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

Waking the Tiger : Healing Trauma : The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences | Peter Levine, Ann Frederick | Brilliant!

books:

Waking the Tiger :...

	Waking the Tiger : Healing Trauma : The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences Peter Levine, Ann Frederick North Atlantic Books, 1997 - 250 pages average customer review:based on 51 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

An excellent book about dealing with trauma

Peter Levine in "Waking the Tiger," postulates that trauma exists not in the event or in the story of the event, but is stored within the nervous system. Many common physical ailments are actually residues of thwarted trauma reactions incurred during such events as surgical procedures, falls, pre or perinatal stress and/or childhood accidents and traumas. The body has a natural, innate, and miraculous capacity to heal once these reactions are understood and guided.

Levine reinforces the holistic nature of the human being. Our bodies and brains connect instinct, emotion and rationality to our experience. Trauma may create damaging and often enduring symptoms. Human beings have a harder time than do animals in releasing trauma and may carry it throughout our lives. We often become frozen in trauma, unlike animals that can cope with the unpredictability of nature. This may provide a major interference with our 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 remain locked within the brain and held within the body's musculature, tissues and organs, awaiting discharge.

The author writes about an oft-forgotten aspect of trauma, freezing or immobilization during a traumatic experience. Modern medicine/psychiatry emphasize the "flight or fight" response while often neglecting the freeze response. The concept of the freeze response in the face of overwhelming threat provides a missing link to symptoms such as dissociation that our old ideas of "fight or flight" fail to explain. Immobilization in the face of threat is an automatic biological response that is not voluntarily chosen by the victim. This provides redeeming message to trauma survivors.

Levine points out that our memories are not literal recordings of events, but rather, a complex of images that are influenced by arousal, emotional context, and prior experience. Memories may even transform over time as new experiences add layers of meaning to the images. While remembering the past can be an important aspect of therapy, appreciating the subjective quality of memories is crucial to integrating them appropriately into the healing process.

Those with deep psychological scars may have dissociated 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 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. Trauma is stored energy that must be released.

my web site: http://larrytunis.com/

for more information click here

Brilliant!

If you have trauma and/or PTSD you simply must but this book. I know you have probably been searching for a long time and dealing with feelings of isolation and invalidation like myself. This book will give you serious validation and tools to further and complete your healing. The tapes by Levine are great too, they give you even more concrete steps. I can honestly say that in all the years of searching for someone or something to help and validate me this book and the tapes have been the only thing. You will see the truth about trauma and what I believe you probably knew already on some level especially if you have been trying like hell to understand your symptoms and what is wrong with you. Guess what? There is nothing wrong with you. Trauma is a natural human reaction that makes you feel alot of shame, pain and anguish but you can heal.
I could go on about the book but I don't want to ruin it. Buy it. I know I will and can heal, I have made much sucess and you will too!!

P.S. To all of you therapists that charge so much money for attempting to heal people from trauma I'd like to say that statisticly most people with ptsd don't have alot of money or are on assistance so you might want to re-think why you are a therapist or of ways to provide help to all. Is it to make money or to help people If you really want to help people then why don't you organize a group and all come together and make it possible instead of refusing but another potential client and well potential healer for that matter. I mean people if the majority of trauma survivors cannot afford your costs what the hell are you doing! With all due respect of course. $$$

Trauma Survivors: buy the book we need you!

for more information click here

A redeeming message for trauma survivors

...I found "Waking the Tiger" an engrossing approach to the problem of how trauma creates damaging and often enduring symptoms. Dr. Levine's concept of the "freeze response" in the face of overwhelming threat provides a missing link to symptoms such as dissociation that our old ideas of "fight or flight" fail to explain.

Even more important to trauma survivors and their therapists is the redeeming message that immobilization in the face of threat is an automatic biological response that is not voluntarily chosen by the victim. This was vividly portrayed in an episode of the TV series "Cagney and Lacey" in which Cagney, a tough and well-trained police officer, becomes the victim of a rape and later struggles with the helplessness she experienced while it was occurring. The January 2003 issue of Clinical Psychiatry News reported that an overwhelming majority of victims of sexual assault describe a moderate or high level of paralysis occurring during the assault, consistent with Dr. Levine's observations. The "freeze response" is also addressed in an article on fear in the March 2003 issue of Discover magazine.

Dr. Levine also provides an astute protrayal of the nature of memory by acknowledging that memories are not literal recordings of events but a complex of images that are influenced by arousal, emotional context, and prior experience. Like a painting, memories may even transform over time as new experiences add layers of meaning to the images. While remembering the past can be an important aspect of therapy, appreciating the subjective quality of memories is crucial to integrating them appropriately into the healing process.

for more information click here

A Good Companion Book to His Tape Set

After suffering a major life threatening illness several years ago, I've struggled with chronic pain that lasts every day, all day. I've literally seen EVERY specialist, every test conceivable to diagnose let alone treat my pain. I've been left with the conclusion that an inner, holistic manner is the only thing left to treat the pain, because drug treatment leaves me basically in a state better left to those in hospice and who have given up.
Dr. Levine has 30 years experience in dealing with patients suffering severe pain and the overiding factor that the pain interferes with even the most simple aspect of living a normal life.
Waking the Tiger presents case studies that are representative of how pain affects us. Levine gives simple exercises to help break through the web of pain so that we can go about enjoying life again.
I can't just recommend going out and buying this workbook and all your problems and pain will be gone by the time you finish reading it. But it does give you faith in the inner strength we all have to control our pain in conjunction with other treatment. And believe it or not, that inner strength MAY be enough to make the difference between needing to be doped up all the time, not being able to enjoy life.
I recommend Dr Levine's material. I'm not pain free and never will be but I am better because of it.
John Row

for more information click here

A good book ..., but bit too sure she is "right" for me.

This book has some marvelous ideas and if taken with a grain offers some real insights into healing. I have a bit of trouble with some of her certainty about her theories. I often have trouble with people who are sure their theories are "right"; that is a bit of a personal issue. I would recomend this book for people who are struggling with their own healing of trauma AND those who want to help in the healing of trauma. Really. this book has some very good ideas. She doesn't bombard us with lots of words to get her meaning across. It is well written and easy to read. Just remember to keep your own reasoning and thinking cap on while you read it.

for more information click here

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

products you might be interested in

recommendations

Trauma, Dissociation, and Mind-Body Medicine
Psychology Related Recommendations
Must-have books for midwives
Healing Trauma
Becoming