Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time

by Laura Khoudari, Licia Sky (Foreword by)

Overview

A celebrated strength trainer and trauma practitioner offers a fresh and empowering approach to healing and thriving after trauma.

In this innovative title, celebrated trainer and trauma practitioner Laura Khoudari brings a fresh approach to healing after trauma, using strength training as an embodied movement practice. Compassionate, witty and fastidiously researched, Khoudari’s debut, Lifting Heavy Things, is a breakthrough title that will empower and inspire you to develop resilience and build emotional and physical strength through working out with weights, while mindful of the ways that trauma can compromise the wellbeing of the mind and body.

In Lifting Heavy Things, you’ll learn about:

Managing chronic pain
Creating the conditions for training and healing
Understanding how trauma shows up in daily life
Using embodied movement practices (beyond yoga) as a tool to comfortably re-inhabit the body
Navigating interpersonal relationships during and after the healing process
Why you don’t have to tell your trauma story (to everyone)
​Thriving with and moving beyond trauma
With humor, tenderness and grit, Lifting Heavy Things takes readers on a journey of personal revelation and integration, helping them to lighten their emotional burden and build deep inner strength to lift all of the heavy things that life may bring with greater ease.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781928055778
Publisher:	Wonderwell Press
Publication date:	05/25/2021
Pages:	216
Sales rank:	420,796
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

A certified trauma practitioner and personal trainer, Laura Khoudari is passionate about giving people the tools they need to heal from trauma and cultivate mental health and wellness. Her work has been widely recognized by the trauma and fitness community, and she has been featured on Buzzfeed, UpWorthy, Outside Online, Medium, Tonic, and Girls Gone Strong. A lifelong student and writer, she is currently pursuing her Master’s of Counseling for Mental Health and Wellness at New York University. She lives in New York City with her family and two cats.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

My Trauma Story That I Never Tell xiii

Author's Note on Privacy xv

Introduction 1

Take Action: Conduct Your Own Intake 15

Part I Conditions

Chapter 1 Preparing to Lift Heavy Things 21

Take Action: Passing the Ball Back and Forth 32

Chapter 2 Shifting Your Relationship with Your Body 35

Take Action: Reflect on the Habit of Negative Self-Talk 43

Chapter 3 Examining Your Workout Baggage 45

Take Action: Unpacking and Repacking 53

Chapter 4 Orienting to Your Space and Your Workout 55

Take Action: Orienting to Your Space Through Sight and Sound 63

Part II Activation

Chapter 5 Fostering Your Mind-Body Connection 67

Take Action: Establish a Mind-Body Connection During Warm-up 74

Chapter 6 Trauma and Time 81

Take Action: Settle and Integrate 89

Chapter 7 Strength Training as an Embodied Movement Practice 91

Take Action: Learn to Hip Hinge Mindfully 102

Chapter 8 Claiming Your Agency 105

Take Action: Give Parts of Your Body a Voice 113

Chapter 9 Finding and Restoring Your Boundaries 115

Take Action: Push Away 121

Part III Recovery

Chapter 10 Increasing Your Resilience with Recovery 125

Take Action: Steady-State Cardio for Active Recovery 132

Chapter 11 Start Somewhere 137

Take Action: Get Curious About Your Strengths 144

Chapter 12 Healing Your Relationships and Finding Connections 147

Take Action: Practice Co-Regulation 155

Chapter 13 (Not) Telling Your Story 159

Take Action: Pause Before You Post 168

Chapter 14 What Moves You? 171

Take Action: Pause Before You Move 179

Resource Guide 181

Acknowledgments 185

Endnotes 187

Index 191

About the Author 197

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“An empowering guide for anyone who wants to experience exercise as an act of self-care. More than just an introduction to lifting weights, this book shares a new way of relating to your body.”

—Kelly McGonigal, author of The Joy of Movement

“A unique and beautiful book. This advice is both deep and practical, and can be used by anyone interested in a stereotype-breaking story about trauma and how we might heal from it.”

—Ethan Nichtern, author of The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path

“This is a book I will use in my practice with clients working to heal trauma.”

—Haven Fyfe Kiernan, LICSW, psychotherapist and trauma specialist

“Lifting Heavy Things has ‘raised the bar’ by revealing how movement can be the satisfying basis of healing trauma.”
—Dan Cayer, Alexander Technique teacher and contributor to The In-Between newsletter