Calm Your Body, Heal Your Mind: Transcend Pain, Anxiety, Anger, and Repetitive Unwanted Thoughts - Paperback

by David MD Hanscom (Author), Stephen W. PhD Porges (Foreword by)

A groundbreaking, dynamic healing program designed to help you achieve deep healing and relief from disruptive, unwanted thoughts through calming your body and rerouting your nervous system.

Who among us has not experienced periods of high anxiety, persistent stress, obsessive ruminations, or recurrent intrusive thoughts? The longer these "repetitive unpleasant thoughts" (RUTs) go untreated, the greater the intensity and number of associated painful symptoms, which can lead to more serious illness.

In Calm Your Body, Heal Your Mind--drawing from the fields of neurology, psychology, basic science, social psychology, and clinical medical research--best-selling author Dr. David Hanscom explains the physiology of mental pain and presents a unique four-part "dynamic healing" program to help your brain regenerate and repair. The key is learning to regulate your nervous system by cultivating what he calls "safety physiology." Instead of being overwhelmed by your thoughts, you can gain a greater capacity to enjoy life and live it on your own terms.

Methods and techniques include:

• Separating from negative thoughts through mindfulness, meditation, and expressive writing.
• "Turning down the heat" of anger, which is hyperactivated anxiety and neuroinflammation.
• Softening the ego and its cognitive distortions.
• Nurturing creativity and joy to rewire neural circuitry.

With uncommon clarity and compassion, Dr. Hanscom explains the science behind these interventions and offers practical tools and an integrated plan for rewiring the brain to relieve pain. Illustrating the scientific research with case studies from his own practice, along with stories from his own recovery from "the abyss" of RUTs, Calm Your Body, Heal Your Mind offers effective strategies and tremendous hope for healing.

Author Biography

David Hanscom, MD, is an orthopedic surgeon who practiced complex spine surgery for thirty-two years in Seattle, Washington, and Sun Valley, Idaho. His expertise in healing chronic mental and physical pain emerged from his relentless search for answers to his own challenges with chronic pain and recurring intrusive thoughts. As he applied what he was learning to his spine practice, many of his surgical patients began to heal. He presented the healing principles he learned in Back in Control: A Surgeon's Roadmap out of Chronic Pain, published in 2012, with a second edition in 2016. Dr. Hanscom quit his clinical practice in 2019 to bring his healing concepts into mainstream awareness. He is a guest on TV and radio programs spearheading efforts to define chronic illness, a regular contributor to Psychology Today, and a sought-after speaker at medical conferences worldwide.