Book review!

 

"Curse the mind that mounts the clouds / in search of mythical things and only mystical things, / mystical things / cry for the soul that will not face / the body as an equal place / and I never learned to touch for real / down, down, down, where the iguanas feel." -- "Iguana Song," by Judy Mayham

This is a poem used as an epigraph in the book I just finished, "Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma" by Peter A. Levine (1997). The book documents the way that trauma and traumatic events are stored in the body, and the way the emotions from trauma live in the body in long-lasting ways. I guess it's a bit like "The Body Keeps The Score" but less problematic because it's not all about U.S. soldiers (I haven't read the latter book, to be fair, and also the author does get quoted in this book a few times.) I picked up the book because Tommy Caldwell posted it on his instagram page, and it spoke to me because ... I liked the tigers on the front cover. I had a dream maybe a few days before involving tigers, so ... here we are.

Anyway, this book was pretty good. The author begins the book by writing about how the popular notion of "fight or flight" in response to trauma would be more accurately described as "fight, flight or freeze." He says that in response to traumatic events, sometimes people freeze up entirely, leaving victims or survivors with long-term frozen emotional responses that can live in their bodies for extended periods of time, at least until they are given some kind of outlet for the "energy" of the trauma to exit their bodies, where it has been living. I liked the book in terms of it being an invitation to get in touch with one's own body (my body). I feel like connecting with my own body and learning to be in better touch with it is something that always feels basically healthy to me, and can also help soothe me down when I am feeling overwhelmed. My therapist is a big believer in this approach. I think on a more mystical level, if you want to call it that, some people believe that the body can show us the way forward in our lives, and that we can make good decisions and have healthy and prosperous lives simply by becoming attuned to our bodies and listening to what they are wanting. I can't say I've personally ever made any money off of this approach, but I definitely find it helpful in terms of avoiding injuries and making decent decisions, to say the least.

                                                        (^^dat boi Tommy Caldwell )

I was recently getting very overwhelmed by certain events in my life and not knowing how to handle them, and my therapist reminded me to "return to the earth and soil of my body" which I found to be a very beautiful and helpful approach.

In the past two years, I've been struggling with depression, which has made me very tired and lack energy for a lot of activity that I previously had a lot of energy for. This has been a challenging development, but at the same time, if my body is asking for a lot of rest and generally just taking it easier overall, that's not necessarily a terrible thing. Riding bikes and fixing bikes and cooking organic meals from scratch is cool, but getting sleep is also cool and important, so ... 

One interesting thing the book mentioned is that people who are recovering from some kind of traumatic event might be more prone to sickness than other people. This might be hard to verify empirically, but in my own experience, I find that the resilience / strength of my immune system can very significantly from time to time. There have been times of my life when I feel like I can do almost anything and nothing gets me down -- long commutes and strenuous tasks are easy to accomplish like they are nothing. And there have been other times in my life (over the past two years especially) that relatively low energy tasks are extremely challenging. In New Haven, I did not have a dishwasher, but I never found it that challenging to wash my dishes. In San Francisco, I do have a dishwasher, but loading the dishwasher is extremely cumbersome to me. Just as one small example. Or a few years ago, I would go on twenty mile bike rides in the morning before going to college classes. And now riding a bike just a few miles is very annoying to me. A lot has changed in those few years, and some of those more herculean tasks I used to do no longer feel particularly important to me, so of course I won't expend energy on them in the same way. Some of those things just feel like a waste of energy. But at the same time, my capacity for just like functioning in society and getting through the tasks of life has seemingly diminished a lot, which is why I'm interested in a book like this. 

Anyway, decent book, maybe a little bit boring and repetitive at times. Also not super politically sharp or radical (like when the author makes sweeping generalizations about "inner city violence and international wars") but a very solid book and I definitely hope to continue staying in touch with my body and learning (and getting better at) listening to my body and being comfortable giving it what it wants.