Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine


Candace B. Pert - 1997
     Her pioneering research on how the chemicals inside our bodies form a dynamic information network, linking mind and body, is not only provocative, it is revolutionary. By establishing the biomolecular basis for our emotions and explaining these new scientific developments in a clear and accessible way, Pert empowers us to understand ourselves, our feelings, and the connection between our minds and our bodies -- body-minds -- in ways we could never possibly have imagined before. Molecules of Emotion is a landmark work, full of insight and wisdom and possessing that rare power to change the way we see the world and ourselves.

The Chemistry of Joy: A Three-Step Program for Overcoming Depression Through Western Science and Eastern Wisdom


Henry Emmons - 2005
    Larry Dossey called “a valuable guide for anyone wishing to find greater exuberance and fulfillment in their life,” The Chemistry of Joy offers a unique blend of Western science and Eastern philosophy to show you how to treat depression more naturally and effectively, and what you can do TODAY to create a happier, more fulfilling life for yourself.The Chemistry of Joy presents Dr. Emmons’s natural approach to depression—supplemented with medication if necessary—combining the best of Western medicine and Eastern teaching to create your body’s own biochemistry of joy. Integrating Western brain chemistry, natural and Ayurvedic medicine, Buddhist psychology, and his own joyful heart techniques, Dr. Emmons creates a practical program for each of the three types of depression: anxious depression, agitated depression, and sluggish depression. The Chemistry of Joy helps you to identify which type of depression you are experiencing and provides a specific diet and exercise plan to address it, as well as nutritional supplements and “psychology of mindfulness” exercises that can restore your body’s natural balance and energy. This flexible approach creates newfound joy for those whose lives have been touched by depression—and pathways for all who seek to actively improve their emotional lives.

Grateful Life: The Secret to Happiness and the Science of Contentment


Nina Lesowitz - 2014
    In years of research and practice, authors Nina Lesowitz and Mary Beth Sammons have discovered that grateful living can transform lives. Grateful people are happier people. They are healthier and less stressed. They report much higher levels of satisfaction with their relationships and are less likely to credit luck with the good fortune of others.This book contains inspiring stories about those who exercise gratitude as a spiritual practice to rise out of adversity to new life. It also shows how grateful living is central to the good life and to attracting abundance. Filled with motivational quotes, resources, and exercises, The Grateful Life helps readers on their journey to creating the life they've always wanted.Taking the concept of Living Life as a Thank You to the next level, The Grateful Life includes absorbing and transformative stories from real people who unveil the secret to achieving successes both big and small.

A Short Guide to a Long Life


David B. Agus - 2014
    David B. Agus shared what he has learned from his work as a pioneering cancer doctor, revealing the innovative steps he takes to prolong the lives of not only cancer patients, but all those who want to enjoy a vigorous, lengthy life. Now Dr. Agus has turned his research into a practical and concise illustrated handbook for everyday living. A Short Guide to a Long Life is divided into three sections (What to Do, What to Avoid, and Doctor's Orders) that provide the definitive answers to many common and not-so-common questions: Who should take a baby aspirin daily? Are flu shots safe? What constitutes "healthy" foods? Are airport scanners hazardous? Dr. Agus believes optimal health begins with our daily routines. His book will help you develop new patterns of personal health care, using inexpensive and widely available tools that are based on the latest and most reliable science.

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite


David A. Kessler - 2009
    But it’s harder to understand why we can't seem to stop eating—even when we know better. When we want so badly to say "no," why do we continue to reach for food? Dr. David Kessler, the dynamic former FDA commissioner who reinvented the food label and tackled the tobacco industry, now reveals how the food industry has hijacked the brains of millions of Americans. The result? America’s number-one public health issue. Dr. Kessler cracks the code of overeating by explaining how our bodies and minds are changed when we consume foods that contain sugar, fat, and salt. Food manufacturers create products by manipulating these ingredients to stimulate our appetites, setting in motion a cycle of desire and consumption that ends with a nation of overeaters. The End of Overeating explains for the first time why it is exceptionally difficult to resist certain foods and why it’s so easy to overindulge. Dr. Kessler met with top scientists, physicians, and food industry insiders. The End of Overeating uncovers the shocking facts about how we lost control over our eating habits—and how we can get it back. Dr. Kessler presents groundbreaking research, along with what is sure to be a controversial view inside the industry that continues to feed a nation of overeaters—from popular brand manufacturers to advertisers, chain restaurants, and fast food franchises. For the millions of people struggling with weight as well as for those of us who simply don't understand why we can't seem to stop eating our favorite foods, Dr. Kessler’s cutting-edge investigation offers new insights and helpful tools to help us find a solution. There has never been a more thorough, compelling, or in-depth analysis of why we eat the way we do.

Don't Just Sit There!: 44 Insights to Get Your Meditation Practice Off the Cushion and Into the Real World


Biet Simkin - 2019
    Drawing on hard-won wisdom from her journey through addiction, personal tragedy, and the New York rock-n-roll scene, Biet shares the guidance you’ll need to move from meltdowns to miracles. Don’t Just Sit There! is a guidebook that will empower you to dive into meditation by helping you work through the not-so-peaceful side of achieving peace. With insights on forty-four laws of human experience, it provides week-by-week instructions to process each one. From the Law of Focus to the Law of Desire, these aspects of spiritual life can become obstacles without the tools to properly face them. Experienced and novice meditators alike can benefit from Biet’s frank, freeing advice on how to establish a lifelong practice in an often chaotic modern world. By confronting the disruptive quality of spiritual life, you can motivate yourself to realize the meditative practice of your dreams.

12 Healing Herbal Recipes: Herbal Medicine The Delicious Way


Mary Thibodeau - 2016
    If you are interested in maximizing this health strategy by incorporating highly medicinal and nutritive herbs and spices, then this book is for you. There exists a line between nutrition and herbal medicine that represents a very gray area when it comes to our diet. This book is about that line – and how to discover delicious foods that provide not only nutrition, but also many medicinal benefits. These cross-over foods, as I like to call them, include some of nature’s most potent herbal remedies. Not only do they offer herbal healing, but they also provide a high level of vitamins, minerals, healthy fats, amino acids, energy giving carbs and essential fatty acids. In modern society, our main food sources purchased at grocery stores and restaurants are often lacking in necessary Vitamins and Minerals, and are abundant in artificial ingredients, dangerous additives and excess fat and sodium. As a result, many of us are nutrient deficient and sick. The 12 recipes in this book all include herbs and foods that are nutrient dense and medicinally dynamic. Incorporating these amazingly sumptuous dishes into your diet can bring your level of natural wellness up to a higher level. “12 Healing Herbal Recipes: Herbal Medicine The Delicious Way” focuses on super foods and herbs like Basil, Cayenne, Dandelion, Thyme, and many more. Each recipe is complete with a nutritional summary and breakdown of the featured herbs. Enjoying herbal remedies and nutrient dense foods (sometimes they are one and the same!) as part of your regular meals translates into the best bang for your buck when it comes to eating healthy (and I don’t just mean money savings!). These are all recipes that I prepare regularly – they have all been developed by me over the years and have been personally taste tested by my family, my friends and me. Discover how herbal remedies and healthy spices can be integrated into your diet with these twelve easy recipes: Mango Cilantro Salad Passionflower Blend Tea Carob Flax Fudge Super Hummus Creamy Mushroom Soup Pickled Garlic Cold Curried Rice Salad Dandy Green Smoothie Spicy Guacamole Chaga Coffee Herbal Marinara Basil Pesto Download today and start making the most of these amazingly simple herbal healing recipes!

Mind-Body Medicine: The New Science of Optimal Health


Jason M. Satterfield - 2013
    While it’seasy to see that stress affects health and well-being, or that your blood pressure rises when you’re angry, cutting-edge research shows that the mind-body connection goes much further.Numerous studies on the brain’s interaction with the body demonstrate that health is directly affected by our social environments, socioeconomic status, culture, behaviors, relationships, psychological states, and habits of mind, among many factors. Current mind-body science reveals facts such as these: As few as eight weeks of mindfulness meditation can meaningfully boost your immune system. Extreme stress and low social support increase the risk of breast cancer by a factor of 9. Contact with nature is correlated with numerous positive health outcomes, including improved attention for children, reduced stress, and enhanced work performance. Chronic hostility portends calcification of the coronary arteries, even in young people. Expressive writing by patients is correlated with improved outcomes for both asthma and rheumatoid arthritis.Mind-body medicine—working in tandem with traditional medical practice—makes use of a large spectrum of psychological, physical, and behavioral treatments, drawn from many disciplines, in an approach to health care that aims to treat the whole person. It provides highly effective resources for preventing and treating a wide range of medical conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, stress, cancer, and depression—as well as for fostering the ultimate goals of health care: truly optimal and lasting physical health, and emotional and psychological well-being.A knowledge of this exciting field offers you critical understanding of the state of the art of health care and a significant new direction in medicine. But beyond valuable knowledge, a grounding in mind-body medicine gives you numerous practical, empowering tools for your own health care, as well as that of your family—tools that can make a profound difference for healthful, vibrant living.In Mind-Body Medicine: The New Science of Optimal Health, you’ll study this subject in compelling depth, with the expert guidance of Professor Jason M. Satterfield of the University of California, San Francisco. These 36 eye-opening lectures offer you a comprehensive overview of the field, providing rigorous answers to the questions of what makes us sick, what makes us well, and what we can do about it.You’ll look closely at the anatomical and biological systems through which what is “outside” in the environment gets “inside” to affect our minds and bodies. You’ll also examine recent research on subjects ranging from the impact our emotions and psychology have on health to the crucial roles that social, cultural, and behavioral factors play. And you’ll learn about effective mind-body treatments for numerous common medical conditions and diseases.Finally, you’ll finish the course with a toolbox of ideas and interventions for your personal wellness goals, empowering you to partner more effectively with your medical providers and maximize your own health.A Remarkable New Context for Health Care Professor Satterfield, a highly respected professor of clinical medicine and a specialist on the intersection of psychological factors and physical health, brings to the table his deep knowledge of mind-body science and extensive clinical experience in its application.In the course’s opening, he introduces you to the model of “biopsychosocial medicine,” which looks at the relationship between biological, psychological, and social factors in health.In studying how the biopsychosocial model is applied in modern medicine, you delve into these core subject areas:Biological pathways:You first investigate the anatomy and physiology of four biological systems through which the “outside” gets “in.” By reviewing a detailed study of the autonomic nervous system and the neuroendocrine system, discover how the brain activates the body’s two stress-response systems, and how these systems crucially affect health and well-being. Learn also about the physiology of immune function and the effects of stress on immune response and healing. Study the mechanisms of genetics as well as fascinating research indicating that your behavior can alter your genetic material, for better or worse—changes that can be passed on to future generations.Psychological factors in health: In the course of nine lectures, you look in depth at the critical ways in which psychology affects the body. Learn how negative emotional states such as anger and hostility can influence both the onset and progression of disease, and how positive emotions aid substantially in healing and wellness. Study how cognition—the ways in which we think and process our experiences—affects emotional states and behavior. Drawing from cognitive and other behavioral therapies, learn effective techniques for reshaping thinking, emotions, and behavior. Review evidence that certain personality types may be predisposed to conditions such as cardiovascular disease and depression, and learn how we can compensate for risk-carrying personality traits by working with cognitions and emotions. Investigate the neuroscience of behavior and the important effects of our behaviors on both disease and disease prevention. Look at stress as an integration of biological, cognitive, and social factors, and see how we can approach stress response and coping as a developmental skill. Social and ecological factors: You also study the important effects on health of factors such as culture, identity, socioeconomic status, social support, communities, and public health policy. Examine the studied correlations of income to health, education level to longevity, and ethnicity to susceptibility to disease, and consider how we can use this knowledge to benefit both individual and public health. Review research linking social support to health in many medical conditions, such as heart disease, cancer, and pregnancy; and do a detailed assessment to evaluate and strengthen your own social support network. Investigate how spiritual affiliations and practices have distinct physical benefits, such as reducing blood pressure, cortisol, and inflammation; improving lipid profiles and cardiovascular health; and extending life expectancy. Assess how physical environments affect health, how national and local culture impacts health-related behaviors, and how public initiatives can create healthier behaviors, environments, and communities.Tools and Strategies for Optimal WellnessBuilding on the biopsychosocial model, you study mind-body treatments for common conditions such as cardiovascular disease, stress, cancer, obesity, chronic pain, depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.Here, you learn about specific practices and interventions that you can use in your own health care program, such as these. Stress management: For both personal and occupational stress, learn about a spectrum of stress management approaches, from cognitive restructuring and perspective shifting to meditation, breathing techniques, relaxation training, and the learnable skill of resilience. Strategies for successful behavior change: With reference to concerns such as lifestyle change, weight management, and disease prevention, study the leading models of effective behavior change, as well as specific approaches such as the strategies of motivational interviewing, the four key elements of change, and the internal skills of self-regulation. Heart disease—prevention and treatment: Survey psychosocial interventions for heart disease, including a range of behavior change approaches, stress and emotion management, somatic quieting, social connection, and dramatic evidence that cardiac disease can be reversed through lifestyle change. Treatment of pain: Study mind-body factors in pain experience, and learn about treatments including cognitive and behavior change, acupuncture, mindfulness-based stress reduction, and biofeedback. Fatigue, headaches, insomnia: Investigate the variety of medical conditions that show no clear organic cause, such as chronic fatigue, tension headaches, and sleep disorders; and review effective psychological, physical, and behavioral approaches to treatment.Professor Satterfield’s teaching combines an extraordinary breadth of knowledge, clear and accessible explanations of the science involved, and a highly compassionate approach to patient care. He enriches the lectures with stories and case studies of patients in treatment for stress, heart conditions, insomnia, trauma, and other health challenges, showing you what mind-body medicine looks like in clinical practice and how you can integrate its lessons into your health program and daily life.With the knowledge and tools you’ll learn in Mind-Body Medicine: The New Science of Optimal Health, you can begin your own biopsychosocial assessment, identify your strengths and challenges in partnership with your medical providers, and take authentic steps toward your fullest physical and mental wellness.

The Three Pillars of Zen


Philip Kapleau - 1965
    Through explorations of the three pillars of Zen--teaching, practice, and enlightenment--Roshi Philip Kapleau presents a comprehensive overview of the history and discipline of Zen Buddhism.  An established classic, this 35th anniversary edition features new illustrations and photographs, as well as a new afterword by Sensei Bodhin Kjolhede, who has succeeded Philip Kapleau as spiritual director of the Rochester Zen Center, one of the oldest and most influential Zen centers in the United States.

Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives


Daniel J. Levitin - 2020
    Pink, author of When and Drive SUCCESSFUL AGING delivers powerful insights: - Debunking the myth that memory always declines with age - Confirming that health span--not life span--is what matters - Proving that sixty-plus years is a unique and newly recognized developmental stage - Recommending that people look forward to joy, as reminiscing doesn't promote health Levitin looks at the science behind what we all can learn from those who age joyously, as well as how to adapt our culture to take full advantage of older people's wisdom and experience. Throughout his exploration of what aging really means, using research from developmental neuroscience and the psychology of individual differences, Levitin reveals resilience strategies and practical, cognitive enhancing tricks everyone should do as they age.Successful Aging inspires a powerful new approach to how readers think about our final decades, and it will revolutionize the way we plan for old age as individuals, family members, and citizens within a society where the average life expectancy continues to rise.

A Headache in the Pelvis: A New Understanding and Treatment for Prostatitis and Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndromes


David Wise - 2001
    The 4th edition enlarges the scope of the book to specifically address the Stanford Protocol for women'ss pelvic pain and includes a large illustrated section on the method of pelvic floor trigger point release. It also includes details of Paradoxical Relaxation for conditions of pelvic pain that affect women.

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma


Bessel van der Kolk - 2014
    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. Such experiences inevitably leave traces on minds, emotions, and even on biology. Sadly, trauma sufferers frequently pass on their stress to their partners and children. Renowned trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he transforms our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain’s wiring—specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust. He shows how these areas can be reactivated through innovative treatments including neurofeedback, mindfulness techniques, play, yoga, and other therapies. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score offers proven alternatives to drugs and talk therapy—and a way to reclaim lives.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Treatment: A Treatment Guide


Erica Verrillo - 2011
    Designed for the electronic age, the ebook features over 2600 useful links to further reading, research articles, and patient reviews. A bibliography for print publications is also included.

Through Time Into Healing


Brian L. Weiss - 1992
    Now, based on his extensive clinical experience, he builds on time-tested techniques of psychotherapy, revealing how regression to past lifetimes provides the necessary breakthrough to healing mind, body, and soul. Using vivid past life case studies, Dr. Weiss shows how regression therapy can heal grief, create more loving relationships, uncover hidden talents, and ultimately shows how near death and out of body experiences help confirm the existence of past lives. Dr. Weiss includes his own professional hypnosis, dream recall, meditation and journaling techniques for safe past life recall at home.

Minding the Body, Mending the Mind


Joan Borysenko - 1987
    Tells how to use the mind's power to dramatically improve physical and emotional health.