The MindBody Workbook: A Thirty Day Program of Insight and Awareness for People with Back Pain and Other Disorders

If you have a good understanding of TMS then this book is so helpful and thought provoking. I have been familiar with Sarno for a few years and believe it but didn’t really know how to work on it since I’m not near any providers. Thought I should try this workbook and didn’t think I would stick with it but I would try. I listened to “Healing Back Pain” from Sarno and this workbook and it has changed my life. The way the questions are set up it progresses you through thoughts that help you feel better. My horrible back pain was gone half way through and I could cry being relieved of such horrible pain and getting out horrible thoughts.

Chronic pain has been something I have been working to relieve most of my adult life……over half of my life now. Most of my life work has been working with business owners that are in the health and wellness field because this has been something that has plagued me so much personally. I’ve been to dozens (if not hundreds – who’s counting at this point) of allopathic, complementary and alternative practitioners to deal with this pain.I’ve tried things as aggressive and invasive as radio frequency ablation, cortisone shots, many rounds of Physical Therapy, consults with top surgeons, acupuncture, massage, somatic body therapist, people waving crystals over my head and lots of yoga, stretching and myofascial release.Sometimes I feel like a part-time patient with all the doctor visits I have. I know my health card ID by heart. I have Aetna on speed dial. I have lots of blank insurance forms. I can’t stand filling out forms and having to tell my story to yet another person who probably won’t be able to help me.I started to research more and more different methods to deal with pain. What causes pain? So many theories and mysterious reasons. lack of vitamins, water, ergonomics, structural anatomical differences, faulty movement patterns, negative beliefs, bad posture when sitting and standing, old injuries that never healed properly.I watched lots of videos on youtube about ways to deal with pain with non-surgical methods. I started to learn the language of anatomy and dysfunction. When I go to my doctor I can describe anatomically the exact areas of my pain just like a doctor.Where is my pain? Depending on what year you ask me it has been in different body parts -my tailbone, me knees, my low back, my shoulders, my hands and wrists and the last decade mostly in my forehead and neck.My biggest friend in my right against debilitating and excruciating pain – Google. I realized that if I wanted to get rid of my pain I was going to have to become my own doctor and not rely on a health professional to heal me. I started to wonder what all this pain and constriction in my head and neck was. What was causing it and how could I deal with it more powerfully.I don't even know how I found Dr Sarno.... I think it was just suggested to me by Amazon... so not having any faith that this would help me I bought his book.After I read the book, I wondered if retraining my brain via's Sarno's suggestions would work for me. So I committed myself to retraining my brain.... I bought two of his books and the The MindBody Workbook: A Thirty Day Program of Insight and Awareness by David Schechter M.D.. I bought these over a month ago. I also started to meditate almost daily.Relief From Chronic Pain... finallyToday I am pain-free!Having chronic pain for 2 decades is like being in a prison. You want to run away from your body but you can't. Life is miserable.Today I feel like I finally have the keys to unlock myself and stay free.I am forever grateful to Dr Sarno.

This workbook was helpful. But it did move a bit fast for me. It is a four week workbook. Now that I am in my fifth week, I plan on going back to the beginning of week three in the work book and answering the questions again, since I feel at week five, I am now really ready for the questions that it asks in week three. I do recomend it to people that have already read one of John E. Sarno's books, especially after they have read Healing Back Pain, since the workbook focuses on pain management issues and not other "TMS equivalence"

Journaling is said to be an effective technique for TMS. It didn’t work for me.Setting that aside, this workbook is laid out well. Provides thought provoking guidance and encouragement, and it isn’t expensive. So, it’s worth a try.

This is an excellent follow-up to and practical application of the principles in Dr John Sarno's bestseller "Healing Back Pain" and should be read if, after reading Dr Sarno's book, you're still not quite where you want to be. "Healing Back Pain" is a classic and pioneering 5-star book, but does not contain individualised exercises or assignments for practically dealing with a mindbody disorder such as TMS (tension myositis syndrome) causing lower back pain.Dr Sarno states in his book that merely reading it should in most cases bring sufficient relief from TMS, but that some people might need additional psychotherapy to get rid of TMS pain symptoms. Well, The MindBody Workbook offers such psychotherapy in book form. Do-it-yourself psychotherapy such as this is obviously cheaper and more convenient than first trying to find, and then going to actual sessions with, a suitably qualified mindbody therapist.Reading Sarno's book, which he describes as "knowledge therapy", I did experience major improvement of my lower-back pain problem though some residual pain remained. After working through about 2/3rd of the workbook I found that my symptoms had lessened to such an extent that I stopped doing the assignments.The workbook mainly consists of a series of questions which you need to think about, and then write down the answers - putting them in writing helps to internalise them. This you have to do each day for thirty days.I must say that I found the first week very time-consuming as one of the tasks is to read or re-read one of Dr Sarno's books in addition to doing other assignments. In fact this whole process will probably take you longer than a month.On the downside the book needs a good proofread and edit to weed out the typos and other language-related issues. Also I bought the iPad electronic version, which could have been more user-friendly and creative. For instance, the text contains blank spaces to fill in the dates and some of the answers, but on an electronic screen they are unusable so that you need a separate writing pad for completing the written assignments. It would have been helpful if the text could be in some other electronic format so that you can actually complete the assignments on screen.Even so this is a great book which has helped me get rid of a 3-year-old back problem.