Athletes know the difference between a good day and a great day often lives in the space you cannot fully explain. Your body is primed, your training is sound, yet something jams the signal. A minor hesitation in the blocks, a split second of double clutch on the free throw, a grip that tightens instead of releases. Coaches call it mental, but that label does not tell you how to change it. This is where brainspotting can be a practical, measurable tool, especially when the usual mindset routines have hit a ceiling.
What brainspotting is and why it matters in sport
Brainspotting is a focused psychotherapy method developed by David Grand, PhD, that uses a fixed eye position to access and process stuck emotional and physiological responses. The core idea is straightforward. Where you look influences how your brain and body feel. By locating an eye position that resonates with a target issue, then holding attention there with support from a trained clinician, the nervous system often unwinds reactions that talking, mental rehearsal, and sheer willpower have not shifted.
In an athletic context, those stuck reactions show up as performance anxiety, the yips, overreactions after injuries, chronic tightness that returns the instant you reenter pressure situations, or a focus that scatters under noise and lights. Brainspotting sits at the intersection of performance psychology and trauma therapy. It is not only for extreme events. Small t traumas like repeated near misses, harsh criticism at formative ages, and persistent uncertainty in selection or contracts can wire the body to brace. That brace steals speed, accuracy, and feel.
A practical translation for athletes: brainspotting helps the nervous system complete unfinished business so you do not have to micromanage your mental state before every rep.
What a session actually looks like
Most athletes I work with initially suspect there is a catch, some elaborate visualization drill hiding behind fancy language. Sessions are simple, quiet, and less talk heavy than cognitive work.
We identify a target. It may be a moment your throat closes in the lane, a sudden loss of feel in your swing, or the spike of fear as the balance beam narrows under your feet. You describe it briefly and we notice where it lives in your body. Tight jaw, buzzing hands, pressure in the chest. We then find an eye position that makes that reaction feel a notch stronger or clearer. Often this is a small diagonal or lateral shift. With bilateral sound in headphones, typically soft alternating tones, you hold that visual spot while tracking internal sensations.
Little happens on the outside. Internally, athletes report waves of heat, subtle tremors, yawns, micro images they had not recalled in years, and then a settling. There is no forced retelling. It is not exposure therapy. It is closer to letting the midbrain finish a reflex it has been holding in a loop.
Sessions last 50 to 90 minutes. Some changes show up inside the room. Others surface in the training week, when you return to the starting line or the mat and notice your body does not flinch at the same cue. I ask athletes to log these moments, not to prove anything but to map what is actually shifting.
Stories from the field
A Division I sprinter I saw had two false starts his freshman year at high-profile meets. The next season, his reaction time slowed by an average of 0.04 seconds, which at that level is the difference between a lane in the final and watching from the stands. He had tried breathing drills, self-talk scripts, even caffeine timing. In brainspotting, the target was not the gun. It was the instant just after the set command when his shoulders would creep up. The eye position sat slightly up and left. Over two sessions, his body worked through a mix of pressure memories, including a high school coach’s habit of hovering and a small start-line stumble he had long forgotten. He opened his next meet with a clean start and a return to pre-false-start reaction times, then held that through championship season. The training block did not change. His nervous system’s prediction did.
A pro goalkeeper coming back from a concussion felt a half beat of freeze on hard, near-post shots. Neurologically cleared, legs strong, film study complete, but the reflex was late. His target sensation was the split-second narrowing of vision and a pull through the right trapezius. His eye spot was down and right. We did three sessions spaced a week apart, each under 60 minutes, alongside his standard return-to-play plan. He described his field of view widening mid-session and, later that week, a clean parry in practice at the exact speed that had triggered the freeze. He texted afterward that he felt “unhooked from the flinch.”
A collegiate golfer’s putter had turned into a stranger. On short putts in particular, her wrists flicked at contact. She had worn ruts into practice by then. Her target in brainspotting was a hum in the hands and a slight breath hold just before the stroke. The spot was marginally up and right. Two sessions in, she could sense the urge and let it pass without compensating. Over the next month, her make percentage inside six feet rose from roughly 70 percent to the low 80s. This was not magic. She had worked on mechanics and green reading. Brainspotting freed the component that practice had not soothed.
These examples are not promises. They are snapshots of how nervous systems reorganize when you stop treating performance blocks as a purely mental problem and meet them as full-body predictions.
The science without the jargon
Brainspotting draws on basic neurophysiology. Three elements matter for athletes.
First, orienting. When you hear your name in a crowded venue, your attention snaps. Your eyes orient. That reflex runs beneath conscious planning. Brainspotting leverages this orienting response. Fixing your gaze helps the midbrain and limbic circuits maintain access to the material your system is trying to resolve, rather than flipping back into avoidance.
Second, subcortical processing. Many performance blocks are not top-down beliefs, they are bottom-up alarms. Speed-based sports punish delay. The neural layers that mediate bracing, startle, freeze, and microtiming operate faster than deliberative thought. Brainspotting organizes attention in a way that invites those layers to finish their cycle. Athletes often notice spontaneous sighs, heaviness, or warmth as the autonomic system rebalances.
Third, bilateral stimulation. Alternating tones or gentle taps appear to assist the brain in integrating stuck material. The research on exactly how is ongoing. Early studies and clinical reports suggest that bilateral input supports cross-hemispheric coordination, not unlike what occurs during certain sleep phases. In practice, it seems to keep processing moving without ruts.
The published evidence base in sport is small but growing. We have case series, practitioner reports, and a handful of controlled trials in related areas like trauma therapy and anxiety therapy that show reductions in symptom severity and improved functioning. In athletics, objective metrics like reaction time, heart rate variability, and error rates provide helpful anchors. In my work, I track both subjective readiness scores and concrete outputs when feasible, for example pitch location variance or free throw percentage over sample sizes large enough to matter.
Where brainspotting fits among performance tools
No single method covers everything. Brainspotting excels when the nervous system’s reflexes are the bottleneck. Cognitive strategies like self-talk, attentional cues, and visualization are powerful, especially for skill acquisition and tactical focus. Mindfulness trains presence and nonreactivity. Traditional sport psychology helps with goal setting, arousal regulation, and resilience. Cognitive behavioral therapy shines at reframing distortions and building behavioral momentum. These https://blogfreely.net/launusyfrj/mindfulness-in-depression-therapy-training-the-brain-to-ease-rumination are complementary, not redundant.
Brainspotting steps in when your knowledge of what to do and your capacity to do it have drifted apart in the heat of competition. It also pairs well with intensive therapy formats that compress several sessions into a few days during an off week or bye, allowing an athlete to process layers without repeatedly reopening the issue during a dense schedule. That rhythm, the ability to go deeper, stabilize, then test on the field or court, is a pragmatic advantage.
Injuries, pain memories, and the body’s veto
After significant injuries, even fully healed tissues can carry a trace of the impact. The body learns fast. If a knee buckled on a landing, the system may tighten hip rotators and delay quad firing at the hint of a similar load. You can strengthen around this and build new patterns, which is necessary, yet some athletes feel a ghost of the moment under playoff stress. Brainspotting helps process the sensory memory of the fall, the sound in the arena, the fraction of time when the world shrank. Once processed, your motor control work sticks with less fight.
I often collaborate with physical therapists and athletic trainers during these cases. We time sessions relative to rehab milestones, then test movement patterns the same week. The combination reduces reactivity and, in practice, lowers reported fear of reinjury. Importantly, brainspotting is not a substitute for medical evaluation. If pain or instability appears, you get it imaged and cleared. The method addresses the nervous system’s protective overlay, not structural deficits.
Anxiety, depression, and performance
Elite sport does not inoculate anyone against anxiety or depression. In fact, the schedule, public scrutiny, and identity load can aggravate both. Athletes who meet criteria for anxiety disorders often perform well in practice but get hijacked by spikes of sympathetic arousal in competition. Those with depression may carry a low-grade heaviness that flattens motivation and steals the joy that used to power training blocks.
Brainspotting is not a cure-all, yet it can play a targeted role inside broader anxiety therapy or depression therapy. For anxiety, we use performance-relevant targets, often starting with situations that consistently overload your system. For depression, we may focus on embodied numbness or the specific moments that collapse drive. Outcomes improve when this work sits inside a comprehensive plan that may include medication, sleep optimization, nutritional support, and structured social connection. When the emotional ground under an athlete stabilizes, the sport often follows.
What to expect in your first three sessions
- A clear performance target that matters to you, even if you do not yet know why it sticks. A brief body map, locating where you feel the issue and what intensifies it. Finding and holding a visual spot that amplifies the target just enough to work with it. Bilateral sound through headphones, while you track changes with minimal commentary. A short debrief, with homework centered on noticing shifts during training and competition.
Notice what is not in that list. There is no pressure to recount every detail of a past event. There is no demand to relax on command. The process is not passive, but it also does not rely on white-knuckle focus. Your job is to notice.
Timing during a season
The best time to do deeper processing is the off-season or a bye week. That said, targeted sessions fit inside a competitive calendar if we are smart about dose and recovery. I avoid heavy targets within 48 to 72 hours of key events. For quick tune-ups, 30 to 45 minute sessions that reinforce prior gains often suffice. In tournament settings, brief check-ins built around neutral or resource spots can stabilize without stirring much.
For athletes navigating travel, virtual sessions are feasible. The clinician can guide you to set up your camera and headphone audio properly. If a session looks like it will open more than we can close that day, we shift the plan. Pushing hard is not the point.
Working with the rest of the team
Coaches and support staff want to know what you are doing and how it affects readiness. I share general themes with permission, not session details. I coordinate with strength coaches on days when we expect nervous system fatigue, often recommending aerobic flushes, light mobility, and skill drills that keep confidence intact while processing integrates. We also plan specific return-to-stress tests, like simulated crowd noise or time-pressure reps, to confirm that gains transfer.
When agents or front office staff inquire, I keep it simple. We are addressing reflex-level patterns that influence performance consistency. You will know it is working when microhesitations fade and your decision speed returns, not only when you feel better but when the tape looks cleaner.
How this intersects with culture and identity
Athletes carry identities layered with family expectations, team roles, sponsorship narratives, and their own sense of worth. A perfectionistic culture can produce medals and also brittle minds. Processing is not only about fear and pain. It is about releasing the subtle contracts you signed with yourself years ago, like never showing weakness or earning love through output. When those lift, you often play looser, paradoxically more precise because you are not protecting.
I have seen veterans late in their careers discover that what they thought was fading talent was, in part, accumulated body tension from years of playing on edge. After a handful of sessions, they stopped rehearsing failure in the tunnel and started looking forward to contact again. Numbers followed. So did enjoyment.
Comparing brainspotting to EMDR and mindfulness
Athletes often ask how brainspotting differs from EMDR or mindfulness. EMDR, which also uses bilateral stimulation, tends to be more protocol driven and includes sets of eye movements or taps while recalling target events. Brainspotting fixes the gaze to a specific eye position, often with fewer cognitive interjections. In my experience, athletes who feel overcoached mentally find brainspotting less effortful because they are not asked to recount or reframe as much in the moment.
Mindfulness, by contrast, trains you to notice thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations with less reactivity. I teach mindfulness to nearly every athlete I see. It builds observing muscles and is invaluable for day-to-day regulation. Brainspotting is different in that it aims to metabolize the historical charge so the trigger itself quiets. Many athletes use both. They practice mindfulness daily and deploy brainspotting for knots that mindfulness observes but cannot dissolve alone.
Safety, limits, and good fit
Brainspotting is generally gentle, yet it can surface strong emotions. A competent clinician will pace sessions, watch for dissociation or overload, and keep you within a tolerable range. If you have a history of complex trauma, psychosis, or unmanaged substance use, additional care and structure are required. Concussions and neurological conditions warrant medical coordination. Good practitioners welcome collaboration with your medical and performance team and adjust the plan as new information arises.
It also needs saying that not every block has a psychological anchor. If your shot is short because leg strength has dropped in the second game of a back-to-back, therapy will not add inches. If your timing is off due to an unaddressed vision issue, see a sports vision specialist. The best results come when you respect the full system: body, brain, support, schedule.
When brainspotting shines
- Persistent performance dips tied to specific cues despite solid training. The yips, freezing, or startle responses that show up only under pressure. Post-injury hesitancy and movement patterns that defy normal rehab gains. Overarousal or underarousal that does not respond to standard breathing and focus drills. Athletes who say, I know what to do, but my body will not let me.
If you do not recognize yourself in that list, you may not need brainspotting now. If you do, it is not a verdict on your toughness. It is a choice to address the actual layer that is steering your performance in the decisive second.
Practical details and realistic timelines
Most athletes feel meaningful shifts within three to six sessions on a specific target. Complex, layered issues can take longer. Intensive therapy formats, for example two to three sessions per day over two or three days, compress that timeline and work well during breaks in competition. Maintenance sessions every few weeks help consolidate gains during long seasons.
Between sessions, plan light skill work that recreates the trigger in low-stakes contexts. After a session that moves a lot, avoid max lifts or high-collision drills that same day. Hydration, sleep, and basic nutrition matter more than usual while your nervous system reorganizes. Track both feel and performance. A simple log that pairs a 0 to 10 readiness score with one or two sport metrics can reveal patterns you might miss.
Cost and access vary. Some clinicians are embedded with teams. Others practice privately. Not all insurance plans cover performance-focused work, though if you are also addressing aspects of trauma therapy, anxiety therapy, or depression therapy, coverage may be more likely. Ask about experience with athletes in your sport. Subtle differences in demands matter. A diver’s world is not a linebacker’s.
A short exercise you can try today
This is not a full session, but it gives you a taste of how eye position and body sensation interact. Sit comfortably. Bring to mind a minor, manageable performance stressor. Scan your body and name the main sensation, for example tight throat or buzzing hands. Slowly move your gaze, head still, a few degrees to the left and hold for 10 to 20 seconds. Notice changes. Return to center. Then a few degrees to the right and hold. Most people feel a difference. If one side heightens the sensation slightly, that is a clue. Do not force processing on your own for heavier material. The point here is to recognize that how and where you look maps to internal states.
What coaches can do differently tomorrow
If you coach, you can frame blocks as momentary nervous system predictions rather than character flaws. Help athletes track specific cues and body responses. Build drills that test under similar constraints, then back out before defenses harden. Consider brief resource spotting sessions before film or practice to build calm focus. And when an athlete keeps missing in ways that do not match biomechanics, bring in a clinician who understands both brainspotting and the demands of your sport. Small shifts in language and timing change outcomes.
The payoff
The greatest compliment I hear is not that an athlete feels calmer. It is that they feel free to do what they trained to do without negotiating with themselves. Reaction time improves by hundredths that add up. Movements feel smoother. Focus holds through noise. You still earn your results. You simply stop fighting invisible friction.
Brainspotting is not a silver bullet. It is a precise way to help the nervous system let go of patterns that no longer serve you. Used alongside smart coaching, solid recovery, and honest self-assessment, it unlocks capacity you have already built. When the mental block dissolves, what remains is the athlete who has been there all along.
Phone: 650-387-2578
Website: https://www.drkatrinakwan.com/
Hours:
Sunday: Closed
Monday: 9:00 AM - 6:30 PM
Tuesday: 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM
Wednesday: 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM
Thursday: 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Friday: Closed
Saturday: Closed
Map/listing URL: https://maps.app.goo.gl/WRgYvvbdvkT2C1my8
Embed iframe:
Dr. Katrina Kwan, Licensed Psychologist provides online therapy for adults who want support that goes deeper than talk-only work.
The site presents Brainspotting, trauma therapy, somatic therapies, nervous system regulation work, Accelerated Resourcing, the Safe and Sound Protocol, and intensive therapy as core offerings.
This virtual practice serves adults across Washington, Utah, and Florida, making it easier to access care without commuting to an office.
The practice appears especially relevant for adults navigating trauma, anxiety, depression, overwhelm, nervous system dysregulation, and some neurological or health-related concerns.
The overall approach is body-aware and regulation-focused, with an emphasis on helping clients build safety, self-understanding, and steadier functioning over time.
Weekly or bi-weekly 50-minute sessions are available, and the investment page also lists intensive therapy for people who want a more concentrated format.
To ask about fit or scheduling, call 650-387-2578 or visit https://www.drkatrinakwan.com/.
For a public profile reference with hours, see https://maps.app.goo.gl/WRgYvvbdvkT2C1my8.
Popular Questions About Dr. Katrina Kwan, Licensed Psychologist
What services does Dr. Katrina Kwan offer?
The official site lists Brainspotting, trauma therapy, anxiety therapy, depression therapy, nervous system regulation therapy, somatic therapies, Accelerated Resourcing, the Safe and Sound Protocol, and intensive therapy.Is this an online or in-person practice?
The site presents the practice as online therapy, with location pages for Washington, Utah, and Florida rather than a published walk-in office address.Who does the practice work with?
The about page says Dr. Katrina Kwan provides mental health treatment for adults experiencing trauma, anxiety, depression, overwhelm, nervous system dysregulation, and related difficulties.What states are listed on the website?
The official site says services are offered online in Washington, Utah, and Florida.What therapy methods are mentioned on the site?
The site highlights Brainspotting, somatic therapies, Accelerated Resourcing, and the Safe and Sound Protocol, along with broader trauma-informed and nervous-system-focused care.Does the practice offer intensive therapy?
Yes. The site includes an intensive therapy page and describes 1-day and 2-day intensive options alongside ongoing weekly or bi-weekly sessions.What does the investment page list for standard sessions?
The investment page says individual sessions are $250 for 50 minutes.What public hours are listed?
The accessible public listing shows Monday 9:00 AM to 6:30 PM, Tuesday 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM, Wednesday 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM, Thursday 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and Friday through Sunday closed.How can I contact Dr. Katrina Kwan, Licensed Psychologist?
Call tel:+16503872578, visit https://www.drkatrinakwan.com/, and use the public profile at https://maps.app.goo.gl/WRgYvvbdvkT2C1my8.Landmarks Across the Online Service Area
Seattle Center — A major Seattle arts and events hub and a recognizable anchor for clients in the Puget Sound region. If Seattle Center is part of your regular area, this practice serves Washington adults online through https://www.drkatrinakwan.com/.Pike Place Market — One of Seattle’s best-known downtown landmarks and a practical point of reference for central Seattle coverage. People near Pike Place Market can access the same virtual therapy options without an office commute.
Riverfront Spokane — Downtown Spokane’s Riverfront Park is a strong Eastern Washington landmark for service-area copy. If you are based near Riverfront Spokane or the Spokane Falls area, online sessions are available across Washington.
Temple Square — A central Salt Lake City landmark and a helpful anchor for Utah coverage. If you live near Temple Square or downtown Salt Lake, the practice’s Utah telehealth service area may be a fit.
Utah State Capitol — Another widely recognized Salt Lake City reference point for clients in northern Utah. Adults near Capitol Hill and surrounding neighborhoods can reach the practice online through https://www.drkatrinakwan.com/.
Lake Eola Park — A well-known Downtown Orlando landmark and a practical Florida service-area anchor. Florida adults near Lake Eola or central Orlando can explore virtual therapy options through the website.
Tampa Riverwalk — A major downtown Tampa landmark that helps illustrate statewide Florida coverage beyond one metro alone. If you are near the Riverwalk or nearby Tampa neighborhoods, the practice’s online format keeps access simple.