Routes Away From Pain & Despair.

Reading these books could lead you to change your mind about your relationship with your body, as well as your relationship to your chronic pain or mental illness. The concepts contained in these books can change your life. Permanently. For. The. Better.

Together, these self-healing books sell over 12,000 copies per month, with “The Body Keeps The Score” selling in #1 position on this list.

Until we have time to provide our own review on each book, here is the information from each book’s inside or back cover, along with sales ratings from Amazon.com (and corresponding links to the books on Amazon – with no current sales affiliations).

It goes without saying that our book recommendations are a small sampling from many sources of bodymind or mind-body concepts. Here are the top five books by sales, as recommended by a selection of self-healing books from TheBodyIsMind library. All sales rankings as listed were accurate as of 2018 when this research was done.

#1

The Body Keeps the Score

Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Author: Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.
Year: 2015 |  Pages: 464
MOSTLY 5-STAR REVIEWS from 1523 people
Rank: 94th / selling 10,058 books per month

From The Cover

“Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding and treating traumatic stress and the scope of its impact on society.” —Alexander McFarlane, Director of the Centre for Traumatic Stress Studies

A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing in this New York Times Science bestseller.

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.

#2

Becoming Supernatural

How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon

Author: Dr. Joe Dispenza
Year: 2017 | Pages: 384
MOSTLY 5-STAR REVIEWS from 529 people
Rank: 2477th / selling 1,133 books per month

From The Cover

The author of the New York Times bestseller You Are the Placebo, as well as Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself and Evolve Your Brain, draws on research conducted at his advanced workshops since 2012 to explore how common people are doing the uncommon to transform themselves and their lives. Becoming Supernatural marries some of the most profound scientific information with ancient wisdom to show how people like you and me can experience a more mystical life.

Readers will learn that we are, quite literally supernatural by nature if given the proper knowledge and instruction, and when we learn how to apply that information through various meditations, we should experience a greater expression of our creative abilities; that we have the capacity to tune in to frequencies beyond our material world and receive more orderly coherent streams of consciousness and energy; that we can intentionally change our brain chemistry to initiate profoundly mystical transcendental experiences; and how, if we do this enough times, we can develop the skill of creating a more efficient, balanced, healthy body, a more unlimited mind, and greater access to the realms of spiritual truth.

Topics include:

• Demystifying the body’s 7 energy centers and how you can balance them to heal
• How to free yourself from the past by reconditioning your body to a new mind
• How you can create reality in the generous present moment by changing your energy
• The difference between third-dimension creation and fifth-dimension creation
• The secret science of the pineal gland and its role in accessing mystical realms of reality
• The distinction between Space-Time vs. Time-Space realities
• And much more

Using tools and disciplines ranging from cutting-edge physics to practical exercises such as a walking meditation, Dr. Joe offers nothing less than a program for stepping outside our physical reality and into the quantum field of infinite possibilities.

#3

The Biology of Belief

Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles

Author: Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D.
Year: 2016 | Pages: 312
4.5 STARS on average from 1387 people
Rank: 3855th selling at 807 books per month

From The Cover

This 10th-anniversary edition of Bruce Lipton’s best-selling book The Biology of Belief has been updated to bolster the book’s central premise with the latest scientific discoveries—and there have been a lot in the last decade.

The Biology of Belief is a groundbreaking work in the field of new biology. Former medical school professor and research scientist Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D., presents his experiments, and those of other leading-edge scientists, which examine in great detail the mechanisms by which cells receive and process information. The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life, showing that genes and DNA do not control our biology; instead, DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts. This profoundly hopeful synthesis of the latest and best research in cell biology and quantum physics has been hailed as a major breakthrough, showing that our bodies can be changed as we retrain our thinking.

#4

The Mindbody Prescription

Healing The Body, Healing The Pain

Author: John E. Sarno, M.D.
Year: 1999 |  Pages: 210
4.5 STARS on average from 534 people
Rank: 3856th selling 806 books per month

From the Cover

“My life was filled with excruciating back and shoulder pain until I applied Dr. Sarno’s principles, and in a matter of weeks my back pain disappeared. I never suffered a single symptom again…I owe Dr. Sarno my life.” – Howard Stern

Musculoskeletal pain disorders have reached epidemic proportions in the United States, with most doctors failing to recognize their underlying cause. In this acclaimed volume, Dr. Sarno reveals how many painful conditions-including most neck and back pain, migraine, repetitive stress injuries, whiplash, and tendonitises-are rooted in repressed emotions, and shows how they can be successfully treated without drugs, physical measures, or surgery.

The Mindbody Prescription is your invaluable key to a healthy and pain-free life.

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This book spearheaded the concept that the body is mind when it was published back in 1999. It is widely considered that Dr. John Sarno was one of the Godfathers of mind-body medicine; he passed in 2017 but his book is still selling like hotcakes!

#5

Altered Traits

Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body

Author: Daniel Goleman, Richard J. Davidson
Year: 2017 |  Pages: 336
4 STARS average from 86 people
Rank: 4522th selling 712 books per month

From The Cover

In the last twenty years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it.

Sweeping away common misconceptions and neuromythology to open readers’ eyes to the ways data has been distorted to sell mind-training methods, the authors demonstrate that beyond the pleasant states mental exercises can produce, the real payoffs are the lasting personality traits that can result. But short daily doses will not get us to the highest level of lasting positive change—even if we continue for years—without specific additions. More than sheer hours, we need smart practice, including crucial ingredients such as targeted feedback from a master teacher and a more spacious, less attached view of the self, all of which are missing in widespread versions of mind training. The authors also reveal the latest data from Davidson’s own lab that point to a new methodology for developing a broader array of mind-training methods with larger implications for how we can derive the greatest benefits from the practice.

Exciting, compelling, and grounded in new research, this is one of those rare books that has the power to change us at the deepest level.

BONUS BOOK

PAIN FREE

A Revolutionary Method For Stopping Chronic Pain

Author: Pete Egoscue
Year: 2000 |  Pages: 320
4.5 STARS average from 1,282 people
Rank: 2,434th / selling 1148 books per month

From The Cover

Starting today, you don’t have to live in pain.

That is the revolutionary message of this breakthrough system for eliminating chronic pain without drugs, surgery, or expensive physical therapy. Developed by Pete Egoscue, a nationally renowned physiologist and sports injury consultant to some of today’s top athletes, the Egoscue Method has an astounding 95 percent success rate. The key is a series of gentle exercises and carefully constructed stretches called E-cises. Inside you’ll find detailed photographs and step-by-step instructions for dozens of e-cizes specifically designed to provide quick and lasting relief of:

• Lower back pain, hip problems, sciatica, and bad knees.
• Carpal tunnel syndrome and even some forms of arthritis.
• Migraines and other headaches, stiff neck, fatigue, sinus problems, vertigo, and TMJ.
• Shin splints, varicose veins, sprained or weak ankles, and many foot ailment.
• Bursitis, tendinitis, and rotator cuff problems.
• Plus special preventive programs for maintaining health through the entire body.

With the help of Pete Egoscue’s revolutionary program of quick stretches and strength-building exercises, you can cure chronic pain, and do it naturally.

Here’s how to regain the greatest gift of all: a pain-free body.

Pete Egoscue has shown thousands of individuals, corporations, schools, and championship sports teams how to eliminate pain without investing in expensive ergonomic devices or resorting to surgery or drug therapies. His groundbreaking book, with nearly 50,000 hardcover copies sold, shows readers how to:

• Relieve lower back pain.
• Improve hip problems, sciatica, and bad knees.
• Relieve migraines and other headaches, stiff neck, fatigue, sinus problems, vertigo, and TMJ.
• Relieve painful problems, like carpal tunnel syndrome, often misdiagnosed as arthritis.
• Prevent injuries and maintain health through stretching programs for the entire body.

Filled with easy instructions, photos, and line illustrations throughout, this book will provide quick, effective pain relief.