Trauma and Spirituality

• Draws on neuroscience, attachment theory, and cross-cultural healing traditions to show how unresolved trauma can become a portal to spiritual transformation

• Reveals the risks of spiritual practice for trauma survivors and offers somatic tools for safe, embodied integration

• Synthesizes shamanic soul retrieval, Buddhist philosophy, and nervous system science into a unified framework for healing and wholeness

Trauma is widely understood as something to overcome—a wound to be treated and, ideally, left behind. Peter A. Levine, PhD, offers a different perspective: that the very experiences which shatter us hold within them the seeds of our deepest awakening. Drawing on five decades of developing the clinical practice in Somatic Experiencing, Levine demonstrates how the body’s survival energies and instincts, when skillfully navigated, can open into states of ecstasy, belonging, and expanded consciousness.

Levine examines how trauma fragments human experience across sensation, emotion, behavior, and meaning, and he reveals how healing these fragments restores our psychological coherence and spiritual vitality. He draws on Buddhism, shamanism, Indigenous healing traditions, and neuroscience to illuminate the shared physiology of trauma and transcendence. Levine also addresses some of the risks of spiritual practice for those carrying unresolved trauma and offers trauma-informed guidance for meditators, clinicians, spiritual teachers, and seekers.

Trauma and Spirituality integrates science, spirituality, and somatic practice to provide a map of how the energies of survival can be consciously transformed into resilience, compassion, and embodied spiritual presence.