Dear Students:
I highly recommend Dr. Norman Doidge’s book, The Brain’s Way of Healing 
for anyone that wants to learn how to heal, through natural ways without toxic medicines or invasive surgeries. I wish I could put this book in the hands of every parent with a child with special needs and every person suffering from brain injury, chronic pain or disease.
Each alternative therapy mentioned in this book encourages neuroplastic learning much like the Feldenkrais Method® does. I think you will find the book easy to read because of your own understanding of how the brain learns through your experiences with classes and sessions. I hope that I can inspire you to read the entire book in this short review.
Chapter 1: Physician Hurt, Then Heal Thyself, Michael Moskowitz Discovers That Chronic Pain Can Be Unlearned
This chapter is for anyone dealing with chronic pain. Dr. Michael Moskowitz, a pain specialist used the knowledge he discovered when recovering from his own injuries to teach people how to “unlearn chronic pain”. Using visualization and imagination every time one feels pain, can re-wire one’s brain and body image. This powerful chapter helped to relieve the sense of hopelessness in a some of my students that were doubting they were on the right track to recovering.
Chapter 2: A Man Walks Off His Parkinsonian Symptoms, How Exercise Helps Fend Off Degenerative Disorders and Can Defer Dementia
John Pepper learned how to consciously walk to slow down the progression of Parkinson’s, so much that some Doctors question his diagnosis. This encouraging chapter shows how a man determined to help himself and others, learned how to think in a smarter way and got his life back.
Chapter 3: The Stages of Neuroplastic Healing, How and Why It Works
Dr. Doidge observed there are five stages of neuroplastic healing: 1) Correction of general functions of the neurons and glia; 2) Neurostimulation; 3) Neuromodulation; 4) Neurorelaxation; 5) Neurodifferentiation & Learning. He states that the chapters about the Feldenkrais Method® emphasize the fifth stage of healing.
Chapter 4: Rewiring a Brain with Light, Using Light to Reawaken Dormant Neural Circuits
Light Laser therapy was only approved by the F.D.A. in United States in 2002. It helps with issues such as: promoting the growth of collagen fibers in skin tissues; healing wounds; healing damaged cartilage, ligaments, torn tendons & muscles; osteoarthritis; diabetic ulcers as well as heart disease and brain injuries. Dr. Doidge also reminds us about the healing power of the sun, something that has been forgotten by many since sun screens were born. People dealing with athletic injuries will be happy to hear that there is an alternative to surgery.
Chapter 5: Moshe Feldenkrais: Physicist, Black Belt and Healer, Healing Serious Brain Problems Through Mental Awareness of Movement
Dr. Doidge, tells the life story of the man behind the Feldenkrais Method® like a fiction novel. Dr. Feldenkrais was truly an amazing human being and a genius that was well ahead of his time. This chapter has taken a weight off my shoulders in that it explains the Feldenkrais Method® and all that it entails in easy to understand terms.
Chapter 6: A Blind Man Learns to See; Using Feldenkrais, Buddhist, and Other Neuroplastic Methods
David Webber became a Feldenkrais® Practitoner and recovered his vision after having five failed eye surgeries. His uplifting story explains how the Feldenkrais Method® taught him to stimulate his brain’s innate learning abilities to reorganize his neuromuscular system. This allowed him to combine the Feldenkrais Method® with other modalities to teach his brain how to see again.
Chapter 7: A Device That Resets the Brain, Stimulating Neuromodulation to Reverse Symptoms
This chapter tells about a remarkable device called the PoNs that stimulates a person’s tongue to promote healing. The team that designed the device claims that the tongue is a “royal road to activating the entire human brain”. The case studies mentioned are remarkable in explaining how people dealing with Post-Concussion Syndrome, Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s, walked into sessions with canes and left them behind upon leaving.
Chapter 8: A Bridge of Sound, The Special Connection Between Music and the Brain
Dr. Alfred Tomatis’s method stimulates the ears with music, sound and voice to rewire the brain. His method has helped children to improve and heal from the symptoms of learning disorders such as dyslexia, autism, attention deficit disorder and sensory processing disorder. He helped singers by using the philosophy, “the voice can only contain the frequencies that the ear can hear.” Tomatis says, “the ear is the battery to the brain.” He taught people how to differentiate listening through the ears in very much the same way that Moshe Feldenkrais taught how to differentiate movement through awareness. This chapter gave me many new ideas in how to better help people and energized my learning.
The main impression this book left me with is that when people take their health into their own hands they discover the miraculous ability of their bodies and brains to heal. Each person mentioned in this book explored their chosen modality of healing well beyond the one hour they spent with the practitioner they were working with. They did not expect to be healed, but rather learned how to heal themselves. They took the information given to them and ran with it until they improved beyond the expectations of western medicine.
This book supports my belief that anyone with the desire, can heal from any disease with the right thinking, the right movement, the right action, along with living close to the earth while eating her unaltered fruits & vegetables, breathing fresh air, drinking living water, and taking in the rays of the sun.
~Donna