How Mindfulness Can Help With Pain
You might look at this title and think, “Isn’t mindfulness being present with what is? If I focus on my pain, won’t it make my pain worse?”
Actually, no it won’t! Research* has shown that mindfulness can not only change our relationship to pain (reducing pain aversion, catastrophizing, and reactivity), but it can actually change our experiences of pain as well! (reducing pain intensity, sensitivity, and create changes in brain areas connected to our experiences of pain).
But before we get too much further, what is pain?
The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) defines Pain as: “An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage." They give 6 key points for further context. Check them out here. I also think it's important to note that pain can be physical, emotional, spiritual, and/or energetic. Pain is complex.
So back to how Mindfulness can help with pain:
Mindfulness can help us let go of attachment. Through ongoing mindfulness practice, we can let go of attachment and expectation of making things a certain way. We can let go of goal-oriented outcomes that we must get rid of our pain 100%. It’s not to say we should be resigned to our pain. No, not at all. Rather, we can be present with whatever is right now, on this day. Maybe it’s a high pain moment, maybe’s there’s very little. Maybe the quality of pain is different than it was last month or last week. Mindfulness helps us practice non-attachment and awareness. This awareness helps us take action to make changes in our movements or self-care or pain management, but without hyper-fixating on one outcome.
Mindfulness can help us separate ourselves from the pain. Sometimes the pain can see so overwhelming. It is everywhere in the body. It never ends. It never feels better. Mindfulness helps us remember: You are not your pain. There is always a part of us, the core of who we are, that is not pain. Mindfulness can us help us lessen this pain catastrophizing of it never ends and is everywhere.
Mindfulness can give us a different perspective. With mindfulness we can see how the pain, like everything, changes. Nothing is permanent. It may not be big changes (or it might be!). With mindfulness we are not suppressing, forcing out or detached from the pain; rather we turn towards it or go within it (gently and gradually so as not to get overwhelmed). Can we “put out the welcome mat” for pain and see what we learn from it?
Mindfulness can give us insight into our pain. Various dimensions of pain can be “uncoupled from one another, meaning they can be held in awareness as independent aspects of experience” (Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living, p. 374). With this uncoupling, we can begin to see how pain ebbs and flows, or notice the different qualities of the pain and how it changes, or when we feel more or less pain at different points in our day or after different activities.
Through mindfulness we learn to cultivate curiosity and compassion for whatever we’re experiencing, and we can do this with pain as well as with the joys of live. With mindfulness we can begin to recognize all of these experiences, see their complexity, and let go of judgment and attachment.
more ways to learn about yoga & pain:
Yoga & Mindfulness for Pain Management: An interactive webinar that includes research and hands-on practices on how to use yoga and mindfulness for pain. Anyone can take it, however it also meets the meets the Pain Management Continuing Education requirements for social workers in the state of Michigan.
Sign up for Yoga Therapy to experience firsthand how mindfulness (as part of a yoga therapy plan) can help you better understand and change your experience of pain.
*You can find out more about research studies on mindfulness and pain in my continuing education workshop: Yoga & Mindfulness for Pain Management. You can also find a list of research references that I use here.
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash