About Our Trainers

Dr. Roby Abeles (left) and Salene Souza (right) are International Brainspotting  Trainers, and the co-founders of Brainspotting Australia Pacific.

They are the co-presenters of Brainspotting (BSP) Trainings Phases 1 & 2 in the Australia Pacific region. Both Roby & Salene have been personally trained by Dr. David Grand, the developer of Brainspotting, to deliver his trademarked training programs.

Dr Roby Abeles has been a trauma and addiction therapist for over 34 years. She is also a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP).

She is in high demand training therapists all over the world in her revolutionary work using Brainspotting to stop addiction relapse using her Trademarked Brainspotting Crocodile Set Up.

Dr Abeles most recent development is Brainspotting and The Hero’s Journey for transforming Adversity into Heroism.

Dr. Roby Abeles on the Experts Panel at the ACF International Trauma Conference in Melbourne, August, 2018. Also on stage are Peter Fonagy, Cathy Malchiodi, Gabor Mate´, Kim Golding, Bessel van der Kolk, Marilyn Devallier and Ed Tronick.

Roby began using Brainspotting in 2004, after participating in the second BSP US training David Grand presented, which was in Chicago, USA. Salene Souza met David Grand in 2007, when she attended his Phase 1 and 2 BSP trainings in Brazil.

In December 2009, Roby brought David Grand to teach the very first BSP Phases 1 & 2 in Sydney, Australia, to a small group of enthused Australian EMDR therapists, where she met Salene Souza.

In March of 2013, BSP developer Dr. David Grand, personally invited Roby and Salene to become International BSP trainers

Both have been personally trained by Dr Grand to deliver his Brainspotting Phase One and Phase Two trainings in Australia, New Zealand and the wider Pacific Region.

Salene has developed creative ways to use BSP with children and families and has presented her work in Australia, and at the 1st International Brainspotting Conference in Buzios, Brazil, March, 2016, and all over Brazil since then.

Roby Abeles has specialised in using BSP to resolve addiction relapse and in the benefits of using Narrative Therapy with Brainspotting, and presented her work at the 1st International Brainspotting Conference in Buzios, Brazil, in March, 2016.

She has continued to train other Brainspotting therapists in this work in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia and:

• USA  (Atlanta, GA 2017, Boulder, CO 2018 and Los Angeles, CA in 2019)
• Vienna, Austria (2018)
• London, UK (2018)
• Ljubljana, Slovenia (2019)
• Barcelona, Spain (2019)

Planned for 2020

• Ottawa, Canada
• Milan, Italy
• Singapore, Singapore