Reviews of Sound Mind, Sound Body

"Sound Mind, Sound Body shows just how powerful a genuine altruistic attitude can be. It's the path to overcoming adversity and staying healthy throughout your life."
—Bernie Siegel, M.D., author of Love, Medicine, and Miracles and Peace, Love, and Healing

"A new wisdom redefines health beyond traditional biology to include wholeness of mind, body, and spirit. In Sound Mind, Sound Body, Dr. Pelletier's research has given us this wisdom and the will to apply his 'prescriptions' to move us all toward better personal health and also toward a truly healthy society."
—John W. Farquhar, M.D., professor of medicine; director, Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention

"Sound Mind, Sound Body is a most inspiring and useful book. Through insightful interviews with scores of highly successful people, Dr. Pelletier has discovered a common thread of timeless strategies and beliefs that could help us all live healthier and more fulfilling lives."
—Herbert Benson, M.D., president, Mind/Body Medical Institute, New England Deaconess Hospital, Harvard Medical School

“Sound Mind, Sound Body is a profound exploration of the nature of health in its widest sense, and healing in its many dimensions. Beyond that, it is a guide to the well-lived life, a clarion call for meaning, purpose, and values as the centerpiece of true success and satisfaction. Kenneth Pelletier has rendered us all a service.”
— Daniel Goleman, coeditor. Mind/Body Medicine

“For more than twenty years. Dr. Pelletier has pioneered the creation of the field of mind/body medicine and optimal health. In Sound Mind, Sound Body, he extends his groundbreaking research even further by providing us with living prototypes of prominent individuals and their lifestyle practices, pointing the way toward greater lifelong good health for everyone. This is truly a landmark book of the greatest importance.”
— Michael Murphy, founder, Esalcn Institute, author of Future of the Body

“Dr. Pelletier’s research on highly successful people indicates that optimal health depends on much more than what you eat, how you exercise, and what vitamins you take. In particular, it involves how connected you are to other people, how you define purpose in your life, and how much you devote yourself to improving the welfare of others. Sound Mind, Sound Body is an excellent demonstration of the first principle of holistic medicine: We are more than just physical bodies.”
—Andrew T Weil, M.D., author of Health and Healing and Natural Health, Natural Medicine

“It is refreshing to hear a voice in our national health dialogue that speaks from clinical data in support of the premise that healthy folks are simultaneously anchored inwardly to spiritual roots, and outwardly to their community through compassion.”
—Ram Dass, author of Be Here Now

“Dr. Pelletier goes beyond the familiar wellness guidelines to delve deeply into the essential inner lives, illness experiences, personal challenges, and individualized health practices of several dozen highly prominent people. A fascinating and profoundly useful book.”
—Tom ferguson, M.D., President of Self-Care Productions, founder. Medical Self-Care journal

“Dr. Pelletier’s new book is by far his best and most important. He totally reframes our conceptions of what health is all about. When I turned the last page over, I was overcome with that rare epiphany:
an understanding of health. And for someone approaching 70, that’s seminal—and life-giving. Unless the Clinton administration takes Pelletier’s book into account— seriously so — I’m afraid the only reforms we’ll get will be cosmetic.
—Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business Administration, University of Southern California, and author of An Invented Life: Reflections on Leadership and Change

“Sound. Mind, Sound Body is a lucid summary of the evidence that a sound mind not only inhabits but helps produce a sound body. Ken Pelletier makes it clear how mind and body can interact to foster good health. This book is an excellent overview of what is and isn’t worth knowing in mind/body medicine.”
—David Spiegel, M.D.,
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine

“Sound Mind, Sound Body is a remarkable book—beautifully written, documented, and reasoned. The theme of ‘broken bones heal strongest’ offers a much-needed antidote to the cultural whine that traumatic or difficult periods of life need weaken the body and mind. The methods described for responding to and resolving traumatic incidents are extremely practical. And the interweaving of relevant and pithy comments from 53 exceptional individuals into a logical and nonrepetitive sequence is itself a tour de force.”
—James F. Fries, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine

“In this impressive examination of health in America, Ken Pelletier argues convincingly that to achieve optimal mental and physical health, we must devote fewer resources to strategies aimed at avoiding or treating disease and more toward creating a health-care system that fosters a deep and abiding sense of purpose and genuine caring about others. With its broad-ranging and comprehensive review of mind-body research and fascinating stories of extraordinary people who have succeeded in this quest, this book will help many to do likewise. Pelletier’s message, if heeded, will dramatically improve our individual and national robustness.”
— Redford Williams, M.D., Director, Behavioral Medicine Research Center at Duke University; coauthor, Anger Kills: Seventeen Strategies for Controlling the Hostility That Can Harm Your Health

“Dr. Ken Pelletier describes the cutting edge of mind/body research while exploring the motivations, world views, and struggles of highly successful people to give an extremely interesting and human perspective on health and illness, reminding us that it’s not the challenges we face as much as how we cope with them that ultimately influences our health and the quality of our lives. This hook will truly inspire people to change their lives.”
—Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., Director, Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program, Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Massachusetts

“If you think the secrets to health, vitality, and longevity are to be found only in modern medicine, you are in desperate need of this book. Medical science, as magnificent as it may be, is helpless without you, for the key to lifelong health lies within each of us, as this book makes clear.

“Dr. Kenneth Pelletier has emerged over the past two decades as a veritable prophet of the future of health care. Sound Mind, Sound Body is an invaluable vision of what lies ahead.”
—Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words, Meaning & Medicine, and Recovering the Soul

“Sound Mind, Sound Body is a sane prescription for healthy living that is remarkably easy to follow. A diet of altruism and loving-kindness, spiced with a sense of purpose in life, moderately low in fat and high in fiber, can make our personal and collective world a better place to live. It is refreshing to read the personal stories and scientific studies that support an attainable and sustainable approach to health. This book will take its place alongside Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer as one of the classics of the new medicine.”
—Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., President, Mind/Body Health Institute

“Most of what we know about health comes from a study of sick people, bill Sound Mind, Sound Body corrects this incomplete picture of health with a refreshing account drawn from in-depth interviews with some of the healthiest high-achievers Dr. Pelletier could find. These are real people who manage to attain high levels of health despite disabilities, illnesses, and crises. Their success appears to be related to their drive toward a deeper purpose and meaning in life—rather than arduous personal health regimens of diet and exercise.

“Sound Mind, Sound Body is a highly readable, fascinating book that will inform and inspire those facing life-threatening illness or those just wishing to pursue the deeper meanings of health.”
—David S. Sobel, M.D., Director of Patient Education and Health Promotion, Kaiser Permanente, coauthor of Healthy Pleasures and The Healing Brain

“Nothing is more common than the notion that health is not the same as the absence of disease. Nothing is less common than an understanding of the difference. Now Sound Mind, Sound Body promises to remedy this situation once and for all. Based on Ken Pelletier’s extraordinary study of a fortunate few who have found health on their own, this ground-breaking book offers a unique gift—the wisdom of health. We, as individuals and as a society, cannot afford to turn this offer down. Simply put, this is required reading for all those who value the human experience.”
—Donald M. Vickery, M.D., President and CEO, Health Decisions, Inc.

“An intriguing and thought-provoking treatment of an important subject: preventing illness and promoting health. Read it and be well!”
—Diana Chapman Walsh, President, Wellesley College

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