Can Meditation Relieve Chronic Pain?

It can be hard to hear as a patient that chronic pain is something you are going to have to live with regardless of treatment. However one option of treatment that is often overlooked is meditation. Meditation has been shown to be a viable pain option. It requires focusing your breathing and tuning out the world around you in order to center your mind and calm your body. With the right training, meditation can help a person manage chronic pain.

How Meditation Can Help

Many experts believe that meditation creates a level of awareness within one's self that allows you to better understand your body's needs. It also allows you to focus and control your level of energy. Therefore, by working on these skills you are able to identify your pain and understand how to lessen it.

A first step in this process is to recognize and face the pain within your body. While you are meditating it is important to keep your body relaxed and comfortable while focusing on the source of your pain. Don’t focus solely on the pain but rather just acknowledge that it is there. As you work on meditating and pain focus, you’ll be able to start coming to terms with the sensation.

Once you have created that sensory awareness of the pain, you will no longer have to focus on the pain. You will find that if you acknowledge that the pain is there and then choose to ignore it you won’t feel as much pain when you aren’t thinking about it. Even though any method that allows for a distraction from the pain is significant, meditation relies on an in-depth shift in focus that other methods are unable to obtain. 

Building Pain Tolerance

Pain tolerance can continue to be built up from direct mindful acknowledgement. The easiest way to achieve this is to lie on the floor and focus on different aspects of your body over a period of time. This helps you become more aware of your body based on breathing, relaxation, and sources of pain.

Multiple studies have shown that patients that suffer from fibromyalgia benefit from this kind of meditation. It has also been shown that meditating regularly increases reduced results. The mind is a very powerful thing that can aid in your reduction of pain by simply learning to accept it. 

If you have questions about what pain relief options are available to you, contact Pain Specialty Group here. Our pain experts can assess your pain and make you aware of medical as well as home treatment options.

Author

Aidan Fisher, Maureen Cassidy Pain Specialty Group