Today, I would like to introduce you to my somatic bookshelf at home and express my respect for some of my influencers and teachers. I read a lot of literature on the subject I am interested in – somatic change, transformation… I learned a lot from these books, and some of them were very powerful encounters that really changed my life.
The tendency is, these are rather old books. I don’t get along with modern literature 🙂
“The Erotic Mind” from Jack Morin
Dr. Jack Morin — Pleasure Mechanics
Jack Morin was a great hero of ours during the SexBod years for his life’s work on anal pleasure. Sadly he passed away in 2013. The Erotic Mind is a very insightful book that I highly recommend if you want to understand yourself and your sexual fantasies and desires. It is written with great kindness and compassion for people and their controversies, very easy to read and understand as it is full of real-life stories.Â
“The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk
The Body Keeps The Score | Bessel van der Kolk, MD.
Must read for anyone who has ever used the word “trauma” in their life. He is a pioneer in trauma work, dealing with Vietnam war veterans suffering from PTSD ever before there was a terminology for it. Also, it is very insightful about pharmacology and the limitations of drugs in trauma treatment.Â
Everything by Richard Strozzi-Heckler
Richard Strozzi-Heckler, PhD – Senior Teacher & Advisor – Strozzi Institute for Somatics
For me personally, I found a lot of answers here – answers I have been looking for all my life, answers that offered real life tools, strategies and great clarity about conditioned tendency, the cycles of somatic change and so on. These books have absolutely changed my life forever and I am still on a mission to meet the author in person (having been prevented from doing so in 2019).Â
“A general theory of love”
A General Theory of Love – Wikipedia
A beautifully written book about the complexities of human relationships and their role in our well-being, and beyond that, about why we are the way we are, and the web of interconnectedness we are all part of – based on the authors’ research in somatics and neuroscience.Â
Everything by Thomas Hanna
Somatics Library | Somatic Systems Institute
the best being “Bodies In Revolt: A Primer In Somatic Thinking” – good luck finding it, I borrowed it from the library – groundbreaking book in which Thomas Hanna first introduced the term “somatics”, but really it is about deep philosophy of how we can think “somatically” in various fields of human potential.Â
What is on your somatic shelf – happy to hear from you 🙂