Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18094 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Synopsis
In an age of Prozac and victimhood, we are not encouraged to take control of our behavioural ailments. This book, based on the authors' years of work with stress and trauma victims, aims to pass control back to the individual and away from the treatment centre. It challenges the myth that trauma stays with you for the rest of your life, and presents powerful exercises to reconcile traumatic experiences with "normal" life. By understanding the source of trauma - whether it be by violence, loss, or natural disaster - you can pick up the psychological and physical tools to resolve and complete a natural traumatic reaction.

From the Author
Nature's Lessons in Healing Trauma
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 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 a heightened awareness of these sensations trauma can be healed.

Customer Reviews

A redeeming message for trauma survivors
As a psychiatrist and author of "Lost in the Mirror: an Inside Look at Borderline Personality Disorder," I have dealt with many kinds of trauma and am always interested in new approaches to this difficult area. I found "Waking the Tiger" an engrossing approach to the problem of how trauma creates damaging and often enduring symptoms. Dr. Levine's concept of the "freeze response" in the face of overwhelming threat provides a missing link to symptoms such as dissociation that our old ideas of "fight or flight" fail to explain.

Even more important to trauma survivors and their therapists is the redeeming message that immobilization in the face of threat is an automatic biological response that is not voluntarily chosen by the victim. The January 2003 issue of Clinical Psychiatry News reported that an overwhelming majority of victims of sexual assault describe a moderate or high level of paralysis occurring during the assault, consistent with Dr. Levine's observations.

Dr. Levine also provides an astute portrayal of the nature of memory by acknowledging that memories are not literal recordings of events but a complex of images that are influenced by arousal, emotional context, and prior experience. Like a painting, memories may even transform over time as new experiences add layers of meaning to the images. While remembering the past can be an important aspect of therapy, appreciating the subjective quality of memories is crucial to integrating them appropriately into the healing process.

It provides an unique option to the flee/flight scenario.
As someone who was directly impacted by the September 11 tragedy this book was recommended by my counsellor on my return to the UK. I could readily identify with the third scenario of 'freeze' and how this affects the body in addition to the mind. The book is well written and it is easy to grasp the concepts and apply them to real life situations with good examples being used throughout. Peter Levine also extends the book into the impact and management of trauma in Children and this is particularly relevant, given that I am also a father of three small rugrats. The structure of the book is not convoluted and addresses each section and sub section briefly but to the point. I would recommend the book to those who feel trapped in their own cycle and cannot see a clear way out.

Points the way to an integrated art of mind/body healing
I am an osteopath and psychotherapist. This book interests me, as it seems to offer a focus or beginning, for an empirically grounded, integrative science of human healing. Levine and Frederick take us into the animal reality of our selves, from which healing stems, and teach us how to integrate our experiences into our rational human conciousness.Many schools of healing attempt this in various ways. The novelty and importance of their approach lie in its basis in animal behaviour and physiology, and a conviction that chronic dis-ease results from unresolved trauma. In other words that healing fundamentally requires the reintegration, re-owning, of our animal selves. This has profound implications, on many levels,not least that of planetary healing, which affects all of us.