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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Books

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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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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 Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem

Racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies. Essential reading for anyone doing healing work in these times.

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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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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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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" and his interview on

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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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The Science of Being Transgender — YouTube Video

Clear, science-based explanation. Helpful for understanding and supporting trans folks.

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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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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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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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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 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 — Read here

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

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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.

 

Soul Retrieval by Sandra Ingerman

Mending the fragmented self through shamanic practice. A classic in the field.

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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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The Breath of God by Swami Chetanananda

Teachings on breath and spiritual awakening.

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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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A Guide to Green Hope Farm Flower Essences by Molly Sheehan

For those called to work with flower essences.

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Bridge of Light by LaUna Huffines

Tools of light for spiritual transformation.

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Anna, Grandmother of Jesus by Claire Heartsong

For those drawn to the Magdalene lineage and light conception teachings.

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Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins, MD, PhD

The hidden determinants of human behavior. Consciousness research.

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The Magdalen Manuscript by Tom Kenyon & Judi Sion

The alchemies of Horus and the sex magic of Isis. For those called to sacred sexuality and Egyptian mysteries.

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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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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. This book offers a blueprint for individual maturation and cultural transformation—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. Plotkin offers a revolutionary understanding of the full range of human consciousness.

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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. For those ready to descend.

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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

Winner of the Nautilus Book Award, this was 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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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. Topics range from climate change and the soul to the discipline of erotic consciousness to the hallucination of empire.

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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. The swoop of raven, the swamp, the thinking that moves through him—all form relationship between land and story.

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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, taking much of your vitality with them. Shaw challenges us to examine our broken relationship with the world through two ancient European fairy 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. A passionate call to arms.

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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.

 

Liturgies of the Wild: Myths That Make Us:

Shaw argues that we live in a myth-impoverished age, vulnerable to stories that may not wish us well. Drawing on a thirty-year journey and a 101-night vigil in the Dartmoor forest, he shares how myth led him—unexpectedly—to Christ.

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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.

 

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 Trail to the Sacred Mountain: A Handbook for an Adult Wilderness Rite of Passage

A practical handbook for preparing for and undertaking a vision fast. Revised in 2025.

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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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Rites and Responsibilities: A Guide to Growing Up

A guide for youth on what it means to take on adult responsibilities through rites of passage.

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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 School of Lost Borders: A Love Story by Meredith Little

The story of the School's founding—"the love for wild nature and an unflinching courage to turn into the heat of natural life transitions."

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We Who Have Gone Before: Memory and an Old Wilderness Midwife

Reflections on the lineage and memory of this work.

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Bound for the Crags of Ithaka

The Odyssean journey as initiatory map.

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Dying for Beginners

A small, essential book on approaching death as threshold.

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The Way of Council by Jack Zimmerman & Virginia Coyle

(Carried by Lost Borders Press)

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

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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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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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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.

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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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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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Soulskin Journeys

https://www.soulskinjourneys.com/

Women's wilderness rites of passage for radical remembrance and reclaiming your intact, authentic self. Transformative threshold work I participated in and assisted with for several years.

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Wild Mountain Retreats

wildmountainretreats.org/events

Wilderness rites of passage and nature-based healing. Transformative immersion experiences.

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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

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

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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.

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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.

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The altar is waiting. So is the next book that will change your life.