The Little Book of Somatic Healing | Bright Raven Press
Bright Raven | Non-Fiction
The Little Book of Somatic Healing
Daily practices and insights for a more flexible nervous system
Some days you wake up already unsteady. Nothing has happened, exactly, but your system is humming at the wrong frequency. You feel wired, or foggy, or close to tears, and the advice you've been given lives in a book too big to open when you actually need it.
This is the book for that moment.
Small enough to live in your bag, it's a pocket companion for the days your nervous system tips out of balance, whether you're anxious and wired, shut down and flat, or simply in need of something steadying. No wading through theory to reach the part that helps. Just find the state you're in, and the practice that meets it.
About The Book
It's the book I wanted my clients to be able to carry with them.
Inside, you'll find gentle, body-based practices for regulating in real time, at home or out in the world, alongside plain-language insight into why you struggle in the first place. Because so much of what feels like personal failing is really a nervous system doing its best under a particular kind of load, especially if you're neurodivergent, hypermobile, or moving through perimenopause, and especially where those things meet and amplify each other.
This isn't another self-help book to abandon a quarter of the way through. There's no padding here. Just the thing you reach for, when you reach for it.
You are not broken. You are not too much. You are a whole person, learning to feel safe in your own body, one practice at a time.
The Little Book of Somatic Healing is written by Claire Buttrum, psychotherapist, somatic therapist, and author of the novella Little Bird. A percentage of every sale funds The Little Bird Fund, providing subsidised sessions for young women in Cambridgeshire who couldn't otherwise access this support.
A pocket guide to somatic healing and nervous system regulation
The Little Book of Somatic Healing is a small, carry-anywhere guide to regulating your nervous system in the moments you need it most. Rooted in somatic therapy and polyvagal theory, it offers simple, body-based practices for the days you feel anxious and wired, shut down and flat, or simply unable to settle.
Unlike the many somatic exercise books written for a general audience, this one is written for the people so often left out of them: neurodivergent women, those living with hypermobility, and anyone moving through perimenopause, especially where these overlap and amplify one another. If you've ever wondered why nervous system regulation feels harder for you than the advice seems to assume, this book was written with you in mind.
Inside you'll find gentle somatic practices for grounding and calming an overwhelmed nervous system, plain-language insight into polyvagal theory and why your body responds the way it does, tools you can use discreetly at home or out in the world, and a way to track the early signs your nervous system is tipping out of balance. No jargon, no padding, and nothing you need to sit down and study. Just find the state you're in, and the practice that meets it.
Written by Claire Buttrum, a Level 7 qualified somatic trauma-informed practitioner based in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, and author of the novella Little Bird, it distils nearly three decades of work with the body into something you can hold in one hand.
“Our emotions are connected to our senses – very much so. If you are happy or sad, you can display it by a stim.”
Emma Dalmayne
Meet Your Author
Claire Buttrum
Author, Coach, and Therapist
“For much of my life, I’ve existed in fragments. As a neurodivergent, hypermobile woman, my journey has been peppered with the specific, heavy shame that comes when your way of being doesn't align with the world's expectations.”
Claire is a therapeutic coach based in St Ives, Cambridgeshire. Her therapeutic work with families and her own lived experience navigating neurodivergence, disordered eating, and mental health is the living foundation of Little Bird.
Little Bird is published under her own imprint, Bright Raven.
She is available for readings, Q&As, and events at bookshops and schools across Cambridgeshire and East Anglia.