Here, for the first time, is a layperson's explanation of polyvagal theory, an approach to mental health and well-being that has taken the clinical world by storm. A polyvagal approach to life is based on the knowledge that the autonomic nervous system is shaped by early experience and reshaped with ongoing experience. This short book will offer an overview for nonspecialists and provide a series of exercises and meditations (practices) that will allow listeners to tune into their nervous systems, providing calming prompts to build and strengthen ventral vagal connections.

This book compiles, for the first time, Stephen W. Porges's decades of research. A leading expert in developmental psychophysiology and developmental behavioral neuroscience, Porges is the mind behind the groundbreaking Polyvagal Theory, which has startling implications for the treatment of anxiety, depression, trauma, and autism. Adopted by clinicians around the world, the Polyvagal Theory has provided exciting new insights into the way our autonomic nervous system unconsciously mediates social engagement, trust, and intimacy.

Deb Dana is the foremost translator of polyvagal theory into clinical practice. Here, in her third book on this groundbreaking theory, she provides therapists with a grab-bag of polyvagal-informed exercises for their clients, to use both within and between sessions. These exercises offer readily understandable explanations of the ways the autonomic nervous system directs daily living.

It can be incredibly frustrating when your body reacts to situations in ways that you can’t control. But what if you could harness the same mechanisms that cause fear and panic to instead summon peace and spaciousness? In Befriending Your Nervous System, clinician Deb Dana offers practical advice and exercises for engaging with your subconscious nervous system responses for greater wellness and resilience.

When The Polyvagal Theory was published in 2011, it took the therapeutic world by storm, bringing Stephen Porges's insights about the autonomic nervous system to a clinical audience interested in understanding trauma, anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. The book made accessible to clinicians and other professionals a polyvagal perspective that provided new concepts and insights for understanding human behavior. The perspective placed an emphasis on the important link between psychological experiences and physical manifestations in the body.

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent more than three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust.

Dr. Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) model has been transforming psychology for decades. With No Bad Parts, you’ll learn why IFS has been so effective in areas such as trauma recovery, addiction therapy, and depression treatment - and how this new understanding of consciousness has the potential to radically change our lives.

Are you experiencing physical or emotional symptoms that no one is able to explain? If so, you may be suffering a traumatic reaction to a past event, teaches Levine.

Emotions, affect regulation, and interpersonal social behavior are psychological processes that define how people react to events, environmental difficulties, and other people. These processes build our sense of self, help us form connections, and influence whether we feel comfortable in different situations or with different individuals. Despite the fact that these processes may be witnessed scientifically and subjectively, they constitute a complex interplay between our psychological experience and physiological control.

Over the past two decades, Internal Family Systems (IFS) has transformed the practice of psychotherapy. With Introduction to Internal Family Systems, the creator of IFS presents the ideal layperson’s guide for understanding this empowering, effective, and non-pathologizing approach to self-discovery and healing. Here, Dr. Schwartz shares evidence, case studies, and self-care tools.

Do loving relationships end because couples lack communication skills, struggle to empathize, and fail to accommodate each other’s needs? That’s a common belief within and outside of the therapeutic world… but what if it’s all wrong? In You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For, Dr. Richard Schwartz, the celebrated founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, offers a new way—a path toward courageous love that replaces the striving, dependent, and disconnected approach to solving relationship challenges.

This book offers therapists an integrated approach to adding a polyvagal foundation to their work with clients. With clear explanations of the organizing principles of Polyvagal theory, this complex theory is translated into clinician and client-friendly language. Using a unique autonomic mapping process designed to effectively track autonomic response patterns, this book presents practical ways to work with clients' experiences of connection.

Whether you are stuck in the distress of life, or appear like nothing’s wrong, you may have faced trauma, or incredible stress, or suffocating fear. Maybe you wonder whether those emotions, memories, and experiences are blocking you from being as fulfilled and happy as you could be. Maybe you’re stuck in patterns that simply no longer work for you. What if you could change it all? What if you could feel safe and solid and secure inside your own body? What if your life could be peaceful and centered and fulfilled?

From trauma educator and somatic guide Kimberly Ann Johnson comes a cutting-edge guide for tapping into the wisdom and resilience of the body to rewire the nervous system, heal from trauma, and live fully.

In her first book, How to Do the Work, Dr. Nicole offered listeners a revolutionary, holistic framework for self-healing. Now, in How to Meet Your Self, she shares a book designed to help every listener uncover their Authentic Self. By objectively and compassionately observing the physical, mental, and emotional patterns that fill our days and create our current selves, we can more clearly see what we do not wish to carry into the future.

Deb Dana is the foremost translator of polyvagal theory into clinical practice. Here, in her third book on this groundbreaking theory, she provides therapists with a grab-bag of polyvagal-informed exercises for their clients, to use both within and between sessions. These exercises offer readily understandable explanations of the ways the autonomic nervous system directs daily living.

This book offers therapists an integrated approach to adding a polyvagal foundation to their work with clients. With clear explanations of the organizing principles of Polyvagal theory, this complex theory is translated into clinician and client-friendly language. Using a unique autonomic mapping process designed to effectively track autonomic response patterns, this book presents practical ways to work with clients' experiences of connection.

When The Polyvagal Theory was published in 2011, it took the therapeutic world by storm, bringing Stephen Porges's insights about the autonomic nervous system to a clinical audience interested in understanding trauma, anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. The book made accessible to clinicians and other professionals a polyvagal perspective that provided new concepts and insights for understanding human behavior. The perspective placed an emphasis on the important link between psychological experiences and physical manifestations in the body.

Here, for the first time, is a layperson's explanation of polyvagal theory, an approach to mental health and well-being that has taken the clinical world by storm. A polyvagal approach to life is based on the knowledge that the autonomic nervous system is shaped by early experience and reshaped with ongoing experience. This short book will offer an overview for nonspecialists and provide a series of exercises and meditations (practices) that will allow listeners to tune into their nervous systems, providing calming prompts to build and strengthen ventral vagal connections.

This book compiles, for the first time, Stephen W. Porges's decades of research. A leading expert in developmental psychophysiology and developmental behavioral neuroscience, Porges is the mind behind the groundbreaking Polyvagal Theory, which has startling implications for the treatment of anxiety, depression, trauma, and autism. Adopted by clinicians around the world, the Polyvagal Theory has provided exciting new insights into the way our autonomic nervous system unconsciously mediates social engagement, trust, and intimacy.

Polyvagal Theory, developed by researcher and scientist Dr. Stephen Porges and popularized by therapist Deb Dana, has impacted countless lives. It has changed the way therapists work with their clients and provided a pathway toward healing for those who have experienced hardship or trauma. In Polyvagal Prompts, Deb Dana and Courtney Rolfe invite listeners to explore their nervous systems through Polyvagal Theory with engaging questions and exercises.

Ever since publication of The Polyvagal Theory in 2011, demand for information about this innovative perspective has been constant. Here Stephen W. Porges brings together his most important writings since the publication of that seminal work. At its heart, polyvagal theory is about safety. It provides an understanding that feeling safe is dependent on autonomic states, and that our cognitive evaluations of risk in the environment, including identifying potentially dangerous relationships, play a secondary role to our visceral reactions to people and places.

The premise of Trauma and the Body is that, by adding body-oriented interventions to their repertoire, traditionally trained therapists can increase the depth and efficacy of their clinical work. Sensorimotor psychotherapy is an approach that builds on traditional psychotherapeutic understanding but includes the body as central in the therapeutic field of awareness, using observational skills, theories, and interventions not usually practiced in psychodynamic psychotherapy.

Images and sounds of war, natural disasters, and human-made devastation explicitly surround us and implicitly leave their imprint in our muscles, our belly and heart, our nervous systems, and the brains in our skulls. We each experience more digital data than we are capable of processing in a day, and this is leading to a loss of empathy and human contact. This loss of leisurely, sustained, face-to-face connection is making true presence a rare experience for many of us, and is neurally ingraining fast pace and split attention as the norm.

It's no secret that we're pushed to the limit. Today's professionals feel rushed, overwhelmed, and perennially behind. How can we break out of the cycle and create the kind of interesting, meaningful lives that we all seek? Just as CEOs who optimize for quarterly profits often fail to make the strategic investments necessary for long-term growth, the same is true in our own personal and professional lives.

The concepts and interventions introduced in this book are designed as an adjunct to, and in support of, other methods of treatment rather than as a stand-alone treatment or manualized approach. By drawing on the therapeutic relationship and adjusting interventions to the particular needs of each client, thoughtful attention to what is being spoken beneath the words through the body can heighten the intimacy of the therapist/client journey and help change take place more easily in the hidden recesses of the self.

Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors integrates a neurobiologically informed understanding of trauma, dissociation, and attachment with a practical approach to treatment, all communicated in straightforward language accessible to both client and therapist. Listeners will be exposed to a model that emphasizes "resolution" - a transformation in the relationship to one's self, replacing shame, self-loathing, and assumptions of guilt with compassionate acceptance.

Since Stephen Porges first proposed the Polyvagal Theory in 1994, its basic idea-that the level of safety we feel impacts our health and happiness-has radically shifted how researchers and clinicians approach trauma interventions and therapeutic interactions. Yet despite its wide acceptance, most of the writing on the topic has been obscured behind clinical texts and scientific jargon.

Much has been written about trauma and neglect and the damage they do to the developing brain. But little has been written or researched about the potential to heal these attachment wounds and address the damage sustained from neglect or poor parenting in early childhood. This book presents a therapy that focuses on precisely these areas. Laurel Parnell, leader and innovator in the field of eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), offers us a way to embrace two often separate worlds of knowing.

Recovery of Your Inner Child is the only book that tells you how to have a firsthand experience of your Inner Child - actually feeling its emotions and recapturing its sense of wonder - by writing and drawing with your non-dominant hand. Expanding on the highly acclaimed technique introduced in The Power of Your Other Hand, here Dr. Capacchione shares scores of hands-on activities that will help you to embrace your Vulnerable Child and your Angry Child, find the Nurturing Parent within, and finally discover the Creative and Magical Child that can heal your life.