A practical but far-reaching look at a variety of mind-body techniques for working with trauma clients.
This book offers an unprecedented, attachment-informed translation of yogic philosophy to body-based trauma treatment. The result is both erudite and accessible, emphasizing ready-to-implement skills and approaches that are as groundbreaking as they are effective. Organized around key trauma issues and symptoms, this book offers clinicians a practical but far-reaching look at mind-body skills and techniques for helping trauma clients access their individual wisdom, develop secure internal attachment, and find the path home to the Self.
It is a book I am so grateful to own for both professional and personal reasons! Thank you Deirdre Fay!!!
I found this book to be a revelation, personally. As a client I found descriptions of my inner world in Fay’s accounts that gave me a new way to understand the long and fraught path of my own healing. I could see my own struggles more clearly and took comfort in Fay’s compassionate approach. As a historian of psychology and just off my own study of attachment theory, I enjoyed how Fay’s book clearly positioned itself in a longer history of trauma while marking out new avenues points of intersection with yoga philosophy and psychology, including the work of Don & Amba Stapleton (Self-Awakening Yoga) and Amy Weintraub (LifeForce Yoga). As a yoga practitioner, I delighted not only in Fay’s integration of yoga philosophy and psychology into attachment theory but for new understanding of how the practice of yoga can support emotional healing.
Rigorous yet accessible, this is an account that truly has something for everyone.
Deirdre's writing is fluid, captivating and so clear that complicated interpersonal dynamics are explained for all levels of learning. It is an honor to be a colleague and friend of Deirdre's and I know you will feel the essence of who she is as you read her book. Deirdre not only conceptualizes healing, she lives from her heart essence. A true gift to our field, a true healer.
Through her rich writing style, clear explanations and specific instructions, Fay gives clinicians what she encourages us to give to our clients. As if writing to a dear friend, she first gives us her kind, gentle and non-judgmental presence. Her finely tuned attention to what we experience as clinicians as we work with our clients reflects what must have been her own open-hearted and careful self-examination along the way. She makes compassionate sense of clients’ sometimes-confusing interaction patterns with us as their therapists. She educates us about what makes a positive difference for clients, skillfully integrating attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, trauma research and yogic philosophy. Then she gives us tools that we can use to gently guide and ease our clients’ journeys inward so that they can “comprehend how they are making meaning” and achieve a “second-to-second fine tuning of their inner states.”
And, as if this were not already a joyful abundance, she shows us how this tool and other practices help our clients transform their own internal models of themselves in relationship to themselves and those around them. Her integration of these important fields truly offers a road map toward lasting positive transformation for our clients.
My work is infinitely more satisfying with her guidance. I am inspired and grateful!