From acclaimed psychiatrist Dr. Ellen Vora comes a groundbreaking understanding of how anxiety manifests in the body and mind—and what we can do to overcome it.
THE ANATOMY OF ANXIETY:
Understanding and Overcoming the Body’s Fear Response
by Ellen Vora
Harper Wave, March 2022
(via Park & Fine)
Anxiety affects more than forty million Americans—a number that continues to climb in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. While conventional medicine tends to view anxiety as a “neck-up” problem—that is, one of brain chemistry and psychology—the truth is that the origins of anxiety are rooted in the body.
In THE ANATOMY OF ANXIETY, holistic psychiatrist Dr. Ellen Vora offers nothing less than a paradigm shift in our understanding of anxiety and mental health, suggesting that anxiety is not simply a brain disorder but a whole-body condition. In her clinical work, Dr. Vora has found time and again that the symptoms of anxiety can often be traced to imbalances in the body. The emotional and physical discomfort we experience—sleeplessness, brain fog, stomach pain, jitters—is a result of the body’s stress response. This physiological state can be triggered by challenging experiences as well as seemingly innocuous factors, such as diet and use of technology.
The good news is that this body-based anxiety, or, as Dr. Vora terms it, “false anxiety,” is easily treated. Once the body’s needs are addressed, Dr. Vora reframes any remaining symptoms not as a disorder but rather as an urgent plea from within. This “true anxiety” is a signal that something else is out of balance—in our lives, in our relationships, in the world. True anxiety serves as our inner compass, helping us recalibrate when we’re feeling lost.
Practical, informative, and deeply hopeful, THE ANATOMY OF ANXIETY is the first book to fully explain the origins of anxiety and offer a detailed road map for healing and growth.
Ellen Vora, MD, is a holistic psychiatrist, acupuncturist, and yoga teacher. She takes a functional medicine approach to mental health—considering the whole person and addressing imbalance at the root. Dr. Vora received her B.A. from Yale University and her M.D. from Columbia University, and she is board-certified in psychiatry and integrative holistic medicine. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

RISING TOGETHER will offer practical advice to help men and women move past impediments and establish relationships built on authenticity and trust. Finding a way to do this has become urgent in the wake of the pandemic. Working virtually has made questions of visibility, perception and assessment both more vital and more complex, while also undermining time-honored ways of building networks and alliances. These challenges will not disappear when we emerge from this period because the trend toward virtual work was already underway; the disruptions of 2020 simply accelerated it. Rising Together addresses the human questions on how we move forward.
Pulled around by desires and distractions, we’re so easily disconnected from ourselves. Life is happening right in front of us, and within us—but still, we manage to miss so much of it. AWAKE WHERE YOU ARE provides the antidote, inviting us to go deep into our own bodies, to inhabit our sensory experience carefully; to learn the art of living from the inside out, and in the process to find ease, clarity, and an authentic, unshakeable freedom. 
Every year millions of pediatric patients could benefit from hypnosis therapy to deal with and alleviate physical and psychological symptoms big and small. The benefits of hypnosis-facilitated therapy range from complete cures to small improvements. They extend beyond the physical and into the psychological and spiritual, building confidence, positivity and resilience. They include the empowerment of children with chronic health issues to feel more in control of their own minds, bodies and circumstances. They sometimes lead to the reduction or even elimination of medications. Hypnosis is painless, non-invasive, and cost-effective. It doesn’t preclude any other treatment, and drawbacks are virtually nonexistent.