Resources
Tools to support your work between sessions.
Before the exercises, a short note from Kyle on how to use these recordings. Start here if you're new to this kind of practice.
These are simple tools for slowing down, coming back to your body, and finding steadier ground when things feel like a lot. No experience needed and no such thing as doing them perfectly — find a quiet spot, sit or lie down, and take your time.
Grounding Recordings
These recordings are the same scripts Kyle uses in his mindfulness and Yoga Nidra classes and clinical sessions. Optional tools to help you find your footing when things feel unsteady.
360 Breathing
A guided breathwork exercise that builds awareness of your full breath: ribs, diaphragm, back, belly. Good for when you're feeling overwhelmed and need to slow down.
Yoga Nidra
A guided rest practice that moves through body awareness, breath, and visualization. No experience or flexibility required. Just lie down and follow along.
Grounding Meditation
A body scan and grounding practice. Moves from breath awareness through your whole body, then opens to sound and sight. Helpful before difficult conversations or after emotionally heavy days.
What We're Reading
Books we return to, recommend often, and think are worth your time.
On the Nervous System & the Body
The Body Keeps the Score
Bessel van der Kolk
AboutThe book that changed how the world talks about trauma.
Why we like itVan der Kolk makes the case that trauma lives in the body, not just the story we tell about it. Reading this often changes how a client understands what they've been carrying, and gives a vocabulary for the somatic side of our work.
Waking the Tiger
Peter Levine
AboutThe foundational text on somatic experiencing.
Why we like itLevine traces what the nervous system actually does in the wake of overwhelm. We lean on his framework constantly when working with clients whose intellectual understanding outpaces their felt sense of safety.
When the Body Says No
Gabor Maté
AboutHow chronic stress and suppressed emotion show up in the body.
Why we like itMaté connects autoimmune flare-ups, chronic illness, and emotional suppression in a way that's both scientifically careful and deeply humane. A useful read for clients who keep getting handed a physical diagnosis with no map for the emotional terrain underneath.
On Emotion-Focused Therapy & Attachment
Hold Me Tight
Sue Johnson
AboutThe most readable introduction to EFT for couples.
Why we like itIf you only read one couples book, make it this one. Johnson's seven conversations frame the cycles couples get stuck in as protests about connection, not character flaws, and that reframe alone unlocks a lot of stuck pain.
Wired for Love
Stan Tatkin
AboutA neurobiology-informed guide to understanding your partner, and yourself, in relationship.
Why we like itTatkin's framing of partners as anchors, islands, and waves gives couples a quick shared language for the way each person regulates (or doesn't). Practical, warm, and honest about the work.
Attached
Amir Levine & Rachel Heller
AboutHelps you understand your own attachment style and what to do with it.
Why we like itThe clearest mass-market introduction to attachment theory. We recommend this often to clients who suspect their relationship patterns aren't accidents but can't yet name what's underneath.
On Couples & Relationships
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
John Gottman
AboutForty years of research distilled into something you can actually use.
Why we like itGottman's predictors of relationship distress (the four horsemen) are the closest thing the field has to a diagnostic shorthand. Whether you're in a thriving relationship or a strained one, this gives you a vocabulary to name what's working.
Eight Dates
John & Julie Gottman
AboutEight conversations every couple should have, and how to have them.
Why we like itWe assign this between sessions sometimes. Each chapter is a structured conversation about money, sex, family, dreams, etc. with the prompts and questions ready to use. Low overhead, high yield.
Mating in Captivity
Esther Perel
AboutOn desire, intimacy, and keeping erotic life alive in long-term relationships.
Why we like itPerel asks the question most couples avoid: how do you sustain desire with the same person who has become your safe harbor? Her answer is paradoxical, careful, and honest about what gets in the way.
On Psychodynamic Understanding
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Lori Gottlieb
AboutA therapist's honest, human account of the work from both sides of the chair.
Why we like itGottlieb is in therapy while writing about being a therapist, and the dual perspective is what makes this readable. Anyone wondering what therapy actually feels like from the inside should start here.
The Examined Life
Stephen Grosz
AboutShort, quietly stunning vignettes from 25 years of psychoanalytic practice.
Why we like itGrosz writes the way a good therapist listens: patiently, without flourish, until the meaning surfaces. Each chapter is short enough to read at lunch and rich enough to think about for weeks.
On DBT & Skill-Building
The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook
McKay, Wood & Brantley
AboutPractical tools for managing big emotions.
Why we like itWhen a client needs concrete skills for distress tolerance and emotion regulation that they can practice between sessions, this workbook is what we point to. Direct, well-organized, no fluff.
On ACT & Getting Unstuck
The Happiness Trap
Russ Harris
AboutChallenges the idea that the goal is to feel good, and offers something more sustainable.
Why we like itHarris dismantles the cultural premise that we're supposed to feel good most of the time, and replaces it with something more durable: living a meaningful life with whatever you're feeling. The reframe is liberating once it lands.
On Grief & Loss
It's OK That You're Not OK
Megan Devine
AboutThe most honest book about grief we've found. Meets you where you are.
Why we like itDevine refuses the cultural pressure to make grief tidy, redemptive, or productive. If someone in your life is grieving and you're tired of platitudes, give them this.
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion
AboutA luminous memoir of grief.
Why we like itFor readers who want to feel understood rather than instructed. Didion's account of the year after her husband's death captures the strange logic the grieving mind invents, and the slow path back to a kind of recognition.
On Self-Compassion
Self-Compassion
Kristin Neff
AboutThe research behind why being hard on yourself doesn't help, and what to do instead.
Why we like itNeff is rigorous about the difference between self-compassion and self-indulgence, which matters because clients with harsh inner critics often hear 'self-compassion' as 'letting yourself off the hook.' She makes the case that it's actually the opposite.
Radical Acceptance
Tara Brach
AboutA gentler, meditation-rooted companion to Neff.
Why we like itWhen self-criticism runs deep enough that intellectual reframes don't reach it, Brach's contemplative approach often does. She combines Buddhist practice with clinical experience in a way that lands as practiced rather than performative.
On Eating Disorders & the Relationship with Food
The Food and Feelings Workbook
Karen Koenig
AboutExplores the emotional roots of disordered eating with practical exercises.
Why we like itWe frequently use this to accompany sessions when working on eating concerns. Koenig connects feelings to food behaviors in a way that's specific without being prescriptive, and the exercises are doable between sessions.