A book review
Full title :
Short description: Waking the Tiger offers a new and hopeful vision of trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question: why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed.
Waking the Tiger normalizes the symptoms of trauma and the steps needed to heal them. People are often traumatized by seemingly ordinary experiences. The reader is taken on a guided tour of the subtle, yet powerful impulses that govern our responses to overwhelming life events. To do this, it employs a series of exercises that help us focus on bodily sensations. Through heightened awareness of these sensations trauma can be healed.
Contents
Introduction
Prologue
Giving the body it's Due
Body and Mind
Finding a Method
The Body as Healer
How to Use This Book
Section 1. The Body as Healer.
1. Shadows From a Forgotten Past
Nature's Plan
Why Look to the Wild? Trauma is Physiological
It's About Energy
2. The Mystery of Trauma
What is Trauma?
Chowchilla, California
The Mystery of Trauma
Waking the Tiger: A First Glimmering
3. Wounds That Can Heal
Trauma is not a Disease, but a Dis-Ease
4. A Strange New Land
Trauma is not a Life Sentence
The Strange New Land
Trauma!
What we Don't Know Can Hurt Us
A Traumatised Person's Reality
Get On With Your Life
Who is Traumatised?
Causes of Trauma
5. Healing and Community
Shamanic Approaches to Healing
Somatic Experiencing
Acknowledging the Need to Heal
Let us Begin - Calling the Spirit Back to The Body
6. In Trauma's Reflection
Medusa
The Felt Sense
Let The Body Speak It's Mind
Using the Felt Sense to Listen to the Organism
How the Organism Communicates
Sensation and the Felt Sense
Rhythm: All Gods Children Got it
7. The Animal Experience
The Animals do it, Too
When the Reptilian Brain Speaks, Listen!
One With Nature
Attunement
The Orienting Response
Flee, Fight...or Freeze
The Return to Normal Activity
8. How Biology Becomes Pathology: Freezing
The Stage is Set
Blame it on the Neo-cortex
Fear and Immobility
"As They go in, so They Come Out"
Like Death Itself
It's a Cumulative Effect
How Biology Becomes Pathology
9. How Pathology Becomes Biology: Thawing
Nancy Re-examined: A First Step
It's All Energy
Marius: A Next Step
Renegotiation
Somatic Experiencing - Gradated Renegotiation
Elements of Re-negotiation
II. Symptoms of Trauma
10. The Core of the Traumatic Reaction
Arousal - What Goes up Must Come Down
Trauma is Trauma, No Matter What Caused it
The Core of the Traumatic Reaction
Hyperarousal
Constriction
Dissociation
Helplessness
And Then There Was Trauma
11. Symptoms of Trauma
Symptoms
And Around and Around We Go
Out of the Loop
12. A Traumatised Person's Reality
The Threat that Can't be Found
Mrs. Thayer
Can't Synthesise New Information / Can't Learn
Chronic Helplessness
Traumatic Coupling
Traumatic Anxiety
Psychosomatic Symptoms
Denial
Gladys
What Trauma Survivors Expect
The Last Turn
III. Transformation
13. Blueprint for Repetition
Re-enactment
July 5th, 6:30 in the Morning
The Vital Role of Awareness
Jack
Patterns of Shock
Without Awareness, We Have No Choice
Re-enactment vs Re-negotiation
In The Theatre of the Body
Postscript: How Far in Time and Space?
14. Transformation
Two Faces of Trauma
Heaven, Hell and Healing: A Middle Ground
LetIt Flow-Renegotiation
Margaret
What Really Happened?
Renegotiation and Re-enactment
What is Memory?
Brain and Memory
But It Seems So Real!
But I'm Proud to be a Survivor
The Courage to Feel
Desire and Healing
With a Little Help From our Friends
15. The Eleventh Hour: Transforming Societal Trauma
The Animal Approach to Aggression
Human Aggression
Why do Humans Kill, Maim, and Torture One Another?
Circle of Trauma, Circle of Grace
Transforming Cultural Trauma
Epilogue or Epitaph?
Nature is No Fool
IV. First Aid
Phase I: Immediate Action (At The Scene of the Accident)
Phase II: Once the Person is Moved Home or to the Hospital
Phase III: Beginning to Access and Renegotiate the Trauma
Phase IV: Experiencing the Moment of Impact to End
Scenario of Healing Following an Accident
17. First Aid for Children
Delayed Traumatic Reactions
First Aid for Accidents and Falls
Resolving a Traumatic Reaction
How Can I Tell if My Child has been Traumatised?
Sammy: A Case History
Traumatic Play, Re-enactment, and Renegotiation
Key Principles for Renegotiating Trauma with Children
Epilogue
Three Brains, One Mind
