I have always loved Rudyard Kipling’s uplifting poem ‘If’ – it’s too long to repeat here, but easily available. Just a few lines …

“If you can dream and not make dreams your master

If you can think – and not makes thoughts your aim.

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,

And treat those two impostors just the same.”

Wandering through one of those increasingly rare independent bookshops on a rainy Sunday afternoon, I picked up ‘Stressed Unstressed‘ – a collection of over 100 ‘classic poems to ease the mind’. Published by William Collins in 2016 the poems are categorised into groups such as stress-beating, meditating, stopping, grieving, moving on and positive thinking. Lovely stuff and ‘If’ was in it!

At NOI we hold the fundamental belief that the arts have a potent yet sometimes unrecognised place in the treatment of chronic pain. This book is so welcome as a…