly frustrating, especially when you’ve already tried to reason your way out of it.
How Is Brainspotting Different From Talk Therapy?
I love talk therapy. Obviously—I’m a therapist. And there is absolutely a place for talking with athletes about perfectionism, anxiety, confidence, identity, pressure, fear of failure, difficult coaching experiences, or the mental aftermath of an injury.
But sometimes we reach a point where someone understands the problem really well and still can’t get their body to respond differently. You can know exactly why you’re anxious and still feel anxious. You can know an injury has healed and still notice your body bracing before the movement that caused it.
You can understand that one bad performance doesn’t define you and still feel your heart race when you walk back into the same environment. At that point, more insight isn’t necessarily the missing piece.
Brainspotting gives us a way to work with what your nervous system may be holding without requiring you to explain, analyze, or talk your way through all of it.
A Brainspotting therapist helps you identify an issue, body sensation, emotion, performance block, or even a desired performance state and then uses your visual field to locate an eye position that seems connected to that experience.
From there, there is often much less talking than people expect. Instead of constantly analyzing or trying to change what is happening, we pay attention to what your brain and body naturally bring forward. This can include thoughts, sensations, memories, images, emotions, impulses, or subtle shifts in how your body feels.
What Might a Brainspotting Session With an Athlete Actually Look Like?
Let’s say you’re a athlete who has returned to your sport after an injury. Medically, you’re cleared, you’ve rebuilt your strength, and you know you can perform the skill. But every time you approach the movement where you originally got hurt, you hesitate. You might not even feel consciously afraid.
Your brain is saying, I’m fine. I know I can do this. But your body is saying something else.
In a Brainspotting session, a therapist might have you imagine approaching that skill and pay attention to what happens inside your body. Maybe there’s tightness in your chest, a dropping feeling in your stomach, tension in your legs, or simply a sense of NOPE that’s difficult to put into words.
Instead of trying to convince that reaction to go away, you would be encouraged to get curious about it and take a non-judgmental stance. You would then, with your therapist, find an eye position where you notice that activation most strongly and allow your attention to stay there while your brain begins making its own associations.
Sometimes, an image from the injury comes up, or a memory shows up where you remember a coach’s reaction afterward. Maybe you notice fear, anger, pressure, or something completely unexpected. Or maybe there isn’t a dramatic memory at all. That’s okay, too.
Brainspotting isn’t about searching for the “right” memory or forcing something profound to happen. Part of the work is allowing your brain and nervous system to process without us deciding ahead of time what it should look like.
Brainspotting Isn’t Only for Trauma
Because Brainspotting is often discussed as a trauma therapy, people sometimes assume they need to have experienced a major trauma to benefit from it. The truth? They don’t.
In performance work, Brainspotting can be used with things like:
- Performance anxiety or freezing under pressure
- The “yips” or other unexplained performance blocks
- Difficulty trusting your body after recovery
- Perfectionism or fear of making mistakes
- A particularly painful loss, fall, error, or competition
- Harsh coaching experiences or criticism
- Difficulty mentally recovering after mistakes
- Performing well in practice but struggling during competition
And importantly, Brainspotting doesn’t always have to be about fixing something that’s wrong. We can also use it from an expansion perspective.
An athlete might bring in a memory of a time they felt completely in their element—strong, confident, grounded, powerful, connected to their body, or fully absorbed in what they were doing. Instead of processing something negative, we can explore and deepen access to that.
This makes Brainspotting relevant not only when performance has broken down, but also when an athlete wants to strengthen the mental and emotional side of performing at their best.
When “Try Harder” Stops Working
Athletes are exceptionally good at pushing. Practice more. Work harder. Visualize success. Correct the mistake. Watch the film. Do another rep. Get stronger. Stay disciplined. Those qualities are often part of what makes someone successful in the first place.
They can also make it confusing, and honestly, pretty defeating, when more effort isn’t fixing the problem. Sometimes the answer isn’t another cue, another rep, or another attempt to convince yourself that you’re fine. Sometimes there is something happening beneath the level of conscious thought that deserves attention, too.
Brainspotting gives us another way into those moments—one that works not only with what you know, but with what your brain and body may still be responding to. Because sometimes your body already knows exactly how to perform.
The work isn’t teaching it what to do. It’s helping remove whatever might be getting in the way of letting it do what it already knows.
If you’re curious about Brainspotting, reach out today to learn more and get started!
