Buddhist Practices for Healing Trauma

by Tim Desmond

A transformative and accessible path to profound emotional healing.


While many mental health books draw on secular mindfulness, Buddhist Practices for Healing Trauma offers something a comprehensive healing path grounded in the full breadth of Buddhist wisdom. Drawing from ancient sutras, traditional metaphors, and modern psychology, Tim Desmond—a psychotherapist and longtime student of Thich Nhat Hanh—guides readers through a journey of strengthening, acceptance, and transformation.


Each short chapter offers a concrete practice, from visualizing your five-year-old self to embracing suffering as compost for growth. Interwoven with teachings on non-self, the Discourse on Happiness, and the transformational power of loving–awareness, this book goes beyond symptom relief to support deep spiritual and emotional healing. Gentle, profound, and accessible, this is not just a guide to feeling better—it’s a path toward liberation. For readers seeking trauma recovery through Buddhist practice—not just Buddhist-flavored therapy—this book offers a rare and authentic resource.

Genres: Buddhism

224 pages, Paperback

Published June 16, 2026

About the author

TIM DESMOND is a Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Antioch University, teaching psychotherapy rooted in self-compassion. Author of Self-Compassion in Psychotherapy and How to Stay Human in a F*cked Up World, he led a team at Google that developed a practice for predicting counselor efficacy. Desmond is also a student of Thich Nhat Hanh.

Reviews

[Emilie]

Buddhist Practices for Healing Trauma by Tim Desmond offers a transformative, accessible and deeply positive path towards emotional healing. Drawing from ancient wisdom, traditional metaphors and modern psychology, Desmond guides readers through a journey of strengthening, acceptance and self-compassion. The book relies on a practical four-stage circuit rooted in breathing techniques, mindfulness and meditation, with short chapters that provide concrete steps (such as visualising your five-year-old self) to navigate pain.

I found this book incredibly interesting, insightful and calming. One of the standout elements for me was the author's wonderful use of metaphors, particularly using seeds to describe feelings like suffering, joy and happiness. He also frames trauma as "garbage" that can eventually be transformed into compost, a mandatory element required to grow beautiful flowers. This honest, reflective approach completely shifted my perspective, reinforcing a deep sense of kindness and compassion for myself. Even without actively performing every single exercise, simply reading it made me look at my own life, traumas and triggers in a completely different light.

I initially picked up this book to learn more about techniques to support my adoptive child who has experienced trauma, with the hope of teaching her these valuable tools as she grows. It is absolutely a resource I will refer back to frequently. My only wish is that the book came with a companion poster outlining each step and practice, which is actually something I plan to create myself to help support my family.

As the author highlights, we all deal with past traumas of varying intensities. Because the book is so easy to read and follow, I highly recommend it to anyone looking to understand trauma healing or simply wanting to cultivate a calmer day-to-day life. While not every single chapter may feel personally relevant to your situation, it is bound to provide at least one simple, powerful tool for your daily routine.

[Caroline]

This is such a difficult book to describe. It has short chapters that explore trauma from a Buddhist perspective, it’s a book that could have been written for me so it’s hard for me to think how it would translate to the general population. In the intro it talks about the book not being a replacement for training and supervision then there is a lot of mention of managing your trauma, I guess this acknowledges that therapists have trauma and this would be especially helpful for vicarious trauma related to providing therapy. I also think this book could be tweaked to become a self help book and I understand of the complexity of doing this due to the difficulty people with trauma would have in using these teachings without the support of therapy.
I tended to read a few chapters last thing at night and found it calming and reflective. I think it is well written and explores trauma in a way I’d not seen before and I have read a lot of trauma books. It explores Buddhism in a way I have not read before and again I have read a lot of books on this subject. Saying all this the writing style is simple, uncomplicated and accessible. There are so many practical exercises described and whilst it is about trauma i could not see any thing that would be triggering. Often, when you work with people with trauma you want to develop your skills but you don’t necessarily want to read a book that details trauma and I found this book very calming and safe for me to read at home.
Self care and compassion are front and centre of this book and I am looking forward to getting my own physical copy. There are so many practical additions that the book offers to the training that I have already completed to help me further develop my Buddhist practice as well as my therapeutic interventions.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this book for my consideration, this is all my own rambling, honest and personal opinion.

[Helen]

This is a nice book - easy to read and digest and explains Buddhist practices without making it too complex. There were some bits that really resonated with me like the analogy of the seed of suffering and being careful not to water it. I also really liked the narrative around what is self-compassion and what isn’t. I would recommend this to those that want to put some balance in their life when times are difficult. Thanks to NetGalley and WW Norton for the ARC.