Ed Nash shouldn't be reading audio books

...and who ever directed this reading was out to lunch at the very least. What a mess!

Viscera. Say it: vis·cer·a, emphasis on the vis. This word is used almost every page in this book and he never figures out how to say it. And viscera is not the only bizarre mispronunciation.

Then there is punctuation. Mostly ignored. Headings? Just run them into the next sentence. Comas? Ignore or treat as periods.

I will never buy another book read by Ed. Ed need to find another line of work. He almost manages to ruin this otherwise brilliant book. There were a few sentences where he did so much creative pronunciation that I wasn't sure it was English.

117 people found this helpful

Great book, poor performance

This is an important and helpful book. I recommend it highly for the contents. The narration of the audio book, however will be very distracting for anyone who cares much about words. He reader seems not to have been familiar with much of the author’s terminology, and the producers of the audiobook seem not to have wasted much energy editing the performance. It really is a disappointing flaw in an otherwise valuable book.

69 people found this helpful

Great content! Confusing narration.

I found the information in this book incredibly useful in my practice. I enjoy Peter Levine's approach and all of the insights into trauma.
My largest critique is of the narrating. I much prefer the books that Peter reads for himself. It adds great texture to the experience.
Ed is not a mental health professional, therefore made some confusing interpretations of the words "viscera" and "id" (from Freud's id, ego, super ego theory). Each time he made the mistake, I had to double take, rewind, and internally correct the mispronunciation so I could understand the content. I recommend a revision that corrects these mistakes. They are significant.

63 people found this helpful

Great story. Needs a new narrator.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Ed Nash?

someone that can pronounce the words. He read to fast like he wasn't even reading the book. It was hard to listen to. Esp. every time he mispronounced Visera. It's almost on every other page and It was painful.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

no

46 people found this helpful

Beyond Exceptional

I'm now reading every single book that Levine has published. The Body Keeps Score is still my favorite book of all time, but I think that Levine's books (at least those I've read so far) and absolutely incredible. These should be required reading for everyone.

23 people found this helpful

Excellent, in-depth

This work beautifully builds on Peter Levine’s book ‘waking the tiger’ with new insights and latest research. He provides an excellent review of our brain’s evolution and function and how we adapt and struggle with the effects of trauma as well as the stresses of disconnection in modern life. By trusting our body’s innate intelligence and guidance, we can come back to feeling whole again - there is hope for all sorts of trauma through working with the body. Very inspiring !

The audio version is challenging in places where the narrator struggles with medical and foreign words that are spoken can’t be recognized—it would be nice to fix that so the listener can understand the message.

Overall a great book!

18 people found this helpful

Constant Mispronunciations a Distraction

The constant mispronunciation of words that are central to the subject addressed in this book was done to distraction!
It was blatantly careless on the part of the reader. Don’t these recordings get edited?

15 people found this helpful

Casual misogyny makes it awkward

Wile I am grateful for Dr Levine’s work that normalizes shaking as an appropriate and healthy response to trauma, I’m disappointed by his casual misogyny and urge him to peel back these layers of his conditioning in order to better communicate with and treat women.

The story of Picasso as predator using a woman’s freeze instinct to immobilize her described as “consensual” is problematic. Especially coming from a therapist who has worked with victims of rape - although his description of this work does seem to only apply to “stranger” rape. The trauma inflicted by Picasso on the women in his life is well known. https://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/art-politics/the_picasso_problem_why_we_shouldnt_separate_the_art_from_the_artists_misogyny-55120

I’m going to continue to listen, hoping Dr Levine will redeem himself. I’ll update if he does.

7 people found this helpful

Please school the narrator

Peter Levine’s book is a deep, exacting, and critical work for anyone in the healing professions seeking to understand the somatic relationship in guiding people as they heal from trauma. I strongly recommend reading this book!
However, Ed Nash, the narrator, is disappointing as the voice of this audio volume. We may choose to graciously forgive his mispronunciation of various medical and scientific words, but his repeated pronunciation of the word id as I.D. (as in “the ego and the I.D.”) was so grating as to cause me to clinch my ears.
If reading the paper addition is a possibility for you, I strongly recommend it.

6 people found this helpful

Going deep in understanding body and reactions

This book has an AMAZING content! It is powerful, deep, truthful, relatable. I will study this book over and over (in print, though).

The audio voice is awful! The reader is not connected with the content, he sounds soo superficial and like he doesn't understand what he is reading. He may work for other superficial books, not for this type of book. I literally listened to this book twice at least because even the way he was reading was so hard for me to understand mainly because it felt sooooooo disconnected and foreign. It was almost like re-traumatizing for me because I had to listen about 4 times to be able to get over the voice and just focus on the content. I was sooooo easily tuning out with this voice, and I had to repeat and repeat forever every chunk. Also, he makes no pauses and it hard when he is starting a new topic.

6 people found this helpful