Understanding the secret code of illness and health Many doctors overlook the seemingly inexplicable tragedies and recoveries that happen in hospitals every day, opting to view them simply as aberrations from the medical norm. In this book, Dr. Marc Siegel draws from his decades of experience treating patients and explores the sometimes miraculous effects that the spirit and emotion can have on disease and healing. The inner pulse is the essence that links the soul to the mind and body, the marker that predicts whether a person's life force is fading or strengthening. This book shows you how to tap into your inner pulse and even how to influence it. Explores how your inner pulse can alert you to what is going on in your body - Offers a new perspective on the positive and negative effects of the mind on illness and healing - Includes dramatic case stories of Dr. Siegel's work with his own patients?those who have healed and those who have not Exploring the uncanny world where expectation and outcome are driven by a patient's personal intuition, this book will give you a deeper understanding of how the mind relates to disease and how the mind and the body working in sync can help heal. Introduction from the Author, Dr. Marc Siegel The inner pulse is the spiritual and physical axis that grows stronger with good health and weaker with illness. It is the most powerful force in the body, and it can be your radar to good health or impending illness. Here are some of the things I learned while writing The Inner Pulse : 1) A strong inner pulse is your radar that you will survive; a weakening inner pulse warns you that your health is deteriorating. The inner pulse can't be measured but it can be sensed or intuited. It is the marker of your determination to live. 2) Dedicated physical exercise and spiritual practices including meditation can bring you more in contact with your inner pulse. 3) Severe life-threatening illnesses can put you more in touch with your inner pulse, especially as you recover from them. 4) Believe in your inner pulse and beware of doctors who would dismiss you or use simple statistics to discourage you, writing you off too soon. Look for a doctor who believes in your intuition and your own sense of your health. 5) In some cases, you might be able to influence your inner pulse. 6) A doctor becomes a true healer when he or she learns to be guided by a patient's inner pulse rather than by preconceived notions. Recently, Congresswoman Giffords defied the odds when many medical improbabilities occurred at exactly the same time: the bullet passed through her brain missing vital structures, an aide with a minimum of medical training held her wound together, and she happened to arrive within the “golden hour” after injury at one of the top trauma centers in the country. But beyond even these miraculous coincidences, what contributed to her recovery the most was her indomitable spirit, her powerful life force, her inner pulse. In The Inner Pulse , I tell the story of my patients and how they survived against the odds because of the strength of their inner pulse. I have discovered this strong inner pulse in many of my patients: from one man who managed to recover even after his brain had been choked of oxygen, to another who couldn't walk yet rose out of his wheelchair to attack a former employer who owed him millions, to a third whose fractured personality was able to control her blood sugar in some personalities but not in others. I have also found this power in myself as I overcame my own life crisis and recovered my inner strength. I hope you learn as much about your inner pulse while reading this book as I did while writing it. * Siegel (False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear), a professor of medicine at NYU, writes about an ineffable but perceptible (though not measurable) ""essential life force."" This pulse acts as the ""fulcrum of a person's life force...where the physical and the spiritual combine."" Taking incidents from his life both personal and profession, Siegel relays how he learned to listen for and accept guidance from the pulse. He gives examples of how the force can be strengthened and focused, citing extraordinary rescues and feats and the exploits of Houdini and other magicians, arguing that tapping into it can bring an awareness of ""the direction your health is heading."" The doctor relates how he has been guided to perform diagnostic tests that have detected early cancers and other illnesses. Over the course of the book Siegel defines his concept in many often-metaphoric ways, alternatively referring to it as ""the power that holds the body and the soul together""; ""the strongest power in the body""; a person's ""drive to live"" or ""survive""; the efficacy of ""positive emotion and spirit"" or ""thinking"" on a person's health; ""magic,"" and other concepts, effectively circling an inherently vague spiritual concern (""how much w