Gary Kaplan, DO: I highly recommend Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach (published 2004). Tara, a local psychologist and meditation teacher, shares insights about the natural tendency of our minds to storytell and strategize -- activities that often are based in fear and lead to great suffering.

I recommend this book to my patients as a way of helping them to distinquish their "pain" from their "suffering." Although physical pain may be an unavoidable part of life, the suffering we experience is largely determined by the story we tell ourselves about our pain. Time and time again, I see patients whose pain may be manageable, but whose feelings of fear, shame, guilt, remorse or anger make their suffering nearly unbearable.

Tara explains how these negative states can gradually dissolve by becoming aware of the stories we tell ourselves and facing into our own uncomfortable feelings. Drawing from her own experiences and those of her clients, Tara's message is honest, deeply respectful and potentially life-changing. It is available for purchase at the Clinic and bookstores or click here to order a copy.

Jodi Brayton, LICSW: Recently I have been working with Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body, by Peter Levine, PhD (published 2005). I am recommending it to patients and colleagues because it offers such a hopeful message about our innate ability, as humans, to rebound from traumatic injury.

Levine, a psychotherapist and former stress researcher, examines how survivors of accidents, disasters, or childhood traumas may endure lost-lasting symptoms ranging from anxiety and depression to unexplained physical pain.

This small book (91 pages) comes with 6 instructional CDs (9 hours) that can help readers increase their awareness of their own body's physiological responses to danger and identify where, within their own bodies, they might be storing unresolved distress. This book and CD set is an excellent resource for those motivated to understand, and ultimately free themselves from, the long-term effects of past trauma.