Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
Authors: Peter A. Levine, Ann Frederick
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Publication: 1997
Number of pages: 276
Softcover book
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: Many individuals are unable to release trauma and may carry it all of their lives, which causes major interference with health, peace of mind and the ability to live joyfully and creatively. When human trauma remains unhealed, the energy of the trauma and accompanying emotions will remain locked within the brain and held within the body’s musculature, tissues and organs. Levine’s methodology offers an excellent resource for truly healing and transforming trauma. It does not require that we re-live what happened and re-experience the pain. Instead, it follows the body’s wisdom in its search for renewal and healing.
The author persuasively asserts that psychological wounds are reversible and that healing comes when the physical and mental letting go occurs, similar to the way the tiger experiences the coming and going of threat, tensing in response to danger, and as the threat passes, the tiger’s muscles shake, twitch and let go right then and there the fear related energy which now is forever out of mind and body. Similarly, humans can learn to release long-held and/or current trauma without its return.
About the author: Peter A. Levine, PhD, has spent 45 years studying and treating stress and trauma. He holds a doctorate degree in medical biophysics from the University of California at Berkeley and in psychology from International University. He is the developer of Somatic Experiencing®, a naturalistic approach to healing trauma. He has practiced and taught at treatment centers, hospitals, and pain clinics throughout the world, and has dealt with a wide range of trauma, including accidents, rapes, assaults, abuse, and invasive medical procedures. Peter was a stress consultant for NASA during the development of the Space Shuttle program. He served with the Institute for World Affairs Task Force for "Psychologists for Social Responsibility" and the American Psychological Association "Presidential Initiative on Responding to Large-Scale Disasters and Ethno-Centric Warfare."
