Book Reviews

Somatic Movement Educator who has read many books by authors in the field, I felt a quickening and rising in my body and became curious, shyly excited, and a little nervous when invited to review a book by Joan Davis. Davis is among a generation of creative professionals in Ireland and across the UK dedicated their lives to in-depth explorations and research through the silent level (non-words) processes and expressions of the human body. In this very small, yet internationally growing world of somatic movement, Davis is among the “rock stars”, and she has rightfully earned her honor and fame through decades of creative, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual research that she integrated into a training programme called Origins.

Linda Graham’s 2018 book, Resilience: Powerful Practices for Bouncing Back from Disappointment, Difficulty, and Even Disaster, is a continuation of the practices she first wrote about in her book, Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being. Throughout each chapter, Graham details exercises aimed to build and strengthen resilience by way of regular practice. Graham divides the book into eight chapters that are designed to guide the reader through a journey of understanding and strengthening resilience.

Trauma Sensitive Yoga Deck for Kids: For Therapists, Caregivers, and Yoga Teachers combines yoga practices and psychological science to inform readers on the use of a yoga practice to aid in the treatment of and care for traumatized children. Unlike typical yoga decks, the Trauma Sensitive Yoga Deck for Kids is trauma informed and somatically focused.

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.

Written by Judith Blackstone, PhD Reviewed by Nancy Eichhorn, PhD “Wholeness is not a vague ideal, but a lived experience. It is a potential, inherent in...

Heller provides a clear discussion to help readers understand attachment theory in general and the different attachment styles, noted as secure, anxious, ambivalent, and disorganized. At the end of each chapter there are questions to help readers assess which style they may align more with. I appreciated the direction to answer the questions, twice. First, when you are imagining a relaxed situation and second when you are tense, feeling defensive, upset. The results are indeed different. I also thought it wise to let readers know that our attachment style is not fixed in one category or the other. Our attachment style is individualized, and fluid, flexible. In some relationships we may have a sense of a secure attachment while in another we might feel more avoidant or ambivert.

Feldenkrais wrote The Elusive Obvious in his mid-70s, three years before his death, with the intention to offer a "coherent and comprehensive statement of his theoretical point of view" (xii). His writing style intrigued me, his conversational tone engaging. His conversations about words and movement, about science and acceptance, about learning and awareness pulled me deeper into his philosophical stance on health and healing. He offered that the content only provides information necessary to understand how his techniques work. He deliberately avoided discussing why. "In science," he wrote, "we really only know how" (pg.1).

I follow Carolyn’s blog because her writing fascinates me. She helps people (mainly in the UK) recover from trauma, abuse, and dissociative disorders, heavy stuff. Yet, she writes with a light hand—her use of figurative language, strong nouns and verbs, pacing, structure, and characterization create stories that share the confusion, the pain, the doubt, the suffering, and the dread that come with trauma as well as the desire to surmount it all and be healthy without miring the reader in an abyss of drop-dead emotions. When I learned about her new book, Unshame: Healing Trauma-based Shame through Psychotherapy, I requested a reviewer’s copy.

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.

Adreanna Limbach’s new book Tea and Cake with Demons relies on Buddhist teachings to improve our self-worth and explore our insecurities. Limbach believes that the Buddha represents our capacity to be present in our own lives and come to know the “fundamentally whole” versions of ourselves. The book explores this mindset through the lens of Buddhist teachings and the Four Noble Truths. Limbach has divided the book into three parts: Waking Up to Worthiness, The Four Noble Truths, and The Eightfold Path.