By inviting the Dalai Lama and leading researchers in medicine, psychology, and neuroscience to join in conversation, the Mind & Life Institute set the stage for a fascinating exploration of the healing potential of the human mind. The Mind’s Own Physician presents in its entirety the thirteenth Mind and Life dialogue, a discussion addressing a range of vital questions concerning the science and clinical applications of meditation: How do meditative practices influence pain and human suffering? What role does the brain play in emotional well-being and health? To what extent can our minds actually influence physical disease? Are there important synergies here for transforming health care, and for understanding our own evolutionary limitations as a species? Edited by world-renowned researchers Jon Kabat-Zinn and Richard J. Davidson, this book presents this remarkably dynamic interchange along with intriguing research findings that shed light on the nature of the mind, its capacity to refine itself through training, and its role in physical and emotional health.

Presents evidence from medical journals that beliefs, thoughts, and feelings can cure the body and shows readers how to apply this knowledge in their own lives. -- provided by publisher.

What is your emotional fingerprint? Why are some people so quick to recover from setbacks? Why are some so attuned to others that they seem psychic? Why are some people always up and others always down? In his thirty-year quest to answer these questions, pioneering neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson discovered that each of us has an Emotional Style, composed of Resilience, Outlook, Social Intuition, Self-Awareness, Sensitivity to Context, and Attention. Where we fall on these six continuums determines our own “emotional fingerprint.” Sharing Dr. Davidson’s fascinating case histories and experiments, The Emotional Life of Your Brain offers a new model for treating conditions like autism and depression as it empowers us all to better understand ourselves—and live more meaningful lives.

Steven E. Hodes, M.D., initially trained in traditional, high-caliber medical programs that led him through graduation at the Albert Einstein Medical School and to a fellowship at Mount Sinai Hospital. But many years later, he saw something vital missing in his approach to healthcare. I was trained as a physician, not a healer...taught to view the patient as a machine suffering from some mechanical failure. My purpose was to be the best diagnostician possible, he explains. Then events occurred that opened the eyes of this now veteran physician to deep insights about the mind-body-spirit connection. That awakening moved him to a metaphysical view of health—a view more spiritual than religious, but still firmly grounded in science. Embracing his role as a metaphysician, he also began to see himself as a meta-physician, or doctor transformed (meta) by this new awareness. In this book, Hodes describes his journey to becoming a metaphysician on call. He points out profound, yet simple, observations and beliefs that affect our perception of the nature of reality—metaphysics—which, in turn, can largely affect our well-being in all senses—body, mind, and spirit. We all can and should take responsibility for our own well-being on all levels, he explains. This book is designed to inspire us to ask our own questions, and gather our own evidence to enhance all areas of our lives and well-being, and so find healing and peace.

The Divided Mind is the crowning achievement of Dr. John E. Sarno's distinguished career as a groundbreaking medical pioneer, going beyond pain to address the entire spectrum of psychosomatic (mindbody) disorders. The interaction between the generally reasonable, rational, ethical, moral conscious mind and the repressed feelings of emotional pain, hurt, sadness, and anger characteristic of the unconscious mind appears to be the basis for mindbody disorders. The Divided Mind traces the history of psychosomatic medicine, including Freud's crucial role, and describes the psychology responsible for the broad range of psychosomatic illness. The failure of medicine's practitioners to recognize and appropriately treat mindbody disorders has produced public health and economic problems of major proportions in the United States. One of the most important aspects of psychosomatic phenomena is that knowledge and awareness of the process clearly have healing powers. Thousands of people have become pain-free simply by reading Dr. Sarno's previous books. How and why this happens is a fascinating story, and is revealed in The Divided Mind.

At last, the paperback edition of the monumental best-seller (almost half a million copies in print!) that has changed the way Americans think about sickness and health -- the companion volume to the landmark PBS series of the same name. In a remarkably short period of time, Bill Moyers's Healing And The Mind has become a touchstone, shaping the debate over alternative medical treatments and the role of the mind in illness and recovery in a way that few books have in recent memory. With almost half a million copies in print, it is already a classic -- the most widely read and influential book of its kind. In a series of fascinating interviews with world-renowned experts and laypeople alike, Bill Moyers explores the new mind/body medicine. Healing And The Mind shows how it is being practiced in the treatment of stress, chronic disease, and neonatal problems in several American hospitals; examines the chemical basis of emotions, and their potential for making us sick (and making us well); explores the fusion of traditional Chinese medicine with modern Western practices in contemporary China; and takes an up-close, personal look at alternative healing therapies, including a Massachusetts center that combines Eastern meditation and Western group therapy, and a California retreat for cancer patients who help each other even when a cure is impossible. Combining the incisive yet personal interview approach that made A World Of Ideas a feast for the mind and the provocative interplay of text and art that made The Power Of Myth a feast for the imagination, Healing And The Mind is a landmark work.

Drs. Groopman and Hartzband reveal a clear path for making the right medical choices. Such factors as authority figures, statistics, other patients' stories, technology, and natural healing are key factors that shape choices.