Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection

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

• The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain
• The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders
• Dr. John Sarno's Top 10 Healing Discoveries
• The MindBody Workbook: A Thirty Day Program of Insight and Awareness for People with Back Pain and Other Disorders
• Foundation: Redefine Your Core, Conquer Back Pain, and Move with Confidence
• 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back: Natural Posture Solutions for Pain in the Back, Neck, Shoulder, Hip, Knee, and Foot
• Mind Over Back Pain: A Radically New Approach to the Diagnosis and Treatment of Back Pain
• Mind Over Back Pain: A Radically New Approach to the Diagnosis and Treatment of Back Pain
• The Great Pain Deception: Faulty Medical Advice Is Making Us Worse
• Treat Your Own Back