He believes that simply treating the physical symptoms of pain, such as with medications or physical therapy, is not enough to resolve the underlying problem.

In this book, Dr. Sarno explains that many cases of chronic pain are caused not by physical injuries or abnormalities, but by the mind's suppression of emotional issues. Psychological factors I personally don't have much in the way of physical pain, but reading this book highlighted just how much my depression - which I've suffered with, at times very severely, for 25 years - was the result of deeply oppressed aspects of my total self. As such, I think the principles behind this book apply equally to the current epidemic of mental health problems - particularly anxiety and depression - as it did to the 1990s epidemic of various types of physical pain syndromes that Dr. Sarno focusses on mostly in this book.

Also, I believe that Sarno plays too fast and loose with some of his facts, conspicuously ignoring some evidence which undermines his position, and sometimes making too much of evidence that supports it. And many of his citations are of dubious quality. If this book gave me anything and everything it is this: My pain is an illusion. It is not real even though it feels that way! It can be healed! I do not have to buy into the mind game that my body is distracting me from identifying what my feelings are and where the pain is being directed to. I get that now. I’ve done it all and still, my pain woke up with me and laid me down to sleep, night after night/ day after day. History has shown us that it is all too easy to sell books by promising that the “power of the mind” can do whatever you want to believe it can do. Sarno has jumped on that old bandwagon. And so, unfortunately, it is not possible for a serious thinker to take Sarno at his word straight through his books. It is necessary to take the good, and filter out the exaggerated, the grandiose, the empty promises. MPS vs. TMS

I have had episodes of pain (that I didn't imagine) disappear after a few weeks on multiple occasions. I knew of TMS although I wasn't always consciously practicing any pain-mitigating mental strategy. I feel inclined to believe TMS was at play and thinking about it (as Sarno enjoins) helped counter it. But this is one person's anecdotal experience. I knew any specialist would not be able to diagnose my pain and even if they did, it wouldn’t matter because … The hidden feeling is mainly interpreted as anger. Anger is a very testosteronic emotion. Women have testosterone too, just as anger, but I do not believe all the repressed feelings we have are linked to anger. He says loosing someone you love and depend on causes anger; well, for me it causes fear and sadness. Personally I have experienced a lot of traumatic events, and have been into psychotherapy for many years ( my uncle studied with Jung ).It's been over 6 months since I started having pain that spread all over my body--hands, elbows, toes, ears... I went to the doctor numerous times, saw various specialists, did every test under the sun..and nothing came out to explain what I was feeling. I started thinking maybe I was imagining the pain altogether. I do not believe doctors are so unaware that emotions can cause disease, as Dr. Sarno states; I just think they might not be aware of how frequent this can be, or how to deal with it. On the day I finished the book, I found that a good portion of my subconscious rage had surfaced, and for the first time since middle school I actually wanted to fight someone, lmao. That boiling anger lasted for a few days before receding. Not even a week later, the pain had basically vanished. A few weeks later I went to a neurologist who told me my nerves were incredibly healthy and that what I had been experiencing was a software issue, not a hardware one. But they’re covered over with endless repetition, and it feels like a snake oil salesman’s approach. If the patient doesn’t accept his ideas then he can’t recover. Such circular reasoning - “if you accept my thesis you will recover. If not, you won’t. If you don’t recover, you need psychotherapy to keep exploring my thesis.” The thesis is that it’s unconscious rage which causes many common ailments, and once one learned of this fact, the rage will no longer have a negative effect and the pain/ailment will dissipate. Yet the very definition of unconscious rage means it can’t be proven or disproven. Therefore the doctor is always right and the patient can’t argue any counterpoints. I would agree that PT in general doesn't really help with the pain but it can build up all core muscles to the point that an actual physical strain in weak core ligaments and muscles is more preventable.

The Mindbody Prescription has been translated into Korean, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, Turkish, Romanian, and Hebrew ( Source). However, I think this research is dated and the reasoning as to why your mind is sending pain signals was a little questionable for me. The author clearly tries to relate to as many people as possible by listing every injury and disease possible and in some cases having a pretty weak argument as to why it’s neuroplastic. The practical bright spot about this theory is that it proposes a solution: Because it is the mind (albeit the unconscious part of it) that is involved, we can tell our conscious mind about TMS, and the unconscious will realize the jig is up and stop using TMS. Strangely, this does not seem to mean that the repressed rages have to necessarily be unleashed (although Sarno mentions one case where they were, unintentionally, which of course also solves the problem by making hiding it a lost cause). Even more happily, Sarno claims that simply reading about the TMS process is often sufficient, and there is no need for real-time mediation with a TMS expert, as would be the case in standard psychotherapy.As I'm reading I go ahead and buy Schacter's MindBody Workbook and I make a few notion docs with Sarno's affirmations, and the stories of every person I can find who claims their headaches were improved by treating it as TMS I do the journal daily, reread the book a few more times, read the success stories every few days, reading guides and stories on tmswiki, and start doing all the things I had been avoiding for fear of causing a headache.

There were days that I had a break from the pain and I could not tell you why. It was always a mystery to me that left me feeling frustrated. Why would today I feel better than yesterday? What did I do differently and … I could never come up with an answer!Have you listened to any of Brian Holsopple’s other performances before? How does this one compare? I asked my ENT about my "sinus headaches" and he told me that these are probably tension headaches. "Do you work at a desk sitting like this all day?", "Yes", "Yeah those are tension headaches, I'll give you some exercises and also prescribe some sumatriptan for the ones that are migraines." (Important disclaimer: see a doctor and rule out serious physical causes. If your doctor diagnoses you with tension/migraine/sinus headaches, then this book might help you).