Ramblemuse^SM Annotated Bibliography for Massage Practitioners

Are you an HSP? Are you easily overwhelmed by stimuli? Affected by other people's moods? Easily startled? Do you need to withdraw during busy times to a private, quiet place? Do you get nervous or shaky if someone is observing you or competing with you? HSP, shorthand for "highly sensitive person," describes 15 to 20 percent of the population. Being sensitive is a normal trait — nothing defective about it. But you may not realize that, because society rewards the outgoing personality and treats shyness and sensitivity as something to be overcome. According to author Elaine Aron (herself an HSP), sensitive people have the unusual ability to sense subtleties, spot or avoid errors, concentrate deeply, and delve deeply. This book helps HSPs to understand themselves and their sensitive trait and its impact on personal history, career, relationships, and inner life.

Creating Sanctuary makes some broadly challenging statements about human nature and social organization. Dr. Sandra Bloom interweaves the individual and the social, the personal and the political, with the story of how she and a group of friends and colleagues created a traditional psychiatric milieu based on social psychiatry principles. Bloom and her colleagues have come to believe that unresolved, multi-generational, often forgotten trauma leads to a compulsion to repeat that is a powerful force in individual and social history. Because of this unresolved legacy of trauma, all of our social systems are "trauma-organized," producing institutions which are unresponsive to and often directly counter to human needs. Creating Sanctuary presents the thesis that effective social reconstruction is only effective if we understand the biological, psychological, social, and moral legacy of trauma.

Traditional therapeutic approaches to treating trauma survivors focus on survivor's words about their mental processes. The Braddock Body Process was developed in response to the author's observation that many survivors have no voice to express the kind of anger, sadness, frustration or pain they experience. Instead they suffer in silence. In this book Ms. Braddock identifies three main types that illustrate how victims embody the memory of their trauma and pain. These body types — rigid, collapsed and inanimate — express their respective and distinct patterns of breath, sound and movement. In Body Voices she describes these types in detail, and offers eight guided learning lessons that invite the reader to follow a path of healing using breath, sound, and movement to unlock feelings that have been frozen in the body.

When author Bill Bridges's wife died from breast cancer, he began to question all his previous groundbreaking work on transitions. Having conducted seminars and written bestselling books on transition, Bridges had built a reputation as an expert on the topic. And yet, "I felt now that my words had totally failed to match in depth the experience of actually being in transition," he explains. After floundering in self-doubt for months after his wife died, Bridges embarked on a spiritual pilgrimage through Wales. During his visits to sacred sites, Bridges began to see that he hadn't been misguiding people. Rather, he simply had more to offer on the subject of transition — more depth, more spirit, and above all else, more experience. So at 66 years old he wrote this excellent and highly personal book in which he examines the pain and challenge of transition — how it is a time of letting go of the past while taking hold of the future.

Another entry in the small but growing management library that suggests purposely slowing down and smelling the roses could actually boost productivity in today's 24/7 world, Tom DeMarco's "Slack" stands out because it is aimed at "the infernal busyness of the modern workplace." DeMarco writes, "Organizations sometimes become obsessed with efficiency and make themselves so busy that responsiveness and net effectiveness suffer." By intentionally creating downtime, or "slack," management will find a much-needed opportunity to build a "capacity to change" into an otherwise strained enterprise that will help companies respond more successfully to constantly evolving conditions. Focusing specifically on knowledge workers and the environment in which they toil, DeMarco addresses the corporate stress that results from going full-tilt, and offers remedies he thinks will foster growth instead of stagnation. Slack, he contends, is just the thing to nurture the out-of-box thinking required in the 21st century, and within these pages, he makes a strong case for it.

Using case histories and examples from sessions and workshops, Clyde Ford describes his approach to healing physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. Showing the correlation between physical ailments and emotional trauma, he includes exercises that may be done individually or with a trusted partner.

After her plane crashes, a seventeen-year-old girl spends eleven days walking through the Peruvian jungle. Against all odds, with no food, shelter, or equipment, she gets out. A better-equipped group of adult survivors of the same crash sits down and dies. What makes the difference? Examining such stories of miraculous endurance and tragic death — people get into trouble and how they get out again (or not) — "Deep Survival" takes us from the tops of snowy mountains and the depths of oceans to the workings of the brain that control our behavior. Through close analysis of case studies, Laurence Gonzales describes the "stages of survival" and reveals the essence of a survivor — truths that apply not only to surviving in the wild but also to surviving life-threatening illness, relationships, the death of a loved one, running a business during uncertain times, even war. Fascinating for any reader, and absolutely essential for anyone who takes a hike in the woods, this book will change the way we understand ourselves and the great outdoors.

This book is designed to provide massage therapists and bodyworkers with a greater understanding of the psychological issues that can arise from using touch in their therapy sessions. The book describes the connection between the body and the mind, how touch affects this connection, the client's emotional reaction and release, and how to respond to the client in an appropriate manner. The purpose of the book is to clearly define the scope of practice in this area for massage therapists, and bodyworkers.

Clinical psychologist Maxine Harris shows how the death of a parent before someone reaches adulthood is a life-defining event with profound and long-lasting effects. Ripple effects may appear in every aspect of adult development. Interview material is woven together with literary sources including Virginia Woolf, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Darwin to illustrate how themes of loss and survival become central to the lives of those who have lost a parent in childhood. She discusses the relationship with the surviving parent, intimate relationships, and perspectives on one's own mortality. For anyone who has survived the early loss of a parent, as well as for those with a spouse, friend, or lover who has lost a parent in childhood, this book can provide helpful insights into why people are the way they are. This would also be an excellent read for a surviving parent or family member who would like to help a child with grief recovery.

As in all his books, Heckler draws from personal experience: training his horse, cultivating presence in aikido dojos, consulting with business executives, raising children, A masterful and encompassing book, Holding the Center develops from the fulcrum of the self in the natural world. Many of Heckler’s lessons arise from his life as a householder and father. Community is a larger family—we make alliances to “take care of what matters to us.” But that takes listening to others with an open heart, and learning what the needs of others are, so Heckler teaches. The world can be a sanctuary, if we find a balance between instinct and choice. Richard Strozzi Heckler sounds an important call about the interplay between power and generosity in these subtle and luminous essays.

A sensible and compassionate book that will help those involved in any form of therapy make the best possible use of their time, effort, and money. "A fascinating blend of Eastern spirituality, Western psychotherapy, feminist consciousness, and real caring. "—Riane Eisler, author of "he Chalice and the Blade"

The Body in Psychotherapy explores the life of the body as a basis of psychological understanding. Its chapters describe the use of movement, awareness exercises, and bodily imagination in work with various populations and life situations. It chronicles somatic work with childhood trauma, political torture, and life transitions such as aging, the loss of parents, and the emergence of a sense of self.

One of the seminal books in the body-centered movement in psychotherapy, the Hakomi Method integrates the use of mindfulness, nonviolence, meditation and holism into a highly original amalgam of therapeutic techniques. Hakomi work incorporates the idea of respect for the wisdom of each individual as a living organic system, organizing matter and energy to maintain its goals, and identity. It is written with clarity, humor and simplicity; sure to inspire and give insight to both therapists and laypersons.

Waking the Tiger offers a new and hopeful vision of 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 traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed. Waking the Tiger normalizes the symptoms of trauma and the steps needed to heal them. People are often traumatized by seemingly ordinary experiences. The reader is taken on a guided tour of the subtle, yet powerful impulses that govern our responses to overwhelming life events. To do this, it employs a series of exercises that help us focus on bodily sensations. Through heightened awareness of these sensations trauma can be healed.

The forces that develop the self - somatic, emotional, mental, interpersonal, social, and spiritual - must all be considered by therapists in treating any patient. Each article in this important anthology deals in some way with these various elements. The writing is focused on the body-mind connection, exploring the practices and theories of this popular branch of psychology. Topics include the significance of family systems; dealing with trauma and shock in therapy; and the importance of breathing, offering valuable insights for the student and practitioner alike. Contributors include Marianne Bentzen, a trainer in Somatic Developmental Psychology; Peter Bernhardt, a professor of psychology; and Peter A. Levine, author of Waking the Tiger.

Researchers have shown that survivors of accidents, disaster, and childhood trauma often endure life-long symptoms ranging from anxiety and depression to unexplained physical pain, fatigue, illness, and harmful "acting out" behaviors reflecting these painful events. Today, millions in both the bodywork and the psychotherapeutic fields are turning to Peter A. Levine's breakthrough Somatic Experiencing methods to effectively overcome these challenges. In Healing Trauma, Dr. Levine gives readers the personal how-to-guide for using the theory he first introduced in his highly acclaimed work, Waking the Tiger.

This book bridges the gap between cognitive and somatic models. Psychological trauma profoundly affects the body. Drawing on this insight, Pat Ogden and her coauthors present a body-based approach to the psychological and physiological symptoms of trauma. Backed by research in attachment, dissociation, and neuroscience, this mode of psychotherapy integrates cognitive and somatic interventions to form a practical and effective treatment modality suitable for all clinicians.

Using the clinical model of the whiplash syndrome, this groundbreaking book describes the alterations in brain chemistry and function induced in individuals by what is known as traumatic stress or traumatization-experiencing a life-threatening event while in a state of helplessness. The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation, and Disease presents evidence of the resulting and relatively permanent alteration in neurophysiology, neurochemistry, and neuronal organization-changes correlated with many of the most common, yet poorly understood, physical complaints and diseases, including whiplash, migraines, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, and other painful, difficult-to-treat conditions.