📚 The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
The body doesn't forget trauma; it settles into our nervous system, imprinting itself and then trapping us in fight, flight, or freeze long after danger fades. You see it in hypervigilance, tight muscles, fragmented memories, dissociation, rage, or numbness — patterns that talk therapy (like CBT) alone can’t always touch.
Bessel van der Kolk weaves neuroscience with raw patient stories — from Vietnam vets to 9/11 survivors to abused children — to show how trauma disrupts focus, bonds, and self-trust. He highlights body-first paths like EMDR, IFS, theater, yoga, and breathwork that help you rebuild safety from the inside out and reclaim your innate wholeness. It’s a clear, somatic framework that pairs clinical science with intuitive healing, and reframes recovery as something that begins in the body before it can take root in the mind.
Bessel van der Kolk MD, is a highly influential Harvard psychiatrist, professor, researcher, and author, renowned as one of the world's leading experts on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He founded the Trauma Center and directed the National Child Traumatic Stress Network for 20,000+ kids. Van der Kolk dedicated his career to studying trauma's impact on the brain, mind, and body after discovering talk therapy couldn't reach veterans' wired-in survival responses in the 1970s. He promotes innovative therapies that integrate neurobiology, developmental psychology, and somatic (body-based) treatments.
This can be a challenging read due to its dense, clinical language. As an alternative, consider starting with What My Bones Know.
Use these while you give it a go . . .
Process trauma & regulate the body with rhythmic, alternating side-to-side taps, sounds, or visuals.
When you need deep emotional or energetic clearing.
Use the vibration of vocal sound to move energetic blockages, create resonance within your body, and gently activate your vagus nerve to feel calm & grounded.
Slip past the thinking mind with hands-on, creative practices that help release stored emotion, break mental patterns, and create new neural pathways.
Timeline your past to uncover the forgotten experiences that are shaping your present, and open the door to healing at the root.
Six vibrational sounds — each linked to a specific organ, emotion, and color of light — that, when expressed vocally, help release stored emotions, replenish Qi (vital energy), and revitalize the body at a cellular level.
Unblock and restore the free flow of qi (life force energy) from your core energy center — the dantian — through this ancient practice of gentle movement, breath, sound, and intention.
Explore the topic further . . .
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Use the sense of touch (feeling) rather than visualization to stimulate the flow of vital energy throughout the body — a practice anyone can do.
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