The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma

Very deep and insightful

This book is a true gem. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk takes the complex topic of trauma and makes it easy to understand without losing depth or compassion. It’s beautifully written, insightful and full of hope.Van der Kolk weaves neuroscience, psychology and personal stories into a narrative that sheds light on how body, mind and soul get imprinted by trauma. It also shows how important trauma healing and trauma awareness are for us as society.Whether you're a health practitioner, yoga teacher, coach or just someone searching for truth and healing, this is a must-read – a modern classic.

Good read

Anyone want to heal. Then this is the book.

In The Body Keeps the Score, the author Bessel van der Kolk is giving 'a loud cry' to apprise us about the impending threat from the hidden epidemic in the most developed world. The epidemic is NOT biological, but social: the early childhood adverse experiences in the family impairing the wiring of the brain (Chapter 10). Even more alarming was, the author notes quite early in the book (Chapter 1), the textbooks hiding the father-daughter incest and subsequent traumatic life of victims.Dr. Van der Kolk seems as much helpless in this scenario as anyone may feel. But as an authority on trauma, Kolk professes to look back, not to be eluded by psychofarmacologia, and consolidate the 'talking cure' of ages. He underlines again and again the need to help the victim of the trauma to recover from the past the troubling residue in the mind, brain and body. This residue remains elusive from the victim as well as therapist. Repression, he writes, is not an outdated hypothesis; we can explore it through the new technology. For example, the MRI images, Kolk vividly tells the reader, clearly show that the trauma shuts down information flow towards the left brain. It remains limited to the right brain. But, it is the left brain that analyses the information with reasoning. In other words, the self has no access to the traumatic material, for there is dissociation. The association, Kolk writes, comes through the 'talking cure.'The author, throughout the book, apprises the reader with the most important experiments from laboratories that help psychiatrists to modify strategies to recover the trauma from victim's mind, brain and body, so that the agency of the patient get hold on it. One may find reference, for example, to experiments: on dogs who would show signs of trauma after inescapable shocks; on the developmental disabilities in monkey infants due to faulty rearing; and, on the role of interoception in different species. In humans interoception takes leap, as it builds the structure of our feelings.I repeat, in order to apprise oneself with 'the loud cry' of the author about the trauma, it is imperative to take a journey through the book. Could we learn from our monkey cousins where the loud cry (p. 95) of a member triggers rallying response from the entire group to meet the challenge. The secure base hypothesis of John Bowlby is invaluable, Kolk underlines, to avoid these transactions. The last part of the book introduces the reader to a range of healing methods, from medication to talking cure, yoga, EDMR, theatre, and neurofeedback.The only hassle for a curious reader may be the small font of the book, but then it is a feast to enjoy such a vast knowledge at an affordable price.

This is extremely good book. Vary simple and detail descriptions of trauma . Any person can understand the language. You don’t need to have knowledge of medical science to understand this book..any people with any kind of trauma mist read it..you will have answers of all your trauma related quarries after reading the book.

This book delves into trauma with great compassion, insight and understanding. A tour de force by Dr. Van Der Kolk!

Understanding trauma is one of the foundations for dealing with it effectively. Healthy societies are based on what we do to our childern. Book gives a unique presentation on science. And how far humans have come onunderstanding trauma and most amazing work people are doing to eliminate it from life of upcoming generations.To the amazing life every one should be entitled to...