Waking the Tiger audiobook cover - Healing Trauma

Waking the Tiger

Healing Trauma

Peter A. Levine with Ann Frederick

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Categories:
PsychologyNature & the Environment

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Waking the Tiger
The Nature of Trauma+
The Stress Response & Freeze State+
Animal Wisdom for Healing+
Somatic Experiencing Techniques+
The Felt Sense+

Quiz — Test Your Understanding

Question 1 of 6
According to the text, why do wild animals rarely suffer from long-term trauma despite facing constant life-threatening dangers?
  • A. They lack the higher brain functions necessary to form long-term emotional memories.
  • B. They instinctively discharge pent-up survival energy through physiological responses like shaking and trembling.
  • C. Their fight-or-flight response is much shorter and less intense than that of human beings.
  • D. They live in highly supportive social structures that immediately soothe their nervous systems.
Question 2 of 6
What is the primary evolutionary purpose of the 'freeze' response in animals?
  • A. To rapidly repair damaged muscle tissue by lowering heart rate and blood pressure.
  • B. To intimidate predators by appearing unnatural and rigid.
  • C. To serve as a last-ditch survival strategy that might stop an attack and to protect against suffering through dissociation.
  • D. To conserve physical energy so the animal can fight back more aggressively later.
Question 3 of 6
Why do humans often fail to complete the stress response cycle, resulting in stored traumatic energy?
  • A. Human nervous systems are genetically predisposed to retain stress hormones longer than animal nervous systems.
  • B. Higher cognition distracts us from bodily sensations, and social conditioning encourages us to stoically 'hold ourselves together.'
  • C. Humans rarely experience the freeze response, which is necessary to trigger the release of pent-up energy.
  • D. Modern diets and sedentary lifestyles have weakened the human body's natural ability to shake and tremble.
Question 4 of 6
In somatic experiencing, what is the practice of 'pendulation'?
  • A. Alternating gently back and forth between grounding in the body and small amounts of traumatic material.
  • B. Bringing awareness to the present moment through the five senses to avoid being overwhelmed by past events.
  • C. Introducing a small, manageable amount of a stressor to provide carefully regulated exposure.
  • D. Releasing pent-up energies locked in the body through intentional shaking, stretching, or making sounds.
Question 5 of 6
How does psychologist Eugene Gendlin define the 'felt sense'?
  • A. The conscious, logical understanding of why a traumatic event occurred.
  • B. The physical pain experienced immediately after a traumatic injury.
  • C. A subtle, holistic, and pre-verbal bodily awareness of a particular issue or situation.
  • D. The emotional release that occurs during traditional talk therapy.
Question 6 of 6
What is the primary goal of the exercise where you imagine a fear-provoking scenario and then voluntarily return to a relaxed state?
  • A. To build a psychological tolerance to specific phobias by repeatedly visualizing them.
  • B. To train the body out of automatic dissociation and show the nervous system it can manage stressors without being overwhelmed.
  • C. To identify the specific childhood memory that is the root cause of one's current anxiety.
  • D. To permanently erase the traumatic memory from the brain's neural pathways.

Waking the Tiger — Full Chapter Overview

Waking the Tiger Summary & Overview

Waking the Tiger (1997) offers an enlightening perspective on trauma by exploring the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms. Using this knowledge, it then provides a pathway to healing through exercises that focus on bodily sensations.

Who Should Listen to Waking the Tiger?

  • Trauma survivors looking to understand and heal their symptoms
  • Readers fascinated by animal behavior and human nature
  • Anyone drawn to explore how awareness, instinct, and resilience can transform suffering

About the Author: Peter A. Levine with Ann Frederick

Peter Levine is the originator of Somatic Experiencing, an approach to healing trauma. He holds doctorates in Medical Biophysics and Psychology, and has published extensively on stress and trauma over his 30-year career. Peter Levine has consulted for NASA and taught trauma healing techniques at hospitals and pain clinics, and in indigenous communities in Europe and the United States.

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