Here are 92 books that Our Polyvagal World fans have personally recommended if you like
Our Polyvagal World.
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I am a holistic adult and child psychiatrist, astrologer, shamanic practitioner, and energy healer who has been in practice for 35 years. I am thoroughly familiar with the conventional paradigm for treating psychiatric illness, but I no longer endorse it and, in fact, believe that it causes harm. I am convinced that there is an urgent need for a paradigm shift in medicine at this time of collapse and breakdown on the planet. The sacred's vital role in healing needs to be acknowledged, as does the role of nutrition and lifestyle, as well as a need to identify and treat the root causes of illness rather than simply suppressing symptoms with pharmaceuticals.
This book delivers such an important and deeply needed message at this time of accelerated change on our planet when so many people feel lost, fearful, alienated, and disconnected.
Many patients who consult me in my practice of psychiatry have a longing to feel clearer about their life purpose and what they are meant to do with their lives. They long for a connection to a more soulful aspect of themselves. This book provides many stories of individuals who were courageously able to respond to their heart’s calling and to change their lives dramatically in ways that resulted in their existence feeling more meaningful and aligned with their soul’s purpose.
This book inspires the reader to dare to make big changes, to get out of their comfort zone, and to find a way of living that feels more authentic and satisfying.
How do we know if we're following our true callings? How do we sharpen our senses to cut through the distractions of everyday reality and hear the calls that are beckoning us?
is the first book to examine the many kinds of calls we receive and the great variety of channels through which they come to us. A calling may be to do something (change careers, go back to school, have a child) or to be something (more creative, less judgmental, more loving). While honoring a calling's essential mystery, this book also guides readers to ask and answer the fundamental…
Nineteen years ago, my 13-year-old daughter became wracked in severe pain for no discernible reason. She found walking, lying flat, or sitting up straight impossible. She had a host of other bizarre physical symptoms, too. The doctors we consulted not only didn’t help us, they decided she was faking it. We had to step outside the medical mainstream to discover she had chronic Lyme disease. After many difficult years, she got better, and I began working to change the system. As president of LymeDisease.org, a national Lyme advocacy and research organization, I write and speak on behalf of Lyme patients and their families.
This is one of the first books I recommend to Lyme patients who email me for advice about getting better. It’s a sad fact that most people with chronic Lyme disease don’t have “just” Lyme disease. Their condition is complicated by toxic mold exposure, environmental chemicals, other infectious bacteria and viruses, and/or a highly sensitized nervous system.
Whether they’ve been diagnosed with Lyme disease or not, I think anyone with complex health problems that they just can’t resolve could benefit from reading this book.
Millions of people are suffering from chronic illnesses that, unbeknownst to them, are the result of exposure to environmental toxins and infectious agents such as mold and Borrelia, which causes Lyme disease. Millions. Because the symptoms of these illnesses are so varied and unusual, many of these individuals have sought medical care only to be dismissed, as if what they are experiencing is “in their head.” Many (if not most) have tried to tough it out and continue to function without hope of improvement. Unfortunately, their illnesses are very real.
Toxic is a book of hope for these individuals, their…
I am a holistic adult and child psychiatrist, astrologer, shamanic practitioner, and energy healer who has been in practice for 35 years. I am thoroughly familiar with the conventional paradigm for treating psychiatric illness, but I no longer endorse it and, in fact, believe that it causes harm. I am convinced that there is an urgent need for a paradigm shift in medicine at this time of collapse and breakdown on the planet. The sacred's vital role in healing needs to be acknowledged, as does the role of nutrition and lifestyle, as well as a need to identify and treat the root causes of illness rather than simply suppressing symptoms with pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Terry Wahls is an absolutely brilliant physician whose accessible book describes a treatment approach that is enormously effective for treating the inflammation that is at the heart of so many conditions. She reversed her own illness with it. She had rapidly progressive degeneration of her nervous system due to multiple sclerosis, which resulted in her needing to use a wheelchair. Through implementing her own protocol, she is now back to riding her bike.
I recommend this book to 95% of the patients in my practice because the dietary approach that she clearly describes makes such a difference in their health and well-being. I like the fact that she outlines three stages of implementing her protocol so that a person can begin with the least restrictive and, if desired, can take it to the next level.
This approach offers flexibility and allows a person to ease into making lifestyle changes.…
The cookbook companion to the groundbreaking The Wahls Protocol, featuring delicious, nutritionally dense recipes tailored to each level of the Wahls Paleo Diet.
The Wahls Protocol has become a sensation, transforming the lives of people who suffer from autoimmune disorders. Now, in her highly anticipated follow-up, Dr. Wahls is sharing the essential Paleo-inspired recipes her readers need to reduce and often eliminate their chronic pain, fatigue, brain fog, and other symptoms related to autoimmune problems, neurological diseases, and other chronic conditions, even when physicians have been unable to make a specific diagnosis. Packed with easy-to-prepare meals based on Dr. Wahls’s…
I am a holistic adult and child psychiatrist, astrologer, shamanic practitioner, and energy healer who has been in practice for 35 years. I am thoroughly familiar with the conventional paradigm for treating psychiatric illness, but I no longer endorse it and, in fact, believe that it causes harm. I am convinced that there is an urgent need for a paradigm shift in medicine at this time of collapse and breakdown on the planet. The sacred's vital role in healing needs to be acknowledged, as does the role of nutrition and lifestyle, as well as a need to identify and treat the root causes of illness rather than simply suppressing symptoms with pharmaceuticals.
I love this author’s voice, which feels very authentic and fresh. The writing is beautiful, both magical and earthy, and I loved the description of her spiritual journey growing up with atheist parents and her discovery of the helpful real presence of the ancestors in her life.
The author’s description of the presence of the dead in her life, her relationships with them, and their influence on her life have the potential to open up the reader to their experience of their ancestor’s presence in their own lives, which can be both so enormously helpful, enriching and comforting. I loved the description of the evolution of her relationship with her complicated father, both over the course of her lifetime and then as the years passed after he was gone.
The book models a reality, which I share, that our relationships with our loved ones continue in a very alive way…
"Finn weaves a spellbinding meditation . . . an affecting ode to the power of the unseen." -Publisher's Weekly
What if you could live in a world where the guidance of those who were gone was available, right at your very fingertips? It's possible, if we are open to it. Anyone can reclaim the forgotten guidance of the dead, and anyone can return to the realm of magic and miracles. In Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World, author, spiritual teacher, and co-founder of The Way of the Rose Perdita Finn reveals that life is beginningless, love is…
As a youth, I longed to understand life and its meaning and purpose, and I sought books that opened me up to a world that transcended the more rational, tangible aspects of my life. I also became fascinated with psychology in high school and knew that would be my life’s path. In college and beyond, I was drawn to meditation and mind-body practices that became transformative in my life. This journey continues to this day, calling me to bridge the scientific and psychological with the more contemplative and spiritual traditions to find and help others find healing and wholeness.
Deb Dana has an amazing gift of taking polyvagal theory (understanding the role of our autonomic nervous system and its evolution) and making it so understandable, accessible, and essential for our day-to-day lives.
This book truly transformed how I view the world, offering an understanding of how our autonomic nervous system underlies everything we do and feel. What I loved about this book was how hands-on it was. Deb takes you through simple but profound exercises to learn how to create a felt sense of safety in the nervous system and find your way back there when you get out of balance.
This book offers a beautiful path to resilience and well-being. It changed how I go through my life and how I work with my patients.
Harness the power of your nervous system to support healthy relationships and personal well-being.
Why is it that when you have a tense conversation with a boss, coworker, or partner, you feel like you’re staring down a charging rhinoceros? How is it that both situations cause a fight-or-flight response―and what can you learn from it?
As it turns out, the same neurological processes that cause unwanted stress can also be harnessed to summon relaxation, spaciousness, and equanimity. In Befriending Your Nervous System, clinician Deb Dana presents a simple, hopeful message: when you approach these subconscious processes with openness, mindful attention,…
My formative immersion in nature during eleven summers at a girls’ camp in the Hocking Hills of southeastern Ohio showed me that everything in the physical world, including humans, is dynamically interrelated at subtle levels. As an adult, I’ve followed post-mechanistic sciences that explore this invisible truth, a theme that runs through several books I have written. Since the early 2000s, a new wave of discoveries, this time in human biology, reveals that we are composed entirely of dynamic interrelationships, in and around us, which affect us continuously from conception to our last breath. These discoveries are quickly being applied in many areas. I call this new awareness the Relational Shift.
You may have noticed that patients’ rooms in new or recently remodeled hospitals often feature nature motifs in the drapery, a picture of a mountain scene across from the bed, nature videos on the television, and a window facing trees or landscaping. Why? Because of numerous recent discoveries that healing proceeds faster and better when a patient connects with nature, even via a photograph! In The Biophilia Effect,Clemens Arvay presents surprising results of many relevant biological studies, and he also suggests methods of boosting our mental and physical healing through specific immersions in nature. These suggestions are set in venues such as long walks in a forest or gardening. He discusses the powerful healing effects of recognizing ecopsychosomatics with regard to various diseases and conditions.
Did you know that spending time in a forest activates the vagus nerve, which is responsible for inducing calm and regeneration? Or that spending just one single day in a wooded area increases the number of natural killer cells in the blood by almost 40 percent on average?
We've all had an intuitive sense of the healing power of nature. Clemens G. Arvay's new book brings us the science to verify this power, sharing fascinating research along with teachings and tools for accessing the therapeutic properties of the forest and natural world. Already a bestseller in Germany, The Biophilia Effect…
I’m a yoga therapist, health journalist, mother, and grandmother with a passion for helping people harness the powerful medicine of movement. Physical activity is essential to good health, and yoga can be particularly effective because it’s a holistic discipline that enhances all aspects of wellbeing—physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual. I started taking a weekly yoga class in my early 20s to stretch tight muscles and relieve stress from my busy job as a Washington Post reporter. Nearly 50 years later, yoga is central to my life, with practices that have helped me through several major health challenges, and kept me balanced, fit, and centered in our unpredictable world.
As a mind-body science educator, Ann Swanson specializes in making complex scientific concepts simple and easy to understand. And in this dazzlingly-illustrated, comprehensive guide to how and why yoga works, she masterfully deconstructs more than two dozen basic yoga poses with detailed information on the physical and energetic components. A section on human anatomy explains various systems—including cardiovascular, digestive, and endocrine—and a Q & A section explores common concerns such as chronic pain, stress, and mental well-being. Full disclosure—Ann is a friend and colleague—with extraordinary energy, deep compassion, and a generous heart.
Explore the biomechanics of 30 key yoga poses, in-depth and from every angle, and master each asana with confidence and control.
Take your knowledge of yoga to the next level with this ground-breaking 360 degree visual resource - made for serious practitioners and teachers.
Recent scientific research now backs up what were once anecdotal claims about the benefits of yoga to every system in the body. Science of Yoga reveals the facts, with annotated artworks that show the mechanics, the angles, how blood flow and respiration are affected, the key muscle and joint actions working below the surface of each…
I’m a professor of cognitive psychology at UCLA, and also a poet. Growing up on a dairy farm in British Columbia, I immersed myself in the world of books. My mother showed me her well-worn copy of a poetry book written by her Scottish great-great-aunt, and I longed to create my own arrangements of words. Later, as a student at the University of British Columbia and then Stanford, my interest in creativity was channeled into research on how people think. I’ve studied how people use analogies and metaphors to create new ideas. In addition to books on the psychology of thinking and reasoning, I’ve written several volumes of poetry.
It’s not really six songs, but six human needs that songs fulfill: friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, love—needs that largely define “human nature.” This book combines the perspective of a neuroscientist and musician (Dan Levitin is both), describing why songs may have arisen, and how they impact emotion, memory, and the place of an individual in a society. A song combines music with lyrics—the near relative of a poem. For me (a non-musician), the book was especially useful in clarifying the ways in which song lyrics and poems are both similar and different. Songs derive their power by combining the creative potential of language and music.
The author of the New York Times bestseller This Is Your Brain on Music reveals music’s role in the evolution of human culture in this thought-provoking book that “will leave you awestruck” (The New York Times).
Daniel J. Levitin's astounding debut bestseller, This Is Your Brain on Music, enthralled and delighted readers as it transformed our understanding of how music gets in our heads and stays there. Now in his second New York Times bestseller, his genius for combining science and art reveals how music shaped humanity across cultures and throughout history.
Here he identifies six fundamental song functions or…
I didn’t always know that I wanted to be a doctor, perhaps because there were no doctors in my family, and I did not even realize that I wanted to (or could) go to medical school until I was almost done with college. Once I did realize this, however, it became immediately obvious to me that being a physician (a surgeon) was what I wanted to dedicate my life’s work to, and I have been passionate about it ever since. Probably the topics I am most passionate about after surgery are education, books, reading, poetry, etc., so this book lets both these passions dovetail beautifully!
I love the way this book so clearly explains the structure and function of the body (anatomy and physiology) functions with conceptually perspicuous illustrations. It’s remarkable how the clear and intuitive the schematic illustrations teach about the body. At first, I thought that I would not like it, since the organs are not shown in their natural appearances but instead as machines, but after reading it, I loved it.
I like trying to solve problems about the mind: Is the mind just the brain? What is consciousness, and where is it in the brain? What happens in the brain during aesthetic experience? Why are we prone to self-deception? In approaching these questions, I don’t limit myself to one discipline or set of techniques. These mental phenomena, and the problems that surround them, do not hew to our disciplinary boundaries. In spite of this, someone needs to collect, analyze, and assess information relevant to the problems—which is in many different formats—and build theories designed to make sense of it. During that time, more data will become available, so back you go.
Oliver Sacks was a person who really loved science and being a scientist. Instead of describing some neurological condition or syndrome then explaining why that condition matters to our humanity, he describes the condition and the people who have it in ways that make it clear why it matters.
In Musicophilia, Sacks’ object of study is musical disorders, including cases of people who suddenly showed a great interest in music after having little prior interest, as well as people who suddenly lost all love for music. He also looks at people who have hallucinations of music, and struggle to find where the sound is coming from.
Oliver Sacks has been hailed by the New York Times as `one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century'. In this eagerly awaited new book, the subject of his uniquely literate scrutiny is music: our relationship with it, our facility for it, and what this most universal of passions says about us.
In chapters examining savants and synaesthetics, depressives and musical dreamers, Sacks succeeds not only in articulating the musical experience but in locating it in the human brain. He shows that music is not simply about sound, but also movement, visualization, and silence. He follows the experiences…
