Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection Mass Market Paperback – February 1, 2010

I have found the cause and cure for my horrible hip & leg pain that I suffered for more than 10 years!!! IT CHANGED MY LIFE!! What a great relief! I actually read Dr. Sarno’s book 10 years ago and had experienced very good results. The book was recommended by my friend Judy, who got help from reading this book and cured her TMS. (Thank you, Judy!) I was quite sure that I was having TMS back then. However, I failed the battle because and I didn’t know how to handle recurrence episodes, so I thought I was not having TMS. What a big mistake!! I gave up on the theory, put the book back to the book shelf and went back to my old treatments – physical therapy, acupuncture treatments, chiropractors, pain killers, massage, ice, etc., for 10 years!! I really wish I held onto Dr. Sarno’s theory and saved myself so much unnecessary suffering…During the past 10 (2004 – 2014) years, I was not in constant pain, but every year I had at least 2 -3 episodes. Each episode will last for about 2 months. My physical therapists told me that my core muscles were too weak; that’s why I kept injuring myself if I lift something heavy or slip my feet on ice. I had trouble to walk during the attacks, because the muscles in my hip areas were having spasm which made my hip alignment crooked, one leg will become shorter than another. During each attack, I had to accept the truth that I will have to live with the pain for about 2 months. My physical therapist said that strengthening and stretching my muscles will be my only solution.Because of the excruciating & debilitating pain, I sometimes had to use crutches. The buttock muscles were having constant spasm and the pain travels from one side to another. I can never forget the worst situation I had before, was that one night I didn’t have my crutches with me so I had to crawl from my bedroom to bathroom at night…On 12/30/13, I had another attack right before my husband’s eye surgery. I was under a lot of stress because his other health issues plus his eye surgery. During this most recent episode, I went to my PT who already became my friend to receive my usual massage and adjusting treatments for about 1 month and yet the pain still kept traveling to different areas between my hips and legs and the pain just won’t go away.On 1/23/14, I was so depressed and feeling hopeless. I felt that my life is over because of this never fading problem and it made me not able to function. Out of desperation, I suddenly thought about the book “Healing Back Pain” by Dr. Sarno that I read 10 years ago. I picked it up from my book shelf and read it again from chapter 1 carefully. This time I again see myself on each page of this book like 10 years ago. To help myself even better, I also read a lot of reviews from Amazon about this book; I realized that there are so many people had the same problem as me. A lot of them are even more serious than me and they were cured. I also found out that for some people it does takes longer to be cured 100%. Not everyone was cured 100% instantly. For some people it takes 2 day, some 1 to 2 weeks, or even 1 to 2 months, or ever longer. Be patient and do not doubt!!Another very important aspect that we should know is sometimes TMS can come back because our brains are so deeply ingrained by the previous diagnosis and experiences. We just need to learn how to deal with it by shifting our attention to our emotion and reading the daily reminder that Dr. Sarno suggested. The pain should go away in a very short period of time. I also watched some video online to help to understand how other people got help by Dr. Sarno’s theory.This time, 10 years later, the result was amazing! I’m now 100% cured! It took me about 1 week to get 100%!Here is a record during that amazing 1 week. I’d like to share this with you to hopefully be of any help to you --The 1st day – I read the book and felt 90% better immediately. I stopped messaging myself and doing any strengthening and stretching exercises that I supposed to do in the past. I can feel that my both legs were stronger and most of the pain was gone, but right buttock still has some mild pain and tightness.The 2nd day – of the book and some Amazon book reviews. I can walk normally and felt stronger than yesterday. Later on, I felt a short period of pain in my groin area and I immediately shift my focus on my emotion, not my physical, and the pain just disappeared instantly. But the tightness in the right buttock was still there.The 3rd day – I read more of the book and the Amazon book reviews. I did laundry and cleaning work without any pain but with the same tightness in my right buttock.The 4th day – I went grocery shopping for 2 hours without any pain and with just the same tightness in the right buttock area. of the book and watched some video regards to Dr. Sarno’s theory.The 5th day – I shoveled the snow for 2 hours with no pain. I was so proud of myself.The 6th day – I felt I was 95% better. I can still felt the tightness in my right hip area though. I went to my PT that day for the last time because the insurance company needed an evaluation report done by my PT. During this past 1 week, I purposely didn’t do any strengthening & stretching that I supposed to do and yet I my PT checked on me and said that my hip alignment was perfect. Both legs were in the same length. I told my PT about this book and cancelled all the booked appointments for the following weeks and asked her NOT to loosen me up on my right buttock since I didn’t want the treatment to confuse my brain.The 7th day – I was 100% better. The last bit of pain and tightness in my right hip area was totally gone.During the following months, I got 2 or 3 times of very mild soreness here and there, but they didn’t last and never affected my walking ability. All I needed to do was to review Dr. Sarno’s "daily reminders" on page 82 and to resume writing journals every night to focus or "think" psychological and the pain will go away instantly.However, I have to say, it does take TREMENDOUS courage. When my hips gave me the old signals that I used to think that it was about to go into spasm, I had to ignore it, and walk, bend over, or lift something, and ignore my fears. I had to force myself not to massage the sore muscles, refuse the PT treatments and be patient to let it go away itself. I had to talk to myself and deal with the fear everyday. This was the most difficult aspect of this healing, though. But it is WORTH it.I feel that I’m gaining back my confidence and ability to live my life. I’m hopeful and very thankful. I’m no longer feeling as a victim but wish my experience can be a blessing to other sufferers. Not only did it cure my pain but it gave me tremendous insights into my own psychology which were incredibly valuable. I realized that I am/was a very anxious person. I constantly live in fear. Especially about my pain, immobility and my husband and my kid’s health conditions; these are probably my biggest worries.I can only hope that more doctors and health care providers will read this book and accept this theory to help thousands and thousands of people who are suffering from TMS pain and yet are being treated incorrectly.I ordered several Dr. Sarno’s books to share with people around me. I thank God for Dr. Sarno and would recommend his book and theory to anyone who is in chronic pain. Even if you are not in pain, it’s good to have the knowledge that the connection between body and mind as a prevention and maybe you can help other people by mentioning this book. If you are in chronic pain, please read this book with an open mind. Just like a reader, Steve Rankel, commented in his Amazon book review for this book ”Why do we as humans think everything must be hard? Complexity is not the measure of something's value. Results are.”I am forever grateful to Dr Sarno. Thank you Dr. Sarno from the bottom of my heart!! You are an amazing doctor. I appreciate you for regaining my health, my life, and I admire you for your honesty and courage to challenge the mainstream medical society. Please keep teaching others how to take advantage of the healing capabilities God gave to all of us.Dr. Sarno, you truly deserve Nobel Prize!!!

this is a weird book. it's not really all that impressive, in and of itself -- a couple hundred pages of loosely sketched out theoretical ideas, and a general sort of critique of common chiropractic diagnoses. some of it makes a lot of sense, some of it seems a little far-fetched – objectively speaking, i can absolutely understand why some people dismiss dr. sarno and this (and his other similar) books as fluff/quackery.that being said – it works. or can, depending on who you are and what kind of pain you’re experiencing. i was suffering from horrible, near-disabling levels of lower back and neck pain when i first read this book, and as many others report, simply reading the book and thinking about what it had to say, made 95% of my discomfort simply vanish overnight, like magic. it was frankly shocking to me how effective it was, and i am a person who absolutely, 100% realizes how ridiculous that sounds. but that was my experience. i do still have back pain, but it is now 10 years later – just reading this book one night literally produced something like eight or nine years of very significant relief. whether the back pain i’m experiencing now is something different or just a recurrence/regression of the TMS described in this book is something i’m currently trying to figure out.the general argument put forward here is that changing the way you think about back (and certain related types of) pain can dramatically alter your experience with it, because the way we’ve been taught to evaluate this type of condition to ourselves is largely based on false medical myths that have an (unfortunately) strong influence on the way our psychology interacts with our body. sounds a little out there, perhaps, but it is – to my honest surprise – quite true. what the book offers is not a placebo effect. what's weird is that the pain a lot of people are experiencing is in itself a kind of (negative) placebo effect already – what this book can do, is sort of quickly train you to reverse the psychological processes that create that scenario. it's not that the pain you’re experiencing isn't real, or that it’s just imagined – it is very, physically real, as any sufferer knows – but in many people/cases, it's being produced and greatly exacerbated by a kind of trick of the brain that can be unlearned with surprising ease. a lot of people in the last couple of generations have, for various reasons the book gets into, unconsciously programmed themselves to be susceptible to certain types of back pain that don't have any real physical cause. most chiropractors and even physical therapists will x-ray you and explain you have a herniated disc, something out of alignment, scoliosis, etc. -- but while true, this is in most cases a very natural part of aging, and it only produces ongoing pain/discomfort in certain people. generally, they won't know exactly why – they'll theorize you have a "pinched nerve" or something along those lines, but this book explains how, in dr. sarno's opinion, that's just unethical guesswork and makes no diagnostic sense. he proposes that the pain is more akin to a negative placebo effect based on the anxiety natural to certain personality types, and nurtured by cultural conditioning. this anxiety and conditioning train the brain to deny oxygen to certain muscle groups and body areas, which produces spasms/constrictions/tension in those areas. while harmless in and of themselves, they can be very uncomfortable, and many in the medical community erroneously link this discomfort to what is actually pretty normal wear-and-tear along the spine. in turn, we (the sufferer) begin to overthink the fragility of our spine/back, and expect it to give us problems, which fuels the negative link the brain has already made to those areas. this begins to allow all kinds of personal anxieties and emotions to start registering in a very physically real way as body pain, usually in certain parts of the back or neck where we most anticipate pain to occur, and it becomes a self-fulfilling cycle that can just grow worse and worse over time.the book explains this all better and in more detail. not everything put forward in the book is 100% convincing, but dr. sarno has definitely tapped into a legitimate phenomenon – and i say that simply because the book just plain worked for me. after years of very depressing and increasingly excruciating levels of discomfort and pain that i attributed to a slipped disc, i read this book, and poof ... it was just literally gone. i couldn’t quite believe it and many people i relate the story to do not take it seriously. but my brain wised up to the trick it was playing on my body and the relief was literally an overnight phenomenon. and not only did it work – the results lasted many years.many people will blow off this book and sarno’s others as pseudo-scientific fluff – i get that. but, listen – i spent $2 on this book at the time i first read it, and got years of shockingly significant relief from it. it’s not like it’s a big expensive gamble, if you think it might help you. i also get that it won’t work for everyone – obviously there are legitimate injuries and conditions that can occur and cause pain that are unrelated to what the book describes (and which the book is very clear about). however, a lot of conditions that people think are legitimate physical problems are covered by this book, and have a far shakier medical basis than you’d think. psychology and the way your psychology programs your body and its expectations has a lot to do with a lot of the pain people suffer from.if you think there’s even a chance this book could help you, spend a couple bucks on a used copy and give it a shot. it takes a couple hours to read, and it could save you thousands in medical bills. worst case scenario, you learn a little about an alternative theory re: body pain. even if you’re skeptical, it’s sort of a no-brainer if you’re really suffering discomfort.