The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How – Dan Coyle is a journalist who has looked at “outbreaks of talent” over the last 500 years. Talent is created, not born. He describes three key components: 1) deep learning 2) ignition 3) master coaching. What makes this book relevant to chronic pain is that he links his findings to the last decade of neuroscience research. He clearly describes how the nervous lays down repeatable pathways. The same principles apply to anxiety, pain, and frustration.  This book is not only entertaining, it will change your concept of how your neural pathways are formed and you will better understand the tools that are effective in creating new functional circuits that do not include pain.

Read one patient’s experience with this book

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated – Cognitive behavioral therapy is a field of psychology that assumes that one must have an anxiety producing thought to elicit a feeling of anxiety. David Burns has written a book that I feel is the cornerstone of the mental health pathway in healing from chronic pain. He presents many methods of restructuring your thinking processes. As you implement the tools your brain will form more functional neurological pathways. Your pain is affected both by your nervous system “calming down” and the alternate pathways not including pain. With commitment and repetition, this book alone can have a dramatic effect both on your pain and your sense of well being.     David Burn’s Comments

The Pain Cure: The Proven Programme That Helps End Your Chronic Pain – Khalsa, an integrative medicine specialist, is credited with developing the first holistic pain management program in the southwestern United States, combining medication, nutrition, physical therapies, and mental and spiritual approaches. This book begins with an overview of the mechanism of pain and how it can initiate chronic pain or chronic pain syndrome, a difference the author explains. Next, Khalsa devotes a chapter to each aspect of his program. Additional chapters focus on specific painful conditions (arthritis, fibromyalgia, headache). Individuals desperate to rid themselves of pain will find good information on combining traditional medical and alternative approaches.

Forgive for Good – Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting, insists Fred Luskin in Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness, nor does it mean condoning bad behavior. What it does mean is that you “take your hurt less personally, take responsibility for how you feel, and become a hero instead of a victim in the story you tell.” Luskin, a practicing psychologist and cofounder of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project, shows why forgiveness is important for mental and physical health, explains how to form a grievance and suggests practical steps for healing. He uses examples from his clinical practice including instances of broader cultural grievances like those between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland in this solidly researched and convincing guide.

Art of Living: The Classical Mannual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness (Plus) – “Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.” The Stoic philosopher Epictetus was born on the eastern edges of the Roman Empire in A.D. 55, but The Art of Living is still perfectly suited for any contemporary self-help or recovery program. To prove the point, this modern interpretation by Sharon Lebell casts the teachings in up-to-date language, with phrases like “power broker” and “casual sex” popping up intermittently. But the core is still the same: Epictetus keeps the focus on progress over perfection, on accomplishing what can be accomplished and abandoning unproductive worry over what cannot. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Unlearn Your Pain – Unlearn Your Pain describes the “Mind Body Syndrome”. It is a clinical chronic pain syndrome where your brain translates prior traumatic events in patients’ lives directly into physical symptoms. Dr. Schubiner illustrates the problem with many compelling stories. He offers a 28-day course consisting of writing and mindfulness that helps uncover the source of the symptoms and allows the patient to move on. Often the results are dramatic. It is another dimension of the reprogramming process that can break up these unconsciousness neurological circuits.   Link to Dr. Schubiner’s website

Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children – Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.), began almost forty years ago as the first national parent-training program to teach parents how to communicate more effectively with kids and offer step-by-step advice to resolving family conflicts so everybody wins. This classic is the most studied, highly praised, and proven parenting program in the world — and it will work for you. Whether you have a toddler striking out for independence or a teenager who has already started rebelling, you’ll find P.E.T. a compassionate, effective way to instill responsibility and create a nurturing family environment in which your child will thrive.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity – Allen, a management consultant and executive coach, provides insights into attaining maximum efficiency and at the same time relaxing whenever one needs or wants to. Readers learn that there is no single means for perfecting organizational efficiency or productivity; rather, the author offers tools to focus energies strategically and tactically without letting anything fall through the cracks. He provides tips, techniques, and tricks for implementation of his workflow management plan, which has two basic components: capture all the things that need to get done into a workable, dependable system; and discipline oneself to make front-end decisions with an action plan for all inputs into that system. In short, do it (quickly), delegate it (appropriately), or defer it. This road map for organizational efficiency may help many who have too much to do in too little time, both professionally and in their personal lives.

Journey into Love : Ten Steps to Wholeness – Often our natural vitality and expansiveness are blocked by patterns of which we are not even fully aware. This book shows how to identify these patterns and take practical steps to stop constraining our lives. It is a practical guide to steps we each need to take to heal and blossom into our own true nature as compassionate, spiritual human beings. In this adventure, the authors bring lessons from work with thousands of people in different cultures, revealing how to go beyond the “negative love” syndrome and find our own power, wisdom and voice. Clear, simple, yet profound knowledge and practical tools to free your heart and spirit–a gift of love to anyone on a healing path.

8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back: Natural Posture Solutions for Pain in the Back, Neck, Shoulder, Hip, Knee, and Foot (Remember When It Didn’t Hurt) – Through her experience in healing her own back pain, coupled with extensive training and research, Esther Gokhale has developed a technique to alleviate back pain–the Gokhale Method. She has helped thousands of people re-learn the way their bodies were designed to move–gracefully and with ease. She has spent fifteen years teaching the technique, honing it for clarity and efficiency, and presents it in her book for general use. Many physicians now refer their back patients to her, and almost all the patients start to improve from the first lesson. In many cases the results are dramatic. This book provides you with step-by-step instructions and demonstrations of her technique.

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (Borzoi Books)- Karen Armstrong, a revered genius of elucidation and synthesis, now tells the full and profound story of altruism throughout human history. She turns to neuroscience and tracks the evolution of our brains and our natural capacity for empathy, and performs her signature mode of beautifully clarifying interpretation in a mind-expanding discussion of the history of the Golden Rule (“Always treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself”), the essence of compassion and the kernel of every religious tradition. Exquisite and affecting explications of Buddhist, Confucian, Judaic, Christian, and Islamic commentary prepare the ground for meditation exercises meant to engender “open-mindedness” and the cultivation of compassion, making for a far-reaching 12-step program.