Peter Levine > Quotes

“Apart from the regime of the Last Man, the other nightmare that plagued Nietzsche was the 'long plentitude and sequence of breakdown, destruction, ruin, and cataclysm that is now impending' as a result of the Death of God. The Death of God resulted when Christianity's chief virtue, truthfulness, was at last turned against religion. The search for historical truth resulted in skepticism about the transcendent claims of religion, and 'eventually turned against morality, discovered its teleology, its partial perspective....' Luther was an archetypical Christian who, impelled by the love of truth 'surrendered the holy books to everyone - until they finally came into the hands of the philologists, who are the destroyers of every faith that rests on books.' At times, it appears that for Nietzsche the death of God was a supremely liberating event, and one to be celebrated. On the other hand, he also speaks of an 'approaching gloom' which will overwhelm Europe as morality gradually perishes: 'this is the great spectacle in a hundred acts reserved for the next two centuries in Europe - the most terrible, most questionable, and perhaps also the most hopeful of all spectacles. -' So although Nietzsche harbors hopes for an eventual transvaluation of all values, he does not by any means consider this a foregone conclusion, nor does he look forward to the gloom and cataclysm that will result between the death of the old values and the birth of the new. 'Nihilism represents a pathological transitional stage,' he writes; and he wonders 'whether the productive forces are not yet strong enough, or whether decadence still hesitates and has not yet invented its remedies.”
― Peter Levine, Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities

“1.​You believe that, because your therapy has ended, your recovery has ended. 2.​You are willing to continue your recovery, but you are not sure what to work on. You decide that you’ll join a gym and see what happens. 3.​You develop a plan that takes you to the highest level of recovery possible. You know that your plan will change over time. Your plan has built-in goals. Achieving goals gives rise to new goals and new achievements. This forces an upward spiral of recovery.”
― Peter Levine, Stronger After Stroke: Your Roadmap to Recovery

“In short, trauma is about loss of connection to ourselves, to our bodies, to our families, to others, and to the world around us. This loss of connection is often hard to recognize, because it doesn't happen all at once. It can happen slowly, over time, and we adapt to these subtle changes sometimes without even noticing them. These are the hidden effects of trauma, the ones most of us keep to ourselves. We may simply sense that we do not feel quite right, without ever becoming fully aware of what is taking place; that is, the gradual undermining of our self-esteem, self-confidence, feelings of well-being, and connection to life.

Our choices become limited as we avoid certain feelings, people, situations, and places. The result of this gradual constriction of freedom is the loss of vitality and potential for the fulfillment of our dreams."

Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body, Peter Levine”
― Peter Levine

“A meaningful life depends upon a sense of aliveness and presence, both of which spring from intimate contact with internal body states.”
― Peter Levine