Body First Healing

Brittany Piper

Whether you’re experiencing anxiety, depression, burnout, or the aftermath of trauma, this groundbreaking book will show you how to become your own best healer.

Brittany spent most of her life sitting across from therapists recalling the painful stories of her trauma. But rehashing each event — being put into foster care as a baby, losing her brother in a car accident, enduring a brutal rape and a public trial, and more — made her even more stuck. At a crossroads, she took her recovery into her own hands.

On this journey, Brittany discovered science that explains how and why trauma lives in our bodies, not in the story of what happened to us. Trauma overwhelms our nervous system, which operates through feelings, sensations, and emotions, not through words and thoughts. Now a Somatic practitioner herself, in Body-First Healing Brittany provides a roadmap to recovery, resilience, and nervous system regulation. With Brittany, you will learn how to:
Name your core wounds, trauma responses, and stuck nervous system state
Create feelings of safety and regulation with anchoring resources like exploratory orienting, movement, self-contact, etc.
Fully experience an uncomfortable feeling with the Sensation, Image, Behaviour, Affect, Meaning framework
Engage somatic tools, like air screaming for anger or limb shaking for anxiety, that help express uncomfortable emotion