In Healing: Beyond Pills & Potions, Dr. Steve Bierman draws on 40 years of clinical experience to restore Mind to medicine and Humanism to healing. Citing case histories from his own remarkable emergency medicine and medical hypnosis practices, Dr. Bierman compels us to acknowledge what material science refuses to see - namely, that Mind Matters. Then, in easy digestible steps, he teaches us how simple refinements of everyday communication (speech and gestures) can enable us to achieve stunningly positive outcomes and lasting cures. 

Working as an emergency physician, Dr. Bierman became renowned for performing painless procedures - from simple injections and laceration repairs to childbirth to electrical cardioversion. But his other less-celebrated outcomes were equally astonishing: perilous heart rhythms converted to normal with a few well-chosen words, hemorrhages arrested, airways opened, bad habits (smoking) broken - all with a few choice phrases and easy delivery techniques. 

In his private practice, Dr. Bierman used the same skills to forestall auto-immune diseases, shrink deadly tumors, relieve depression, ameliorate cardiac disease and ensure bloodless, painless surgeries - in essence, to help patients recover their desired wellness. Many of his cures seem like miracles. But, as Dr. Bierman explains, they are the inevitable consequence of an expanded understanding of disease causality and the focused power of ideas. 

Healing: Beyond Pills & Potions unravels the mysteries of ritual, hypnosis and Placebo, and places the curative power of those phenomena in the hands of patients and caregivers. Here, health is redefined, and the true nature of symptom formation is explored and clarified. With these new conceptual tools, Dr. Bierman teaches both patients and caregivers how to avoid inadvertent “curses,” while instead promoting healing and restoring health. 

Artful caregivers, as Dr. Bierman calls them, will learn from Healing what their professional education failed to teach them - namely, how to deliver information correctly, by avoiding harm while promoting health. They will also learn how to achieve “deep cures,” by uprooting the persisting causes of illness. As a consequence, clinicians will experience a deeper sense of fulfillment and gratification than ever before, as they open themselves to the wonders of painless procedures, bloodless surgeries, unexpectedly positive outcomes and enduring cures. 

Patients who listen to Healing will learn two lessons. First, that if ideas can harm, then other ideas can help. Through this knowledge, patients will learn to gain agency over their own health and healing in a way conventional medicine routinely ignores. Second, patients will learn what they can and should expect of their caregivers, and how to assist those caregivers who have not yet learned the exquisite art of caregiving. 

This is the book every patient should read at least once, and every caregiver should read at least once a year. A book about mastery of the healing arts, written by a master clinician. As one noted academic has written: Healing: Beyond Pills & Potions is one of the most significant works on health and healing in modern times. It will survive the ages.