BONUS: What Did T Read in Health & Wellness? - 9 Books to Change Your Thinking

Here are some of my top picks when it comes to awesome books on the mind-body connection and/or what it takes to be healthy :-)

1) Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (Lori Gottlieb) After her boyfriend blindsides her with a breakup, Gottlieb – herself, a therapist – finds herself sitting on the sofa in another therapist’s office, bawling uncontrollably. With wit, humor, and gentleness, Gottlieb uses her own stories as both therapist and client to examine key issues of love, loss, and death. Example of author’s writing style:“I know that often people create faulty narratives to make themselves feel better in the moment even though it makes them feel worse over time—But I also know this: My boyfriend is a goddamn motherfucking selfish sociopath!!!!!!” 1/19/20 – 4 stars

I loved this book so much I hassled my own therapist into getting it.

2) Good Morning, Monster (Catherine Gildiner) This is a hard book to read, but really, really good. Dr. Gildiner tells about five patients she treated who were incredibly resilient in the face of trauma, neglect, and abuse. I’m giving it 4 stars because the last story didn’t seem to match the depth of breadth of the first 4… Gildiner kept referring to the mother as a psychopath but I never fully grasped why. The phrase “Good morning, monster” didn’t seem to be fully explored: the “good morning” shows civility and seems to leven the “monster” or make it sound sort of endearing. There was something about this final story that was more rushed and disjointed, just making it harder to understand. However, the first 4 were spectacular (if chilling) and I love how Gildiner interwove so many explanations of why psychotherapists do what they do and use different strategies. I’ll definitely be checking out her memoir! 8/25/25 - 4 stars

3) Think Like a Monk (Jay Shetty) An amazing look at meditation, breath work, service to others, visualization, and chanting to help bring the monkey mind under control! 11/5/22 - 5 stars

This book was FANTASTIC! Shetty wanted to be a monk so badly, but the monks decided he had a different dharma or life calling. He is married now and a great giver of mental health advice.

4) The Body Keeps the Score (Bessel van der Kolk) This was a tough read, but it was good. Perhaps I should have foreseen that reading about trauma could be…somewhat traumatic? It took me a lot longer to read than most other books because it was so intense. However, the author does a good job of explaining how trauma functions, as well as all the different treatment options someone might experiment with to overcome it. 4 stars -- 7/16/21

Van der Kolk is held in extremely high regard in the yoga community. His pioneering work at Harvard with EMDR is also documented in Kate Price's book "This Happened to Me."

5) What My Bones Know (Stefanie Foo) Author Stephanie Foo was diagnosed with Complex-PTSD brought on by prolonged childhood trauma. That’s the first 25% of the book. The author then undergoes a journey to discover how we store trauma in our bodies and how we can heal. This book is a rare blend of investigative reporting, memoir, and really good writing. 1/21/23 - 5 stars

As a yoga practitioner & instructor, and as someone with a lot of stored trauma, I cannot recommend this book enough.

6) Attached (Amir Levine) This book was AWESOME!! The authors took a complex topic (attachment theory) and put it all into laymen’s terms. I found myself highlighting or annotating almost the entire book. I think Amazon might have recommended this book to me? It was #1 in Sociology and will help you understand why you act the way you do. I immediately recommended it to friends! 5 stars - 5/3/19

Healing is a lot easier said than done when it comes to disorganized attachment styles. Still, you can't start healing until you know you have a problem. This book will help you figure out what your attachment style is & why you interact with others the way you do. Then you can begin to "do the work."

7) The Comfort Crisis (Michael Easter) Shoutout to my friend from church youth group MIMS for recommending this book, a rare re-read for me! Author Michael Easter travels to the Arctic Circle to hunt caribou and reflects on his research about humans and comfort. During a trip to Bhutan, he met with a lama or monk (to ask about the Bhutanese way of living and dying. The holy man noted that Westerners are obsessed with happiness and comfort, and we approach life like a checklist: here are all the things I have to do, see, and attain while on this planet. We spend next to no time contemplating death because we are scared. As a result, we are unhappy.
In contrast, Bhutan ranks 161st in GDP, but its people are consistently ranked amongst the happiest on earth. Why? The guru explains, "In the West, you measure personal comfort by income, so your government chases a high GDP. Our government recognizes that wealth and income are not the same thing, so they set out with the end goal not of increasing our nation's wealth, but rather its happiness." He goes on to explain that by recognizing the reality of Death, the Bhutanese can live a fuller and happier life. To paraphrase, "It's like there's a 500-foot cliff in front of us and we're all walking toward it. Westerners refuse to acknowledge the cliff. But if you acknowledge that the cliff is coming for everyone, you can make different choices: you can choose to slow down; or you can take a more scenic route; you can stop to really enjoy the journey." There was just so much here to think about! 7/7/22 - 5 stars

8) What Happened to You? (Bruce D. Perry) Trauma + Psychology + Oprah = a 4.5 star rating on GoodReads from 20,000+ reviews! This is a PHENOMENAL book on the effects of trauma and the importance of meaningful connections in reaching dysregulated humans. By changing the conversation from “What is wrong with you?” to “what happened to you?” we start to uncover the reasons why people act the way they do. Highly recommend for anyone who works with kids or just wants to understand how the mind and body interact. 2/24/22 - 5 stars

9) Four Thousand Weeks (Oliver Burkeman) It’s been awhile since I read a 5-star book but this is one! What do you do with your brief 4,000 weeks on earth? Stop and be intentional. This is one I definitely want to buy and mark up. ** I reread it as my first book of 2026. Still a great book! There are some good insights about how we can be more intentional, as well: getting a hobby you're really bad at; setting your phone's settings to greyscale, etc. 6/8/24 - 5 stars