Unlearn Your Pain by Howard Schubiner, MD

Unlearn Your Pain
by Howard Schubiner, MD

ISBN-13: 9780593994368
Hardcover: 496 pages
Publisher: The Open Field
Released: May 26 2026

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description from NetGalley:
Migraines, headaches, back pain, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue, and a host of other chronic illnesses have caused hardship worldwide. For the past twenty years, Dr. Howard Schubiner has conducted clinical trials and authored more than 100 scientific papers to uncover the root cause of these in challenging illnesses. In Unlearn Your Pain, he shares in inspiring and step-by-step detail the program that has proven to be effective in reversing chronic pain, fatigue, anxiety, and depression. For most people, the answers lie in the science of neuroplasticity, and this book details a revolutionary program that has saved thousands from a lifetime of misery and depression.

Using the latest research and mind-body practices all confirmed by clinical trials and studies, Dr. Schubiner leads readers to a new understanding of how the mind affects pain and physical and emotional health, and how we can live healthier and better lives.


My Review:
Unlearn Your Pain explains how it is actually your brain that generates pain based on perceived danger, either from further physical damage or emotional distress. While injury can be the cause of pain, this usually resolves when the injury heals. Yet chronic pain and things like depression or anxiety might linger even after the damage is healed--or even be generated because the brain thinks it's keeping you from danger. The author provided many examples of this.

He carefully evaluates patients to see if tissue damage is behind the pain or not. If not, he's developed a couple ways to help your brain feel safe again--safe to move, have energy, and be joyful. The one thing that I felt the author overlooked is how the body can go into "freeze" (of fight, flight, or freeze fame) when a person feels overwhelmed, powerless, or in danger and that's what he's trying to reset with his methods.

The author then described in detail and with real examples how to use his methods on yourself or what a practitioner using these methods will do with you. He also described a number of clinical trials that have tested his methods against other popular chronic pain alternatives like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. The results with his methods worked better (greater relief from symptoms) and lasted longer. So if you have chronic pain, fatigue, depression, or anxiety you might try this an see if it helps.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.

The Gratitude Effect Positivity Journal by Randy E. Kamen, EdD

The Gratitude Effect Positivity Journal
by Randy E. Kamen, EdD

ISBN-13: 9780593690062
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: Zeitgeist
Released: January 9, 2024

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description from Goodreads:
Gratitude is a powerful emotion that conveys appreciation for a moment that has touched you in some way and moves you to express thankfulness. When you experience gratitude, your brain releases neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin, resulting in a host of tangible benefits associated with positive thinking and emotions. Practiced regularly, gratitude literally rewires your brain to be more optimistic, flexible, and joyful, while simultaneously reducing stress and anxiety, building resilience to adversity, and strengthening your immune system, cardiac health, sleep hygiene, and more. These many positive changes to your health and well-being are “the gratitude effect,” and because these effects are cumulative, the more you practice gratitude, the greater its impact over time.

With The Gratitude Effect Positivity Journal, you’ll engage your brain’s neuroplasticity to reshape your worldview—and retrain your brain for greater joy, resiliency, and personal empowerment.


My Review:
The Gratitude Effect Positivity Journal is about how gratitude can help change your outlook and well-being. The first section talked about some of the science behind this and how daily gratitude practices (finding things you're grateful for) can actually change how you view life. Most of the book was the journal, with an area for you to write your daily gratitude list and a quote about gratitude for each day. The author provided some prompts in the first section that help you think of things you're grateful for. It was an interesting, short book. I'd recommend it (especially the print version) for those who like to journal.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.

Energy Rising by Julia DiGangi

Energy Rising
by Julia DiGangi

ISBN-13: 9781647823450
Hardback: 256 pages
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Released: September 26, 2023

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Your success in life—at work and at home—rises when you harness the energy that powers your brain. A neuropsychologist explains how. Your drive to create change, catalyze impact, and build relationships all come from neuroelectrical energy—real, electrical impulses—firing in your brain. Who you are as a person depends on how you work with this energy. When this energy rises within you, you feel empowered and dynamic. But when this energy falls, you feel down, stressed, and defeated. You may feel as if you don't control your emotional energy, that it's an inevitable consequence of the world around you and the forces bearing down on you. But that's not the case.

To reach your full potential, you can learn to recognize and harness the energy in your brain. Leading neuropsychologist Julia DiGangi will teach you how through eight "codes." Some of the codes will surprise you. All will fortify you. You will learn why these codes work and how to apply them to your own challenges through exercises and reflections. When you start viewing your life less about the activities you do and more about the natural energies within and around you, your power to live and lead with impact grows exponentially. Energy Rising offers you a provocative and neuroscientifically accurate path to greater emotional power, influence, and connection, both at work and at home.

DiGangi's lab and clinical work have been conducted at Harvard, Columbia, Georgetown University, the University of Chicago, DePaul, and the University of Illinois Chicago. Her fMRI and EEG research has helped business leaders, parents, couples, educators, and military leaders. Her work, rooted in resilience after extreme stress, will show you how to effectively deal with struggles you currently face. She tells the stories of business leaders, parents, couples—and even combat veterans and trauma survivors—who used the eight codes to rise.


My Review:
Energy Rising is about how you can change painful situations by uncovering the root causes of how you react to those situations. The intended audience is people in leadership positions with a focus on business, but the author also gave examples from marriage, parenting, and other areas of life. Each chapter covered a different "code," with 5 focused on yourself (which change how you interact with others) and 3 on influencing others. She clearly explained each concept and gave questions to work through to help you implement each concept.

Among other things, she talked about naming what you fear will happen if you change your behavior and evaluating how likely it is that bad result will happen. Also, about changing your outlook from negative to positive (like from a discouraged 'no one understands what I'm trying to accomplish' to seeing it as a positive challenge resulting from 'I'm at the cutting edge'). She explained the root fear that you don't matter and aren't worthy of good things and about becoming aware of our sense of worth regardless of the situation. She covered how our brain tries to avoid uncertainty, but how it's better to become self-assured and be willing to say, "I don't know." She also examined how ways of dealing with life that you learned in childhood aren't necessarily helpful in adulthood and exercises to rewrite those patterns.

She then talked about why you don't need to always be the one who's right or have everyone's approval to be an effective leader. She also explained how to get people to follow your lead because they want to and to visualize how you want your relationships to look in the future. Overall, I found the topics covered to be interesting and helpful, so I would recommend this book to others.

From the book: "Your most enduring pain comes from what you already think about yourself--that you're not good enough, important enough, or worthy enough. And the thing about this pain is that you can never outrun what you believe about yourself."


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt: Read an excerpt using Google Preview.

Survival Tips by Clive Johnson

Survival Tips by Clive Johnson ISBN-13: 9781782749790 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Amber Books Released: April 14, 2020

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
With a total of 150 expert survival tips, Survival Tips gives you the basic skills to keep going in any situation. Tips range from using an ice axe and sheltering from the wind, to finding fresh water and building a protective shelter. Survival Tips explains how to stay safe in every environment, from the sub-zero landscape of the Arctic to the scorching suns of the tropics. Topics covered include: edible plants and animals, finding water, celestial navigation, surviving at sea, constructing shelters, hunting and trapping techniques, making fire, and more. Illustrated with more than 100 black-and-white illustrations.


My Review:
Survival Tips provides a series of brief tips about how to stay safe in a variety of landscapes (desert, snow, jungle, etc.) and how to deal with different emergency situations. This book is not comprehensive, not really survival training, and wasn't necessarily about unexpected emergency situations. For example, it started off with advice about what to carry in your survival kit when going hiking. The water survival tips assumed that you had been on a yacht equipped with a survival raft, so you can grab canned goods, a can opener, and water before getting into the raft. The author did have an illustration showing how to lash a raft together from wood, but a YouTube video showing these techniques in action would be more helpful and comprehensive.

The tips were generally only a few sentences long. He'd tell you how to find water, what animals and plants are edible, and what animals and plants are dangerous. However, you already have to know how to identify these plants and animals for this information to be useful. He also gave commonsense advice and advice that you probably would be given by instructors if you were going hiking in a snowy, mountainous area or visiting a desert area. He also gave some information about first aid, but much of this ended with evacuating the person to a hospital as fast as possible. Even if you had this book on hand in a survival situation, I didn't feel like the information was complete enough to help you survive. Since I learned how to do first aid, use maps, make fires, etc., in Girl Scouts and from my parents, I didn't really find much of this information useful.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.

The Art of Jin Shin by Alexis Brink

The Art of Jin Shin by Alexis Brink ISBN-13: 9781982130930 Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: Tiller Press Released: June 25, 2019

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Balance your body, mind, and spirit and heal yourself with your own hands using this clear, step-by-step illustrated guide to the practice of the ancient Japanese healing art of Jin Shin—written by a trained expert with nearly three decades of experience.

You might be surprised to learn that the majority of today’s most common ailments including anxiety, backaches, colds and flu, digestive issues, immune disorders, migraines, and insomnia, can be alleviated naturally by restoring and harmonizing blocked, stagnant energy. The art of Jin Shin, based on the Japanese healing art of energy medicine, is practiced throughout the world. While related to acupressure and massage therapy, this holistic practice uses only minimal pressure and gentle touching with the fingers and hands to redirect or unblock the flow of energy along the body’s fifty-two points (twenty-six on each side of the body)—called Safety Energy Locations, or SELs—areas where energy tends to get congested. This simple, non-invasive process allows your body’s energy to flow smoothly, and with balance restored, you will experience a sense of wellbeing and calm.

The Art of Jin Shin explains all the basics of this healing art and provides you with the knowledge you need to practice it on yourself—with exercises ranging from simply holding a finger for a few minutes to spending twenty minutes to harmonize a specific circulation pattern.


My Review:
The Art of Jin Shin explains how Jin Shin works (gentle touches and deep breathing) and some positions that a person can do on themselves to help with things like headaches, a cold, insomnia, dizziness, stomach aches, etc. The author started with a basic introduction to and history of the Art of Jin Shin. While Jin Shin can be applied to others, the focus of this book is how to apply it to your own body. The author provided an overview of how to do the technique and where the points you will touch are located on the body. She talked about some short routines to do for everyday care, organ flow routines, and positions to use for specific problems. There were pictures of people doing each position, so you can see clearly were to touch. She's a little less clear on how long to hold a position as that seems very variable and dependent on being able to feel when the energy becomes unstuck.

Many of the positions quickly get tiring to hold, so I'm not sure if I'm doing them long enough. Also, some positions (especially in the organ flow routines) require a flexible body to touch the two spots at the same time. Due to my rheumatoid arthritis, I'm not flexible enough to do most of the holds for the organ flows nor the one for autoimmune conditions, though I can do the arthritis hold for a short length of time. Does it work? I haven't seen any improvements in my RA, but it did seem to work quite quickly on a mild headache that I had. I'll keep trying it for a while since you can't hurt yourself by doing it. Anyway, if you're interested in The Art of Jin Shin, this book will get you started in applying it to yourself. I was left with some questions after finishing the book, but they weren't the sort that would prevent me from using the holds in the book.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.

The Undercover Edge by Derrick Levasseur

The Undercover Edge by Derrick Levasseur ISBN-13: 9781492650591 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Sourcebooks Released: Jan. 1, 2018

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from NetGalley:
In a televised social experiment before millions of viewers, police sergeant Derrick Levasseur demonstrated that techniques used by undercover detectives could help people achieve their goals in everyday social situations. The result: he walked away with more than half a million dollars.

In The Undercover Edge, Derrick shares advise about human behavior and motivation. He provides easy tools based on experience acquired while overcoming personal adversity and working more than a decade in law enforcement. He shows readers:

• The power of observation and creating a profile
• The effect of using silence to extract and evaluate information
• The benefits of interpreting body language and developing your sixth sense
• The importance of self-awareness and adapting to your environment
• The value of developing a personal ops plan with a defined mission

Derrick's approach allows readers to create a solid foundation in their lives, build confidence personally and professionally, and push themselves to become stronger, more capable leaders.


My Review:
The Undercover Edge is an advice book about how to succeed in life using techniques the author learned as a police officer and through adversity in his life. It's written in an encouraging, easy-to-read and -understand way. Basically, he teaches good communication, leadership skills, how to spot what motivates the people around you, and how to use that knowledge to everyone's advantage. He used examples from his life and fictional business-world scenarios to illustrate his points. Overall, I'd recommend this book to people who want to be more proactive in achieving their goals.

He started by encouraging the reader to analyze your own strengths and weaknesses and to set goals and achieve them through smaller steps. He explained the advantages of "profiling" the people around you. He gave general advice about staying healthy, creating financial stability, and developing relationships. He talked about how to effectively listen to others and to watch their body language. He gave leadership and management advice and talked about visualization techniques, growing through adversity, and the importance of having good mentors/roll models.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt: Read an excerpt using Google Preview.

Mind Hacking by John Hargrave

Mind Hacking by John Hargrave ISBN-13: 9781501105654 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Gallery Books Released: Jan. 5, 2016

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from NetGalley:
Have you ever wished you could reprogram your brain, just as a hacker would a computer? In this guide to improving your mental habits, Hargrave reveals the steps that allowed him to overcome negativity and eliminate mental problems at their core.

This book lays out a simple yet comprehensive approach to help you rewire your brain and achieve healthier thought patterns for a better quality of life. It hinges on the repetitive steps of analyzing, imagining, and reprogramming. By treating your brain as a computer and mastering Hargrave’s mind hacking skills, you, too, can create a positive, permanent shift in your thinking.


My Review:
Mind Hacking is a way to re-write problem thoughts and succeed at the goals you set. There are three main steps: being aware of what you're thinking, choosing new thoughts to replace the problem thoughts, and actually replacing those thoughts. For each step, we're given simple exercises that help you achieve things like increasing your concentration. The last step also covers coming up with small, do-able steps toward your ultimate goal. These techniques are good for any goal, not just re-writing problem thoughts.

Each concept is illustrated with a number of stories and analogies. While the author sometimes refers to scientific studies, he explains the concepts in computer programming terms and in other ways so that even teens can easily understand them. In fact, I know of a teen who could really use the information in this book. I suspect the humorous, encouraging writing style will keep her engaged in the content.

I've previously read about some of these ideas and tried them, and they really do work. This book brings these ideas together and explains them on a level that most people can understand and do. I'd recommend this book to anyone ready to change their negative thoughts that keep coming back or who need advice on how to achieve their goals.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt: Read an excerpt using Google Preview.