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Books! Educational Videos! Documentaries!

Here's a place where you can review books, educational dvds and documentaries that relate to ACE concepts or trauma-informed practices. "Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world." ~ Nelson Mandela

Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past: A Practical Guide for Understanding and Working with Traumatic Memory, by Peter A. Levine, PhD

 

Although I haven't read this book, I took a sneak peek of the foreword, written by Bessel van der Kolk in 2015. Although I'm familiar with Levine's Somatic Experiencing approach to healing trauma, some of what I read here was new to me. Here's what van der Kolk had to say about this latest book from Peter Levine:

"One of the most brilliant and original discussions in this book is Peter's explanation of how, in order to meet extreme adversity, one needs to engage both the brain's motivation and action systems. The motivation system is run by the brain's dopamine system, and the action system by the noradrenergic system. In order to meet great challenges with a sense of purpose, both need to be galvanized in the therapeutic process. These are necessary conditions for confronting and transforming the demons of the past from helpless surrender to competent self-ownership."

(Confronting and transforming the demons of the past from helpless surrender to competent self-ownership? I'm in!)

Van der Kolk goes on:

"This work lays the frozen shame, grief, rage, and sense of loss to rest by helping trauma's explosive assault on the body to be completed and resolved. Peter's work helps us transcend what he calls "the destructive explanation compulsion" and to create an inner sense of ownership and control over previously out-of-control sensations and reactions. In order to do that, we need to create an experience of embodied action, as opposed to helpless capitulation or uncontrollable rage. Only after we become capable of standing back, taking stock of ourselves, reducing the intensity of our sensations and emotions, and activating our inborn physical defensive reactions can we learn to modify our entrenched maladaptive automatic survival responses and, in doing so, put our haunting memories to rest."

For more info on this titlehttps://www.amazon.com/Trauma-Memory

Here's a link to Levine's book Waking the Tiger: Healing Traumahttps:/https://www.amazon.com/Waking-Tiger-Healing-

And a link to In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodnesshttps://www.amazon.com/Unspoken-Voice-

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Comments (2)

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Thanks for this review and the links, Jill!  

I was debating which of Levine’s books to read first and you helped me to decide with greater “competent self ownership.”

Peace as this school year comes to a close. There will no doubt be a collective sigh of relief when the bell rings for the last time this year. 

C. 

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