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Restorative Embodiment and Resilience: A Guide to Disrupt Habits, Create Inner Peace, Deepen Relationships, and Feel Greater Presence
An expanded take on traditional Embodied Self-Awareness therapy, ideal for practitioners in all areas of body-focused work, including yoga, meditation, and somatic psychotherapy
Embodied Self-Awareness (ESA) is a somatic approach to treat trauma and other mental health concerns by helping people connect directly to thoughts, sensations, and emotions as they arise within the body. Here, psychologist Alan Fogel introduces Restorative ESA, an expansion of traditional ESA that incorporates three new and unique ESA states: Restorative, Modulated, and Dysregulated. Using a research-backed approach, Fogel explains their underlying neuroscience with concrete examples to illustrate how these states impact our personal and professional lives.
Fogel shows that wellness is more than the ability to moderate one’s inner state by regulating and tolerating emotions. By shi ing from states of doing to allowing, from activation to receptivity, and from thinking to felt experience, we can access the expansive power of the restorative state and heal the body, mind, and spirit.
Embodied Self-Awareness (ESA) is a somatic approach to treat trauma and other mental health concerns by helping people connect directly to thoughts, sensations, and emotions as they arise within the body. Here, psychologist Alan Fogel introduces Restorative ESA, an expansion of traditional ESA that incorporates three new and unique ESA states: Restorative, Modulated, and Dysregulated. Using a research-backed approach, Fogel explains their underlying neuroscience with concrete examples to illustrate how these states impact our personal and professional lives.
Fogel shows that wellness is more than the ability to moderate one’s inner state by regulating and tolerating emotions. By shi ing from states of doing to allowing, from activation to receptivity, and from thinking to felt experience, we can access the expansive power of the restorative state and heal the body, mind, and spirit.
304 pages, Paperback
Published September 28, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 5, 2021
Thank you to Mark Walsh for so convincingly recommending this book.
As writer, teacher and psychotherapist Graham Music has noted, this is a work of "extraordinary synthesis and profound depth."
In our world of striving, our approaches to wellness and growth generally involve making great efforts to wrest ourselves out of states of dysregulation.
The author, Alan Fogel, introduces us to the richness and expansiveness available in a state beneath effort, which he terms restorative embodied self-awareness. Here, in the briefest of moments, we connect to the vastness of our true nature, the body repairs itself, dissociated emotions and traumas arise spontaneously in states of deep parasympathetic mediated rest, where they can be effortlessly transmuted and metabolized.
Beneath our constructed narrative exist states where we "are not meant to explain or to convince you, but rather to 'find' you."
We arrive in "a sense of peace, safety, connection, oneness, and being completely in the present moment."
If you are in therapy, or engaged in any type of regular practice - from meditation, to yoga & qigong, to regular exercise, spending time in nature, prayer, art or elsewhere - this book will become a guide to finding entrance in a place of deep renewal, acceptance, and wordless, awakened lovingkindness.
I took something powerful from this book and it will impact the way I practice, and teach and most importantly, approach my own life, recognizing that there is a place beneath striving and 'shoulds', a place we can - when we feel safe enough to surrender to it - dip into for a moment, in wonder, or awe, or depthless tranquility.
Anyone involved in providing mental health care or wellness programs to organizations inside and outside of healthcare, would do well to read this book and take this important message that you cannot force people into wellness - at least not entirely - while you can create the circumstances which allow strained and distressed individuals to 'find' their way to restorative states and their own innate capacities to repair and reconnect.
As writer, teacher and psychotherapist Graham Music has noted, this is a work of "extraordinary synthesis and profound depth."
In our world of striving, our approaches to wellness and growth generally involve making great efforts to wrest ourselves out of states of dysregulation.
The author, Alan Fogel, introduces us to the richness and expansiveness available in a state beneath effort, which he terms restorative embodied self-awareness. Here, in the briefest of moments, we connect to the vastness of our true nature, the body repairs itself, dissociated emotions and traumas arise spontaneously in states of deep parasympathetic mediated rest, where they can be effortlessly transmuted and metabolized.
Beneath our constructed narrative exist states where we "are not meant to explain or to convince you, but rather to 'find' you."
We arrive in "a sense of peace, safety, connection, oneness, and being completely in the present moment."
If you are in therapy, or engaged in any type of regular practice - from meditation, to yoga & qigong, to regular exercise, spending time in nature, prayer, art or elsewhere - this book will become a guide to finding entrance in a place of deep renewal, acceptance, and wordless, awakened lovingkindness.
I took something powerful from this book and it will impact the way I practice, and teach and most importantly, approach my own life, recognizing that there is a place beneath striving and 'shoulds', a place we can - when we feel safe enough to surrender to it - dip into for a moment, in wonder, or awe, or depthless tranquility.
Anyone involved in providing mental health care or wellness programs to organizations inside and outside of healthcare, would do well to read this book and take this important message that you cannot force people into wellness - at least not entirely - while you can create the circumstances which allow strained and distressed individuals to 'find' their way to restorative states and their own innate capacities to repair and reconnect.
November 25, 2021
This book offers technical explanations of how the brain and body work and how that has worked out for us historically. It goes on to explain ways that our body continues to use the simple ways to respond to issues, how we can get caught up in thinking instead of feeling if we don't stop to allow ourselves to "be", and how restorative the various states (it explains them, I won't) can be for us if we allow them.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you may like this book. It's a bit deep for someone who doesn't read technical writing but the author suggests that you might want to skip that part. It can help you see that this is the kind of therapy you'd like to be involved in. There were quotes from many people who found relief and success.
(I received this book in a goodreads giveaway.)
If you or someone you know is struggling, you may like this book. It's a bit deep for someone who doesn't read technical writing but the author suggests that you might want to skip that part. It can help you see that this is the kind of therapy you'd like to be involved in. There were quotes from many people who found relief and success.
(I received this book in a goodreads giveaway.)
September 23, 2022
I learned so much from this book. The language around disregulated, modulated & restorative states helped name my experiences in a new way. I was also entranced with the description of the thinking & feeling states of the brain. The author’s explanation of why it can be hard to name a feeling was so helpful. My one minor quibble with the book is that it takes a skilled reader to be able to follow along with the highly technical discussions of the brain. Even though I have some training in this area, it was easy to get confused.
March 5, 2023
This book took me months, a little bit here and there, returning to previous chapters to further understand concepts. Super insightful.
March 10, 2025
Fascinating
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews