Relief for Your Chronic Pain
Living with chronic pain becomes intolerable physically and mentally. Even when taking the maximum dose of painkillers, the pain returns with a vengeance. No matter what you try to do, you can’t see or feel relief anywhere.
Putting up a fight against pain and illness is a natural response, but what if this resistance is causing more pain and disease.
Scientific Research
The latest medical advances here in the western world show it’s more effective to bring awareness to your body’s sensations of pain and illness. Becoming aware as they rise and fall. It may sound terrifying, but the latest medical research shows it’s more powerful to reduce pain than prescription pain medications. Its benefits have been my experience also.
In yoga, for as long as these ancient traditions have been practiced, acknowledge that our preset pain and suffering have their roots in our past pain, trauma, stress, loss, and illness. Our stored emotions in the body and mind are good and bad.
The Western World Agrees
Now modern science in the western world agrees with the most recent research. Their finding points to a second source of chronic pain—the fundamental biology of our thoughts, emotions, expectations, and memories.
Most chronic pain does have its roots in physical injury or illness, but it is sustained by how that initial trauma has changed the mind-body relationship, not just the physical pain.
Understanding how chronic pain is a mind-body experience and its complexities are crucial in dealing with our chronic pain—trying to fix the body with pain medication, physical therapy, and surgery is not your only option.
Understanding Your Primary and Secondary Pain
By first understanding that your chronic pain is a mind-body experience and how it works, then using yoga’s toolbox of healing practices. You can take control of your pain, heal, and claim your life back. They include breathing exercises and restorative poses. You can begin to find true relief from pain.
Primary pain comes from injury, nervous system damage, or illness. This is raw pain signal information sent from the body to the brain.
Secondary pain is the mind’s reaction to the primary pain, often longer-lasting and more intense. Crucially, it is controlled by an amplifier in the brain that governs the overall intensity of suffering.
Scientific research has begun to know how the mind’s pain amplifier is controlled and ways in which the volume of suffering can be turned down.
The mind does not simply feel pain, it processes the information it already contains. The brain processes all the different sensations trying to find the underlying cause. The brain is trying to help you avoid further pain or damage to your body.
The mind zooms in on your pain as it tries to find a solution, but this “zooming in” amplifies your pain.
Your Brains Analysis of Your Pain
Your mind processes this analysis of your pain. It also sifts through memories for times you have similarly suffered in the past. The brain searches for patterns, and your mind finds a warehouse full of painful memories to draw upon, especially if you have been suffering pain for months or years and find very few solutions.
Your mind becomes overwhelmed with unsettling memories, and your thoughts about your suffering are greatly enhanced. It begins to process the pain information as if you have always been in pain and illness.
You become consumed by anxiety, stress, and worry. You are asking yourself questions. Am I always going to be in pain like this? Is the pain going to get worse? What happens if I can’t stop it?
In an instant, this process begins before you are even consciously aware of it. Every thought builds on the last, further amplifying your pain. Does this sound familiar? This vicious cycle feeds your fears and provides stressors back into the body, creating more stress, anxiety, and, therefore, more pain.
The Never-Ending Cycle
This cycle aggravates your illness and injuries with more pain. It also drains the immune system and impairs healing.
These negative cycles put the mind on daunting tracks, and you become primed to suffer. The brain begins to sense pain by fine-tuning itself quickly and with greater intensity when trying to avoid you from experiencing more suffering.
People who suffer from chronic pain have more brain tissue dedicated to feeling the conscious sensations of pain. The brain turns up the pain volume and does not know how to turn it back down.
Secondary pain is real; it is the mind’s reaction to the Primary pain and is heavily processed before you consciously feel it.
The good news is that the same processing offers a way out of your pain. Meaning you can learn to control your pain.
Mindfulness Meditation
This approach is a new treatment for chronic pain and illness in the western world. Based on an ancient form of “mindfulness” meditation. Clinical trials reduce chronic pain by 57 percent, and individuals who have practiced mindfulness meditation for a while reduce their chronic pain by 90 percent.
Mindfulness meditation soothes the brain patterns underlying pain in imaging studies of the brain. Over time these changes alter the structure of the brain itself. Patients no longer feel pain with the same intensity.
Mindfulness Meditation Now Prescribed in Pain Clinics
Pain clinics now prescribe mindfulness meditation to help patients cope with suffering. Mindfulness meditation is prescribed for a wide range of illnesses, such as cancer and the side effects of chemotherapy. Arthritis, heart disease, fibromyalgia, back pain, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome, multiple sclerosis, and migraines.
Meditation of this type focuses on different areas of the body, with simple observing with the mind’s eye and bringing into your awareness of what you find—allowing you to see your mind and body connection. Observing painful sensations arise in the body and letting go of the struggle.
Your suffering begins to melt away of its own accord when you practice mindfulness meditation. A profound realization comes to you that pain comes in two forms. Primary and Secondary both have very different causes. When this comes into your awareness, you have greater control over your suffering.
Take Back The Pain Control Button
Mindfulness meditation hands you back the control button to your pain. Individuals undergoing brain scans confirm mindfulness soothes the brain circuits that amplify the Secondary pain response. Mindfulness teaches you how to turn down the volume of your pain. Anxiety, stress, and depression begin to melt away so your body can relax and heal.
Hundreds of scientific research trials show mindfulness meditation is extremely good at relieving stress, anxiety, depression, irritability, and exhaustion. Improves memory and physical stamina increases.
If you want more information on mindfulness meditation, we have a Master Your Mind beginner online course.
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Disclosure: Bear in mind the links above in this post are affiliate links, and if you make a purchase I will earn a commission at no extra cost. Keep in mind that I link this company and its products because of their quality and the positive impact on thousands of people’s lives, and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you. Much love, Lesa
Source:
Diana J Burgess, Ph.D., Roni Evans, Ph.D., Kelli D Allen, Ph.D., Ann Bangerter,, Gert Bronfort, Ph.D., Lee J Cross, MPH, John E Ferguson, Ph.D., Alex Haley, JD, Emily M Hagel Campbell, MS, Mallory R Mahaffey, MPH, Marianne S Matthias, Ph.D., Laura A Meis, Ph.D., Melissa A Polusny, Ph.D., J Greg Serpa, Ph.D., Stephanie L Taylor, Ph.D., Brent C Taylor, Ph.D., Learning to Apply Mindfulness to Pain (LAMP): Design for a Pragmatic Clinical Trial of Two Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Chronic Pain, Pain Medicine, Volume 21, Issue Supplement_2, December 2020, Pages S29–S36 https://doi.org/10.1093/pm/pnaa337
Use mindfulness to cope with chronic pain https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/use-mindfulness-to-cope-with-chronic-pain