This Is Your Body on Trauma
How to Nourish Safety, Resilience, and Connection with Polyvagal-Informed Nutrition
On Sale October 28, 2025
Published by Health Communications Inc, Distributed by Simon & Schuster
"Meg Bowman has written the book so many people have been waiting for - including me!”
“This Is Your Body on Trauma beautifully bridges the science of the nervous system with the lived experience of eating and healing after trauma. Her approach is compassionate, grounded in both experience and research, and deeply respectful of each person’s capacity for change. I am so grateful to have Meg's book on my shelf to recommend to both clients and clinicians."
Marci Evans, MS, RDN, LDN, CEDS-C
What is often overlooked…
Trauma is pervasive, and recovery usually involves extensive talk therapy.
What is often overlooked is using nutrition as a way to restore a sense of safety and self-trust.
The gut is often our first indicator that something is awry; it is the watchtower raising the alarm, and the existence of trauma can create a negative feedback loop with the brain that leads to several quite common gut-brain axis complaints, such as anxiety, depression, IBS, and pain.
Peek Inside This is Your Body on Trauma
Part 1: A Different Approach to Nutrition
1. Why Did I Get Sick?
2. Why Is It So Hard to Eat Healthy?
3. Where Did My Relationship With Food Go Wrong?
4. How Do I Actually Choose a Way of Eating That Works?
Part 2: What Comes After Your Body Keeps the Score?
5. FIGS Starts With Food: Are You Getting What You Need?
6. I Is for Inflammation: Trauma Drives It; How Do You Want To Reduce It?
7. You Can Calm The Fire: How to Lower Inflammation and Support Healing.
8. That Gut Feeling? It’s Your Nervous System Talking.
9. Your Gut May Have Trouble Maintaining Good Boundaries; Support It.
10. Stress Shapes Your Symptoms: How to Build More Resilience.
Part 3: Building Approachable and Sustainable Tool Kits
11. Building Your Survival Nutrition Tool Kit
12. Building Your Ventral Regulation Nutrition Tool Kit
"This is a groundbreaking book!”
“Meg exquisitely interweaves polyvagal theory with her nutritional wisdom to create an easy to read roadmap for healing. The safety created within the multiple exercises, and suggestions she has shared in her writing, will reach so many. This book is a true gift to the recovery community!!"
Tina Zorger Psy.D, Clinical Psychologist and Assistant Director of Deb Dana’s Foundation's Trainings
More Than “Just” a Nutrition Book
This Is Your Body on Trauma is the first book to teach readers how to use nutrition to heal underlying trauma that presents in physical symptoms. It features a unique do-it-yourself approach, allowing people to completely customize their care plan.
Using a unique, customizable approach, readers are given a series of experiments based on recommendations, formulating their needs and providing actionable solutions to lessen the perception of stress with nutrition.
Order This is Your Body on Trauma
Embark on a powerful journey with This Is Your Body on Trauma—a deeply human exploration of how stress and survival shape our biology, our relationship with food, and our capacity for safety and connection. Blending science, story, and compassion, it invites you to rediscover what it means to feel nourished—in body, mind, and nervous system.
“In This Is Your Body on Trauma, Meg Bowman offers a radical yet deeply intuitive truth: that healing isn’t just about the mind, but about the whole body.”
“With wisdom, warmth, and a trauma-informed lens, she reminds us that food is not something to control, but a pathway back to safety and self-trust. This book is both practical and profoundly hopeful—it feels like a steady hand on your shoulder, showing you that nourishment can be a doorway to resilience, connection, and healing.”
Abbie Attwood, MS, Owner of Abbie Attwood Wellness and host of Full Plate Podcast
Meet Meg
Meg Bowman is a licensed nutritionist who helps people with conditions that make life tough.
As an integrative clinical nutritionist specializing in mental health issues and the physical conditions that go with them, Meg works with clients to nourish their mind, body, and nervous system. She uses food, herbs, and supplements, as well as biofeedback tools and integrative practices, to support her clients’ needs.