True Alignment: Brainspotting Therapy for Personal Clarity
Phoenix Area Brainspotting: How Brainspotting Therapy Helps Us Create Clarity & Inner Alignment
So here we are: June! A season signaling a new rhythm.
I'm so curious to learn what the first half of 2026 has held for those who read this (besides my beloved clients!). From my corner of the Phoenix Area, this year has brought an abundance of activity and transformation in service to individual and communal healing - as well as my own.
Inner Alignment—or True Alignment— is at the forefront of my mind and heart as we enter summer. It brings to mind the cyclical nature of change. There are times for building up, times for maintaining, and times for letting go. Cycles of change to realign us.
I’m seeing it all around. Are you?
In writing this, I remembered I brought my car in for an alignment check on a recent occasion, and my mechanic said, "You know, so many people don't align their vehicles on a regular basis. It ends up costing them way more on the other end. I'd recommend keeping this up for optimal performance."
I see a parallel here. :)
What is True Alignment, really? I like to think of it as an inner congruence, a harmonic connection between our inner and outer worlds. I just recently came across this definition from my teacher and mentor, Mary Morrissey: “Alignment is when who you’re being on the inside matches what you say you want (and do) on the outside.” Congruence.
When we’re living from True Alignment, our worlds harmonize: there’s ease, flow and clarity in our relationships, decisions, projects and endeavors. Our head space is clearer and our hearts are more calm, too.
I’ve noticed that, per the nature of my work, people will drift years—even decades—into a life misaligned with their authentic selves or values, or from a vision they once held sacred for their lives.
When we live misaligned, we invite in chronic anxiety, depression, an underlying sense of tension, unsettledness, insomnia and relationship conflict. We may even sustain physical symptoms accompanying the aforementioned—symptoms linked to a heightened nervous system (elevated cortisol levels, elevated irritation, reactivity, skittishness, etc.) or a collapsed nervous system (feeling numb, frozen, lethargic, apathetic), or even digestive issues, headaches, heart palpatations (tension and stress!), and more.
Sometimes, I’ll meet with folks during an initial visit and they have no clear idea when their lives started to become misaligned with their authentic selves. This is where the beauty of Brainspotting therapy comes in.
What Is Brainspotting Therapy?
Brainspotting is a somatic (body-centered), neuro-experiential therapy developed by Dr. David Grand that uses specific eye positions, known as “brainspots,” to help identify and process unresolved emotional experiences.
The guiding principle is simple and incredibly effective: Where you look affects how you feel.
In Brainspotting, certain eye positions connect with deeper neurological and emotional memories (or “material”) stored within the brain and nervous system. By locating these brainspots and mindfully attending to what arises, clients can access experiences that may be difficult to reach through talking and words alone.
Unlike traditional talk therapy, Brainspotting therapy doesn’t require you to explain every detail of what happened or fully understand why you feel the way you do. Instead, it creates a natural space for the brain and body to access and process experiences in an organic way, at its own pace. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever come across — and that says a lot as a mind-body practitioner of 20 years!
What Happens In a Brainspotting Session?
During a Brainspotting session, clients listen to soothing music (always optional) and they are guided to notice physical sensations, emotions, thoughts and internal experiences while focusing on a specific eye position connected to an issue they’ve chosen to work on. This naturally and gently begins the processes for deeper emotional processing to occur in a region of the brain we can’t access in talk therapy alone. The client’s only job is to notice what arises with curiosity and compassion. There’s no analyzing to be done - just witnessing.
Brainspotting allows the brain and nervous system to begin releasing stored distress (trauma, grief, etc.) and replacing negative beliefs about self in a natural, gentle way. It’s self-led by the client, not the therapist. There’s no forcing and no specific agenda except for a gentle intention for healing to occur.
This may seem a little obtuse to analytical folks–but let me tell you, it’s profound work.
Many of my clients describe Brainspotting as feeling like “less figuring things out” and more like allowing the body and mind to finally let go of and resolve an issue they’ve previously tried to talk through or out-think.
How Can Brainspotting Support Our True Alignment?
While there’s a whole lot I can say about this, in essence, using Brainspotting therapy can help tremendously to clear confusion, distressing emotions or views of self that are getting in the way of our daily life.
For instance: bring just one area of your life to mind right now that’s unsatisfactory or unfulfilling. Can you feel the internal activation around it? You can Brainspot that! Brainspotting can support the deeper processing and the “clearing out” of what’s troubling you—what’s kept you feeling stuck, tired or frustrated in your life, work or relationships. Brainspotting can help you shed light on what next step to take—with clarity and confidence—that will support your healing, growth, transformation and overall positive change.
In Brainspotting therapy, the answers lie within the client and reveal themselves throughout the session.
A Seasonal Reflection: Brainspotting for Your True Alignment:
Here are simple questions to ask yourself this season. You can Brainspot these!
What in your life are you no longer aligned with?
What have you outgrown?
What are you holding on to that’s costing you peace of mind?
What are you being asked to let go of to make way for something new?
What still serves you?
Whether it's a role, identity, relationship, a way of being or circumstance, pausing to consider our alignment helps us get real about the parts of us and our lives that are working well...or not so well (misaligned). From here, we have the freedom to reassess what's in harmony with who we authentically are and who we wish to become in service to a world yearning for healing.
True Alignment brings us home to calm - the heart and essence of Calm Hearts Counseling. :) Perhaps this is why I’m feeling Alignment so strongly this season.
However you spend the next few months, may this summer offer you pause to enter into your heart to reconnect with your True Alignment for today and the journey ahead.
And may joy, rest, and play be yours this season.
With Heart, Grace - and True Alignment,
Christine
PS - I played around with watercolors in my endeavors to reawaken my inner artist - a recent pursuit of soulful True Alignment (image above).
Christine Slomski, MS, LPC is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the Phoenix Area. Her practice, Calm Hearts Counseling, in Mesa, Arizona, specializes in using Brainspotting, EMDR, EFT Tapping and brain-body therapies to treat anxiety, trauma, grief, infertility & pregnancy loss, and women’s mental health issues.
Hi, I’m Christine Slomski, a Licensed Professional Counselor, Brainspotting & Somatic EMDR Therapist, EFT Tapping Practitioner & Reproductive Trauma & Grief Specialist in Mesa, Arizona.
My mission to to help women come home to calm. I believe you are created to heal, and I look forward to walking this journey with you!
With heart,
Christine
Phoenix Area Brainspotting & Somatic EMDR serving Mesa, Tempe, Gilbert, Chandler, Scottsdale, Phoenix.