Sports Performance
Helping athletes recover and perform at their best
Whether you’re a professional, competitive, or leisure athlete, sports and recreational activities can be hard on your body— and your mind.
The Body and Trauma
Perhaps you hit a rock and toppled over your handlebars, your foot slipped on a run out and you came crashing down into the wall, you caught an edge and slammed your head down on the slope, or you witnessed or experienced an accident in the backcountry. You notice the next time you get out, you’re anxious, fearful, and things just aren’t the same. Your reaction time is delayed or off, and your movements aren’t precise. What’s going on?
Logically, you can look at these incidences and accidents as “I messed up or made a wrong decision or didn’t avoid risk”. However, you’re body doesn’t see it that way.
Our nervous system adapts to keep us safe. When it perceives something as threatening or unsafe based on past experiences, it goes into self preservation mode. Helpful for survival? Yes. Helpful in sports and recreation? Sometimes. Self-preservation mode is typically known as fight-flight-freeze. When this occurs, we lose our access to logical thinking. This is why typical sports psychology of positive thinking isn’t effective. We can’t access this part of the brain when our nervous system is activated.
So now what?
Brainspotting
Brainspotting works by finding, processing, and releasing the core neurological source of trauma/emotional distress/pain from the body. Put most simplistically, “where we look affects how we feel”. Brainspotting pinpoints a space in the visual field that correlates with activation in the body. This allows direct access to the subcortical brain. By mindfully focusing on this spot, the body will somatically process and release the activation, essentially desensitizing the nervous system.
It has been found effective for:
Concussions
Injuries
Performance anxiety and blocks
Shame and negative self-talk
Chronic pain
Performance “slumps”
Fear
Finding flow state
Preparing for competition