Book Recommendations

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Where to Buy Books

​I encourage supporting independent bookstores whenever possible. These are the alternatives to Amazon that align with my values:

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Bookshop.org — An online bookstore that supports local independent bookshops with every purchase. Over 80% of their profit goes back to stores, authors, and the literary ecosystem. This is my first recommendation.

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Libro.fm — If you prefer audiobooks, this is the ethical alternative to Audible. They also support independent bookstores with every purchase.

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Your Local Library — Free access to books, ebooks, and audiobooks through the Libby app. Libraries are sacred community spaces—use them.

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Your Neighborhood Bookshop — Nothing replaces the medicine of browsing real shelves, being surprised by what finds you.

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Trauma Resolution & Somatics

​These books shaped how I understand the body as the site of both wounding and healing. Essential reading for anyone doing somatic or trauma-informed work.

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My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem

Racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies. Examines trauma from the perspective of body-centered psychology, offering a step-by-step healing process based on neuroscience and somatic methods. Essential reading for anyone doing healing work in these times.

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The Quaking of America by Resmaa Menakem

An embodied guide to navigating our national upheaval and racial reckoning.

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The Pain We Carry: Healing from Complex PTSD for People of Color by Natalie Y. Gutiérrez, LMFT

Illuminates complex PTSD as uniquely experienced by people of color, blending IFS therapy, activism, and curanderismo. A groundbreaking work that provides tools for healing racial trauma, intergenerational trauma, and reclaiming ancestral wisdom.

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Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing by Suzanne Methot (Nehiyaw/Cree)

Traces the roots of Indigenous cultural dislocation while showing how Indigenous ways of knowing can light the path to healing from intergenerational trauma.

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Racial Wellness: A Guide to Liberatory Healing for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color by Jacquelyn Ogorchukwu Iyamah

Shifts the conversation from racial trauma to racial wellness, helping BIPOC understand, reflect, and cope with the effects of systemic racism on holistic health.

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Healing the Soul Wound by Eduardo Duran

Counseling with American Indians and other Native people. Essential for understanding culturally-grounded approaches to healing.

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Decolonizing Trauma Work by Renee Linklater

Indigenous stories and strategies for trauma healing that center traditional knowledge.

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Strong Helpers' Teachings by Cyndy Baskin (Mi'kmaq)

The value of Indigenous knowledges in the helping professions.

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Nurturing Resilience by Kathy L. Kain & Stephen J. Terrell

Helping clients move forward from developmental trauma through an integrative somatic approach. Foundational for practitioners.

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My Body, My Earth by Ruby Gibson

The practice of somatic archaeology. Beautiful integration of body wisdom and earth-based healing.

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In an Unspoken Voice by Peter A. Levine, PhD

How the body releases trauma and restores goodness. Levine's work is foundational to somatic trauma healing.

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Waking the Tiger by Peter A. Levine, PhD

Healing trauma through the body's innate wisdom. A classic that opened the field.

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The Tao of Trauma by Alaine D. Duncan & Kathy L. Kain

Integrating Five Element Theory and trauma treatment. For those drawn to Eastern medicine frameworks.

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Trauma-Proofing Your Kids by Peter A. Levine & Maggie Kline

A parents' guide for instilling confidence, joy, and resilience. Practical and compassionate.

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The Heart of Trauma by Bonnie Badenoch

Healing the embodied brain in the context of relationship. Deep dive into relational neuroscience.

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Trauma is Really Strange by Steve Haines (illustrated by Sophie Standing)

A small, accessible booklet that explains trauma in the body. Perfect for clients or anyone just beginning to understand.

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Pain is Really Strange by Steve Haines (illustrated by Sophie Standing)

Companion booklet on pain. Gentle, clear, and surprisingly profound.

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Polyvagal Theory by Stephen Porges

The science behind nervous system states. Dense but essential for understanding why regulation matters.

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Mindsight and other works by Dan Siegel

Accessible neuroscience for understanding the developing mind. Multiple books worth exploring.

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Rest & Liberation​

​Rest as resistance, rest as medicine, rest as a pathway back to ourselves.

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Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey

The Nap Bishop argues that sleep deprivation is a racial and social justice issue, calling for rest as a form of resistance to white supremacy and capitalism, connecting rest to Black liberation and ancestral healing. A New York Times bestseller.

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We Will Rest! The Art of Escape by Tricia Hersey

Weaves meditations, poetry, and storytelling to provoke liberation through rest. Medicine for a sick and exhausted world.

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Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma by Gail Parker

Embodied practices for healing from race-related stress.

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Embodiment

 

Finding Our Way Podcast by Prentis Hemphill

Conversations about somatics, belonging, and liberation. Prentis's work bridges the personal and political beautifully.

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What It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World by Prentis Hemphill

From the founder of The Embodiment Institute and former Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter, a groundbreaking exploration of how inhabiting our bodies more fully can be a portal to personal transformation and collective change. Hemphill weaves together somatics, therapy, and social movement work to show how healing ourselves and healing our communities are inseparable practices.

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The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice by Staci K. Haines

A foundational text bridging individual somatic healing with collective liberation. Haines, cofounder of generative somatics, examines the social, political, and economic roots of trauma—including racism, sexism, and poverty—and offers embodied practices for both personal transformation and social change. Essential reading for activists and healers alike.

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Decolonizing the Body: Healing, Body-Centered Practices for Women of Color to Reclaim Confidence, Dignity, and Self-Worth by Kelsey Blackwell

A cultural somatics practitioner's invitation to unravel embodied social conditioning through practices rooted in ancestral wisdom, spirituality, and connection to the natural world. Blackwell offers journaling prompts and body-based mindfulness practices specifically designed for women of color navigating systems that teach us to distance ourselves from bodily wisdom.

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Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by Adrienne Maree Brown

Drawing on the Black feminist tradition and Audre Lorde's work on the erotic as power, brown challenges us to rethink activism through pleasure, embodiment, and healing. A collection of essays and interviews that explores how what feels good always has a complex politics—and how politics can feel good.

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Homecoming: Healing Trauma to Reclaim Your Authentic Self by Dr. Thema Bryant

From the 2023 president of the American Psychological Association, a guide to reconnecting with your authentic self after stress, trauma, and disconnection. As a survivor of sexual assault, racism, and evacuation from civil war in Liberia, Dr. Thema combines clinical psychology with spiritual practice to offer therapeutic approaches for living a more expansive life.

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My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem

A somatic therapist's essential guide to healing the trauma that lives in our bodies from generations of racism and oppression. Menakem addresses how racialized trauma affects Black bodies, white bodies, and police bodies differently, offering specific embodied practices for metabolizing historical pain and building resilience.

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Cultural Competency & Justice

This work cannot be separated from the broader context of justice, identity, and belonging. These resources have shaped how I hold space across difference.

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Unmasking Autism by Devon Price

Discovering the new faces of neurodiversity. Essential for understanding the spectrum of human experience.

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Healing Resistance by Kazu Haga

A radically different response to harm. Rooted in Kingian nonviolence and transformative justice.

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So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Clear, direct guidance for navigating conversations about race. Accessible and practical.

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White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

Understanding why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism. Challenging and necessary.

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Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta

Indigenous thinking and how it can save the world. Also listen to his podcast "Other Others."

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A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns by Archie Bongiovanni & Tristan Jimerson

A gentle, illustrated introduction. Share with anyone who wants to learn.

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Metaphysical, Spiritual & Earth-Based

These are the books that feed my soul and inform the spiritual dimensions of my work. Some are practical, some are poetic, all have shaped me.

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Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. One of the most beautiful books I've ever read.

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Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anodea Judith

Psychology and the chakra system as a path to the self. At minimum, read the chapter on the first chakra—it will change how you understand grounding and survival.

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Belonging by Toko-Pa Turner

A gorgeous, necessary book on the spiritual dimensions of belonging and exile. Poetry and medicine.

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Trauma and the Unbound Body by Judith Blackstone, PhD

The healing power of fundamental consciousness. Bridges somatic work and spiritual awakening.

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The Smell of Rain on Dust by Martín Prechtel

About grief, praise, and what the soul needs. Prechtel's writing is medicine.

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The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram

Perception and language in a more-than-human world. Changed how I understand our relationship with the living earth.

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The Empath's Survival Guide by Judith Orloff, MD

Life strategies for sensitive people. Practical tools for those who feel everything.

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Please Don't Call Yourself an Empath by Susan Raffo

A necessary counterpoint. Read this alongside the empath literature for a more complete picture.

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Awakening the Sacred Body by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Tibetan yogas of breath and movement. Powerful embodied practices.

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The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton

How our beliefs affect our biology. Science meets spirituality.

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Anatomy of the Spirit and other works by Caroline Myss

Energy anatomy, spiritual alchemy, and the sacred contracts of the soul. Multiple books and recordings worth exploring.

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Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia by Rob Brezsny

How the whole world is conspiring to shower you with blessings. Playful, subversive, and genuinely healing.

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The Collected Wisdom of Florence Scovel Shinn

Includes The Game of Life and How to Play It, Your Word Is Your Wand, and more. Classic metaphysical teachings on the power of word and thought.

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Behaving as if the God in All Life Mattered by Machaelle Small Wright

Working with nature intelligences. Practical animism.

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Family Constellations — various authors, including Even If It Costs Me My Life by Stephan Hausner

For understanding systemic and ancestral patterns through constellation work.

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African Ceremony, Ritual & Healing

These teachers from the Dagara tradition of Burkina Faso have profoundly influenced how the West understands ritual, grief, and community healing.

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Malidoma Patrice Somé (Dagara, Burkina Faso)

Malidoma was an initiated medicine man and diviner of the Dagara tribe who held doctoral degrees from the Sorbonne and Brandeis University. His name means "be friend with the stranger." He spent his life bridging African wisdom and Western seekers.

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• Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman

His memoir recounting life including kidnapping by Jesuits, escape, and initiation back into his ancestral ways. Brings Dagara wisdom to the West. Start here.

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• Ritual: Power, Healing and Community

Explores the essential role of ritual, arguing that lack of ritual in Western society is why the fabric of community is unraveling.

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• The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual, and Community

The most complete study of the role ritual plays in the lives of African people and the role it can play for seekers in the West.

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Sobonfu Somé (Dagara, Burkina Faso)

Sobonfu's name means "keeper of ritual." She was one of the first and foremost voices of African spirituality to come to the West, bringing teachings on grief, intimacy, and community that have touched thousands.

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• The Spirit of Intimacy: Ancient African Teachings in the Ways of Relationships

Shares ancient wisdom on preparing ritual spaces for intimacy and the connection between spirituality and relationships.

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• Welcoming Spirit Home: Ancient African Teachings to Celebrate Children and Community

On honoring children and building community through ritual.

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• Falling Out of Grace: Meditations on Loss, Healing, and Wisdom

Teachings on grief, loss, and finding our way back to wholeness.

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Curanderismo & Indigenous Mexican Healing

The medicine of the South—healing traditions blending Aztec, Spanish, Indigenous, and African influences.

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Woman Who Glows in the Dark: A Curandera Reveals Traditional Aztec Secrets of Physical and Spiritual Health by Elena Avila, RN

A practicing curandera and psychiatric nurse shares powerful medicine in Curanderismo, integrating Western medicine and traditional healing practices including limpias (spiritual cleansing) and treatment for susto (soul fright).

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Red Medicine: Traditional Indigenous Rites of Birthing and Healing by Patrisia Gonzales

Indigenous rites and healing practices around birth and the body.

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Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices edited by Lara Medina & Martha R. Gonzales

A collection of spiritual expressions and healing practices from Xicanx and Latinx communities.

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Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro by Gloria Anzaldúa

Rewriting identity, spirituality, reality. Anzaldúa's exploration of spiritual activism, curanderismo, and mestiza consciousness.

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Wind in the Blood: Mayan Healing & Chinese Medicine by Hernán García, Antonio Sierra & Gilberto Balam

A remarkable exploration of traditional Mayan medicine from Mexico's Yucatán peninsula and its striking parallels to Chinese medicine.

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Ancestral Healing

For those called to work with the ancestors and heal the lineage.

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Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing by Daniel Foor, PhD

Provides exercises and rituals to initiate contact with ancestors, find ancestral guides, and transform intergenerational legacies of pain. Daniel's work informed how I approach lineage repair and working with the well ancestors.

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Grief & Ceremony

Learning to grieve well is essential to living well. These resources honor grief as sacred work.

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Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief by Joanne Cacciatore, PhD

Opens a space to process, integrate, and deeply honor grief. Francis Weller calls it "a holy book, riddled with insight and compassion."

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The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief by Francis Weller

Essential reading on the importance of grieving, drawing on teachings from the Dagara people and others.

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Rites of Passage & Wilderness Initiation

These books changed how I understand threshold work, initiation, and what it means to truly grow up in a culture that has forgotten its ceremonies. Essential reading for anyone called to rites of passage work—or anyone navigating their own threshold.

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Bill Plotkin

Bill Plotkin is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and founder of Animas Valley Institute. His work weaves ecopsychology, soul initiation, and nature-based human development into a comprehensive vision for growing fully human. I recommend all of his books.

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• Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche

An experiential guidebook to the mystical descent into the underworld of soul. This is where to start if you want practices for soul encounter and deep imagination work.

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• Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World

A visionary map of eight stages of human development rooted in the cycles of the natural world. Essential reading for understanding why our culture is stuck in adolescence and what genuine adulthood looks like.

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• Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche

An ecocentric map of the psyche for healing, growing whole, and cultural transformation.

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• The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries

Maps the journey of soul initiation—the dissolution of current identity, the encounter with soul's mythopoetic mysteries, and the metamorphosis into a cocreator of life-enhancing culture.

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Martin Shaw

Martin Shaw is a mythologist, storyteller, and wilderness rites-of-passage guide. He's spent decades living close to story and land, including years in a tent on Dartmoor. His writing has the quality of woodsmoke and wild weather—it changes you. I recommend all of his books.

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• A Branch from the Lightning Tree: Ecstatic Myth and the Grace of Wildness

​The first book to weave myth and rites of passage so overtly together. It's proven influential to a whole generation of storytellers and wilderness guides. Start here.

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• Courting the Wild Twin

My absolute favorite—I read or listen to it at least twice a year. An invitation to seek out your wild twin—the part of yourself thrown out the window the night you were born.

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• Snowy Tower: Parzival and the Wet, Black Branch of Language

Shaw's telling of the Grail epic Parzival, claimed as a great trickster story of medieval Europe.

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• Scatterlings: Getting Claimed in the Age of Amnesia

​Shaw walks the myth-lines of seven stories based around Dartmoor, using what actually occurs on these walks as the main source of information on the tales.

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• Smoke Hole: Looking to the Wild in the Time of the Spyglass

Three metaphors to help us understand our world in a time of pandemic, fake news, climate crisis, and addictive technology.

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• Wolf Milk: A Reflection on Wilderness Rites of Passage

Shaw's reflection on twenty years of guiding vision fasts and wilderness initiation. For those called to this work.

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Steven Foster & Meredith Little — School of Lost Borders

Steven Foster and Meredith Little co-founded the School of Lost Borders in 1981, pioneering modern wilderness rites of passage through the vision fast. Their work has trained thousands of guides and touched countless lives. These books are foundational texts for anyone doing or seeking threshold work.

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• The Book of the Vision Quest: Personal Transformation in the Wilderness

The foundational text on modern vision fasting. How to prepare for, undergo, and integrate a wilderness rite of passage.

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• The Roaring of the Sacred River: The Wilderness Quest for Vision and Self-Healing

A deeper exploration of wilderness questing as a path of vision and healing. Poetry and practice woven together.

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• The Four Shields: The Initiatory Seasons of Human Nature

A teaching on the four directions as developmental stages and initiatory seasons. This framework underlies much contemporary rites of passage work.

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• The Final Crossing: Death and Dying as a Rite of Passage

Foster and Little's work on conscious dying as ultimate threshold crossing. Essential for anyone working with death and dying.

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• Lost Borders: A Vision Fast Handbook for Youth Coming of Age in the Wilderness

Guidance for youth rites of passage ceremonies. For parents, guides, and young people approaching the threshold of adulthood.

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• The Soul's Red Thread: Memoirs of a Guide by Meredith Little

Meredith's intimate memoir of founding the School, the love story with Steven, and decades of guiding wilderness initiation.

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• The Way of Council by Jack Zimmerman & Virginia Coyle

The practice of council—speaking and listening from the heart in circle. Foundational for anyone doing group work.

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Indigenous Memoir & Narrative

 

Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot (First Nations)

A powerful, poetic memoir of Indigenous experience, trauma, and reclamation.

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Educators, Courses & Trainings I Recommend

These are programs I've completed that profoundly shaped my practice. I recommend them for both

personal healing and professional development.

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Roots of Liberation

https://www.elizabetagonzalez.com/justice-thriving

Offers a menu of self-paced online courses with videos, spoken word poetry, visuals, and audio to support the learning of often untold histories and realities of inequity in the US. When we better understand how structural inequities were created and how we were socialized to internalize unconscious bias, we have greater capacity to engage in collective liberation work. Courses do not need to be viewed in a certain order. Each course is between 1.5 - 2 hours. If you wish to donate to honor the course content (75% of proceeds are donated to BIPOC-led nonprofits), you can venmo elizabetamgonzalez@gmail.com.

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Somatic Archeology

https://www.somaticarchaeology.com/

Dr. Ruby Gibson- For over 35 years, Dr. Gibson has been dedicated to the work of Historical Trauma reconciliation, cultural healing, and wellness among Native and Indigenous Peoples all around Turtle Island, and abroad in Europe and Australia. She offers a earth-centered & transformative training offers a one-of-kind healing approach to complex transgenerational trauma.

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Erotics of Liberation

https://www.eroticsofliberation.com/about

Care (they/them) is a light-skinned Black trans non binary abolitionist somatic practitioner, artist & doula who works on re-membering embodied experiences of awe, connection, miracles & care. Their work blooms at the intersection of Black interiority, somatic memory and queer intimacies. 

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Alchemical Alignment Practitioner Training

alchemicalalignment.com/aboutthetraining

Specialized training for working with freeze, trauma, and the full spectrum of nervous system states. This is the modality I use in my Alchemical Alignment sessions.

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The Magic of the Tides with Joseph Saine

alchemicalalignment.com/magic-of-tides-js

Advanced work with craniosacral rhythms and the tidal body. Beautiful deepening for craniosacral practitioners. 

In this series of 7 classes for somatic seekers, we will explore the deeper foundations of Biodynamic Bodywork through somatic listening, deep ecology, multidimensional anatomy, and the new scientific understanding of water. Biodynamics as embodied in Craniosacral and Visceral Therapeutics work with the coherence of the fluid body where physical and energetic patterns meet.

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Biodynamic Craniosacral Training — Colorado School of Energy Studies

energyschool.com/bcst-training

Comprehensive biodynamic craniosacral training. Where I developed my craniosacral skills and understanding of the Breath of Life.

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Soulskin Journeys

soulskinjourneys.com

Soulskin Journeys welcome all women (cis + trans), non-binary, and gender non-conforming people who want to participate in our inclusive space. We invite adults ages 18+ from diverse ethnic, racial, religious groups, gender identities, and sexual orientations. We do our best to accommodate diverse physical abilities, but due to the nature of our environment and activities on the land, there are some inherent limitations, so please connect with us if you have questions regarding whether this those programs are fully accessible to you in this way.

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Wild Mountain Retreats

wildmountainretreats.org/events

Wild Mountain is non-profit organization dedicated to community wellness and reciprocity. We are a welcoming and inclusive place where people are invited to connect with the wild places on the land and inside themselves. Our intention is that land based ceremonies are a place of belonging and celebration for Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (QTBIPOC).

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Ancestral Medicine with Daniel Foor

ancestralmedicine.org

Rigorous, ethical training in ancestral healing. Daniel's work informed how I approach lineage repair and working with the well ancestors. Highly recommended for anyone called to ancestral work.

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Last Mask Center for Shamanic Healing

lastmaskcenter.org

Shamanic healing training and resources. For those called to earth-based ceremonial healing.

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Engaged Somatics with Annie Brook

anniebrook.com/EngagedSomatics

Pre/perinatal somatic psychology and attachment work. Annie's training transformed how I understand early development and its imprint on the body.

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Re-Human School

https://rehuman.mykajabi.com/

Indigenous-Led Online Courses Mobilizing Humanity towards Regeneration. Dr. Lyla June Johnston (Diné/Tsétsêhéstâhese) specializes in Indigenous Regenerative Ecosystem Design. Through the survey and study of hundreds of case studies of successful Indigenous food systems, she has developed an understanding of some of the physical and moral attributes of these land management strategies.

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Podcasts

For when you want to learn while you move, drive, or rest.

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The Emerald

Deep dives into animism, mythology, and what it means to be human in relationship with the living world. One of my favorites.

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We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle

Honest conversations about doing hard things together. Accessible and heartfelt.

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Holistic Life Navigation

Practical wisdom for navigating life holistically.

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Other Others with Tyson Yunkaporta

Indigenous perspectives on... everything. Companion to his book Sand Talk.

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Finding Our Way with Prentis Hemphill

Somatics, belonging, and collective liberation.

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A Note on Recommendations

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This list reflects my own journey and isn't exhaustive. I update it as I discover new resources.

Not every book or course here will resonate with every person. Some of these recommendations contain perspectives I don't fully agree with—I've included them because they offered something valuable despite imperfection. Trust your own knowing about what's right for you.

If a book or teacher has profoundly shaped your path and you think I should know about them, I'd love to hear—reach out and share.

 

The altar is waiting. So is the next teaching, gathering or book that inspires and calls you deeper.