It’s known that meditation is one of the tools to relieve stress, but recently, meditation has been looked upon as a means to achieve pain relief. So, how does this process of closing your eyes, clearing your mind (aka, stop thinking about what’s on your to-do-list), relaxing your mind and focusing on your breathing, have to do with pain relief? The key is mindfulness meditation, says the article on the site Mad In America.
Mindfulness Pain Relief Distinct from Placebo Effect
A new study demonstrates that the practice of mindfulness may ease pain in a way that is mechanistically distinct from the placebo effect. Research, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found that mindfulness meditation not only outperformed placebo and fake meditation for pain relief but that it also activated different brain regions than the placebo treatments.”
A previous blog post discussed the topics covered on the 2015 Back Pain Education Day, including Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). It was hosted by Stanford University, and thus, we’re not talking about MBSR being some out-of-this-world, new age thing, but a viable tool used to achieve pain relief.
According to the Mad In America article, mindfulness meditation is “a cognitive practice based on developing nonjudgmental awareness of arising sensory events”. Say w-h-a-t?
That sounds like pretty heavy duty stuff. But when you break it down, it’s about setting some time during the day to meditate, and to do it mindfully. Find a quiet, non-distracting area, sit with a good posture, and focus of your breathing. Okay, I’m no expert on this, so best if you check out this article on the site Mindful, called “How to Do It“.
I guess I found another thing to add to my New Year’s resolution. Here’s to finding new ways to achive pain relief.
