What inspired me to write The Fear Cure? After writing Mind Over Medicine, I had a post-publishing epiphany. I realized that it’s all well and good to teach the 6 Steps to Healing Yourself, to invite people to do the deep transformational work that makes the body ripe for miracles and facilitates “spontaneous” remissions. But even if people are intuitive enough to tune into what their bodies need in order to heal, and even if they’re wise enough to write The Prescription for themselves, way too often, fear gets in the way. You may know what needs to change in your life, but if you’re not courageous enough to act upon your inner guidance, you’re likely to stay sick—and stuck.
That’s when I realized (with a gulp) that I needed to write a book about fear and courage.

A lot of people think of fear as a painful, disruptive emotion, and they may be aware of how fear is holding them back in their personal or professional lives. But few people—including physicians—are aware that fear predisposes you to illness and interrupts the healing process. In The Fear Cure, I share scientific data proving that fear and disease are linked and that fear can out-picture as heart disease, cancer, autoimmune diseases, chronic pain syndromes, and even the common cold.

But fear doesn’t just make you sick. It limits your ability to fully step into your soul’s purpose in what poet Mary Oliver calls “this one wild and precious life.” Perhaps even more importantly, it keeps us stuck in a cultural world view that will destroy our planet—and us along with it—if we don’t WAKE UP.

In The Fear Cure, I share what I call the “Four Fearful Assumptions,” beliefs we have adopted that contribute to our fear-mongering culture and lead us to make choices based on a scarcity mentality, and these choices not only sabotage your efforts to be happy, healthy, and thriving; these choices harm us all.

But what if we apply Byron Katie’s “The Work” to turn these beliefs around? What if instead, we adopt a brave new set of beliefs.

Wouldn’t we be naturally less afraid if we believed the second set of beliefs? Think about something you know you need or want to do, but fear is holding you back. Now imagine how you would feel if you knew that if you leaped into uncertainty, miracles more magical than anything you can even anticipate might happen! Imagine that if things didn’t turn out how you hoped and you lost something you cherished as a result of this leap of faith, you knew with certainty that your soul was growing as a side effect of the loss, that you were becoming more aligned with your natural divinity as a result of the loss. Imagine if you had absolute faith that it’s a purposeful, even friendly universe. My new favorite word is “pronoia,” the opposite of “paranoia,” the belief that everything in the universe is conspiring to support you. What if you had a raging case of pronoia? And what if you knew that no matter what happens in the uncertain future, you are not alone because we are all interconnected in this web of love, that you are not separate from other people or from all sentient beings, from all of Mother Nature herself?

The book includes a number of Courage-Cultivating Exercises meant to help you shift from fear to courage. It is filled with stories and, when available, scientific evidence, supporting these Four Courage-Cultivating Truths. It’s also peppered with what I called “Courage-Cultivating Exercises,” which are workshop-like activities you can do at home to cement these new beliefs and shift your world view permanently. My intention (which I surrender in its entirety to Divine Will with no attachment) is that this book might be a handbook for those committed to the evolution of consciousness, such that we might not so much cure fear as let fear cure us. In doing so, I hope we launch a revolution of love so powerful that we become unstoppable in our yearning to reconnect with each other and with Mother Earth.

As Anaïs Nin said, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” It’s time for us to evolve as a species and blossom. This is cosmic, dear ones. Let’s do this together.

Mind Over Medicine is a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into over twenty languages.

We’ve been led to believe that when we get sick, it’s our genetics. Or it’s just bad luck—and doctors alone hold the keys to optimal health. For years, Lissa Rankin, M.D., believed the same. But when her own health started to suffer, and she turned to Western medical treatments, she found that they not only failed to help; they made her worse. So she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Through her research, Dr. Rankin discovered that the health care she had been taught to practice was missing something crucial: a recognition of the body’s innate ability to self-repair and an appreciation for how we can control these self-healing mechanisms with the power of the mind. In an attempt to better understand this phenomenon, she explored peer-reviewed medical literature and found evidence that the medical establishment had been proving that the body can heal itself for over 50 years.

Using extraordinary cases of spontaneous healing, Dr. Rankin shows how thoughts, feelings, and beliefs can alter the body’s physiology. She lays out the scientific data proving that loneliness, pessimism, depression, fear, and anxiety damage the body, while intimate relationships, gratitude, meditation, sex, and authentic self-expression flip on the body’s self-healing processes.

In the final section of the book, you’ll be introduced to a radical new wellness model based on Dr. Rankin’s scientific findings. Her unique six-step program will help you uncover where things might be out of whack in your life—spiritually, creatively, environmentally, nutritionally, and in your professional and personal relationships—so that you can create a customized treatment plan aimed at bolstering these health-promoting pieces of your life. You’ll learn how to listen to your body’s “whispers” before they turn to life-threatening “screams” that can be prevented with proper self-care, and you’ll learn how to trust your inner guidance when making decisions about your health and your life.

By the time you finish Mind Over Medicine, you’ll have made your own Diagnosis, written your own Prescription, and created a clear action plan designed to help you make your body ripe for miracles.

Suppose you had a wise, warm, funny best friend—who just happened to be a gynecologist. You’re out with the girls for cocktails and the conversation turns to sex, and then to girly parts. One by one, you start asking her all the questions you’ve secretly wondered about—and discover that you have a lot in common. If you were to write those questions down, then you’d have What’s Up Down There?, a life-changing little book that answers:

• Do old ladies have saggy vaginas?
• How do male gynecologists have a sex life without feeling like they’re stuck at the office?
• Is it normal for your inner labia to hang out of your outer labia?
• Can the baby feel its mom having sex during pregnancy?
• How common is it for one’s boobs to be two totally different sizes?

And so much more! As outrageously funny as it is empowering, this book reveals how to love yourself and your body—and will have you recommending it to every woman you know.

With a history that stretches back to the hauntingly beautiful mummy portraits of Greco-Roman Egypt, encaustic art is now enjoying a renewal of popularity among artists and art lovers alike. Today, museums are staging exhibitions of encaustic art, workshops in the technique are thriving, and art collectors and dealers are assimilating encaustic art into their collections and galleries.

The word encaustic is taken from the Greek and means “to burn in.” In the encaustic process, pigmented wax is applied and then fused to a surface with heat. The result is a broad range of surface effects and a luminous translucency that is unique to the encaustic medium. Encaustic Art is a complete resource for artists who wish to learn to create fine art with wax. It features step-by-step techniques with easy-to-understand instructions and detailed illustrations, stunning examples of encaustic works of art (including sculpture), along with practical advice and thoughtful aesthetic observations from more than 60 professional artists working in the encaustic medium.