Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection by John E. Sarno
John Sarno was a professor of rehabilitation medicine at New York University, and this book, first published in 1991, is the one that made his name. His argument is that a great deal of chronic back, neck and shoulder pain isn’t caused by a structural problem in the spine. He called it Tension Myositis Syndrome, or TMS, and he believed the pain comes from the mind rather than the disc or the joint.
The idea is that stress, anxiety and especially anger we don’t feel able to express get pushed out of awareness. The brain then produces real pain as a distraction, so attention lands on the body instead of on the difficult feeling. Sarno isn’t saying the pain is imaginary. He’s saying it’s real, and that the cause is emotional rather than mechanical. Much of the book is case histories from his clinic, and he describes people getting relief once they accept the diagnosis and stop treating their backs as fragile.
This one sits naturally on a hypnotherapy list, because it’s about the mind’s influence over the body and about how attention and belief shape pain. There’s overlap with what we know about central sensitisation and the way the nervous system can turn up the volume on pain signals. Sarno’s own research methods were criticised, and TMS isn’t a diagnosis you’ll get from most Australian doctors, so it’s worth reading alongside that caution rather than instead of proper assessment. If you have back pain, please see your GP or a physio first, especially if it’s new, severe, or comes with numbness, weakness or changes to bladder or bowel control.
What I think the book does well is take seriously how much emotional strain can show up in the body, and give people a way to stop fearing their own back. For some readers that shift in understanding is the turning point. Others find they need more than reading a book, which is where hypnotherapy or pain education can help.
Why you might enjoy it: If you’ve had pain that doesn’t match what the scans show, or you’ve noticed it gets worse when life gets hard, this is a thought-provoking read. It’s short, plain and easy to follow.
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through them I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
🛒 Click here to purchase from Amazon
Want to read more?
Goodreads | Readers discussing Sarno on Reddit
Have you read Healing Back Pain? I’d be interested to hear whether it changed how you think about your pain, in the comments.
