Call of the wild How we heal trauma, awaken our own power, and use it for good

In the eponymous novel by Jack London, a dog, Buck, returns to his wolflike roots when he's kidnapped from his California home and taken to more primitive Alaska. In this guidebook by doula, yoga teacher, and "sexological bodyworker" Johnson, humans learn how to find their "inner wildness." Like Buck, Johnson relocates, with her daughter, from Rio de Janeiro to San Diego to Brooklyn. She offers enigmatic but intriguing observations, such as, "Developing a deeper relationship with your nervous system means learning to surf the waves it generates." Though she is not a medical doctor or a psychologist, she makes a good case for listening to the body. It speaks, she says, through thought, image, movement, emotion, and sensation (aka TIMES). She urges people to grow their capacity to stay blue (the color of joy, mirth, and peace) rather than red (the color of fear, anger, and sadness) and to embody their "inner predator" and remember their "fangs" and "prowess." Expect other unusual acronyms, including PIV (for penis-in-vagina sex) and such recommended resources as steamychick.com (for "vaginal steaming"). New Agers may find Johnson empowering.

Doula Johnson (The Fourth Trimester) draws on her experience working with women recovering from sexual and birth traumas in this quirky exploration of the physiology of traumatic experiences. She argues that psychotherapy, though helpful to some, can't help everyone because it is inherently mental and not physical. Instead, she recommends a more active approach through somatic therapy, which involves noticing the physical reactions one has to a difficult or traumatic experience. First, she shows readers how to "listen to body" by concentrating on TIMES (thought, image, movement, emotion, and sensation) and how to redirect one's emotional responses. Unfortunately, her recurrent suggestion to channel the instincts of a wild animal--because it's through the human body's animal instincts that the traumatized mind can be mastered--comes off as hokey: be "like a dog, who hears a sound far away and stands at attention with ears perked." Despite this, readers working through trauma may want to give this a spin. Agent: Stephanie Tade, Stephanie Tade Agency. (Apr.)