In an Unspoken Voice

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.