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 to heal as well as an intellectual spirit to harness this innate 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.

Read section 1, chapter 3, "Wounds that can heal: Trauma is not a disease but a dis-ease"

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 to heal as well as an intellectual
spirit to harness this innate capacity. It asks
and answers an intriguing question - why
are animals in the wild, though threatened
routinely, rarely traumatised? By understanding
the dynamics that make wild animals virtually
immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of
human trauma is revealed.
Waking the Tiger normalises the symptoms of
trauma and the steps needed to heal them.

I probably would have gotten more out of this book if I had read it more like a textbook. I thought his ideas were interesting and glad they work for some people. I felt he claimed they more have worked for more people than I felt was true. In some ways, he's idealistic, and I like that, but doubt his suggestions will be instituted. ( )

Waking the Tiger is Peter Levine's book on healing traumas. Although I am not a psychologist or therapist, its powerful and natural method is intensely appealing. Everybody in his or her life is bound to obtain traumas. This need not be due to serious accidents or maltreatment, even supposedly harmless events suffice to shock our system. Not only people are subject to trauma, the animal world is full of it.

And it is this world Levine put his attention to. He observed the ways in which an animal 'shakes off' the intense energies after the traumatising event subsided. A human on the other hand has a tendency to thwart these instinctive reaction. Our reasoning neo-cortex comes in the way. As a result the intense energies have no way to discharge and the body has to find other ways to stay in balance. Symptoms arise that can seriously and structurally impede a person's healthy and joyful experience of life.

Levine's method to heal does not involve longterm therapy in which the traumatising event is relived again and again. It involves sensing your body and tracking the trauma energies. Once these are discovered you are encouraged to make the instinctive and natural body movements needed to discharge the energies. Levine's method is as simple as it is effective because it knows how to harness our instinctive and natural capacity to heal. ( )