Sunday, May 16, 2010

Waking The Tiger - Peter Levine

Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine
A book review

Full title :

Waking the Tiger
Healing Trauma
The Innate Capacity to
Transform
Overwhelming Experiences

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

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