Best 10 Mind Body Connection Books

1. The Body Keeps the Score

By Bessel van der Kolk M.D.

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. The Mind-Gut Connection

By Emeran Mayer

The Mind-Gut Connection shows how to keep the brain-gut communication clear and balanced to:

• heal the gut by focusing on a plant-based diet
• balance the microbiome by consuming fermented foods and probiotics, fasting, and cutting out sugar and processed foods
• promote weight loss by detoxifying and creating healthy digestion and maximum nutrient absorption
• boost immunity and prevent the onset of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s
• generate a happier mindset and reduce fatigue, moodiness, anxiety, and depression
• prevent and heal GI disorders such as leaky gut syndrome, food sensitivities and allergies, and IBS, as well as digestive discomfort such as heartburn and bloating
• and much more.

3. The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain

By John E. Sarno M.D.

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.

4. When the Body Says No

By Gabor Maté M.D.

Through the lens of moving personal stories, medical doctor and best-selling author Dr. Gabor Maté shows how emotion and psychological stress play a powerful role in the onset of chronic illness, cancer, and many other serious illnesses.

Drawing on scientific research and the author’s decades of experience as a practicing physician, this book provides answers to important questions about the effect of the mind-body link on illness and health and the role that chronic stress and one’s individual emotional makeup play in an array of common diseases.

5. How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body

By David R. Hamilton PHD

For former pharmaceutical scientist Dr David Hamilton, the testing of new drugs highlighted how profoundly the mind and body are connected. Time and time again, the control group of patients in drug trials improved at similar rates to those who actually received the medicines.

In this book, Dr Hamilton explores the effect of visualization, belief and positive thinking on the body, and shows how using our imagination and mental processes can stimulate our own defences and healing systems to combat disease, pain and illness.

6. The Body Heals Itself

By Emily A. Francis

This book acts as a road map for the energetic journey within your own body, showing you how to recognize and release stored emotions to let go of pain. You’ll discover which emotions are often paired with a specific muscle area and how muscles speak of everything from past traumas to current celebrations. Using stretches, affirmations, visualizations, and more, Emily A. Francis teaches you to unite your mind and body for better health and emotional well-being.

7. Mind-Body Connection for Pain Management

By Anna McConville DPT PT PNE

Mind Body Connection for Pain Management features:

• Psychology-based solutions―Explore techniques rooted in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, mindfulness, meditation, breathwork, and yoga that have a proven track record for helping manage chronic pain.
• Practical and doable―Learn how to make awareness of your mind body connection a consistent habit, so you can engage it anytime and anywhere.
• Anchored in science―These exercises include simple scientific explanations of how they tap into your body’s limbic and nervous systems to help you find pain relief.

8. Minding the Body, Mending the Mind

By Joan Borysenko

Based on Dr. Borysenko’s groundbreaking work nearly thirty years ago at the Mind/Body linic in Boston, Minding the Body, Mending the Mind continues to be a classic in the field, with time-tested tips on how to take control of your own physical and emotional well-being.

9. Healing Mindset

By Eileen Laird

This book is a roadmap to doing less of the former and more of the latter. Inside, you’ll find over 90 mind-body techniques written specifically for people with autoimmune disease. It also includes beginner tips, advanced troubleshooting, and testimonials by fellow autoimmune warriors who have felt the power of the mind-body connection in their own lives.

10. Hidden Within Us

By Samuel J. Mann MD

Hidden Within Us brings attention instead to the burden of emotions kept from our conscious awareness by repression.

Case histories and published evidence will convey to readers the rarely recognized value, and harm, of repression: Its value as an overlooked cornerstone of emotional resilience in many of us. Its harm in the unrecognized impact of repressed, unfelt emotions on our health, with relevance to many highly prevalent yet still inadequately explained and treated medical conditions.