In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness

In this timely book, Peter Levine challenges conventional wisdom by suggesting that many of our most important communications occur in the body’s “unspoken voice.” By deciphering and making sense of this nonverbal world, he says, anyone can rebound from even a devastating trauma. In an Unspoken Voice blends the latest findings in biology, neuroscience, and bodyoriented psychotherapy with revealing personal stories, lively case studies, and awareness exercises to show readers exactly how to do this.

To understand trauma in the body, mind, and psyche, Levine proposes that, in combination, clinical experience, animal observations, and comparative (cross-species) brain research can help create therapeutic approaches that restore resilience and promote self-healing. He explains how the human nervous system has developed a hierarchical structure based on evolution, how those hierarchies interact, and how the more advanced systems shut down in the face of overwhelming threat, capitulating operations of brain, body, and psyche to more primitive functions. Levine demonstrates how to tap the body’s wisdom to restore these systems’ balance and discusses an unexpected side effect of this approach called “Awakening the Living, Knowing Body”—when animal instinct and reason are brought together, laying the groundwork for becoming more whole human beings.

In this timely book, Levine explains how anyone can rebound from a devastating trauma by tapping into the body's wisdom to restore its systems' balances.

**Unraveling Trauma in the Body, Brain and Mind—a Revolution in Treatment**

In this culmination of his life’s work, Peter A. Levine draws on his broad experience as a clinician, a student of comparative brain research, a stress scientist and a keen observer of the naturalistic animal world to explain the nature and transformation of trauma in the body, brain and psyche. In an Unspoken Voice is based on the idea that trauma is neither a disease nor a disorder, but rather an injury caused by fright, helplessness and loss that can be healed by engaging our innate capacity to self-regulate high states of arousal and intense emotions. Enriched with a coherent theoretical framework and compelling case examples, the book elegantly blends the latest findings in biology, neuroscience and body-oriented psychotherapy to show that when we bring together animal instinct and reason, we can become more whole human beings.

**Unraveling Trauma in the Body, Brain and Mind—a Revolution in Treatment**

In this culmination of his life’s work, Peter A. Levine draws on his broad experience as a clinician, a student of comparative brain research, a stress scientist and a keen observer of the naturalistic animal world to explain the nature and transformation of trauma in the body, brain and psyche. In an Unspoken Voice is based on the idea that trauma is neither a disease nor a disorder, but rather an injury caused by fright, helplessness and loss that can be healed by engaging our innate capacity to self-regulate high states of arousal and intense emotions. Enriched with a coherent theoretical framework and compelling case examples, the book elegantly blends the latest findings in biology, neuroscience and body-oriented psychotherapy to show that when we bring together animal instinct and reason, we can become more whole human beings.

Peter A. Levine, PhD, has doctorates in both medical biophysics and psychology. The developer of Somatic Experiencing™ and founder of the Foundation for Human Enrichment, he conducts training in this work throughout the world and in various indigenous cultures. A former stress consultant for NASA and the author of four previous books including the bestselling Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, he lives in Encinitas, CA.