The Embodied Healing Workbook: The Art and Science of Befriending Your Body in Trauma Recovery; Over 100 Healing Practices

“In The Embodied Healing Workbook, Dr. Cook-Cottone provides a toolkit with easy-to-follow exercises that enable us to be safe enough to honor and explore our bodily feelings. Through this journey, an awareness of feelings emerges that both honors and respects the body’s foundational survival reactions and frees the individual to express a more resilient and flexible strategy with others.” —Stephen Porges, PhD, author of The Polyvagal Theory and Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory

The way out is in.

Trauma can change the way you feel about, and in, your body. During a traumatic experience, your body tries to keep you safe, courageously and imperfectly attempting to manage the unmanageable by working to separate you from danger and pain. Even if you understand why something happened, how it happened, and what to do if it happens again, it can still be difficult to move on because your body remembers—and it reminds you again and again through deeply physical symptoms.

Considering this, your body may be your most valuable resource in recovery.

In this workbook, renowned trauma therapist Catherine Cook-Cottone provides a step-by-step, sequential process for embodied healing that will teach you to work through your trauma, reconnect to your body, and begin thinking about what is next in your embodied path forward.

Filled with over 100 embodied practices, worksheets, and meditations, you’ll learn how to:

• Befriend your body and build your inner resources for healing
• Be with and work with your trauma memories and symptoms
• Work with difficult sensations, emotions, cognitions, and reactions in partnership with your body
• Reconnect to your body’s wisdom
• Listen to your body and heart with love and compassion
• Be in relationship with your trauma

True healing comes from reconnecting with your body. It is courageous work that requires commitment and practice over time to create a new way of being.By taking this journey, healing is possible.

Catherine Cook-Cottone, PhD, C-IAYT, is a psychologist, certified yoga therapist, and professor at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), specializing in embodied self-regulation, trauma, and psychosocial disorders. She researches embodiment, trauma-informed mindfulness and yoga curricula and interventions, and mindful self-care. In 2019, she received the American Psychological Association’s presidential citation for service. She is co-editor in chief of Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention and has written ten books and over 100 peer reviewed articles and book chapters.