Have you noticed that no matter how much time you spend in talk therapy, you still feel anxious and triggered? That is because talk therapy can keep you stuck in a pattern of reliving your stories, rather than moving beyond them. But, most of all, it's because trauma doesn't just reside inside your mind--much more importantly, it locks itself in other parts of your body. When left unresolved, that trauma continues to live there, impacting your life, your relationships, your sense of safety, and your ability to experience joy in very real ways. In Moving Beyond Trauma, Ilene Smith will introduce you to Somatic Experiencing, a body-based therapy capable of healing the damage done to your nervous system by trauma. She breaks down the ways in which trauma impacts your nervous system and walks you through a program designed to process trauma in a non-threatening way. You will discover a healing lifestyle marked by a deeper connection with yourself, those around you, and with everything you do.

Winner of the 2022 Eating the West Award! Winner of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Book Award! An accessible guide to time-honored Indigenous wisdom, healing recipes, and wellness rituals for modern life from an experienced curandera. In Earth Medicines, Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz, a curandera (or traditional healer) who is a Xicana with Tewa ancestry, combines Indigenous wisdom from many traditions with the power of the four elements. This modern guide is designed to support readers on their path to wellness with lifestyle practices and recipes perfected by Ruiz in her twenty-five years of training and working as a curandera. Ruiz teaches readers to be their own healers by discovering their own ancestral practices and cultivating a personal connection to the elements. These healing recipes and rituals draw on the power of Water, Air, Earth, and Fire—a reminder that the natural elements are the origins of everything and can heal not only our bodies, but the mind and spirit as well. In chapters organized by each element, readers will first find recipes and advice for: Promoting inner harmony through Hydrotherapy for Headache Relief, Mayan Tea to Calm the Mind, or Ginger Fire Honey Chews Nurturing beauty inside and out with Tepezcohuite Honey Mask, Salt of the Earth Deodorant, or Sweetwater Herbal Mouth Rinse Taking care of the spirit by creating an ancestral altar, making loose incense, or performing a Mayan Bajo Steaming Ritual

Winner of the 2021 SSTAR Consumer Book Award! What makes sex magnificent? What are the qualities of extraordinary erotic intimacy and what are the elements that help to bring it about? Is great sex the stuff that people remember nostalgically from the "honeymoon" phase of their relationships, or can sex improve over time? Magnificent Sex is based on the largest, in-depth interview study ever conducted with people who are having extraordinary sex. It gathers the nuggets for remarkable sex from the "experts", distilling them into an attainable blueprint for ordinary lovers who want to make erotic intimacy grow over the course of a lifetime. Looking at factors including individual and relational qualities, empathic communication and the myths and realities of magnificent sex, this book offers accessible and evidence-based guidance for lovers and therapists alike. It is replete with frank and often humorous interviews with straight and LGBTQ individuals and couples, those who are "vanilla" and "kinky", monogamous and consensually non-monogamous and healthy and chronically ill. This illuminating book explores the implications of the findings to develop a model that effectively tackles the common problems of low desire and frequency. The "cure" for low desire is to create desirable sex!

Medical researchers have known for decades that survivors of accidents, disaster, and childhood trauma often endure life-long symptoms ranging from anxiety and depression to unexplained physical pain and harmful acting out behaviors. Drawing on nature's lessons, Dr. Levine teaches you each of the essential principles of his four-phase process: you will learn how and where you are storing unresolved distress; how to become more aware of your body's physiological responses to danger; and specific methods to free yourself from trauma.

Self-care is a powerful, evidence-based medicine for the mind. Mental health is the driving force behind every decision we make—how we live, work, and love. Many of us suffer from depression and anxiety, which impede our choices and quality of life, and despite the proliferation of prescription drugs, the numbers are growing across the globe. But there is another, proven way to achieve mental wellness, beyond antidepressants and talk therapy. Practicing psychiatrist Gregory Scott Brown believes that mental health begins with actionable self-care. The Self-Healing Mind is a holistic approach to emotional and psychological healing that focuses on how evidence-based self-care strategies can be used to improve and sustain mental health. Dr. Brown challenges the current state of mental health care and the messaging around it, showing us how to move past outdated notions of “broken” brains and chemical imbalances. While he agrees that prescription drugs and talk therapy in many cases are important for healing, his personal and professional experience has taught him that lifestyle interventions are also key to sustainable mental wellness. Dr. Brown’s clinical philosophy supports an integrative approach that combines conventional treatments (medication and psychotherapy) with what he calls the Five Pillars of Self-Care: breathing mindfully, sleep, spirituality, nutrition, and movement. These purposeful lifestyle practices, backed by science and proven in his clinical practice, can be adopted by everyone. Dr. Brown’s advice and insight put the power of healing back in your control.

Introducing the first self-help workbook for moral injury, featuring a powerful approach grounded in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to help you heal in the midst of moral pain and connect with a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. If you’ve experienced, witnessed, or failed to prevent an act that violates your own deeply held values—such as harming someone in an automobile accident, or failing to save someone from a dangerous situation—you may suffer from moral injury, an enduring psychological and spiritual pain that is often accompanied by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, substance abuse, and other mental health conditions. In order to begin healing, you need to (re)connect with your values and what really matters to you as a human being. Written by a renowned team of PTSD and trauma professionals, this workbook can help. The Moral Injury Workbook is the first workbook of its kind to offer a powerful step-by-step program to help you move beyond moral pain. With this guide, you’ll learn to work through difficult thoughts, emotions, and spiritual troubles; (re)connect with your deeply held sense of self, values, or spiritual beliefs; and gain the psychological flexibility you need to begin healing and live a full and meaningful life. Links to downloadable worksheets for veterans and clinicians are also included. Whether you’ve experienced moral injury yourself, work in the field of mental health, or are a pastoral advisor seeking new ways to help facilitate moral healing, this workbook is an effective and much-needed resource.

A world-recognized authority and acclaimed mind-body medicine pioneer presents the first evidence-based program to reverse the psychological and biological damage caused by trauma. Filled with practical tools to alleviate stress, anxiety, fear, and sleeplessness. In his role as the founder and executive director of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM), Dr. Gordon has created and implemented what may well be the world’s largest and most effective program for healing population-wide psychological trauma. He and 130 international faculty have brought this program to populations as diverse as refugees from wars in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Africa; firefighters and U.S. military personnel and their families; student/parent/teacher school shooting survivors; and Native American children – as well as stressed out professionals, stay-at-home mothers, inner-city children, and people struggling with mental and physical disorders and end of life challenges. Dr. Gordon’s work is grounded in scientific evidence and timeless wisdom. Through his decades of first-hand experience, he understands that trauma will come to all of us sooner or later. That each of us has the capacity to understand and heal ourselves. And that the heartbreaking devastation that trauma causes can also open our hearts and minds to deeper understanding, enhanced meaning and purpose, and greater love. In the compassionate, compelling pages of The Transformation, he invites us on a step-by-step, evidence-based journey to heal the psychological and biological damage that trauma brings and to become the people whom we are meant to be.

Traumatic events can leave mental and physical scars—but these scars don’t have to define you. Heal the Body, Heal the Mind takes trauma survivors on a supportive and healing journey toward well-being. By practicing the somatic exercises and mind-body interventions in this compassionate guide, you’ll learn to move past difficult experiences, restore relationships, and cultivate spiritual awareness. When trauma occurs, the logical mind is hijacked and physiology takes over in an effort to protect you. This leaves an imprint—your body wants to ensure that nothing like that will ever happen again. Being reminded of a traumatic event can trigger these automatic responses, leaving you feeling paralyzed or unable to take action. This book will help you understand why and how unresolved trauma can infiltrate all aspects of your life, including your mind and body—even when you’re not aware of its influence. With Heal the Body, Heal the Mind as a gentle guide, you’ll learn about different types of trauma, find helpful assessments, and discover how traumatic experiences—even childhood and incidental traumas—can affect all aspects of your life: your relationship choices, the roles you play in them, your sense of pleasure and desire, and how you approach your career, spirituality, and interactions with others. Using the combination of mind-body interventions, cognitive behavioral theories, research, case studies, and exercises woven into each chapter of this warm-hearted, relatable book, you’ll begin to address the unresolved trauma held in your body and advance your healing process. So, if you’re ready to move beyond the trauma that’s been holding you back in your relationships, at work, and in your spiritual practice, this guide will show you how.

Psychotherapist and trauma survivor Jasmin Lee Cori offers new insight into trauma-related difficulties (including PTSD, depression, substance abuse), provides self-care tools, candor about therapy and medications, and addresses spiritual issues. While there are many different approaches to healing trauma, few offer a wide range of perspectives and options. With innovative insight into trauma-related difficulties, Jasmin Lee Cori helps you: Understand trauma and its devastating impacts; Identify symptoms of trauma (dissociation, numbing, etc.) and common mental health problems that stem from trauma; Manage traumatic reactions and memories; Create a more balanced life that supports your recovery; Choose appropriate interventions (therapies, self-help groups, medications and alternatives); Recognize how far you've come in your healing and what you need to keep growing. Complete with exercises, healing stories, points to remember, and resources, this is a perfect companion for anyone seeking to reclaim their life from the devastating impacts of trauma.

Art Healing: Visual Art for Emotional Insight and Well-Being reveals a method psychiatrist and art lover Jeremy Spiegel, MD, devised over many years to unlock our more elusive thoughts and feelings, leading to an enhanced understanding of the inner self, catharsis, a sense of comfort and happiness, and personal transformation for a more productive life.