Resources & Research

The effects of trauma can be devastating for sufferers, their families and future generations. In this important book one of the world's foremost experts on traumatic stress offers a bold new paradigm for treatment, moving away from standard talking and drug therapies and towards an alternative, body-led approach that explores how our nervous system records and carries our past wounds into our present day, and how to approach healing those wounds.

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Can a person literally die of loneliness? Is there a connection between the ability to express emotions and Alzheimer’s disease? Is there such a thing as a ‘cancer personality’? Drawing on deep scientific research and Dr Gabor Maté’s acclaimed clinical work, When the Body Says No provides the answers to critical questions about the mind-body link – and the role that stress and our emotional makeup play in an array of common diseases.

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Western countries invest billions in healthcare, yet mental illness and chronic diseases are on an unstoppable rise. Medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today's culture stresses our bodies and undermines emotional balance. With over four decades of clinical experience, Dr Maté connects the dots between our personal suffering and the pressures of modern-day living, But he also shows us a pathway to health and healing.

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Why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation? Too many had to learn as children to hide their own feelings, needs and memories skilfully in order to meet parents' expectations and win their love. Alice Miller writes, "When I used the word 'gifted', I simply meant all who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt by becoming numb.... Without this 'gift' offered us by nature, we would not have survived."

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Depression. Anxiety. Chronic pain. Phobias. The root of these difficulties may reside in the traumas of our parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents. The latest research affirms that traumatic experience is passed on to future generations and that this emotional inheritance, hidden in everything from gene expression to everyday language, plays a greater role in our health than ever previously understood, but these patterns can be broken.

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A new and hopeful vision of healing 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 traumatised? By understanding the answer to this, the mystery of human trauma is revealed, symptoms of trauma are normalised and steps needed to heal them are discussed.

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The Holistic Psychologist, Dr Nicole LePera, helps us recognise how adverse experiences and trauma in childhood live with us, keeping us stuck engaging in patterns of codependency, emotional immaturity and trauma bonds. Unless addressed, these self-sabotaging behaviours can quickly become cyclical, leaving people feeling unhappy, unfulfilled, and unwell. She offers support and tools to break free from destructive behaviours and recreate their lives.

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Do you aspire to be a loving parent but all too often 'lose it' in hurtful ways? Do you crave intimacy but wonder if it's worth the struggle? We first see the world though the eyes of the child we once were, and that 'inner child' remains with us, no matter how 'grown-up' we become. If our vulnerable child was hurt, its pain, grief and anger live on within us. In this powerful book John Bradshaw shows us how we can offer ourselves the good parenting we needed and longed for.

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Is there some part of yourself you wish would go away? Most of us would say yes, whether we call it addiction, the inner critic or ‘monkey mind.’ Yet what if there were a different way to approach these aspects of ourselves? Internal Family Systems is a paradigm-changing model of consciousness that is transforming psychology, offering a revolutionary paradigm to understand and relate with ourselves.

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First-hand essays of embodied healing from the Center for Trauma and Embodiment at Justice Resource Institute: challenges, triumphs and healing strategies from the front line of Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga. Written by yoga facilitators, survivors and therapists, the first-hand accounts in healing with Trauma-Sensitive Yoga examine real-life situations and provide guidance on how to act, react and respond to trauma on the mat.

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Survivors of trauma—whether abuse, accidents, or war—can end up profoundly wounded, betrayed by their bodies that failed to get them to safety and that are a source of pain. In order to fully heal from trauma, a connection must be made with oneself, including one’s body. The trauma-sensitive yoga described in this book moves beyond traditional talk therapies that focus on the mind, by bringing the body actively into the healing process.

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With interpersonal trauma, whether chronic childhood abuse or domestic violence, talk therapy isn’t always the most effective course. The trauma and its effects are so complex that reducing it to symptoms or suggesting a change in cognitive frame or behaviour ignores a very basic but critical player: the body. Reorienting clients to their bodies and building their ‘body sense’ can be the key to unlocking their pain and building a path toward healing.

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Millions around the world suffer from mood problems and stress-related issues like anxiety, depression, insomnia and PTSD. Far too many of them are taking medications that have troublesome side effects, withdrawal symptoms and disappointing success rates. Here, physicians Dr. Richard P. Brown and Dr. Patricia L. Gerbarg present a side effect-free solution - breathing - based on teachings drawn from yoga, Buddhism, qigong and other sources.

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This book brings together the science and the practice of yoga therapy, supporting its emergence as a credible profession. It comprehensively summarises research findings and their practical implications for professionals who use yoga or refer patients for yoga practice. It includes chapter contributions by leading biomedical researchers as well as contributions by expert yoga therapists describing practical implementation for specific conditions.

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The Yoga Sūtra sets out a sophisticated theory of moral psychology and perhaps the oldest theory of psychoanalysis. For Patañjali, present mental maladies are a function of subconscious tendencies formed in reaction to past experiences. He argues that people are not powerless against such forces and that they can radically alter their lives through yoga―a process of moral transformation and perfection, which brings the body and mind of a person in line with their true nature. A hugely valuable revisionist translation by Canadian-Indian moral philosopher Dr Shyam Ranganathan.

The Yoga Sutra is the living source wisdom of the yoga tradition, still relevant 2,200 years after it was codified by the sage Patanjali. This is the first practitioner-oriented commentary of the Yoga Sutra fully grounded in a living lineage. It shares the essence of Pandit Tigunait's rigorous scholarly understanding of the Yoga Sutra, through the filter of experiential knowledge gained through decades of advanced yogic practices, and enriched by the living wisdom he received from the masters of the Himalayan Tradition.

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This is the second (after Samadhi Pada, covering the first chapter) in a series of commentaries on the Yoga Sutra—combining Pandit Tigunait’s rigorous scholarly understanding of yoga philosophy with the knowledge he has gained through decades of advanced yoga practice. He demonstrates how Patanjali’s systematic 8-part plan for mastering the roaming tendencies of the mind - offered to beginners and newcomers to practice - opens the door to a more vibrant experience of our Self and our true nature.

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This book journeys to the very heart of Tantra: its key teachings, foundational lineages, and transformative practices. Since the West's discovery of Tantra 100 years ago, there has been considerable fascination, speculation, and more than a little misinformation about this spiritual movement. Tantra Illuminated presents an accessible introduction to this sacred tradition that began 1,500 years ago in the far north of India. Translated from primary Sanskrit sources by Tantrik scholar-practitioner Christopher Wallis.

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More and more people are “waking up” spiritually. And for most of them, the question becomes: now what? “Information about life after awakening is usually not made public,” explains American spiritual teacher Adyashanti. “It's most often shared only between teachers and their students.” The End of Your World is his response to a growing need for direction on the spiritual path.

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Mark Singleton calls into question many commonly held beliefs about the nature and origins of postural yoga and suggests a radically new way of understanding the meaning of yoga as it is practiced by millions of people across the world today. Drawing on a wealth of rare documents, as well as interviews with elderly figures in the world of yoga, Yoga Body turns the conventional wisdom about yoga on its head.

Despite yoga's huge global popularity, relatively little of its roots is known among practitioners. This book draws on a wide range of texts, among others, key passages from the early Upanishads, and from the Tantric, Buddhist and Jaina traditions, with many pieces in scholarly translation for the first time. it covers yoga's varying definitions, its most important practices, such as posture, breath control, sensory withdrawal and meditation, as well as models of the esoteric and physical bodies.

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Bernie Clark presents comprehensive guidance on how to do the practice, including a deep look inside over two dozen Yin Yoga postures, showing the benefit of the pose and their targeted areas, how to get into and out of it and contraindications. The benefits are explored in three main sections: the physiological benefits, the energetic benefits and the mental/emotional benefits.

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Expanding upon the teachings of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, one of the core scriptural texts of the yoga tradition, internationally renowned teacher Donna Farhi describes yoga's transforming power as a complete life practice, far beyond its common reduction to mere exercise routine or stress management. This is the philosophy of yoga as a path to a deeper awareness of self.

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First published in 1997, this has been on the NY Times Bestsellers List for over a decade. Everything we do is based on agreements we have made - agreements with ourselves, with other people, with God/god and with life. But the most important agreements are the ones we make with ourselves. Don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create suffering. And, based on ancient Toltec wisdom, offers a powerful code of conduct that has the potential to transform our lives.

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In the Upanishads, among the world’s most ancient scriptures, illumined sages of ancient India shared flashes of insight, the results of their investigations into consciousness itself. They experienced directly a transcendent Reality which is the essence, or Self, of each being - eternal, deathless, one with the power that created the universe. Easwaran’s translation compiles sections from the principal Upanishads and five others. “The Upanishads belong not just to Hinduism. They are India’s most precious legacy to humanity, and in that spirit they are offered here.”

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