This is the ”bible" on trauma and an effort to deep dive on mental health and how trauma is stored in one's body.

Review

If you are looking for a crash course on mental health (esp how trauma impacts the youth), this is an excellent place to start.

The Body Keeps the Score presents a case to transform how we process trauma & create a world that feels safe for everyone.

As someone who is passionate about creating safe spaces for people to dance, this book served as an unexpected reminder the extent the arts contribute to our mental health (esp movement arts & body awareness) & how broken our social support structures are in America.

In schools, we continue to pull funds from physical education and the arts and we burden teachers to play part-time social workers so they can effectively teach. Addressing trauma fundamentally starts at home with our own families, well before we send our kids to school (and ourselves to work!)

This book has one of the most powerful (and generous) "samples" of any Kindle book I've ever read. The conscious decision to gift his entire thesis impressed me so much, I never clicked "buy this book" so quickly I didn't blink!

The remaining 2 parts of the book served as a deep dive into the finer nuances & mechanics of trauma and a survey into research done to validate a wide array of alternatives to pharmacological methods to address trauma.

This set of alternatives leaves you considering what it might take to gather enough people to care to create a profound shift in social support our society so desperately needs.

Role of Movement in creating "safe space"

(ch5 ~3:35:00)

"non-pharmalogical methods outside of Western Medicine"