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Deepak Chopra says inflammation is “the number one pandemic of our times”. He suggests these 5 habits to help reduce it.
HEALTH ~ STRESS
Vagus Nerve Reset To Release Trauma Stored In The Body
POLYVAGAL EXERCISES
SOCIAL STUDIES JULY 31, 2023
Tell Me Why It Hurts
How Bessel van der Kolk’s once controversial theory of trauma became the dominant way we make sense of our lives.
By Danielle Carr
Nadine Burke Harris; TedMed 2014
How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime.
TEDMED 2014
Paper Tigers; Official Trailer
Captures the pain, the danger and the hopes of struggling teens–and the teachers armed with new science who are changing their lives for the better.
KPJR Films
Resilience
The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope
KPJR Films
Healing Communities I Ending Sexual Violence
Mosaic Vermont
Helping people heal from sexual harm since 1984.
Central Vermont Space for LGBTQ Community
RIVERS WAY MOVEMENT STUDIO
A space for the radical exploration of dance, movement, and self.
Montpelier based Playback Theatre Troupe
CENTRAL VERMONT PLAYBACK THEATRE
We weave movement, music, and metaphor to bring audiences stories to life. Our playback practice is in service of co-creating a just, equitable, and playful Vermont and beyond.
NCK Personal Training
NCK PERSONAL TRAINING NORTH COUNTRY KETTLEBELLS
It is our mission to provide fitness education for unhindered & safe exercise practices so that participants understand how to build and sustain physical strength.
Somatic Movement
THE EVERYTHING SPACE
A somatic education and therapy studio weaving personal growth and dynamic social change.
NEUROINCLUSIVE HEALTHCARE & COMMUNITY
ALL BRAINS BELONG VT
All Brains Belong VT is a non-profit providing flexible, individualized ways to get healthcare and connect with community.
Read the VT Digger article by Bill Schubart featuring the Plainfield Health Center
Health care — a lucrative business or a definable right?
Read the VT Digger article by Bill Schubart
Connecting the dots - three essential drivers of Vermonters’ well-being
Human Rights Mural Unveiled
— The Bridge, Montpelier
Suggested Reading:
The Body Keeps the Score; Bessel Van der Kolk
Renowned trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he transforms our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain’s wiring—specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust. He shows how these areas can be reactivated through innovative treatments including neurofeedback, mindfulness techniques, play, yoga, and other therapies. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score offers proven alternatives to drugs and talk therapy—and a way to reclaim lives.
- Goodreads 2014
The Hidden Life of Trees; Peter Wohlleben
Drawing on groundbreaking new discoveries, Wohlleben presents the science behind the secret and previously unknown life of trees and their communication abilities; he describes how these discoveries have informed his own practices in the forest around him. As he says, a happy forest is a healthy forest, and he believes that eco-friendly practices not only are economically sustainable but also benefit the health of our planet and the mental and physical health of all who live on Earth.
- Goodreads 2015
Walking a Sacred Path; Lauren Artress
The author explores the history and significance of the image of the labyrinth and explains how readers can use the ancient imprint in the art of meditation, leading them to new sources of wisdom, change, and renewal.
- Goodreads 2008
Widen the Window; Elizabeth A. Stanley
This groundbreaking book examines the cultural norms that impede resilience in America, especially our collective tendency to disconnect stress from its potentially extreme consequences and override our need to recover. It explains the science of how to direct our attention to perform under stress and recover from trauma.
With stories from men and women Dr. Stanley has trained in settings as varied as military bases, healthcare facilities, and Capitol Hill, as well as her own striking experiences with stress and trauma, she gives readers hands-on strategies they can use themselves, whether they want to perform under pressure or heal from traumatic experience, while at the same time pointing our understanding in a new direction.
- Goodreads 2019
My Grandmother’s Hands; Resmaa Menakem
The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.
This book paves the way for a new, body-centered understanding of white supremacy—how it is literally in our blood and our nervous system. It offers a step-by-step solution—a healing process—in addition to incisive social commentary.
- Goodreads 2017
The Secret Teachings of Plants; Stephen Harrod Buhner
The Secret Teachings of Plants reveals the use of direct perception in understanding Nature, medicinal plants, and the healing of human disease. The text explores the techniques used by indigenous and Western peoples to learn directly from the plants themselves, including those of Henry David Thoreau, Goethe, and Masanobu Fukuoka, author of The One Straw Revolution and contains leading-edge information on the heart as an organ of perception.
Readers will gain the tools necessary to gather information directly from the heart of Nature, to directly learn the medicinal uses of plants, to engage in diagnosis of disease, and to understand the soul-making process that such deep connection with the world engenders.
- Goodreads 2004
Welcoming the Unwelcome; Pema Chödrön
Welcoming the Unwelcome includes teachings on the true meaning of karma, recognizing the basic goodness in ourselves and the people we share our lives with--even the most challenging ones, transforming adversity into opportunities for growth, and freeing ourselves from the empty and illusory labels that separate us. Pema also provides step-by-step guides to a basic sitting meditation and a compassion meditation that anyone can use to bring light to the darkness we face, wherever and whatever it may be.
From the bestselling author of When Things Fall Apart, Welcoming the Unwelcome is an open-hearted call for human connection, compassion, and learning to love the world just as it is during these most challenging times.
- Goodreads 2019
Uniquely Human; Barry M. Prizant
Autism is usually portrayed as a checklist of deficits, including difficulties interacting socially, problems in communicating, sensory challenges, and repetitive behavior patterns. This perspective leads to therapies focused on ridding individuals of autistic symptoms. In Uniquely Human, Dr. Barry M. Prizant suggests a major shift in understanding autism: Instead of classifying "autistic" behaviors as signs of pathology, he sees them as strategies to cope with a world that feels chaotic and overwhelming. Rather than curb these behaviors, it's better to enhance abilities, build on strengths, and offer supports that will naturally lead to more desirable behavior and a better quality of life. In fact, argues Dr. Prizant, attempts to eliminate autistic behaviors may actually interfere with important developmental processes.
- Goodreads 2015
The Deepest Well; Nadine Burke Harris
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris was already known as a crusading physician delivering targeted care to vulnerable children. But it was Diego — a boy who had stopped growing after a sexual assault — who galvanized her journey to uncover the connections between toxic stress and lifelong illnesses.
The news of Burke Harris’s research is just how deeply our bodies can be imprinted by ACEs—adverse childhood experiences like abuse, neglect, parental addiction, mental illness, and divorce. Childhood adversity changes our biological systems, and lasts a lifetime. For anyone who has faced a difficult childhood, or who cares about the millions of children who do, the scientific insight and innovative, acclaimed health interventions in The Deepest Well represent hope for preventing lifelong illness for those we love and for generations to come.
- Goodreads 2018
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying; Sogyal Rinpoche
A newly revised and updated edition of the internationally bestselling spiritual classic, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, written by Sogyal Rinpoche, is the ultimate introduction to Tibetan Buddhist wisdom. An enlightening, inspiring, and comforting manual for life and death that the New York Times calls, “The Tibetan equivalent of [Dante’s] The Divine Comedy,” this is the essential work that moved Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions, to proclaim, “I have encountered no book on the interplay of life and death that is more comprehensive, practical, and wise.”
- Goodreads 2009
A special thank you and appreciation to Rachel Adam for her dedication and hard work in creating this website!