Lifting Heavy Things

Your body can be a vehicle for emotional healing

Laura Khoudari blends practical training advice and neuroscience insights with a candid and endearing account of her own personal journey, from angry and alienated teen smoker and gym class truant, to young woman with crippling back pain, to 40-something athlete and fitness professional who has reclaimed her power and dedicated her life to helping others do the same.

Part personal narrative, part practical practices, and steeped in research, this book is a must-have for anyone looking for an original approach to moving through stages of healing to thriving. Khoudari tenderly takes her reader through the stages of healing from trauma from the ground up, offering practical applications of how to use training to heal and lift heavy things both physically and figuratively. She explores:

• Trauma-informed strength training for women
• Managing chronic pain
• Creating the conditions for training and healing
• Understanding how trauma shows up in daily life
• Using embodied movement practices (beyond yoga) as a tool to comfortably re-inhabit the body
• Navigating interpersonal relationships during and after the healing process
• Why you don’t have to tell your trauma story (to everyone)
• Thriving with and moving beyond trauma

Although this book speaks in the language of gym bags, squats, and reps, its principles apply to anyone interested in rediscovering peace, joy, and strength in their body after suffering a devastating event. Hopeful, instructive, and articulate, Lifting Heavy Things will appeal to members of the fitness and wellness community who want to expand their trauma-informed skills, and to individuals on a healing path who seek a modality that will meet them where they are and move with them at their own pace. With humor, tenderness, and grit, Lifting Heavy Things takes readers on a journey of personal revelation and integration, helping them to lighten their emotional burden and build deep inner strength to lift all of the heavy things that life may bring with greater ease.

Laura Khoudari

Laura Khoudari is passionate about giving people the tools they need to heal from trauma and cultivate mental health and wellness. Her approach to strength training restores nervous system health, fosters a sense of safety in the body, and gives people the tools they need to process trauma so they may move beyond surviving and begin thriving. Her work has been widely recognized by the trauma and fitness community, and she has been featured on Buzzfeed, Upworthy, Outside Online, Medium, Tonic, and Girls Gone Strong.

“An empowering guide for anyone who wants to experience exercise as an act of self-care. More than just an introduction to lifting weights, this book shares a new way of relating to your body.”

Kelly McGonigal, author of The Joy of Movement

“A unique and beautiful book. This advice is both deep and practical, and can be used by anyone interested in a stereotype-breaking story about trauma and how we might heal from it.”

Ethan Nichtern, author of The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path

“This is a book I will use in my practice with clients working to heal trauma.”

Haven Fyfe Kiernan, LICSW, psychotherapist and trauma specialist

“Lifting Heavy Things has ‘raised the bar’ by revealing how movement can be the satisfying basis of healing trauma.”

Dan Cayer, Alexander Technique teacher and contributor to The In-Between newsletter