This book is amazing. Changed my life. I was diagnosed with spinal stenosis back in 2000 by orthopedists in Washington. One specialist recommended a discotomy, a surgery where they cut out part of your discs in your vertebrae. A major operation that has long-term negative side effects. I was devastated by this news. I looked for other options. Howard Stern mentioned this book on the radio and how it saved his life and cured his back pain
I read it.
I no longer have pain. I’m basically cured!
A miracle? Who knows. Read the book.
Who’d thought I’d be dancing on stage for Chippendales for the past seven years? Certainly not those doctors! lol
– article courtesy of Steve Kim and Apex Body
Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection
Amazon.com Review
Healing Back Pain promises permanent elimination of back pain without drugs, surgery, or exercise. It should have been titled Understanding TMS Pain, because it discusses one particular cause of back pain–Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS)–and isn’t really a program for self-treatment, with only five pages of action plan (and many more pages telling why conventional methods don’t work). According to John E. Sarno, M.D., TMS is the major cause of pain in the back, neck, shoulders, buttocks, and limbs–and it is caused not by structural abnormalities but by the mind’s effort to repress emotions. He’s not saying that your pain is all in your head; rather, he’s saying that the battle going on in your mind results in a real physical disorder that may affect muscles, nerves, tendons, or ligaments. An injury may have triggered the disorder, but is not the cause of the amount or intensity of the resulting pain. According to Sarno, the mind tricks you into not facing repressed emotion by making you focus on pain in the body. When this realization sinks in (“and it must sink in, for mere intellectual appreciation of the process is not enough”), the trick doesn’t work any more, and there’s no need for the pain. (Healing Back Pain should not be used for self-diagnosis. Always consult a physician for chronic or acute back pain.) –Joan Price
