The Mindbody Prescription Quotes

“Our brains have decided that feeling tense, which is the appropriate response to being tense, is too unpleasant to bear and is not as socially acceptable as having something “physically” wrong. And so the brain makes a few adjustments in circuitry and instead of looking and acting like a nervous wreck, presto—a bellyache or a backache”
― John E. Sarno, The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain

“You begin to wonder whether you have lived a full life. And, strange as it may seem, strong negative feelings about your mother or father have not gone away; instead, they continue to be repressed and may give rise to symptoms.”
― John E. Sarno, The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain

“he decides that bringing up children is the woman’s job, his children are in trouble. Either”
― John E. Sarno, The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain

“To understand the phenomenon of avoidance in TMS one must constantly bear in mind how radically the unconscious mind differs from its conscious counterpart. The unconscious is terrified by the rage and reacts to avoid it by keeping it repressed and employing physical symptoms to aid in that repression. One of Freud’s biographers, Peter Gay, likened the unconscious to a maximum-security prison where all the desperate criminals, the undesirables and unacceptables, are incarcerated under heavy lock and key. In other words, they are repressed. If these feelings are already repressed, you may ask, what is the need for a distraction? The prison analogy is particularly apt; the repressed feelings, like desperadoes, will try to escape. Despite the force of repression, powerful emotions like rage will strive to rise to consciousness. I call it the “drive to consciousness.” Yale”
― John E. Sarno, The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain