![]() Can you notice how these experiences are temporary and change over time?Ĥ. Try to develop curiosity and openness towards whatever you are experiencing, even if painful or unpleasant. Between tasks at home or at work, can you briefly close your eyes, take a few breaths and check in with how your body is feeling right now?ģ. Implement “mini-meditations” throughout your day. ![]() Examples can be found in this link as well as the resources list found below.Ģ. A good place to start is by following guided audio and video meditations. So, how can people suffering from chronic pain cultivate mindfulness in their own lives?ġ. While it may seem counter-productive to open up to our pain, it may provide individuals with more control over their condition, and, in turn, facilitate physical function, psychological well being, and overall health. It can help people remain open and curious to their thoughts, emotions, and reactions to their pain, and can help people manage their pain-related symptoms, rather than merely avoiding them. It can help people construct more accurate perceptions of pain. Hence, mindfulness can be a useful coping strategy for dealing with chronic pain. In this way, it can improve our ability to tolerate pain and other unpleasant states, and can enable us to get back to our lives and activities even though some pain may be there. Mindfulness can help break this negative cycle by allowing individuals to be present with and accepting of their momentary experiences, even if unpleasant, without being consumed by them. This can, in turn, worsen mood and exacerbate disability. Such experiences often result in avoidance and reduced engagement in valued life activity. We tend to ruminate on our pain, “fight” it and have “catastrophic” thoughts about it, which can make our experience worse. When pain arises, we often try to push it away, get rid of it, and attach to it a variety of negative judgments. While chronic pain is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon, mindfulness can aid by grounding people to their own experience, whether it is positive or negative. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a scientist, writer, and teacher internationally recognized for bringing mindfulness to the West as a psychological intervention, found that mindfulness can meaningfully be helpful in reducing pain, negative body image, emotional distress, and mood disturbance associated with pain. One of the first applications of mindfulness has been for patients with chronic pain. Mindfulness has increasingly gained attention over the past few decades, as it is gradually implemented in medical care, hospitals, schools, and businesses. It is the act of knowing what is happening in your thought, emotions, body or senses, without “getting carried away by it”. Mindfulness is the ability to pay attention to the present moment both purposefully and non-judgmentally.
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