Laura Khoudari is passionate about giving people the tools they need to heal from trauma and cultivate mental health and wellness. It is her mission to increase access to body-based treatment for individuals living with trauma, chronic stress, and chronic pain, in order to help them feel safe in their bodies, create the conditions for healing, improve their quality of life, and begin to thrive. Her holistic programs draw from body-based trauma healing modalities, neuropsychological models, psychodynamic theory, mindfulness practices, and exercise science. 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.

In Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time, 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.

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.