The Best Alternative & Complementary Medicine Books 2025

1. A Compendium Oriental Healing (Gift of Health Series), Used [Hardcover]

What riches you'll find in this tiny gem: the treasures of Chinese herbal medicine in a lavishly illustrated setting. Enter the world of yoga and meditation, acupuncture and manipulation, shiatsu and acupressure, and a variety of other ancient arts of the East. Learn such techniques as micropuncture, moxibustion, and cupping. Explore the healing powers of the horoscope, meditation, Ta'i Chi, and sex. All is explained in an atmosphere of heavenly wisdom revealed in poetry, meditations, and classics of the ancient visual arts.

A Compendium Oriental Healing (Gift of Health Series), Used [Hardcover]

2. The Complete Body, Mind, and Spirit [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. For centuries, people have been searching for ways to live a long and healthy life with balance and harmony. The Complete Body, Mind, and Spirit is a cross-cultural sampling of holistic techniques and methods from the worlds of health care, education, physical conditioning, self-defense, spirituality, psychology, and the arts. Each chapter was written by a certified practitioner of these disciplines.

The Complete Body, Mind, and Spirit [Paperback - Used]

3. Fourth Uncle in the Mountain: The Remarkable Legacy of a Buddhist Itinerant Doctor in Vietnam, Used [Paperback]

Set during the French and American wars in South Vietnam, Fourth Uncle in the Mountain is the true story of an orphan, Quang Van Nguyen, adopted by a sixty-four-year-old monk, Thau, who carries great responsibility for his people as a barefoot doctor. Thau manages against all odds to raise his son to follow in his footsteps and in doing so saves him, as well as a part of Vietnam's esoteric knowledge from the Vietnam holocaust. Thau is wanted by the French regime and occasionally must flee in to the jungle, where he is perfectly at home living among the animals. As wise and resourceful as Thau is, he meets his match in his mischievous son. Quang is more interested in learning Cambodian sorcery and martial arts than in developing his skills and wisdom according to his father's plan. Fourth Uncle in the Mountain is an odyssey of a single-father folk hero and his foundling son in a land ravaged by the atrocities of war. It is a classic story complete with humor, tragedy, and insight, from a country where ghosts and magic are real.

Fourth Uncle in the Mountain : The Remarkable Legacy of a Buddhist Itinerant Doctor in Vietnam, Used [Paperback]

4. Ayurveda: The Ancient Indian Healing Art (The Health Essentials) [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Ayurvedic therapy takes into account the whole person. Treatment of specific illnesses and the maintenance of good health are approached through meditation practice, diet, herbal preparations, exercises and internal cleansing programs, all tailored to the individual needs of each person.

Ayurveda - The Ancient Indian Healing Art - Health Essentials, Used [Paperback]

5. Restful Sleep: The Complete Mind/Body Program for Overcoming Insomnia [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. A new addition to the popular Perfect Health Library series--now available in paperback. Ayurveda, the ancient Indian science of life, is ideally suited to help with the problem of insomnia, in which the mind is known to play a considerable role. In this volume, Dr. Chopra shows readers how to fall asleep easily, feel rested upon arising, identify and eliminate the imbalances causing insomnia, and more.

Restful Sleep: The Complete Mind/Body Program for Overcoming Insomnia [Paperback - Used]

6. Amazon Magic: The Life Story of Ayahuasquero & Shaman Don Agustin Rivas Vasquez [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Amazon Magic tells the life story of Don Agustin Rivas Vasquez, an ayahuaquero, a shaman skilled in the use of ayahuasca, a visionary and healing plant medicine. Told in his own words, Amazon Magic describes incidents from his childhood in a small jungle town beside the Amazon River, and his early and present day experiences with the plant medicine ayahuasca. The book recounts his days of being lost in the remote depths of the jungle which resulted in his living a year with an Indian tribe. This book provides a fascinating look into the cultural life of the Peruvian Amazon as seen through the eyes of someone who is an integral part of this life, and provides a rare insight into the forces that helped shape the life of a profound healer who is now highly regarded in many parts of the world.

Amazon Magic: The Life Story of Ayahuasquero & Shaman Don Agustin Rivas Vasquez, Used [Paperback]

7. Integrative Medicine : Complementary Therapy in Medical Practice, Used [Hardcover]

This groundbreaking text provides the first definitive clinical reference for the rapidly growing field of integrative medicine. Using a clinical, disease-oriented approach, INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE offers practical guidance for safely and effectively integrating complementary and alternative therapies into regular primary care practice. Drawing on available scientific evidence and the author's first-hand experience, it covers therapies such as botanicals, supplements, mind-body, lifestyle choices, nutrition, exercise, spirituality, and more.

Integrative Medicine : Complementary Therapy in Medical Practice, Used [Hardcover]

8. In Search of the Medicine Buddha : A Himalayan Journey, Used [Paperback]

In 1987 David Crow journeyed to Nepal in search of teachings in Tibetan medicine and Buddhist meditation. For the next ten years, he studied with many teachers. Using his newfound knowledge, Crow opened a clinic in Kathmandu and another in a small mountain village, where he treated beggars from the street as well as high abbots of monasteries. This colorful and captivating story interweaves medical teachings with insights into Tibetan Buddhism, evoking the beauty and wonder of a faraway land.

In Search of the Medicine Buddha : A Himalayan Journey, Used [Paperback]

9. The Ayurvedic Guide to Polarity Therapy: Hands-On Healing a Self-Care Guide, Used [Paperback]

Morningstar explores how you can personally use these two vitally rejuvenative systems for your own self-healing.

The Ayurvedic Guide to Polarity Therapy: Hands-On Healing a Self-Care Guide, Used [Paperback]

10. Other-Worldly: Making Chinese Medicine Through Transnational Frames [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Traditional Chinese medicine is often portrayed as an enduring system of therapeutic knowledge that has become globalized in recent decades. In Other-Worldly , Mei Zhan argues that the discourses and practices called "traditional Chinese medicine" are made through, rather than prior to, translocal encounters and entanglements. Zhan spent a decade following practitioners, teachers, and advocates of Chinese medicine through clinics, hospitals, schools, and grassroots organizations in Shanghai and the San Francisco Bay Area. Drawing on that ethnographic research, she demonstrates that the everyday practice of Chinese medicine is about much more than writing herbal prescriptions and inserting acupuncture needles. "Traditional Chinese medicine" is also made and remade through efforts to create a preventive medicine for the "proletariat world," reinvent it for cosmopolitan middle-class aspirations, produce clinical "miracles," translate knowledge and authority, and negotiate marketing strategies and medical ethics. Whether discussing the presentation of Chinese medicine at a health fair sponsored by a Silicon Valley corporation, or how the inclusion of a traditional Chinese medicine clinic authenticates the "California" appeal of an upscale residential neighborhood in Shanghai, Zhan emphasizes that unexpected encounters and interactions are not anomalies in the structure of Chinese medicine. Instead, they are constitutive of its irreducibly complex and open-ended worlds. Zhan proposes an ethnography of "worlding" as an analytic for engaging and illuminating emergent cultural processes such as those she describes. Rather than taking "cultural difference" as the starting point for anthropological inquiries, this analytic reveals how various terms of difference--for example, "traditional," "Chinese," and "medicine"--are invented, negotiated, and deployed translocally. Other-Worldly is a theoretically innovative and ethnographically rich account of the worlding of Chinese medicine.

Other-Worldly : Making Chinese Medicine Through Transnational Frames, Used [Paperback]