Waking the Tiger : Healing Trauma : The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 250 pages
• Published by: North Atlantic Books
• Edition: 1st Edition July 7, 1997
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 155643233X
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1556432330
• Book Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Weighs: 14.4 ounces

Product Review
"Every life contains difficulties we are not prepared for. Read, learn, and be prepared for life and healing."
- Bernard S. Siegal, M.D., Author of Love, Medicine & Miracles and Peace, Love, and Healing

"Fascinating! Amazing! A revolutionary exploration of the effects and causes of trauma."
-Mira Rothenberg, Director Emeritus of Blueberry Treatment Centers for Disturbed Children, Author of Children With Emerald Eyes

"It is a most important book. Quite possibly a work of genius."
-Ron Kurtz, Author of Body Reveals and Body-Centered Psychotherapy

"Levine effectively argues that the body is healer and that psychological scars of trauma are reversible -- but only if we listen to the voices of our body."
-Stephen W. Porges, Ph.D., Professor of Human Development and Psychology, University of Maryland

"A vital contribution to the exciting emerging science of mind/body interaction in the treatment of disease."
-Robert C. Scaer, M.D., Neurology, Medical Director, Rehabilitation Services, Boulder Community Hospital

Product Description
Nature's Lessons in Healing Trauma

Waking the Tiger offers a new and hopeful vision of trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question: why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed.

Waking the Tiger normalizes the symptoms of trauma and the steps needed to heal them. People are often traumatized by seemingly ordinary experiences. The reader is taken on a guided tour of the subtle, yet powerful impulses that govern our responses to overwhelming life events. To do this, it employs a series of exercises that help us focus on bodily sensations. Through heightened awareness of these sensations trauma can be healed.

Reader Reviews
This exciting, insightful book reinforces the wholeness of the human vehicle, that our body and triune brain of instinct, emotion and rationality are totally connected to the human experience and to our connection with all of life. The book explains why humans are often frozen in trauma, unlike animals who daily cope with the unpredictability of nature and man. For humans, as is true for animals, the potential for trauma exists from birth through death, with at least one major difference - that humans have a harder time releasing trauma and many carry it all of their lives, which causes major interference with health, peace of mind and the ability to live joyfully and creatively. When human trauma remains unhealed, the energy of the trauma and accompanying emotions will remain locked within the brain and held within the body's musculature, tissues and organs awaiting discharge. Like Sleeping Beauty awaiting her restoration to life once the poisoned apple is dislodged, those with deep psychological scars have disassociated the memory from their minds and are living in a numbed, tensed body awaiting its release so the body can return to wholeness and optimum mental and physical health. The author persuasively asserts that psychological wounds are reversible and that healing comes when the physical and mental letting go occurs, similar to the way the tiger experiences the coming and going of threat, tensing in response to danger, and as the threat passes, the tiger's muscles shake, twitch and let go right then and there the fear related energy which now is forever out of mind and body. So, too, Peter Levine states, can humans learn to release long-held and/or current trauma without return. The book is well-written, peppered with healing stories, and details step-by-step instructions on how to listen to the wisdom of the body to release trauma and heal. Consider this book as one great step forward to expanding the frontier of body/mind energy work that is emerging as the most comprehensive and effective wellness paradigm of the future. Comment | | (Report this)