Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences

The bestselling guide to healing trauma through the body, and the book that introduced Somatic Experiencing®

For nearly three decades, this book has reshaped how we think about—and heal from—trauma.

If you live with panic, chronic tension, numbness, or the sense of being stuck in a past you can’t think your way out of, SE™ creator Peter A. Levine offers a different approach to healing. Trauma isn’t only in the mind. It’s held in the nervous system. It's not a flaw, but a natural process that, when properly supported, can help us self-regulate and lead to profound healing.

Dr. Levine’s insight began with a simple observation: Wild animals face life-threatening danger constantly, yet they rarely develop lasting traumatic symptoms. After a close call, they shake and tremble, releasing the survival energy they mobilized for fight or flight. Humans often override that instinct, and the energy stays frozen in the body.

Translated into 24 languages and with more than a million copies sold, Waking the Tiger has become a foundational text for trauma survivors, therapists, bodyworkers, and anyone looking to learn more about the mind-body connection. Inside, you’ll find:

• Exercises for developing the felt sense, the awareness of bodily sensation beneath thought and emotion
• The four core components of every traumatic reaction: hyperarousal, constriction, dissociation, and freezing
• Case stories showing how ordinary events, such as falls, surgeries, anesthesia, and car accidents, can cause trauma, not only violence or disaster
• Emotional first-aid guidance for adults after accidents and for children after falls and medical procedures
• A fresh look at re-enactment and memory, including why reliving traumatic details isn’t necessary to heal

Hopeful and grounded in biology, this embodied healing classic reframes trauma symptoms as incomplete responses and invites you to work with your body’s innate capacity for self-regulation.

Peter Levine, Ph.D. is the originator and developer of Somatic Experiencing® and the Director of the Foundation for Human Enrichment. He holds doctorate degrees in both Medical Biophysics and Psychology. During his thirty year study of stress and trauma, Dr. Levine has contributed to a variety of scientific, medical, and popular publications. His book, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma is in its fifth printing and receiving wide international attention. Peter was a consultant for NASA during the development of the Space Shuttle, and has taught at hospitals and pain clinics in both Europe and the U.S., as well as at the Hopi Guidance Center in Arizona. He lives near Lyons, Colorado, on the banks of the St. Vrain River.