An erudite book about nervous system awareness that is too long on personal examples rather than collective solutions.
An attorney-turned-coach teaches readers how to rewire their brains and nervous systems in this self-help from Stephenson-Laws.
The first part of this instructional book on how to give yourself a neurological overhaul focuses on the practice of recognizing patterns through nonjudgmental awareness. Stephenson-Laws introduces the concept of “observer capacity,” or the ability to witness your physiology. In other words, she encourages separating the self from the experience (i.e., saying “I have anxiety” instead of “I am anxious”) and then explores the body’s “alarm system”: the ways the nervous system is formed through early caregiver interactions, direct experience, and cultural and family transmission. Readers also learn about the “inner protector,” whose cautionary function may prevent people from embracing the good things in life. Stephenson-Laws believes that emotions can also manifest physically, such as through jaw tension (anger), throat tightness (inability to express needs), or lower back pain (feeling unsupported). Readers are guided to return to their “neutral zones,” like earlobes, elbows, or pinky fingers, to remind themselves that they are safe. Part Two transforms this awareness into “gentle experiments” that nudge the nervous system into new territory. The author introduces the psychological concept of the “window of tolerance,” or the “zone where you can handle stress without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down,” and the factors that influence it, including sleep, hormones, anniversary reactions (e.g., responding to anniversary dates of particular traumas) and “social battery depletion.” The author distinguishes between accurate, historical, and capacity anxiety and describes the many guises of the “night guard,” which is the threat-scanning part of the nervous system that can disrupt sleep. The final chapters explore healing through healthy connection, addressing boundaries, nervous system syncing, and familial inheritance. In the end, the author emphasizes that real change is possible thanks to neuroplasticity.
Stephenson-Laws’ original approach combines neuroscience, somatic awareness, and lived experience. The reader will find plenty of practical tools to allow one to shift from reacting to responding, like the “three-step practice” of noticing, validating, and making a “tiny adjustment” to behavior. Readers are also equipped with scripts, such as engaging the inner protector with questions like, “What danger are you protecting me from?” In addition, established concepts like the “window of tolerance” are given a unique spin, such as identifying your capacity as either a “window day” (lots of capacity) or a “keyhole day” (very little capacity). More to the practical and less conceptual side of things, the author outlines helpful exercises to bring people back into their bodies, like “The Butterfly Hug,” which involves crossing the arms over the chest and tapping alternating shoulders for one to two minutes. The book also gives the cultural lenses through which to view phenomena like anxiety: “Some Indigenous communities view anxiety as disconnection from community or land rather than individual pathology.” The book’s eclectic structure includes everything from checklists and worksheets to conversation transcripts and poems, allowing readers various ways to engage with the content. However, the sheer volume of information may overwhelm readers seeking actionable advice in a more digestible format. While the author’s interactions with her son illustrate her lived experience, the deductions from said personal experience sometimes feel superfluous.
An erudite book about nervous system awareness that is too long on personal examples rather than collective solutions.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9798298590181
Page Count: 317
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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