The Role of Mindfulness in Chronic Pain Management (and Why It Works)
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Today we're going to be talking about mindfulness for alleviating chronic pain. Mindfulness practice has been shown to alleviate chronic pain by up to 93%. It's not necessarily a cure-all. It's not meant to

say, replace medication per se, you know, please check with doctors. And the doctors I worked with who are Harvard trained, Stanford trained doctors did their best to treat chronic pain with mindfulness as much as possible to reduce the

the need for pills and surgery. I'm not saying that pills and surgery are necessarily bad, but they can be avoided in many cases. More often than not, these pills can have harmful side effects. Addiction is very real in these circles. Trauma

is very real and mindfulness can also be used to treat the trauma and the addiction. So mindfulness can be helpful for like alleviating the pain itself, the suffering, the addiction to anything that we cope with to get away from or resist.

- The pain, when I say addiction, I mean substance abuse, unhelpful behaviors of any kind really, numbing the mind, numbing the body. And mindfulness can be helpful for healing the trauma itself as well. Whether it's physical trauma,

related to the cause of the pain, emotional trauma, sexual trauma, all sorts of different kinds of traumas. Maybe the most common complaint or skepticism I get is why would I want to be mindful of the pain when it's the last thing I want to be mindful of?

Why would I want to bring awareness to what I'm trying to get rid of? Why would I want to bring mindfulness to what's ruining my life? I will run the other way or I will hurt you if you try to make me want to welcome what I hate. So this can be really scary. Most people will resist this, understandably. I think it's really helpful to begin with empathy and to approach this with as much heart as we can. This is not about thinking your way through it or

pretending certain things are different or putting on some neat filter through your perception or consciousness. This is about softening with the heart. Most people will have lots of beliefs. I should not feel this. This should be different. This should never have happened. That person did this to me. I did this to me. So one thing that's

often not talked about is that part of this work is to notice all the different ways we're resisting, all the different ways we're judging, all the different ways we're clinging on to something, to acknowledge these areas, to notice the judgments of good and bad,

right and wrong and to make concerted efforts towards more and more forgiveness. There's one, say, rule of thumb with all of this work around chronic pain that I hope that most of you will remember is that all of this takes baby steps. The mental, physical, emotional, it's all baby steps. So please don't feel like we have to do this overnight.

It's not a quick fix. This is scary for a reason. This is difficult for a reason. It takes baby steps, but all of us can do this. This is possible. And this resistance will tell us to stop. We can say, okay, well, if I could forgive a little bit more, or if I could forgive 2%, what might that feel like? If I could notice the judgments 2% more, what might I notice? If I could just...

soften some of these stories two percent what might that create space for and a journal talk about it

sense into it. Vijamala has some wonderful guided meditations for chronic pain that you can find online that if you do, you know, five minutes here, five minutes there, five minutes there, a whole new way of being will surface bit by bit. But in general, in my experience, it's been helpful to help

others to differentiate between physical sensations and the thoughts about the sensations. Because most people will conflate the two. It's hard for them to distinguish them as two separate things. So to be able to play with that and explore what is truly visceral, physical, that I can feel

in my body. Is it pleasant or unpleasant or neither? Is it kind of neutral or numb or...

Can I even sense into it at all? If it's unpleasant, am I attaching a story about that unpleasant sensation as being bad or wrong or good or right? And sometimes it's a mix. And sometimes we'll be shocked at how we actually relate to the sensation. A lot of the times we'll think that unpleasant sensations are actually right.

or good and sometimes we'll think that pleasant sensations are wrong or bad. I'm not making a case for those, but I'm saying to notice are these unpleasant sensations, am I deeming them to be bad or good, wrong or right? And to soften those judgments and just come back to the unpleasantness itself with curiosity, gentleness, or pleasant sensations with curiosity.

and gentleness. But the point here is to differentiate between physical sensations and the judgments. Usually there's this unpleasantness or pleasantness kind of in the middle of that that we

don't explore much. Typically, when we're exploring the body and physical sensations, we typically start in areas that feel safe, that are not in pain. You know, if I have chronic pain in my belly, I'll start with my feet. If I have chronic pain in my feet, I'll start with

my hands somewhere else that feels safe and not too close to this epicenter of pain. I'll explore areas of the body that feel comfortable enough for me to do that and I'll work my way

through the body over time, over days and weeks, building my capacity to sense and to soften judgments and to sense into the spaciousness of parts of the body, to offer a sense of care, compassion for parts of the body that might feel a little sore, a little hungry, a little...

bruised, a little tingly. I'll be able to stay with those areas more and more. I'll be able to stay with areas that feel healthy, vibrant, staying with the physical sensations as long as I can. We can play with narrowing our awareness on smaller and smaller areas of the body and moving around with a small scope of awareness. We can practice increasing our awareness of larger and larger parts of the body

and parts of the body and the space around those parts of the body to get a sense of, say, spaciousness, context. The more we stay with these sensations, we can play with noticing how they're changing over time. They're not static. What happens when I increase my field of awareness spatially?

What happens when I shrink it? What happens when I offer care to this area right now? What happens when I sense into pleasantness or unpleasantness or neutral? What happens when I breathe different ways? What happens if I move these areas just a little bit and kind of like feel the energy move a little bit as I move? There's no right or wrong. This is a process that each of us

can explore using intuition. Sometimes we can make it fun. We can sense into what feels healing. We can use that as our guidepost. And then over time, as we build our capacity and our courage,

we can move closer and closer to the area of chronic pain. And notice what happens going in baby steps and slowly opening to those areas that feel a little

more painful. Noticing pleasant, unpleasant. Intensity. Okay, maybe I should back off a little bit. Or can I explore the very, very, very outer edges? You know, how much can I move towards this? What happens if I shrink my awareness? What happens if I open it? What happens if I bring, you know, more care? What happens when I breathe with this? Noticing like,

Is there resistance coming up? And if so, what flavor is that? What comes up? And whatever comes up, we can bring mindfulness to that, whether it's a story or a flair up or judgment. Tend not to use the word acceptance. Tend to use the word and say acknowledge. Just acknowledge what's here. Acknowledge whatever sensations are here, what stories are here, what judgments are here. Acknowledge them with acceptance.

gentle word. You can play with words like allowing this to be here just for now. And if it changes, it changes. We're just allowing it to be here. And if that feels triggering, you can go back to acknowledging. You can kind of play with these words a little bit to see what comes up. Like, can I allow this to be here for now? Some people may or may not like the word surrender. I

in my experience softening tends to help a lot is a lot of chronic pain for a lot of people is amplified by this resistance that we have mentally emotionally physically there's a there's a resistance in the body and in the mind and softening can

usually help to counteract that resistance. So for some people, the mantra like softening or gentle can be really helpful to help us unwind these layers of resistance, these layers of fear, softening, acknowledging, allowing. And when I say the word surrender, it's not surrendering to the pain,

because we still want a sense of like self-efficacy but it's rather surrendering our own resistance surrendering the fear that's keeping the pain around or that's amplifying the pain because the fear as frank herbert in dune says is the mind killer and fear often amplifies this

very real physical pain. And in many cases, I believe this fear is what leads to addiction, cancer, suicide. And so if we can soften, surrender our resistance and the courage to be with what's here,

with a sense of gentleness. And as teachers, can we encourage this courage? More than 50% of people have chronic pain or have had chronic pain at some point. So this is not like a small thing. This is most of humanity deals with this. And too often people with chronic pain are forgotten about or they themselves hide

you know it's not really talked about much and most of us don't know how to deal with this as person with the pain a lot of us don't know how to deal with it with when it's in our family or communities so being able to know like a few healing practices or

Being able to be sensitive around this without feeling too overwhelmed is really helpful. We need each other. This takes a community. Too many people with chronic pain isolate and we need to learn how to reconnect with ourselves, with each other.

There's no shame in this. It's just a part of being human. We are not our pain. So thank you for exploring this. I know a lot of you have explored this already and a lot of nuance. And hopefully, you know, we can play a small part in increasing awareness and mindfulness around chronic pain as a species. Thank you for joining us on this journey into mindfulness for chronic pain.

We hope this episode has offered valuable insights and practical tools to bring more awareness and compassion and relief into your life and also the lives of the people who you care for. If today's discussion inspired you and you're ready to deepen your mindfulness practice and share mindfulness with others as a mindfulness teacher, I invite you to check out our certification program.

in which we certify people to teach mindfulness in professional settings at mindfulnessexercises.com/certify. But remember, healing is a journey, a lifelong journey, and mindfulness is a powerful companion every step of the way. If you found this episode helpful, we'd love for you to share it with others, leave a five-star review,

or join the conversation on our social media channels at Mindfulness Exercises. Let's keep spreading the message of mindfulness and self-care. Thank you for listening. Until next time, stay present, stay grounded, and continue showing up with authenticity and compassion. Thank you for listening.