Written by Nityda Gessel

ANCIENT WISDOM FOR MODERN USE

Review by Gunnel Minett

The author of this book is a former dancer, licensed somatic psychotherapist, trauma specialist, yoga teacher and ‘heart-centred activist’. She has developed a holistic healing modality that combines yoga and Buddhism with somatic psychotherapy which she describes in her book.

Somatic psychotherapy is a therapeutic approach that aims to ‘engage the body awareness as a powerful tool and intervention in therapy’, to engage the relationship between mind, body, brain, and behaviour. Each chapter concludes with guided yoga and meditation practices and the appendix has further explanations of these practices.. 

Following Buddhist tradition, the author discusses the concepts of Dukkha (usually is translated as ‘suffering’ or ‘unsatisfactoriness’ of life) and Samsara  (the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth). We are all carrying ‘baggage’ that we inherit from previous generation in the form of trauma and simply the consequences of living in societies where not everyone can get everything all the time, which leaves us with a certain level unsatisfactoriness.

Gessel  writes: “The Buddha taught of the eight worldly winds as a way to describe how we cling to samsara (suffering). Fuelled by either attachment or aversion. In samsara we navigate these eight worldly concerns. They are the attachment to pleasure and the aversion to pain, the attachment to gain (success) and the aversion to loss (failure), the attachment to praise and the aversion to blame, and the attachment to significance/fame (a need to be ‘“something”) snd the aversion to insignificance.” (P176)

The remedy offered is the combination of Buddhist philosophy, adapted to some extent to Western life, as well as the Yoga practices included in the somatic approach to psychotherapy. 

She writes: “In Buddhist psychology, external phenomena are understood as a mirror reflecting back at us the state of our own body-mind. Waking up and becoming more free involves awakening to the faulty ways in which we may perceive things, while compassionately holding the knowing the, in its natural state, our is already awake.” (P160)

The style in this book is soft and almost poetic at times. “There is no teaching that can swim you across the sea of darkness to the shore of light. The guru is within’” (p180) or “Know that the gates of nirvana are always open to you, should you choose to walk through. You were built for greatness.You have always been awake.(p182)

There is however another side to this book, with a difference approach and style, that we must assume reflects the ‘heart-centred activist’ that the author calls herself. Throughout the book there are references to race issues and inequalities in society, in particular, it seems in, the United States. “Regardless of our personal trauma history, simply living in a society where the collective burdens of white body supremacy, the cis-hetero-patriarchy, and capitalism continue to violate the humanity of so many, we are all harmed in our own way.” (P5) Or:  “Gain doesn’t bring happiness or peace, because we become preoccupies with trying to keep what we’ve got while also gaining more. The entire system of white supremacy was built to support the gain of of people in white bodies at the sacrifice of people in Black and Brown bodies.Yet, as we see, people in power are not free.They are in constant fear of losing their power.” (P176)

This theme would have benefitted from some further explanation. Given that the theme of the book is Buddhist psychology, it seems a bit odd that the book seems to target the American market in particular rather than the whole world, (in one place with encouragement for the reader to go to a land register that lists which indigenous people lived where in America before immigrants took over and occupied the land).There is surely a very good reason for the author to take this approach, but it would have improved the book if there had been some further of explanation of the two different themes.  

The explanations of Buddhist and language that forms the core of this book makes the book a good read for someone interested in self-exploration without feeling a need for deeper forms of psychotherapy or clinical explanations. In particular with such positive sentences as the one that ends the book: 

“Beautiful beings, we have arrived I am deeply humbled and forever grateful that you have trusted me to guide you through this journey. There is so much I wish for you, that I wish for this world.”(p191)

Published by W.W. Norton & Company, 2023, 234PP, £ 22.99, Hardcover, ISBN 1324020059