This book explains many aspects of the trauma recovery process in uncomplicated language and uses basic concepts for the non-professional. It includes the ground-breaking, Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE). These exercises elicit mild psychogenic tremors that release deep chronic tension in the body and assist the individual in the trauma healing process.

Over the Past 150 years, we have vastly changed our definition of what trauma means and correspondingly revised our understanding of how it is experienced.  We have moved from conceiving of trauma as a purely physical phenomenon to seeing trauma as a complex set of physiological and psychological experiences.
Dr Scaer redefines trauma as a continuum of variably negative life events occurring over a lifespan, including those that may be accepted as normal in the context of our daily experience.  He argues that the cumulative experiences of life's little traumas may actually shape every aspect of our existence and thus may be no less powerful than those horrific events we tend to associate with trauma.

Researchers have shown that survivors of accidents, disaster, and childhood trauma often endure life-long symptoms ranging from anxiety and depression to unexplained physical pain, fatigue, illness, and harmful "acting out" behaviors reflecting these painful events.  Today, millions in both the bodywork and the psychotherapeutic fields are turning to Peter A. Levine’s breakthrough Somatic Experiencing™ methods to effectively overcome these challenges.  In Healing Trauma, Dr. Levine gives readers the personal how-to-guide for using the theory he first introduced in his highly acclaimed work, Waking the Tiger.

Using the clinical model of the whiplash syndrome, this groundbreaking book describes the alterations in brain chemistry and function induced in individuals by what is known as traumatic stress or traumatization-experiencing a life-threatening event while in a state of helplessness.  The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation, and Disease presents evidence of the resulting and relatively permanent alteration in neurophysiology, neurochemistry, and neuronal organization-changes correlated with many of the most common, yet poorly understood, physical complaints and diseases, including whiplash, migraines, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, and other painful, difficult-to-treat conditions.

In the wake of 9/11, there was much media coverage of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD—the long-term stress response whose symptoms include chronic pain, nightmares and panic attacks—and how to treat it.  Naparstek, a therapist for more than 30 years, is an advocate of guided imagery, as opposed to talk therapy, and in this book she uses case histories to illustrate how it works; she also looks at recent research on the brain that shows why this method is effective and offers step-by-step instructions on using guided imagery, which she defines as "deliberate, directed daydreaming," for healing trauma.  According to Naparstek, trauma damages the left brain, which is language oriented, and talking about the trauma can actually worsen symptoms.  Imagery, on the other hand affects the right brain, the seat of the emotions.  Guided imagery is "fast, powerful, costs little or nothing," says the author; it can be done alone or in groups, with the help of tapes that walk the stress victim through the process of finding images that help heal the trauma.  People seeking help may not need explanations of the biochemical processes underlying PTSD, but will respond to Naparstek's passionate advocacy of a simple, gentle healing method.

Healing Trauma provides readers with a broad, but detailed, framework in which to understand, evaluate, and treat trauma in the context of recent neurobiological understanding about trauma and traumatic events.  In this book, Daniel Siegel and Marion Solomon have gathered together the work of the foremost researchers, clinicians, and theoreticians working within this new paradigm of trauma treatment to present a comprehensive discussion of trauma and healing, one that involves biological, developmental and social components.