THE MINDBODY PRESCRIPTION: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain

I am a Software developer & had chronic Wrist Pain for 4 years. I tried several doctors & massage therapists without any help. They diagnosed it as RSI. It was frustrating & scary as my career depended on my Wrist! One day while searching online to see if anyone has ever cured Chronic Wrist Pain, I came across an article by the Founder of AppJet - it got acquired by Google. He talked about his experience & how reading this book cured the Wrist Pain in a couple of days. Begin a Science Guy, it was hard for me to believe but given the amount of time I had already spent on this, I thought of giving it a shot - I was desperate & was ready to try anything Non-Surgical. I dedicated an entire weekend to read the book and surprisingly, by the time I was half way through, my pain had reduced 50%. That encouraged me to spend more time. So, the next one week I spent 3-4 hours everyday reading, thinking & internalising the concepts. By the end of 1 week, I was 90% pain free. Remaining 10% took another month - less than 15 minutes per day. It was such a relief! For the first time in life I realised how powerful the human brain is & how much control it has over the body. Since then I have referred this book to several people. Typically, people who are into science tend to ignore. Those who just tried were as surprised as me with the results 😁 Since then I have tried to read more on this subject to understand more. Looks like we are in the very early stage of understanding a whole new field of science. I consider Dr Sarno as the Copernicus of Psychosomatics... 😁

I am a healer and yet this book was very helpful. It offers a guideline that you can follow for relief from a variety of problems, not just backache. I recommend it for anyone who suffers from any kind of pain or long term issues.

After reading this book, my 5 year old rheumatoid arthritis problem is close to being cured. I can not thank Dr. Sarno enough. I recommend this to all friends, family and anyone who suffers from chronic pain.

Many thanks to Dr Sarno for discovering TMS & saveing us from this undiscrible pain syndrome. He explained it very well that anyone can be cured merely by reading the book.

I was having neck and hand pain for 4 years and than I red this book. Now My pain is gone. No medicine no doctor. I live free life without pain from last 16 years .... Please please please people who has back pain, neck pain , or any kind of reoccuring pain ..please read this book once ...

Great book, helped to understand psychology behind neck pain during studies. Helped to understand reason behind every pain. Thanks a lot

Very helpful for people with pain.

Great look on additional treatment for your RSI or back pain. Would recommend it to anybody interested in getting better.

Dr John E. Sarno war ein Genie. Mithilfe seiner Bűcher heilte mein Bandscheibenvorfall aus.

Sarno is a revolutionary, and a discoverer, I would say on par with a Christopher Columbus. Prior to Sarno's work, I don't think the interaction between the unconscious mind and the conscious mind has been demonstrated scientifically. His books and his life's work are not mere theories, but real scientific evidence of lasting cures. In fact, he unmasks a key way in which mainstream medicine operates on blind "faith" rather than any scientific evidence. As with Christopher Columbus, it's not a matter of "believing" him, but a matter of "looking" at what he has discovered. The information that he conveys in his books - and that is what cures you, the information - has saved tens of thousands and could save millions more from debilitating chronic pain. There is only one catch- you must accept the evidence that he presents and apply it to yourself. This is true not because his methods are placebo cures (which are only temporary, whereas Sarno's cures take lasting effect) but because the specific chronic pain that he identifies operates according to your mental processing. His argument is basically this: truly chronic pain is often a "defense mechanism" your mind employs to distract you from something that the mind considers more unpleasant, something that we refuse to think about. The mind's defense mechanism "works" because your mind (i.e. you) allows you to be distracted by chronic pain which you are convinced is due to a structural abnormality. This distraction, in effect, allows you to focus on your body, rather than something that is bothering you on an emotional level. In fact, when it comes to treating chronic pain, medical doctors routinely have no rational explanation, no evidence that pain is actually generated by what they say is a "structural abnormality" in an x-ray. The problem with this explanation is that the vast majority of people have "abnormal" spines, elbows, knees, etc. without any pain. But doctors merely assume they know what is causing chronic pain. The truly sad thing is that mainstream doctors, by focussing the patient's attention only on what they consider a structural abnormality in the body, and refusing to recognize any mental or emotional interaction, actually perpetuate the brain's strategy of making you focus on the symptom, not the cause. Which is why people have chronic pain for 10 or 20 years after seeing countless doctors. Sarno argues persuasively that almost everyone has various structural abnormalities in their bodies from head to toe. But to conclude these are symptomatic of pain is not science, but "faith" on the part of mainstream medicine. In fact, as Sarno points out, what is scientifically shown to be correlated with pain in a specific area of the body is oxygen deprivation via blood-flow to particular parts of the body, which is directed by the autonomic nervous system, which in turn is directed by the brain. In other words, the mind, without consulting us, can actually restrict proper oxygen via the bloodstream to a particular part of the body. The further evidence that this is true is that Sarno cites many people's long term chronic pain ceasing almost immediately when they call to mind certain emotional issues and recognize the fact that their brain has been employing this little trick. After all, if only structural abnormalities were the cause of chronic pain, then how could people who have had chronic back pain for 20 years see it vanish almost immediately? The body's structure does not suddenly change, but the oxygen of blood flow to a particular part of your body can indeed change "on command" --by way of the brain's control over the nervous system. In the mysterious realm of mindbody interaction, your recognition that your brain is conducting this little trick, is the key that turns the lock, and disarms the brain's strategy. Unfortunately, the only way that you "unlock" the chronic pain is to endeavor to call to mind various things that your brain (you) is bothered by or anxious about, which you have not been consciously thinking about or willing to recognize. Many people have a good deal of anger, fears, anxieties etc that they've basically "stuffed into the basement" of the mind, so to speak. You can "clean it out" by being willing to at least recognize certain things, and Sarno's questions about common worries, anger, etc. are helpful in this process. But this is a key point: you don't have to solve the problems, per se, but you do have to be aware that they are there. So, in effect, Sarno does not offer a "free lunch". Take your pick: you can either be mentally aware of things that are uncomfortable to think about or process, or you can ignore them and experience chronic pain somewhere in your body. Thanks to Dr. Sarno, it's your choice. Obviously, the healthiest thing over time is to try to redress the emotional stuff, but thankfully, mere willingness to recognize these things can actually liberate the body for good.

If you suffer lower back pain read this book before all the rest!

A great read, very in depth. It helped me deal with chronic pain issues that come and go.

Before I continue I must quickly explain why this review deserves your attention: 6 Months ago I suffered from a highly sensitive pain in both elbows which turned my life upside down, preventing me from typing and other daily activities. I am now currently working as a software engineer. That's it. That's how ridiculously quickly the situation has changed, I haven't even had a chance to take it all in and write this review until now. I still can't quite believe what has happened. The only problem is I can't CONFIRM that this book was the variable in the equation, there is a possibility it was something else. All I can promise is that this book did 'appear' to be the turning point, that is the only guaranteed truth I can offer. As ridiculous as this sounds for a review, it is not even worth me outlining as to why you should read the book. If you suffer from a chronic pain you've been unable to cure, you should read it, there is no debate there, with the low cost and high success rate there is simply no reason not to. That is not the question you should be asking, you should be wondering how much of the theory in this book works in practice. Most will agree that a psychological approach can have some mild effect in pain treatment, but few would believe it can cure an intense, life-changing injury. Read the book with a completely open mind (presumably other treatments have failed you - so clearly these accepted methods were incorrectly applied to your condition). Once you've read it, I personally believe you need to keep the following points in mind. These are simply based off my own personal experience (and testimonials from a few other cases), but I feel they are missing from the book. Please note that they may therefore not apply in all cases, and some people may have experienced recovery exactly as described by the book. 1) Arguably the most important. Do not EXPECT your life to be brilliant and "out of the nightmare" once your condition is cured. As soon as your physical pain starts to leave, all your old insecurities and problems in life will occupy the vacant space in your mind. This is so subtle that you may even fail to notice your pain dissapearing, your thoughts will simply become occupied on other matters just like before. 2) You HAVE to take the drama out of your condition. You must stop thinking about it, and especially attempting to gain sympathy with it. Don't let it distract you, and flick your attention onto something else when it comes into your head. 3) It may take a while. For me I'd say it took around 3-4 months to notice any huge difference, this is presumably because reworking your mind can take time, don't give up. 4) This is by far the hardest bit - lose the FEAR. Your brain will have associated certain words with pain: perhaps 'inflamattion', 'tendon', or 'nerve'. You need to get this fear out of your system, getting to the stage where you can go about your activities confidently and not be bullied into a weak state of mind. This step alone may take months to achieve. 5) Don't keep looking for further information or solutions afterwards. This may sound ridiculous as I'm giving you information here, but once you've read the book be confident that it's all you need. If you pursue other treatments at the same time or go looking for new cures, then you're not really showing any belief in this theory. The work you need to do is with yourself, don't look towards others for solutions. 6) For me, I'm not convinced the 'suppressed anger' had anything to do with it, but it is certainly possible it did so I don't really have a right to make any strong statements here. It should be noted that I did attempt to take everything the book said as fact whilst trying to recover. I hope to add more to this review one day, and I hope you recover from whatever issue you are experiencing. Just remember it's no big deal, we all have pain in our lives in some form, and your life was not perfect before the injury. You may get it back, but it won't be the heaven you're picturing now. That's not to be negative or pessimistic though, it's the emotional pain which makes us human.