BOOKS

Renowned trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he transforms our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain’s wiring—specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust. He shows how these areas can be reactivated through innovative treatments including neurofeedback, mindfulness techniques, play, yoga, and other therapies. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score offers proven alternatives to drugs and talk therapy—and a way to reclaim lives.

In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health?

The New York Times bestseller from the author of Chasing the Scream offers a radical new way of thinking about depression and anxiety.

There was a mystery haunting award-winning investigative journalist Johann Hari. He was thirty-nine years old, and almost every year he had been alive, depression and anxiety had increased in Britain and across the Western world. Why?

Does agony define your daily experiences? Have overactive nerves drained you of energy? Are you told you’re crazy because your doctor does not understand your pain? Working at one of the largest rehabilitation facilities in the country, pain-management expert Dr. Evan Parks has 32 years of experience helping people find hope and freedom. Now he’s here to teach you how to reclaim command of your mind and body so you can wake up refreshed and ready to conquer your goals. 

Standard medical care used to treat chronic pain often leaves pain sufferers with limited short-term relief and serious long-term complications. If you have tried medications, injections, and surgeries and are still in pain, then you are ready for an approach based on the latest advances in neuroscience and pain psychology. 

Over 1.5 billion people worldwide suffer from chronic pain, and the majority continue to suffer despite seeking conventional medical care. Dr. DeCaria has been on both sides—a patient with pain and a doctor treating pain—an experience that allowed her to witness firsthand the limitations of our current healthcare system.

In this innovative guide, Dr. DeCaria shares her clinically-proven holistic approach, which goes beyond masking symptoms through medications and unnecessary interventions. She has used this approach to successfully treat thousands of patients suffering from chronic pain. 

Chronic pain is an epidemic. Fifty million Americans struggle with back pain, headaches, or some other pain that resists all treatment. Desperate pain sufferers are told again and again that there is no cure for chronic pain.

Alan Gordon, a psychotherapist and the founder of the Pain Psychology Center in Los Angeles, was in grad school when he started experiencing chronic pain and it completely derailed his life. He saw multiple doctors and received many diagnoses, but none of the medical treatments helped. Frustrated with conventional pain management, he developed Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), a mind-body protocol that eliminated his own chronic pain and has transformed the lives of thousands of his patients.

Discover the 3 Chronic Pain Types - Which One are You?

There are three main types of chronic pain - and each needs to be looked at differently to get results.

Dr Jonathan Kuttner is a musculo-skeletal pain specialist with over 30 years helping people in chronic pain get their lives back. After a near fatal hang gliding left him with daily back pain, he dived deep into the neuroscience of chronic pain.

Since then, he's helped thousands of patients (including himself) get their lives back with simple steps you can do yourself to return your body to its natural pain free mode.

In this innovative title, celebrated trainer and trauma practitioner Laura Khoudari brings a fresh approach to healing after trauma, using strength training as an embodied movement practice. Compassionate, witty and fastidiously researched, Khoudari’s debut, Lifting Heavy Things, is a breakthrough title that will empower and inspire you to develop resilience and build emotional and physical strength through working out with weights, while mindful of the ways that trauma can compromise the wellbeing of the mind and body.

The world is facing the greatest healthcare crisis it has ever seen. Chronic disease is shortening our lifespan, destroying our quality of life, bankrupting governments, and threatening the health of future generations. Sadly, conventional medicine, with its focus on managing symptoms, has failed to address this challenge. The result is burned-out physicians, a sicker population, and a broken healthcare system.In Unconventional Medicine, Chris Kresser presents a plan to reverse this dangerous trend. He shows how the combination of a genetically aligned diet and lifestyle, functional medicine, and a lean, collaborative practice model can create a system that better serves the needs of both patients and practitioners.The epidemic of chronic illness can be stopped, if patients and practitioners can adapt.

The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40 directly addresses the most pervasive problem faced by aging humans: the loss of physical strength and all its associated problems - the loss of muscle mass, bone mineral loss and osteoporosis, hip fractures (a terminal event for many older people), loss of balance and coordination, diabetes, heart disease related to a sedentary lifestyle, and the loss of independence.

The worst advice an older person ever gets is, Take it easy. Easy makes you soft, and soft makes you dead. The Barbell Prescription maps an escape from the usual fate of older adults: a logical, programmed approach to the hard work necessary to win at the extreme sport of Aging Well.

In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions—even abandoning his phone for three months—but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention—and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.

Do you keep procrastinating? Do you feel restless and unable to focus on your work? Do you have trouble getting excited about major goals?

If so, you might need a dopamine detox.

In today’s world where distractions are everywhere, the ability to focus has become more and more difficult to achieve. We are constantly being stimulated, feeling restless, often without knowing why.

The fitness industry’s obsession with stretching is causing unnecessary, catastrophic pain and injury. It’s time to stop the flexibility madness.

Stop Stretching! is the book for anyone who wants to restore balance to their body through yoga and begin their pain-free journey. You’ll learn:

Part 1: Stop Stretching: Why the conventional wisdom on stretching is causing you more harm than good—and what to do instead.

Part 2: Applied Yoga Anatomy and Muscle Activation (AYAMA™): Simple techniques to activate your muscles and strengthen your neuromuscular system so you can finally swap pain and injuries for stability and strength.

Part 3: Dare to Live Pain-Free: How to release your attachment to suffering and tap into your soul’s purpose.

Most middle-aged fitness enthusiasts and athletes have been dragged down by joint pain, injuries, and other ailments commonly accepted as “part of getting older.”

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

In fact, anyone can conquer joint pain and rebuild their body.
It simply requires understanding the hidden causes and a road map (this book) that leads to the solution.

Built from Broken presents a paradigm shift in how to think about corrective exercise, sports nutrition, and joint health.
Once you see how the system works, you’ll never look at exercise or joint health the same way again.

No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving - every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research on grit, MacArthur "genius" Angela Duckworth explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success. Rather, other factors can be even more crucial, such as identifying our passions and following through on our commitments.

The first book of its kind, Peak Performance combines the inspiring stories of top performers across a range of capabilities - from athletic, to intellectual, to artistic - with the latest scientific insights into the cognitive and neurochemical factors that drive performance in all domains. In doing so, Peak Performance uncovers new linkages that hold promise as performance enhancers but have been overlooked in our traditionally-siloed ways of thinking. The result is a life-changing book in which listeners will learn how to enhance their performance via myriad ways including: optimally alternating between periods of intense work and rest; developing and harnessing the power of a self-transcending purpose; and priming the body and mind for enhanced productivity.