The Mindfulness Blog

Mindfulness can be very useful in dealing with both acute pain and chronic pain. Practicing mindfulness cannot remove the sensation of pain but rather control the thoughts that come with it. Often when we are in pain our mind conjours up all soughts of unhelpful thoughts that can increase our perception of the level of pain that we are experiencing.

 Pain is a warning sign that what we are doing or have done is likely to put us in danger. Placing your hand on a hot stove is a good example of this. The pain sensation is there to warn us and tell us that if we leave our hand on the stove we will suffer and now is the time to remove it! Therefore pain sensations play a very important part in keeping us safe.

 The same cannot be said for chronic pain however. Studies have shown that chronic pain lingers around long after any damage has been suffered and the danger to the body has passed. This is where Mindfulness is especially useful.

 When suffering pain of any type all sorts of things can be conjoured up in the mind, increasing tension and stress levels in the body and increasing pain levels. Such thoughts can be;

•  Worry that the injury is serious.
•  Fear that it may get worse.
•  Frustration that your activities may be put on hold.
•  Anger if this is a recurring problem.
•  Depression from potential changes to lifestyle and general feeling of being in pain.

 All of these thoughts can add up to one ordinary experience. Once we learn to effectively practice mindfulness we can however seperate the thoughts we are having from the actual pain sensations and reduce our level of self-imposed stress.

 The practice does not promote supression of these thoughts, rather the acceptance that we have those thoughts and without focusing on them we simply let them go from our mind and bring our focus back to our physical self, back to the here and now.

 Take it from me, I have suffered chronic back pain for just over two years and I have not found any other technique (or drug for that matter) that is as effective in improving and maintaining mental health through what is a very trying time. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 1:12 am and is filed under Mindfulness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.