For this post I want to highlight the books I learned the most from regarding the mind-body connection, so you can read them and change your mind forever, too. 

Scientifically speaking, they each focus on Epigenetics and psychoneuroimmunology but with their own experience and expertise within their respective fields. 

Epigenetics is the study of how the environment impacts DNA expression, and psychoneuroimmunology is the study of how the brain, nervous system, and the immune system impact each other. 

We know this as the mind-body connection. 

Let’s start with my favourite, Dr. Joe Dispenza. 

1. Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Dr. Joe Dispenza

I first read You Are the Placebo by Dr. Joe, but then I went back and read his first and I’m covering that one here as it is a better foundational book.  

Joe Dispenza is a chiropractor and neuroscientist who specialises in finding ways to break the body’s habitual programming to create a new future for yourself, which is designed by you, aligned with what you actually want. It is not easy work, and his methods heavily rely on meditation, but it is absolutely life changing. Even if you just understand the concepts he speaks of, it will change your mind. 

I was really deep in the spirituality world in the beginning of my transformation journey, which can become really confusing as it’s all conceptual. This was more grounding and helped me to see how it really is backed by science, and in addition to this, there is evidence and case studies behind it. 

I have many friends and clients who also follow Dr. Joe and none of them have turned back since. Personally I have been to three of his workshops, and had multiple mystical experiences under his guidance. 

Read more about how I came to know Dr. Joe’s work here.

2. Mind over Medicine, Dr. Lissa Rankin

This was actually the first book in my healing journey after seeing her Ted Talk called ‘Scientific Proof we can Heal Ourselves. If you’re interested in scientific proof of the mind-body connection, you can watch that talk here

Lissa had a nervous breakdown as an overworked physician, and spent her two years leave whilst healing, looking into studies on the placebo effect. She found multiple studies highlighting the power of the mind in healing, many which were also in Dr. Joe Dispenza’s books. 

To give two memorable examples; one man believed he could be cured by a brand new cancer treatment (which was a placebo) and his terminal cancer rapidly disappeared. After seeing in the newspaper that the drug trial had been unsuccessful, his cancer returned and he passed away. Another went in for a hip replacement, he was opened up and stitched back up, not having received the replacement and he walked out of the hospital without any issues. 

So it’s all about how powerful your mind is, how you can change your mind at any minute and how that change of mind can alter your physiology and, how there is a power within the physical body that can overcome any illness. 

I ended up doing a workshop with Lissa in 2016 over in America, where I was introduced with many other thought leaders in this area including Bruce Lipton, Alberto Villoldo and Deepak Chopra. It was great! At the course there were many female doctors and surgeons who were defeated by the medical system and found themselves prescribing drugs when they really wanted to be helping people.

They were working towards a model of healing where they had longer time with patients and were able to offer holistic care, and which takes into account the mind-body connection (where the traditional system has failed). 

3. When the body Says No, Dr. Gabor Mate

Dr Gabor Mate is a world-renowned physician who spent his lifetime studying addiction, trauma, childhood development, the mind-body connection and its relationship to stress and illness. He goes into detail in this book about how certain emotional states can play a role in common disease manifestations. 

My favourite saying of his is; “ask not why the addiction, but why the pain?”. He understands that unresolved emotional pain underlies all physical ailments and has been a witness to it throughout his 50+ year medical career. 

He has so much powerful content on YouTube available for free so check him out if you find it interesting, or read his books, whichever you like best! Dr. Joe is a great one to watch if you prefer video or podcasts over reading as well. 

4. A Mind of Your Own, Kelly Brogan, MD. 

Written by a psychiatrist, this book goes deep into her story of prescribing medications to patients only to see them get worse over time, much like Lissa Rankin and the women in her circle. 

Eventually after having depression herself and questioning the need for her to take medication, she looked into natural ways to overcome her feelings. This changed her practice forever, and she is now practising more natural methods with her clients and I believe using medication only where it is absolutely essential. 

She speaks on the importance of animal protein in the diet, whole foods, fats (in particular Omega 3’s), and managing blood sugar by watching consumption of sugar and carbohydrates. She goes into gluten and casein in a little detail as well. She goes into great depth on the nutritional front so if you have depression or anxiety, you will find this book really informative. 

She then goes on to highlight the importance of sleep, meditation and exercise, sharing scientific studies and case studies to highlight the success of each method she recommends. She has a new book out now which is a little more spiritual in nature, and this is also a great read!

5. Mind-to-Matter, Dawson Church. 

‘Science has become the new language of mysticism’ is how Dawson introduces his book. He studies in detail the idea of ‘thoughts becoming things’, which essentially suggests that we attract into our lives those experiences that are a match to our thoughts. 

If you go deeper than this, you learn that thoughts are driven by emotions, and emotions are programmed in childhood, so the things we attract in our lives are really just a reflection of what happened to us before the age of 7 – the most programmable time in our lives. 

So it’s a scientific perspective into how we create our own realities. The information he shares is quite interlinked with Dr. Joe Dispenza’s, as they both study the electromagnetic field that extends beyond all of our physical bodies. 

He shares stories like how they have discovered that cancer patients had cancer in their field before it ever showed up in their physical bodies. I have experienced this myself, working with practitioners who use what we call a CyberScan, a German invention that reads your energy field and acts to balance it out. This machine can also pick up on your emotional state – does this change your mind at all?

So those are my top 5 reads if you’re looking for a scientific perspective pertaining to the mind-body connection. The science is there, and it has the potential to change your life if this is what you want. It’s just not mainstream.

If you find this ‘not mainstream’ advice really helpful, you should check out my course Mindset Mastery – it’s about a holistic as you can get and works through multiple layers of the mind-body connection.

I hope you love it as much as my clients do!

Jen X