The Secret Language of the Body

Regulate Your Nervous System, Heal Your Body, Free Your Mind

By: Jennifer Mann, Karden Rabin

Narrated by: Jennifer Mann, Karden Rabin

“Inspiring, refreshing and practical—a delightfully lucid guide to healing yourself.”–Bessel van der Kolk, MD., New York Times bestselling author of The Body Keeps the Score

From two mind-body practitioners comes the new essential self-healing bible—a revolutionary body-first guide to reducing stress, resolving long-term pain, and healing from trauma for good using your body’s own nervous system.

Your autonomic nervous system is responsible for the constant but mostly subconscious communication between your brain and body. When you experience stress, anxiety, or trauma, your nervous system formulates responses to keep you alive. But you can also become trapped in survival mode if you’re consistently exposed to unsafe environments, toxic relationships, or destructive thought patterns. When this happens it’s known as nervous system dysregulation or sensitization, which can result in chronic mental and physical pain and confusion, leaving you unable to cope with life’s strains and stresses.

Mind-body practitioners Jen Mann and Karden Rabin, co-founders of the Chronic Fatigue School, now provide the first in-depth look at nervous system regulation, somatic therapy, Polyvagal theory, the vagus nerve, and the mind-body connection. Combining science-backed insights and hands-on techniques, The Secret Language of the Body teaches you how to move out of survival mode, regulate your nervous system, and heal your mind and body. Rabin and Mann don’t teach stress management, but something far more powerful–how to control your body’s nervous system. With this revolutionary book, you will learn to skillfully speak the language of your body and train it to not only manage stress but achieve personal transformation.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2024 Jennifer Mann and Karden Rabin (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

Amazing

Buying for my forever shelf! Cannot wait to revisit this book time and again! So many great bits of wisdom.

The Secret Language

This book was amazing and has given me a whole new perspective on PTSD and various other Neurological disorders. I highly recommend this to anyone who really wants to heal from childhood trauma.

Helpful to understand how to calm down your nervous system

A thorough book about how to regulated your nervous system. There were experiences and explanations. I thought it was useful to deepen your understanding of your body and mind.

Clear and consise explanation of steps to reduce neurological and emotional dysfegulation.

Liked that tied physiological, such as polyvagal theory to more psychological, attachment theory. My first introduction to somatics, as previously expected it to be too "fringe" for me. Authors' ability to link practices through adrenergic and HPA axis provided faith in efficacy of these techniques. Very grateful to have found this audio book.

The authors desperately needed a good audio editor … they read like middle school camp activities directors

If you’re going to use people’s names, particularly as a 'credential' to support your work,
look up how they are pronounced. John Grinder, co-founder of NLP, his name is
not pronounced Grinder like a pepper grinder, like the author pronounced it,
But GRINder … the first syllable pronounced like “grin” like a smile ...
The book is a good compilation of a number of sources studying consciousness, with some well formulated exercises and somatic concepts culled from those sources. A Very good 'introduction' ... but I'd strongly suggest buying the hard-copy book, rather than this audio rendition. I typically avoid books "read by the author" and this one is the example that proves the rule... in my opinion, of course ...

Wow! An awakening of being aware.

This was a great listen. The personal stories from the authors were inspiring and reflective of my own experiences. My take away is to be more aware of my nervous system in the present and understand why I reacted to problems in the past. The book also gives the listener an education on how to heal and maintain a healthy nervous system.

Good info; real healing may need professional help

This book is fine as an introduction to how your body subconsciously reacts to past and current stressors, but to really benefit from the practices I would be better served by attending one of the workshops the authors hold. If you are dedicated to trying and practicing the techniques described then this book may be enough.

The book focuses on listening to your body and uses the acronym BASE-M to do this. In BASE-M, the M stands for the mind and focuses on understanding your thoughts and how they relate to your body's signals.
BASE stands for Breath, Action, Sensation, and Emotion.
Take notice of your breathing - is it relaxed or strained? Too fast? Holding your breath?
Action - what is your body and your mind doing?
Sensation - are any muscles tight? Any pain (stomach, headache, other aches or pains)? Tingling?
Emotion - what is your emotional state?

The key is to LISTEN. Don't jump to thinking about the 'why' as this will shutdown the discovery process. You need to fully investigate the symptoms first so you can deal with them.
Then focus on the 'how' - what were you thinking or what was happening that were the triggers to your body having a reaction?
Only after exploring your body's physical and emotional reactions and the possible triggers should you start to think about the 'why'. This is where you investigate the root causes to get to real healing. To me, this step needs a professional to provide their experience and guidance. People often have traumatic experiences as children or years earlier in their life which manifest in how the body handles stress or triggers, but unless someone knowledgable can lead you through that investigation and healing process it may be very difficult to do this yourself.