Every day modern medicine announces the arrival of yet another "wonder drug" or "miracle procedure" to a world increasingly wary of expensive high-tech cures. Drugs, transplants, and surgery don't work for 90 percent of our aches and pains and, while we are grateful for life-saving developments, we know that most come with risks that we ignore at our peril.

Long hailed as one of the founding fathers of mind-body medicine, Larry Dossey directs our attention to simple sources of healing that have been available for centuries--treasures often hidden in plain sight--from the power of optimism...