Mindful Meditation for Chronic Pain – How Can it Help
Mindful Meditation for Chronic Pain – How Can it Help
Hey Guys, Alex here again; For today’s post I will be doing another Meditation for Health post. This time I will be looking into Mindful Meditation for Chronic Pain. This is an idea I’ve been meaning to go over for quite some time now. Just never got round to it. Anyway, by Chronic Pain I mean conditions such as arithritus, back pain, and fatigue.
I actually was only going to do this post about using meditation for arithritus but I decided that chronic pain in general was very much under the same umbrella. So, with this in mind I will be looking at a variety of ways that meditation might be able to help. Very much like in some of my other previous posts where I have looked at using meditation for other health problems. This will be very much like those.
So, where to start…
Arthritus was definitely something I wanted to look at. This is a joint disorder caused by inflammation of one or more joints. It is said to last several years, or can be life long. The usual way of treating this condition is by reducing pain and increasing movement of affected joints.
How meditation may help is by relieving this feeling of pain, and also by enhancing the body’s natural ability to heal.
Mindfulness meditation is one type of meditation that is said to be effective here because it is a method of training your mind to accept the pain. This and active meditation can also really help as this is a practice of letting go of thoughts feeling and sensations. Both can be used to treat all kinds of different chronic pain.
Now, continuing on…
Mindful Meditation and Chronic Pain – How it Can Help
Table of Contents
- Introduction to Mindful Meditation
- What is Chronic Pain?
- How, Mindful Mediation Can Treat Chronic Pain.
- OtherTypes of Meditation that May Help
- Meditation Exercises to Try at Home
- In Conclusion / Your Feedback
#1 Introduction to Mindful Meditation and Chronic Pain
For this edition of Meditation for Health as mentioned above I will be lookiing at using Mindful Meditation for Chronic pain relief. By Chronic pain I mean such conditions that cause our bodies immense pain on an ongoing basis. There many different definitions of Chronic Pain both medially diagnosed and also that which is often felt by others that suffer from these intense feelings of pain regularly.
To understand Chronic Pain a little better I will quickly explain in this next section.
#2 What is Chronic Pain?
Chronic Pain is a condition that is termed for any persistent pain that lasts longer than a period of 12 weeks despite treatment or medication. It is said to be more common in females than males, and that an estimated 1 in every 10 adults is diagnosed with this condition each year.
The common description for Chronic pain is a pain that persists beyond the expected healing period of soft tissue. It may be felt as a dull or sharp pain with an aching or burning sensation. It’s cause or causes can be a whole host of things including injuries, headaches, backaches, inflammation of joints (artritus), tendinitus, blocked sinuses and in more extreme cases advanced cancer.
To treat Chronic pain a GP may suggest things such as medication, electrical stimli, acupuncture, or physio therapy.
#3 How Mindul Meditation Can Treat Chronic Pain
Now, as mentioned at the beginning of this article Mindfulness Meditation is a technique that can be used to make chronic pain more bearable. There are several pieces of evidence that the regular practice of mindfulness can reduce the average person’s feelings of pain. Such as In 2015, a study was conducted by Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D. with his colleagues, and the purpose of this study was to investigate the role of mindfulness in pain management.
When the results of this study were analyzed, they took a look at the brain images of all subjects. They found that people who used mindfulness as a treatment had less activity in the parts of their brains responsible for managing pain messages.
This research also found that some of the people were able to reduce the pain and some were able to eliminate the pain completely just by the use of mindful meditation on a daily basis.
Futher to this idea Mindfulness exercises can assist in focusing the mind and body in a moment without any judgement. If you are having any kind of chronic pain, you can practice mindfulness daily to get rid of negative thoughts and worries. This can help by taking the focus away from the pain and towards other natural sensations.
When you are able to do this and focus on relaxing your body instead you will not only clear your mind from these kind of thoughts, but also reduce the symptoms of stress and anxiety.
#4 Other Types of Meditation that May Help
So, quite clearly mindfulness is a very popular type of meditation for treating Chronic Pain but it is by no means the only one, and whilst it is very helpful in managing pain there are some other types that can help.
A few of these I will discuss breifly below.
- Body Scan Meditation: When a person is in pain, their sole focus is on a certain body part which is affected. The purpose of the body scan meditation is to divert the attention of a person from a certain body part and make them think about the wholeness of the body. To practice body scan medication, you have to scan your whole body from head to toe and then feel the every sensation during this exercise.
- Loving Kindness Meditation: This kind of meditation is also known as metta prayer. It is all about delivering positive thoughts, desires, and wishes on yourself. It can help you in uplifting your mood, reduce the sense of self-critisim, and boost self-confidence. Ultimately you feel happy and the sensation of pain goes away.
- Walking meditation: It is an effective meditation for relieving pain. When you are walking, just focus your attention on the movement of your feet and feel every sensation. By doing this simple exercise you can get rid of severe pain.
Read more about Walking Meditation in my other article here.
For other ideas about using Mindful Meditation for Chronic Pain relief in the next section I will look at…
Meditation Exercises to Try at Home
For anyone interested in doing meditation then here are some exercises that you can try for yourself at home.
Discussed below are some of these exercises that can easily be done by anyone just by following these instructions;
- Yawn and stretch for 10 seconds every hour: You can try doing a fake yawn for 10-15 seconds every hour. Try to stretch your body slowly for at least 10 to 15 seconds and you will notice a considerable change in your thoughts and sensations. Just observe your surroundings for 20 more seconds and then get back to you work again.
- Mindful eating: Take something like a piece of chocolate or raisin and mindfully eat it. Slowly chew every bite and feel every sensation and flavour in the bite that you take. Use all your senses to see, touch, smell, and taste it.
- Breathing Exercises: you can practise mindful breating for one minute and repat this exercise 3-4 times a day. It can be done for longer than one minure however one minute is enough to relax your body and take out all your negative thoughts and emotions.
Conclusion
If you are somebody that is interested in trying out Mindful Meditation for Chronic Pain then I hope that this article has gave you some ideas to think about. Whilst I can not guarantee that such ideas may work for certain I think still that it is safe to say that trying any meditation is only a good thing.
Whether this can help relieve your Chronic Pain or not what is for certain is that it has the potential to do so, and more. If you are looking for some ideas to learn mindfulness then there are many products to try but if you are looking for inspiration then my suggestion would be to check out some of the free meditation apps available, and also some of the videos that can be found on Youtube.
YOUR FEEDBACK
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Many thanks,
Yours Sincerely
Alex
