Mindset is a pivotal component in training and therapy development. Below are books that contribute to building mental strength and fortitude. Feel free to take a closer at them and submit any recommendations of your own.

The Divided Mind traces the history of psychosomatic medicine, including Freud's crucial role, and describes the psychology responsible for the broad range of psychosomatic illness. The failure of medicine's practitioners to recognize and appropriately treat mindbody disorders has produced public health and economic problems of major proportions in the United States.

The interaction between the generally reasonable, rational, ethical, moral conscious mind and the repressed feelings of emotional pain, hurt, sadness, and anger characteristic of the unconscious mind appears to be the basis for mindbody disorders.

One of the most important aspects of psychosomatic phenomena is that knowledge and awareness of the process clearly have healing powers. Thousands of people have become pain-free simply by reading Dr. Sarno's previous books. How and why this happens is a fascinating story, and is revealed in The Divided Mind.

Dr. Sarno's research on TMS (Tension Myoneural Syndrome) helps patients overcome their back conditions. In this New York Times bestseller, Dr. Sarno teaches you how to identify stress and other psychological factors that cause back pain and demonstrates how to heal yourself--without drugs, surgery or exercise. Find out:

1 -- Why self-motivated and successful people are prone to Tension Myoneural Syndrome (TMS)
2 -- How anxiety and repressed anger trigger muscle spasms
3 -- How people condition themselves to accept back pain as inevitable

With case histories and the results of in-depth mind-body research, Dr. Sarno reveals how you can recognize the emotional roots of your TMS and sever the connections between mental and physical pain, and start recovering from back pain.

All athletes experience victory and defeat, but how many truly learn from the experience of sport? For ancient Greek philosophers, sport was an integral part of education. Today, athletics programs remain in schools, but we face a growing gap between the modern sports experience and enduring educational values. This book seeks to bridge that gap by advocating a philosophical approach to the sports experience.

Combining issues and ideas from traditional philosophy with contemporary analyses of sport and applied "thinking activities," this book invites athletes to learn about life from their experience of sport. The text works its way from internal reflection to social interaction by addressing four important topics: self-discovery, responsibility, respect, and citizenship.

This sequence is important because authentic self-knowledge is an essential foundation for effectively dealing with the personal and social challenges faced by philosophical athletes. Specific issues such as violence, racism, and performance-enhancing drugs will be discussed in their relevant contexts, though philosophical athletes focus on the big picture, approaching each issue from a complete vision of themselves, their moral commitments, and their social roles.

Athletes as diverse as the teenage college recruit and the aging weekend-warrior will gain insight into their sports experience and into their lives. This philosophical approach maximizes what we can learn from sport and gives us the best chance for leading better lives because of it.

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.

Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients' anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them.

In his bestselling books, Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Here he examines its ultimate limitations and failures―in his own practices as well as others'―as life draws to a close. Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life―all the way to the very end.