Mindfulness teaches us how to be present, self-aware, and in control of our mind's responses to internal and external triggers. Mindfulness meditation for chronic pain can relieve us from feeling tied down by regrets around how pain has impacted us in the past or lost in worries of how it might burden us in the future. Mindfulness techniques for chronic pain, being able to focus on the present, relaxing the body, noticing the breath and accepting physical sensations can help reduce pain and the accompanying physical and psychological symptoms.
The Benefits
Practicing daily mindfulness is used to treat chronic pain because it can help us face our sensations while gaining distance from the negative stories we tell ourselves about our pain, which tend to make us feel worse. This is vital, because living in constant worry about pain can affect our mood, and in turn increase pain or even lead to depression. Mindfulness meditation for chronic pain can be used as a tool to help us experience our pain sensations with more calm, control the way we process sensations, and shift the negative emotions we project onto pain. The benefits of mindfulness for chronic pain include:
– Reduced stress
– Increased relaxation and calmness
– Increased sense of acceptance for the present
– Decreased repetitive thinking, rumination and reactivity
– Decreased pain intensity
– Decreased anxiety and depression
– Enhanced self-compassion
The Science
The scientific analysis of mindfulness has boomed in recent decades, with some studies showing that meditating for as little as 10 minutes increases the brain's alpha waves (associated with relaxation) and decreases anxiety and depression. Researchers have also found that meditators’ brains respond differently to pain; A 2014 review in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction reduces the perceived severity of pain experienced, while a 2011 study showed that this practice was as effective at reducing anxiety and depression in patients with chronic pain as cognitive behavioral therapy. Finally, a study from 2022 showed that mindfulness can be a powerful tool in actually curing chronic pain, particularly once patients are aware of the mindbody connection to their particular symptoms.
"For the last four hundred years, an unstated assumption of science is that human intention cannot affect what we call 'physical reality.' Our experimental research of the past decade shows that, for today's world and under the right conditions, this assumption is no longer correct. We humans are much more than we think we are and Psychoenergetic Science continues to expand the proof of it."
William A Teller, PhD
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