The Lab · Reading List
The intellectual spine of the practice.
An annotated, opinionated list — the books the founder reads from, teaches from, and returns to. Organised by lineage, not alphabet.
The intellectual spine
Polyvagal theory and its translators.
The conceptual foundation under everything Stillpoint does. Porges' work names the trainable physiology of safety; Dana operationalises it for practitioners; Nagoski translates it for the non-clinical reader.
The body-led tradition
Somatic-experiencing and trauma-resolution scholarship.
The three practitioners who established body-led work as a clinical discipline distinct from talk therapy. Read in order, they trace the arc from foundational claim to originating method to operational synthesis.
The mind-led companion
Inquiry, parts work, and the contemplative pairing.
Body-led work is not enough on its own. These three writers establish the cognitive and contemplative practices that pair with somatic work — the structured inquiry that lets a body-level shift land at the level of meaning.
The inherited body
Cultural context, racialised trauma, and the high-functioning adaptation.
The body is not only what one person has lived through. It is what a culture, a country, and a generation have asked of it. These writers situate the somatic field inside its wider context.
The Indian classical shelf
Read for register and lineage, not method.
The Stillpoint practice is India-made but built in English, and its method runs through the wider somatic canon rather than through Sanskrit scripture. These books are read with the same seriousness as the somatic shelf.
Where to start
Five paths into the list.
New to this conversation
Start with Burnout (Nagoski). Then move to The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory.
You have a meditation or breathwork practice
Start with The Pocket Guide (Porges). Pair it with Anchored (Dana).
You are a clinician or therapist
Start with Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (Ogden), then The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy (Dana).
Approaching from inherited or cultural trauma
Start with The Myth of Normal (Maté) or My Grandmother's Hands (Menakem).
Interested in the Indian classical lineage
Start with The Heart of Yoga (Desikachar). Read Krishnamurti for the register.
What is not on this list
Refusal as positioning.
This list does not include The Power of Now, The Untethered Soul, You Can Heal Your Life, The Secret, Atomic Habits, or most of the wellness-bestseller shelf. There is nothing wrong with several of those books; they are not the lineage Stillpoint draws from.
Stillpoint's intellectual position is specifically somatic, polyvagal-informed, scientifically grounded, English-primary, Indian-context-aware — and the reading list reflects that position rather than offering a comprehensive map of the wellness shelf.
If you think we are missing something true to the somatic, polyvagal, or inquiry lineage, write to contact@stillpointindia.org. We read everything.
Return to the body
Begin the practice.
The Lab is the intellectual home. The sessions are where the body starts to change.
Explore sessions