Heart Open Body Awake: Four Steps To Embodied Spirituality

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,...

Your Life After Trauma: Powerful Practices to Reclaim Your Identity

Your Life After Trauma: Powerful Practices to Reclaim Your Identity is designed to help in “post-trauma identity development.” Eclectic in its methods, it uses motivational interviewing and incorporates cognitive behavioral, existential, gestalt, narrative, psychodynamic, psycho-educational, transpersonal, and neuropsychological frameworks into its exercises, questions, and passages.

The Shattered Oak: Overcoming Domestic Abuse and a Misdiagnosis of Mental Illness

I finished reading The Shattered Oak: Overcoming Domestic Abuse and a Misdiagnosis of Mental Illness and realized I hadn’t drawn a full breath since page one. At some points in the text, I simply stopped breathing. The character’s voice drew me in. Barbara’s first-person voice created an impact. She was distant in moments, disconnected from reality, and then smack dab in the brunt truth of her situation. She sounded emotionally and developmentally stunted; considering the content of her experiences, her tone of voice and language use rang true.

The Inflamed Mind: A Radical New Approach to Depression

In The Inflamed Mind, Dr. Bullmore posits a new theory for the cause of depression: bodily inflammation. Guiding the reader through a timeline of medicinal practice, Bullmore synthesizes historical accounts with anecdotal references to make a compelling case for the link between inflammation and depression.

Why You’re Still Stuck : How to Break Through and Awaken to Your True...

“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.”

Nutrition Essentials for Mental Health

Did you know that thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency can lead to weakness, irritability and depression? That folate (vitamin B9) deficiency can result in depression, apathy, fatigue, poor sleep, and poor concentration? That people with chronic digestion problems are often anxious and depressed? And believe it or not, that pure maple syrup has the potential to prevent Alzheimer’s and other brain disease? Nutritional neuroscience is validating the reality that nutritional factors are intertwined with human cognition, behavior and emotions (Sathyanarayana, Asha, Ramesh, & Rao, 2008). In our current milieu of treating the ‘whole’ person— soma, psyche, and spirit—food has finally claimed its well deserved acclaim for its role in the development, management and prevention of our overall health and for specific mental health problems such as depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, and Alzheimer’s disease (Sathyanarayana et al., 2008).

Embodied Social Justice

Written by Rae Johnson Reviewed by Nancy Eichhorn A story to start, to illustrate potent nuances that, without awareness, perpetuate inequality outside our conscious intentions. And...

Learning From the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil

Imagine revisiting a country that once committed atrocities to your own populations; seeing people going about with their everyday lives normally or waving, smiling as they pass you by. How would your instincts lead you to react? Forgive? Move on? Or even, as Susan Neiman suggested, learn from them?

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is trending. It’s been on the forefront of conversations in terms of Western therapeutic methodologies since Jon Kabat Zinn integrated it into his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR) in the early 1980s. Today, mindfulness practices are at the heart of many psychotherapeutic approaches such as: mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT); acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT); dialectical behavior therapy (DBT); mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP); mindfulness-based trauma therapy (MBTT); and mindfulness-based eating awareness training (MB-EAT). The word itself, however, is often confused. Its meaning subjectively associated with who or what entity is promoting its use. There’s clearly a difference between Eastern approaches to meditation and mindfulness and the current Western emphasis. With the proliferation of modalities integrating components of meditation and mindfulness practice, this book is a welcome addition to Hogrefe’s Advances in Psychotherapy: Evidence Based Practice Series—noted as Volume 37.

Simple Self-Care for Therapists: Restorative Practices To Weave Through Your Workday

The primary concern of Simple Self-Care for Therapists is to break down Bush book for website effective methods to combat burnout and work-related stresses specific to practicing psychotherapists. In addressing this, Bush outlines myriad common scenarios coupled with personal anecdotes to illustrate what the scenarios might look like.