Relational and Body-Centered Practices for Healing Trauma: Lifting the Burdens of the Past

by Sharon Stanley

Overview

Relational and Body-Centered Practices for Healing Trauma provides psychotherapists and other helping professionals with a new body-based clinical model for the treatment of trauma. This model synthesizes emerging neurobiological and attachment research with somatic, embodied healing practices. Tested with hundreds of practitioners in courses for more than a decade, the principles and practices presented here empower helping professionals to effectively treat people with trauma while experiencing a sense of mutuality and personal growth themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040308752
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/13/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Sharon Stanley, PhD, is an educator and psychotherapist in private practice on Bainbridge Island, Washington, where she also develops and facilitates courses on Somatic Transformation, a two-year curriculum for healing trauma.

Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Trauma and Embodied Relational Healing 2. Structures and Functions of the Brain and Polyvagal Theory of Autonomic Functioning 3. Good News! The Brain Can Change! 4. Embodiment—Coming Home to Our Bodies 5. With Trauma "the Spirit Leaves the Body" 6. Somatic Awareness—The Truth of the Mind Begins in the Body 7.Somatic Empathy – Encounters of "Feeling Felt" 8.Somatic Inquiry—Exploring the Intersubjective World through Language 9. Somatic Interventions for Regulating Neural-Emotional States 10. Somatic Interventions with Imagination and Dreams 11. Somatic Reflection 12. The Old/New Paradigm for Healing Trauma Appendix: The Practice of Somatics

Editorial Reviews

"Relational and Body-Centered Practices for Healing Trauma is a remarkably compelling blend of interdisciplinary theory and applied case material. The science is accurate, and the clinical material is absorbing. Sharon Stanley’s integration of anthropological and cultural material with relational body techniques is unique. This book will have an indelible impact on the field."

Allan Schore, PhD, author of Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self and The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy

"Sharon Stanley has written a brilliant and comprehensive testament to the absolute necessity of including the somatic connection between the body and the brain in healing trauma. She explores the emerging literature linking the neurophysiology of the fight/flight limbic system, the autonomic nervous system, and the right-brain centers for procedural memory and modulation of arousal with techniques that re-regulate homeostasis. Detailed case studies provide a manual for specific body-based interventions. This book is a must read for therapists."

Robert Scaer, MD, author of The Trauma Spectrum and The Body Bears the Burden

"What a marvelous book! Relational and Body-Centered Practices for Healing Trauma is an amazing integration of developmental neuroscience and clinical psychotherapy. Well written and engaging, it provides plenty of examples to facilitate applied understanding in somatic healing. It will be an excellent resource for clinicians of all stripes, with step-by-step illustrations of therapeutic approaches."

Darcia Narvaez, PhD, author of Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture, and Wisdom

From the Publisher