My Top 10 Most Recommended Books
I absolutely love to read and am constantly referring to books I’ve read with my clients.
Of course, I have read the seminal works of some of the great contributors to the field such as Peter Levine, Richard Shwartz, Gabor Mate, and Diane Poole Heller. I absolutely recommend their books as they are the cornerstones of ideologies and methodologies of my practice.
However, I thought it might be more interesting or useful to hear about some of the other books that have shaped how I think and to share guiding principles that can keep us most in touch with our humanity, potential, and healing. Here are my top ten most recommended books.
What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World
by Prentis Hemphill
This is one of my favorite books. Prentis is an incredible voice of our times who eloquently synthesizes somatic wisdom, social justice, and lived experience to the conversation around healing.
They write about the intersection of our individual healing in the context of the systems we live in and that individual and collective healing are not seperate- both are needed for liberation. Their writing is almost poetic. It’s tender, powerful, and clear.
A favorite quote:“ Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.”
Call of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken our Own Power, and Use It for Good
by Kimberly Ann Johnson
Kimberly Ann Johnson is one of the only people I know differentiating the female nervous system from the perspective of biological differences as well as the societal ones. She weaves somatic wisdom, trauma healing, feminist insight, and nervous system science into a guide for women to reclaim their embodied power. The book emphasizes the importance of attuning to one's animal body, exploring how socialization and cultural conditioning often disconnect women from their innate instincts, desires, and voices.
Kimberly teaches online classes with different topics, calling her students Jaguars. I have taken courses with her and highly recommend her as a wise, passionate, and authentic teacher.
A favorite quote:“Your ‘no’ makes your ‘yes’ trustworthy.”
It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle
by Mark Wolynn
I often share with clients that when we do our own inner work it can help to clear the lines before and after us as well- another nod to how we are inextricably bound to others but also have personal agency.
This book explores how unresolved trauma from previous generations can unconsciously shape our lives until it is brought into awareness and integrated. His approach which draws from epigenetics and clinical work helps people identify “core language”—recurring phrases, emotions, and symptoms—that act as clues to ancestral pain lodged in the body and psyche. He offers tools for recognizing and healing these invisible legacies.
It is a small but mighty book, though it actually took me a long time to get through it because so much was being revealed. I needed time to integrate before returning.
A favorite quote:“We don’t need to know every detail of our family history to heal. We just need to be willing to feel what lives inside us with curiosity and compassion.”
The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
by Fransis Weller
I often share with clients that when we do our own inner work it can help to clear the lines before and after us as well- another nod to how we are inextricably bound to others but also have personal agency.
This book explores how unresolved trauma from previous generations can unconsciously shape our lives until it is brought into awareness and integrated. His approach which draws from epigenetics and clinical work helps people identify “core language”—recurring phrases, emotions, and symptoms—that act as clues to ancestral pain lodged in the body and psyche. He offers tools for recognizing and healing these invisible legacies.
It is a small but mighty book, though it actually took me a long time to get through it because so much was being revealed. I needed time to integrate before returning.
A favorite quote:“Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”
Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose
by Martha Beck
This book was a timely read for me. Hurricane Helene had come through and decimated the artist district of my community in Asheville North Carolina. As the community came together to support, rebuild, and heal I was struck by how creativity and compassion are so often at the heart of healing.
I was concerned about what would happen to our town if we lost our artists (that was one of the districts most impacted). I began to realize that so much of what makes Asheville feel safe, accepting, and full of possibilities for goodness can be traced back to the natural world and a creative community- both of which were harmed in the hurricane. I began thinking more deeply about the role of creativity in dealing with crisis.
Especially given the polycrises of our times. In January of 2025 just months after Helene a friend invited me to stay in her house in New Orleans to get a break from all the destruction. New Orleans is known for being a creative city and they also have had to recover from a devastating hurricane. This book was published the week before that trip- timely indeed.
Marths Beck explores how humans can move from chronic fear states into a life of peace, creative flow, and purposeful living through personal stories, science, and spiritual principles. She validaes the physiological experience of anxiety while offering a credible, embodied, and perhaps joyful path forward by orienting to creativity.
A favorite quote:“Curiosity is the antidote to fear. It opens doors where anxiety builds walls.”
Mirrors in the Earth: Reflections on Self-Healing from the Living World
by Asia Suler
I read Mirrors in the Earth when it first came out in 2022. I got COVID and didn’t do anything but read for a few days- and this was the book. It actually made being sick feel special and sacred.
I can still remember how peaceful and inspired I felt getting to be so immersed in a neeply nourishing read. Asia offers a deeply compassionate and somatically resonant lens on healing, reminding us that the natural world is both witness and companion in our process. She tells personal stories that are filled with wisdom teachings and metaphors.
This is the book I would recommend to anyone who wants to read something gorgeous and immersive but especially if they are longing to remember their belonging and deepen their intuitive connection with self and Earth.
A favorite quote:“The Earth is not a resource. It is a relationship.”
The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love
by Sonya Renee Taylor
I read this book with two other friends/therapists and the discussions and revelations we had were mind blowing. Sonya Renee Taylor was able to name and question the places we have unconsciously and collectively held shame in and about our bodies-and points out it only serves to oppress.
I found myself becoming more accepting of myself, and wanting all of my clients (especially female) to begin to think about and question where the messages of body shame in their own lives came from and who it serves.
Through her framework of radical self-love, she offers a path toward healing internalized shame and body-based hierarchies, arguing that dismantling body shame is inseparable from dismantling racism, ableism, sexism, and other forms of injustice.
A favorite quote:“Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.”
The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking About
by Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins
Truthfully, I didn’t want to like this book. The boasting title was a turn off for me.
However, I listened to Mel on a podcast and really resonated with what she was saying. Especially because one of the consistent themes in my practice is helping people to find and navigate boundaries so they can rest more peacefully in their authentic selves.
So, I read it. Her core teaching is that we find peace and power not by controlling others but by releasing the grip of people-pleasing, perfectionism, and over-responsibility. Robbins challenges readers to stop micromanaging others’ opinions, behaviors, or decisions and instead focus inward—on self-trust, boundaries, and authentic living. I often catch myself saying “let them” or “let them and let you”. It’s an easy read that distills complicated dynamics into a deceptively simple phrase, that helps to keep the possibility of change within reach.
A favorite quote:“Let them judge you. Let them misunderstand you. Let them walk away. The way they react says more about them than about you.”
My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
by Resmaa Menakem
This book. Whoa.
It’s the most impactful learning I’ve done around understanding the impact of living in a different body, be it color, gender, or culture.
He focuses on how white-body supremacy has shaped the nervous systems of Black bodies, white bodies, and police bodies alike. There were times when my experience of learning about another body experience outside of my own was visceral. This book gave me a broader and deeper perspective on identity in the context of our collective systems as well as self compassion for myself and the ways white supremacy lives in my body as I am not separate from these collective systems. His work brings the wisdom of the nervous system into direct dialogue with racism, inviting readers to not only think differently but to feel and heal differently.
A favorite quote:“We heal through touch, through slowing down, through repetition, and through our relationships with others. Not through punishment. Not through shame.”
Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and the World with the Practice of RAIN
by Tara Brach
This book is a great synthesis of psychology, mindfulness, wisdom teachings, neuroscience, somatic healing, and spirituality all wrapped up in a self practice.
To me the RAIN practice feels like the same thing as Somatic Experiencing- only you are your own compassionate witness. RAIN stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture. It’s embodied. She emphasizes that true transformation arises not through fixing or analyzing ourselves, but through bringing a loving presence to our lived experience—especially the places we feel most ashamed, afraid, or unworthy.
A favorite quote:“The world is not our enemy. Our freedom is in realizing our belonging to it.”