Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy

• The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment
• The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being
• The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)
• Waking the Tiger : Healing Trauma : The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences
• The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain

this book is so full of information but it is not an easy read. All that being said, it is breathtaking in its depth and approach to treatment of clients with trauma. It would be helpful to already be familar with Pat Ogden's work because it helps to understand the theories.

I have worked with people who have experienced trauma particularly childhood abuse and neglect for many years. This book is ground-breaking and to be recommended to all practitioners working in this field, and will also enable survivors of trauma to lead happier and more fruitful lives. This is by far the best approach that I have met, and is based on the recent and revolutionary neurobiological reseach that has transformed the understanding of the impact of trauma on the individual. It uses mindfulness as a key part of the therapeutic approach.

I've taken Ogden's training in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy for Trauma and found it to be extraordinarily useful, so I'm naturally inclined to be sympathetic to her book. In the end, I believe, nothing can be more important than this. If I had one complaint about this book, it would that some of the skill topics are treated too briefly. And since I believe that the resolution of trauma is both safest and most effective when the body is involved, it is therefore the single most useful reference I have on trauma treatment period. I am also looking forward to a book in which body psychotherapy for developmental issues (character structure) is addressed with equal lucidity and completeness, but that is genuinely another book. The first part of the book lays out a theoretical understanding of trauma based on recent scientific research in neurobiology and attachment. Neither does the book avoid areas of doubt or debate; instead it provides balanced and clinically informed discussions of topics such as traumatic memory, the type and nature of freeze responses in trauma, or the use of touch interventions in psychotherapeutic practice. Research and theory are well-documented, and the bibliography is very substantial.

One of the great strengths of Ogden's approach, its teachability, shows up here as well. All interventions and practices are grounded in a framework that emphasizes a non-violent, respectful, mindful and integrative approach to the person who has survived a trauma. I suppose this is parallel to the way that many texts might decline to train the reader in basic psychoanalytic or cognitive-behavioural skills, but since somatic intervention skills are less familiar and less well covered in the literature, it would have been nice to have more here. It is the best thing on the subject I have on my bookshelf.

The skills include the moment-to-moment sensorimotor, affective, and cognitive interventions used in all phases of treatment, as well as skills, practices, and goals specific to each treatment phase. This book is aimed at professional therapists, but I'm sure that much of it would be interesting and readable for many others. This book is a comprehensive, well-organized, and practical reference on a somatic (body-based) approach to trauma treatment. However, I've also had the experience of reading unsatisfying and inadequate expositions of other approaches, and I am glad to say that this is not one of them. It cogently brings together topics including the three levels of information processing in the brain; modulation of physiological and affective arousal in the nervous system; attachment dynamics and neuropsychology; the inbuilt orienting and defensive responses, including fight/flight/freeze, submission, collapse, and dissociation; and relevant findings in affective neuroscience on inbuilt action systems such as nurturance, exploration, and sexuality. The information is there, but in certain cases the very concentrated presentation needs considerable unpacking.

Finally, Ogden's approach is deeply humanistic and compassionate. The writing is clear, precise, and appealing, and it deals authoritatively with an important emerging area of our field. Ogden and her colleagues do not just select a few research results that support a pre-existing point of view, but additionally ask what some substantial bodies of knowledge imply about how we think about trauma and what interventions we can or should make. The second part of the book lays out principles and clinical skills for treatment based on this theoretical model, and places them within a clearly defined phased treatment approach whose outlines will be familiar and comfortable for many clinicians.

This book seems to come closer to understanding the full impact of the mind body connection than most everything I've else I've read in this field. The mind and body are one, and when we learn to treat the "whole" person, people will finally be able to "be whole" as a person. I still see where there's more to be done, but I was please to see this foray into this basic relationship.