Book Reviews

Just at a time when the wider world is waking up to a more compassionate and inclusive way of understanding trauma and addiction, a timely book that addresses these issues in personal, historical, embodied, and practical ways has arrived. In Treating Trauma and Addiction with the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model: A Bottom-Up Approach (Routledge, 2021), author and psychotherapist Jan Winhall both demystifies and depathologizes addiction.

There is a hackneyed tale of two young fishes. As they are swimming in the sea, they encounter an old fish who asks them, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two fishes pass him by without saying a word and then one of them looks over to the other one and goes, “What is water?” In his new book, How to Think Like an Anthropologist?, Matthew Engelke takes on the daunting task of asking us about the water: our culture.

Winston’s new guide offers helpful advice for both novice meditators and experienced meditators looking to improve their practice. The concept of "natural awareness" can seem vague at times, and Winston repeatedly defines it throughout the book. However, her “glimpse” exercises and anecdotes help the guide feel more engaging and the concept of natural awareness to feel more accessible.

Marcel Duclos wrote his latest book in honor of his dear friend and colleague Connie Robillard. It is a collection of thirty poems, one written every day as she navigated her way through the last month with ocular melanoma as a companion.

Following decades of asylums, an over reliance on medication, and treatments like ECT, where popular opinion was that individuals with mental illness had to be locked up and medicated, it is no surprise that professionals in the mental health field have become more and more wary of pharmacological treatments. Additionally, because of growing knowledge about mental illness many mental health professionals recognize that medication is not a “quick fix” to mental illness. However, because of the horrors of the past and a societal tendency to devalue mental illness, popular opinion has shifted from one extreme, an over reliance on medication, to the opposite extreme, denying its usefulness altogether. In Ordinarily Well: The Case for Antidepressants, psychiatrist Peter D. Kramer works to defend the integrity of antidepressant medications in a world that has come to deny their validity.

I was taken by Mia’s presentation of both information about what happens and what outcomes may result and also her specific processes, complete with dialogues and case studies, to work toward understanding and healing moments that can and do create imprints that influence our lives to come—who we are in this world, how we view ourselves within our family system as well as our communities at large, and how we believe the world accepts and values us.

Worried? seeks to relieve some of our anxiety by teaching us to take control of the situations that cause us to worry. The authors claim that taking control involves “critically evaluating potential threats, determining what poses the greatest danger, and prioritizing your actions to minimize adverse outcomes” (pg. 2) and this is exactly what they achieve in their book.

Kamamalani hopes to create a ‘pregnant pause’ for conscious decision-making with a glimpse of the local and global implications.

Reviewed by Nancy Eichhorn   I recently received a copy of Susan’s newest book, Heart Open Body Awake: Four Steps To Embodied Spirituality, from Shambhala Publications,...

“If you’re confused and frustrated despite all you know and achieved, or how much you’ve worked on yourself, this book offers 18 unconventional approaches that reveal how you got stuck, how to finally break through, and awaken to your True Self.”